Queue at the government office
"Get out of here with those two cute boys!"


It became obvious to mother that all the "Foreign Nationals" were, in fact, exclusively Jewish women and young children—a terrible omen in those times, as the Germans and their French collaborators in the Vichy Police used such convocations to trap unsuspecting people and make them "disappear."

A lady—possibly the concierge of the building—picked us out of the assembled multitude and showed us a way out of the compound through a private passage. "Go away with those two beautiful children" she told our mother, as we left. Without any doubt, this person saved our lives.

Mass arrests of Jews were started in the Paris area in May 1941, based on the data collected during the earlier census. The arrests of non-French Jews went on all year in the Occupied Zone, with the victims herded to various "holding" camps, where abominable conditions prevailed. The first deportations from France to the killing grounds in the East took place in the Spring of 1942.