Father was released from internment at the "Les Milles" holding camp thanks to the Camp commander, Capitaine Goruchon of the French Army, who had a number of detainees released on the pretext of "serious illness" on September 16, 1940, the day before this generous human being was dismissed as camp commander.

Fiche de Liberation

Two years later, Jewish detainees as well as the several thousand survivors of the Spanish Civil War who had thought they had found asylum in France, were deported to the death camps in the East. At the Sainte Lizaigne Rail Station, we did not immediately recognize this gaunt figure as he looked, with his béret and "musette"—the typical French carry-all of the time—like any of the French war prisoners who were being released from German captivity in this fall of 1940. Camp commander Capitaine Goruchon did his utmost to liberate detainees with next-of-kin in France, prior to his dismissal and the Army turning over the administration of Les Milles to the Vichy pro-German "Gardes Mobiles" a few weeks later, on October 1, 1940.

Elated as we were, our father's return created the problem of shelter, as the very proper and kind maiden Misses Foerster, Marthe and Hélène, could not possibly let a man into their lovely home. It was simply not done.

Here was a resourceless, devoted couple with two young sons, without means and unable to communicate in the language of this land, forced to wander the streets of a hamlet with their meager belongings; they found shelter, in their desperation, in an icy and unheatable abandoned house.

The move was effected with a wooden barrow which contained little Ernest rolled into blankets, as he was too ill and too weak to walk.