Girl reading
"Le Masgelier" (Creuse) France. Luba, of sainted memory, reading Pearl Buck's "The Good Earth" to the little ones.

Anti-Jewish measures were accelerated in the second half of 1942: the word "JUIF" was stamped on all Jewish identity and food ration cards. It was decided that inasmuch as Jewish children posed a threat to German Aryan racial purity, they were henceforth also to be exterminated. The Marseilles Police Commissioner invented numerous administrative hurdles so that, even after the issuance of 1000 children's USA entry visas, few could be used.

With the Allied Landing in North Africa in November 1942, exit visas were no longer available and the Germans occupied all of France; the OSE children in Marseille awaiting departure were initially interned, but subsequently freed.

Ernest continued to be very weak and ill; he was quarantined in the castle tower as, besides his other ailments, he also had contracted the mumps. In his privileged situation, he had access to buttered toast and, as some good brothers cum best friends are known to do, he scraped the butter from his bread, wrapped it in a piece of paper, and let it down, attached to a string, from the window in his aerie. A few of us ragamuffins managed to steal a few potatoes in a nearby field and, making a fire as I had watched the farmer do in Becherbach, we roasted the potatoes which we then ate with a dab of "Ernest butter." None of us who were privileged to live this show of altruism in those difficult times ever forgot Ernest's potatoes.