With pitchforks
1943–1944: La Blachette, Vernoux d'Ardèche

Our warden and nemesis, the widow Aubert, had periodic attacks of viciousness when she would vent her hatred. On one such occasion, her bile came out in a particularly nasty fashion; she told us, with a sneer, that we best resign ourselves to the fact that our parents were no more, that we were to stay on the farm with her and the goats forever. She alone would decide our future.

Our rage, our hatred and our furor led us to charge her with the farmer's weapon of choice—his pitchfork. In the face of our threats, she recanted and we went back to our chores, but never forgot, or forgave, her vicious meanness.

Obviously, she was one more person not to be trusted. Was there no one, on this wide Earth, whom two children, alone in this world, could trust without reservation and without second-thought?

There was, in fact, such a place on this wide Earth.

Only in Denmark were Nazi laws were not obeyed. Every single Danish Jew survived and found his home untouched after the War. The totality of the Danish People earned the name "Righteous among the Gentiles."