Jacqueline Mendels Birn: Flight from Paris

NARRATOR: Over 60 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur.

This podcast series presents excerpts of interviews with Holocaust survivors from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s public program First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors.

In today’s episode, Jacqueline Mendels Birn talks with host Bill Benson about her family’s flight from Paris to the Vichy-controlled southern zone of France in July of 1942. Jacqueline’s father was able to find two reliable farmers to help the family escape across the demarcation line.

BILL BENSON: Jacqueline, when you left Paris for that last time, you wrote in your memoir that the departure was handled very quietly. Things were moved out of your apartment at night, yet you also said that people in your apartment must have known you were leaving.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Absolutely. The concierge must have been a wonderful person, and the person who lived, I think, two flights of stairs from us. Madame Deneux kept, I think, a lot of my parents’ belongings and she was a widow from World War I and she hated le Boche—the Germans—and she helped us.

And then my mother, by that time, had a little spinet piano and my father and somebody else, in the middle of the night, it was pitch dark—it must have been early July—carried that piano downstairs (we were on the first floor European, so second floor American) to a neighbor across the yard that you saw and that wonderful friend and neighbor kept the piano the whole war.

So my parents were able to…we didn’t know anything, my sister and I. I don’t know if the next morning we said, “Where is the piano?” I know I drew a piano from…[Laughs.]

BILL BENSON: You would have noticed that was missing somehow, when you woke up.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Yes. Right.

BILL BENSON: And then you would stay the night with some friends. That was significant, and it also included getting your good-luck token. Say a little bit about that.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Yes. We had those wonderful friends—my parents had those wonderful friends—since before my birth actually, and they risked their lives in helping us. My parents didn’t want to go to the métro. We were allowed to take the métro after 6 a.m. as Jews, but in the last train, of course.

And they said, you know, “Come and sleep over at our house because they don’t know you on that street and it’s very close to the métro stop. You can leave at 6 a.m. very quietly and nobody will know.”

In our apartment house, people could have looked out the window and something could have been said.

So my parents accepted the offer of their very good friends. We went over there. I was so delighted. I was playing with my little friend that I just saw last spring. She is two years younger than me and we were playing. We shared our bed.

They went down to the cellar, even though it was July, the father, Maurice Paris is his name, burned our Jewish stars. We had dinner, and the next morning, we must have gotten up very early because we left at 6 a.m. for the train station.

Their son, Michel Paris, and the son of the lady, they were 15 years old, those two boys, were in the Underground, in the Résistance, they had taken my parents’ backpacks. My parents decided they were going to travel.

It was not their style, but they were traveling with a backpack, with the most essential things, to get on the train. Let’s not forget, Jews were not allowed to travel, and my parents had their Jewish IDs.

BILL BENSON: They had the Jewish IDs but no stars.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: No stars. So we left that morning. That’s, I think, your question. I elaborate too much.

BILL BENSON: No, no.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: We left that morning, we said goodbye of course, very quickly, and we got on the métro and we stopped at the train station which is called la Gare d’Austerlitz, which takes people south, center south. Well, my parents retrieved their backpack, which had been left the night before by those two young men and they probably bought the tickets for my parents because my parents were not allowed to…

We got on the train and the train wouldn’t leave. And I remember that. And the train wouldn’t leave. Well, I was seven years old by then. And my father got very anxious and went into the corridor and said, “Oh yeah, they are rounding up Jews there on that train, on the other side,” but they didn’t get to our train.

I should mention my medal because Madame [Paris], the wife, Geneviève Paris was her name, gave my sister and me and my mother, I’m sure, a medal, and on the verso, it says “Notre-Dame de Lourdes,” and if you know Lourdes in France, it’s a place where miracles occur. And so that wonderful Geneviève Paris thought this would help us.

BILL BENSON: And you have it today.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: And I have it! Yeah. I don’t really wear it; I keep it…

BILL BENSON: So they were rounding up Jews on the train but they didn’t get to your end.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Yes. They didn’t get to our train.

BILL BENSON: So from there you would make your way and end up eventually finding yourself in this little village of Le Got.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Not right away. [Laughs.]

BILL BENSON: No. Tell us how you found your way to Le Got.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Well, we had to change trains in a little town called Angoulème, which is on the map—not on your map, but on the maps of France. We had to change trains and it was pitch dark, and my sister fell and hit her head on the cement, and to this day, she remembers how it resonated in her head.

But miraculously…maybe that was all that…she didn’t hurt herself. And we jumped on the other train and got to a small village called St. Aulaye and I believe we had to walk. We went to a hotel and then we got word from the passeur, “Uh-uh, we can’t take you.”

BILL BENSON: And the passeurs were the people trying to help get you across the demarcation line.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Yes, right. They were young farmer boys.

BILL BENSON: Passeur.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Meaning “passing, crossing,” if you want. And they couldn’t do it and I think we had to wait two days, and finally we were supposed to meet them in that little village at midnight under the tree next to the church. I remember that. It was, I think, August 1st and it was hot.

So we met those passeurs and we started walking and it was pitch dark. I don’t know if there were stars.

BILL BENSON: And you’re seven years old.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Right. And at one time, I remember seeing cigarette butts, the light, you know, and they’d say, “Get down on the ground,” and then my sister said, “I have to do pee-pee,” and they said, “Shh!” you know, and so we were lying down on the ground and it was very dangerous.

And then one of those passeurs…they were on bicycles and we were walking. One of those passeurs went ahead to make sure things were clear, because the Germans were very, very close.

BILL BENSON: On patrol and doing all of that, yeah.

JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN: Yes, absolutely. They were very nervous, I think I remember that, and the other passeur put Manuela and I, my sister and me, on his bicycle, so the two of us were on the bike, and my parents had to run behind. By that time, I guess we were off from the ground, you know.

And finally, we made it and we knew we made it and I can remember that voice, it was the French Army of Armistice. I think 100,000 soldiers were allowed to keep their arms in the “free zone.” I always say the so-called free zone. And they said, “Qui va là?,”—“Who goes there?”—and it’s a typical military expression.

And the passeur must have said, “Well, it’s us and we have a family.”

NARRATOR: You have been listening to First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors, a podcast series of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Every Wednesday at 1 p.m. from March through August, Holocaust survivors share their stories during First Person programs held at the Museum in Washington, DC. We would appreciate your feedback on this series.