ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING of Thursday, April 1, 2010

at the Centre Communautaire
119 rue La Fayette, 75010 Paris

At 8 p.m. the meeting is opened by the President

I. Treasurer’s financial report

Subscriptions and income

Of 48 registered members, 31 have paid their subscriptions, for €1,722.00 – an average subscription of €55.00.

Event at the Théâtre Ouvert (June 22, 2009)

This event was subsidised by:

Expenditure

Cash position

Victor Kuperminc
Treasurer

II. President’s report

I would like to begin by paying tribute to two very dear friends of Odette and Moussa who died this year:

• René Sicart, journalist and chief news reporter at Paris Match, very close to Moussa, companion of Jacqueline Denechère, who died on November 19, 2009;

• and René Dupuy, who died on August 1, 2009, actor, director and theatre manager. He was a member of the Théâtre des Quatre Saisons company and performed alongside Moussa in Knock in New York. He attended several of our meetings.

Activities in 2009

Thank you to Emmanuel Gagnier, our webmaster, for his help with our website, which allows us to be in contact with the visitors who consult it regularly…

Our friend and Abadi child Michèle Merowka, President of AMEJDAM (Association for the memory of the Jewish children deported from the Alpes-Maritimes), actively represents us in Nice and the surrounding region. A few of her talks, using the film Le Réseau Marcel:

January 19, 2009 at 2 p.m.,
at the Lycée Thierry Maulnier, with Roger Wolman and Joseph Sosnowski. Roger and Joseph both spoke about their lives as hidden children to pupils who had seen the film beforehand. I spoke to explain how Moussa and Odette Abadi created the Marcel network with the help of Archbishop Monseigneur Rémond and the pastors of Nice.

For Yom HaShoah, commemorations were held in front of the plaques put up in various schools (see our website), followed by a screening of the film.

January 29 at 1 p.m.,
at the lycée in Vence, with Daniel Wancier, who presented the film, told of his experiences during the war and answered questions. The debate focused on what happened in Vence, a town where Jews were placed under house arrest. A trip to Auschwitz was planned for the pupils, who were each given two books: Andrée Poch’s and Serge Klarsfeld’s on the deportation of the Jews of the Alpes-Maritimes.

January 2009,
visit to Vouziers by Bohbot Adly, a member of our association. Vouziers, in Champagne-Ardenne, is a small town of 5,047 inhabitants that has decided to preserve traces of the past by paying tribute to the Jewish families of the town who were deported.
The association Les Tourelles, in partnership with the association C’est arrivé près de chez vous, organised an exhibition made up of a set of panels on deportation (lent by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Déportation).
64 years ago, the municipal magazine recalls, Jewish families of Vouziers […] were taken away […] by the Vouziers Feldgendarmerie, taken to Drancy and then deported to Auschwitz, where they perished in the gas chambers. Towards these families, as towards the six million Jews and the six million opponents, dissidents, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled and anonymous people who were victims of the Holocaust, we have a duty to keep the memory of these events vigorously alive. Listening to these harrowing stories and looking at the heart-wrenching photographs, it is hard not to feel concerned.

In March 2009:
again AMEJDAM, which on March 28 at 3 p.m. at the FSJU organised an activity around Yom HaShoah for 7- to 12-year-olds.
The film chosen was the animated film Anne Frank. The panels on the Marcel network were shown to the children, with commentary and an explanation of the rescue of children and of the Jewish Resistance.

April 11, 2009
at the FSJU: screening of the film Le Réseau Marcel with a talk by Georges Schnek on the role of the Jewish Resistance in rescuing children and getting them into Switzerland.

April 2009:
at the Lycée Paul Héroult in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Anna Lecoeur, a French teacher, organised a week on Memory and Citizenship. At her invitation, Jeannette Wolgust spent four days there telling, after a screening of the film Le Réseau Marcel, the story of Odette and Moussa in 1943–1944. (See the website and the article in Le Dauphiné Libéré.)

June 17, 2009
Victor and Marthe Kuperminc and Andrée Poch-Karsenti recorded a programme on Radio J to talk about the conference our association was organising on June 22.
Marc-André Charguéraud, writer and historian specialising in the history of the victims of the Shoah, was present in the first part of the programme for his latest book: Le martyre des survivants de la Shoah de 1945 à 1952 (The suffering of the Shoah survivors, 1945–1952).

June 19, 2009
Our conference was announced on France Culture

June 22, 2009
A conference on Theatre and Resistance was organised by the association at the Théâtre Ouvert, cité Véron, Paris 18th. This theatre, lent to us for a whole day by Lucien Attoun in memory of Moussa and Odette, is in a poetic spot at 94 boulevard de Clichy, from which a long cul-de-sac runs. The cité became famous from 1953 with the arrival of Jacques Prévert and Boris Vian.
The day was a success thanks to the involvement of many personalities whom I must name and thank warmly. I would like to be able to name them all at once!..
So thank you to Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, who agreed to play the difficult role of moderator and, with his usual diplomacy and expertise, gave the floor to the various speakers. He closed the day by discussing the place of Odette’s book Terre de Détresse in the literary world.
Thank you to Catherine Jourdan, who fascinated us by bringing cultural Nice to life – or back to life – with her explanations, her slides and her readings.
Thank you to Helen Solterer, who came from across the ocean to explain to us how being an actor had enabled Moussa’s work of depersonalisation.

Thank you to Duke University in North Carolina (USA), which helped us financially with this conference.
Thank you to Maria Landau for making us feel the pain of the Hidden Children and for speaking so well about Terre de Détresse and Odette.
Thank you to Charif Kiwan, who shared with us his question: Did Moussa exist?
Thank you to our Abadi sisters and brothers who acted as hosts, secretaries and porters: Jeannette, Marthoune, Victor, Coline, Pierre, Armand, Paulette… and the others!..
Thank you to the staff of the Théâtre Ouvert, who helped us with stage management and with handling the invitations. Special thanks to all the artists, authors, directors and writers who, one after another, through their recollections and memories, made us smile with their anecdotes as they portrayed Moussa in
a kaleidoscope, through the eyes of Robert Pouderou, Victor Haïm, Lucien Attoun, Jean-Claude Grumberg and Roland Monod. Thanks to Lucien Attoun, we were able to watch an interview with Ariane Mnouchkine and hear a live telephone contribution from Patrice Chéreau.
Thank you to Natacha Karsenti, Vincent Daufin and Alexis, talented artists who lent their voices to texts by Rutebeuf and Charlotte Delbo.
I would add that the 110-seat auditorium was practically full from 10 in the morning until late in the afternoon. The panels on the walls were very popular and prompted those present to ask many questions.
If you have not already done so, visit our website to read the reports by Robert Pouderou, Victor Kuperminc and Jeannette Wolgust.

November–December 2009.
On the initiative of Joseph Szteinsznaider, an Abadi child, the library of Saint-Martin-d’Auxigny (Cher), where he and his wife Liliane are volunteers, organised an exhibition on the theme of Hidden Children.
Our panels were given pride of place.

Robert Pouderou, a friend of Odette and Moussa and the author of many works, has published a very good book, Pendant que vous dormiez (While you were sleeping), set in Algeria. One of his docudramas was recorded on December 20, 2009 for France Inter.

On April 19, 2010
at 7.30 p.m., at the town hall of Garches (92), our friend Armand Herscovici will welcome you for the publication of his latest book, Stella. I think of how proud Moussa would be…

Sunday, April 11, 2010
in the evening, the reading of the names of the deportees will begin. We have not joined the MJLF as we did last year, but as many Abadi children as possible need to be there.

Activities in 2010

Already done: a talk to a Year 10 class at the collège in Sucy-en-Brie.
Planned: a talk to a final-year primary class in Puteaux

June 2010
Talks are planned in the secondary and primary schools of the 11th arrondissement of Paris. They will end on June 13, 14 and 15 (to be confirmed) with an exhibition at the town hall of the 11th, Place Léon Blum, presenting our panels and panels on the deported children of the 11th. We expect many schools from other arrondissements to take part.
Volunteers are needed to explain the Marcel network, especially on Tuesday, June 14. There are not many of us, and they will be very welcome!..

Jeannette Wolgust described her (extraordinary) work in schools, especially in Seine-Saint-Denis. She explained to pupils from such different backgrounds what life was like during the war for a Jewish child in hiding, constantly in danger of death. In particular, at a vocational lycée in Noisy-le-Sec, she spoke about the Marcel network to young people aged 18 to 21. The pupils, overwhelmed by her testimony, asked many questions during and after her talk.

We are waiting for Elie Wiesel’s reply concerning a preface for Odette’s book, which we could reissue.

I don’t think I have forgotten anything!!!!

The agenda having been completed, the meeting closes at 10 p.m.

The evening ended with a pleasant friendly drink, with fruit juice and delicious Passover cakes

Andrée Poch-Karsenti
President

Gisèle Altman
Secretary