TRIBUTE TO ODETTE ABADI (Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris)

February 28, 2013

On the occasion of the reissue of Odette Abadi’s book Terre de détresse (L’Harmattan, 2013), the Centre de Documentation Juive organised a meeting with the witnesses Marthe Kuperminc, Andrée Poch-Karsenti and Jeannette Wolgust, and Annette Wieviorka, research director at the CNRS. The meeting was chaired by Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, writer and translator.

That evening, a good hundred people filled the auditorium of the Mémorial in the rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier, in Paris. On the platform: Annette Wieviorka, Jeannette Wolgust, Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, Marthe Kuperminc and Andrée Poch-Karsenti. Pierre-Emmanuel introduced the speakers; the lights went down. And then came the shock…

A huge image of Odette Abadi appeared on the screen, taken from the 14 testimonies on Auschwitz collected by Annette Wieviorka. Odette is there; she speaks calmly; her enormous glasses accentuate the intense blue of her eyes. She recounts the horror with a little smile at the corner of her lips, as if apologising for the emotion she arouses.

Annette recalled meeting Odette and Moussa in 1992 through the association “Témoignages pour mémoire”, her discovery of the epic of the “Marcel network”, the rescue of 527 Jewish children in Nice, and Odette’s denunciation and arrest. The historian stressed the importance of “Terre de détresse, Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen”, the unique and irreplaceable account of a woman doctor in the death camps.

Pierre-Emmanuel courteously pointed out that historians generally tend to give pride of place to the executioners rather than to the victims. Annette disagreed, no less courteously.

The floor was then given to Jeannette Wolgust, the Abadi child who was closest to Moussa and Odette. With tenderness and humour, Jeannette shared her memories: how she became Jeanne Moreau, long before the famous actress was known; how she looked after her little brother; how she lived in hiding, and how eagerly the four little Jewish girls shut away in the Catholic school in Grasse awaited the visits of “Mademoiselle” Sylvie Delattre (Odette’s nom de guerre); how she never stopped keeping up affectionate ties with the couple after the Liberation. And how, later, she worked to bring the rescued children together by founding the association “Les Enfants et Amis Abadi”.

Pierre-Emmanuel thanked Jeannette for her talk and turned to Marthe, who spoke in public, for the first time, about “her war”.

The 8-year-old girl found herself alone in Paris after miraculously escaping the Vel d’Hiv round-up, which spared neither her mother nor her elder brother. Neighbours took her in for a while, but they themselves were sent to Drancy. She ended up in a UGIF children’s home in Montreuil, from where she wrote to her father, who had escaped from the Beaune-la-Rolande camp and was hiding in the Ariège. He informed an aunt in Bort-les-Orgues, in Corrèze, who persuaded Mr Brun, the town’s mayor, to go and fetch little Marthe in Vincennes. The managers of the children’s home were reluctant at first, but finally entrusted the little girl to Mr Brun. She stayed a few weeks in Bort, where her father joined her. Soon they both left for Nice, where a cousin took them in temporarily. The Comité Dubouchage in Nice was then organising, with the benevolent complicity of the Italian occupiers, the evacuation of thousands of Jewish families to Haute-Savoie. The few months spent in Saint-Gervais were a happy interlude in this turbulent story. Father and daughter grew “close” to a young woman and her son, Armand, who (as would be learnt much later) was also to be an Abadi child. But the Italian surrender in September 1943 brought the tragedy of the Nazis’ arrival in the region. The Jews of Haute-Savoie had to flee to Nice, where the net closed. Jews were rounded up en masse. Marthe’s father and Armand’s mother were rounded up together and deported to Auschwitz. Before that, they had entrusted the children to the newly formed “Marcel network”. Little Marthe (from then on called Marthoune) underwent depersonalisation. She described how Moussa went about making the Jewish children in his care change identity and carefully hide their real names, which sounded too obviously Jewish. Then came hiding in the religious institutions of Grasse, where she met Jeannette and the two other little Jewish girls, who formed a small group apart in a world they knew to be hostile. The Liberation finally came, and Marthoune was alone again, waiting for her father, an Auschwitz survivor, to come for her at last. An eternity later (50 years!), Marthe tried to piece her story together and, thanks to the OSE, traced her unknown rescuers. One day the telephone rang, and a clear, friendly voice asked: “Marthoune?” That pretty Provençal name had only ever been used by Moussa, Odette and her companions in misfortune. Never, ever, had anyone in her family or circle called her that. The circle was closed; the story resumed its course – for too short a time, alas.

Finally, Andrée spoke about the heroes of the evening. The memories of the baby she was then are confused. When she met again the friends of her parents, Jeanne and Jean Rous, with whom she was staying when her parents were arrested, they told her they had hidden her in Annot, a small mountain village above Nice. The Germans, searching for resisters, had shot a man in the village square. Fearing a denunciation, Jeanne Rous brought her back to Nice and entrusted her to the Marcel network. Andrée too found her rescuers 50 years later, thanks to the Hidden Children’s Bulletin. After a first telephone call, Moussa and Odette met her in a café in Paris, and it made for an intense afternoon. They wanted to know everything, questioning her about her family, her children, her political views! As they were parting, Odette asked Moussa: “Moussa, shall we adopt her a second time?” And Moussa, very solemn, looked her in the eye and answered: “Yes.”

Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, deeply moved, thanked the speakers and the very attentive audience. The tension gave way to friendly exchanges among the many hidden children, each of whom had recognised a little of their own story lived during those few terrible years.
And then we met in the courtyard of the Mémorial, which no one can cross without looking for the name of a relative or friend engraved in the stone of the deportees.