“Hidden children and deportation” week
January 7 to 11, 2008
Speech by Jeannette Wolgust
The Cours Morvan, which takes in many young men and women up to the baccalauréat, wanted to pay tribute – and I thank it for this – to other children: the children hidden during the last war. Do you know what hidden children were between 1942 and 1945? They were children of all ages in mortal danger because they were born Jewish. From July 16, 1942, the day of the great Vel d’Hiv round-up in Paris, when men, women and children were arrested, Pétain and Laval ordered the deportation of Jewish children – so as not to separate them from their parents! In 1940 there were about 70,000 Jewish children in France; more than 11,000 were deported: they did not come back. About 50,000 were entrusted by their parents to foster families, often in the countryside. More than 10,000 children were entrusted to and saved by rescue networks throughout France. The organisation of these networks is specific to France. Many hands reached out to help the networks save children. One of these networks, the Marcel network, created by Moussa Abadi and Odette Rosenstock Abadi in Nice, hid, protected and saved 527 children from deportation between 1943 and 1945. At the beginning of 1943, in Nice, Moussa Abadi met Don Giulio Penitenti, chaplain to the Italian troops in Eastern Europe, who told him what he had seen in Russia and Ukraine – the massacres, the shootings… Moussa would not believe him, so Don Penitenti took out his crucifix, placed it on his hand and swore on Christ that he was telling only the truth. Horrified, Moussa went to Odette, and together they decided to join the Resistance: they would help the smallest, the weakest – the children. The Marcel network was born.
“Your name is Jeanne Moreau, you were born in Algiers”, and the child repeated it, again and again…
How do you create a network? You need hiding places, escorts, money. Moussa obtained a meeting with Monseigneur Rémond, Bishop of Nice, and asked for his help. Monseigneur Rémond agreed: he opened to him all the religious boarding schools of the diocese of Nice. Moussa was given an office at the bishop’s house. In that office, Moussa made all our false papers and our ration cards: he made more than a thousand of them. Moussa was given a title: Inspector of Catholic Education for the diocese of Nice, a title that allowed him to move about freely. Odette became Sylvie Delattre, social worker at the bishop’s house, responsible for protecting refugee children. Odette contacted Pastors Gagnier and Evrard and the mayors of small villages to find foster families. To escort us, Odette and Moussa contacted the Éclaireurs Israélites de France (French Jewish Scouts), known as “la Sixième”. To obtain funding, Moussa met Mr Brener, representative of the Joint (an American Jewish charity) in France. The round-ups intensified; parents, cornered and desperate, decided to save their children – and that is how I was entrusted to the Marcel network. As soon as a child arrived, Moussa taught them their new identity: “Your name is Jeanne Moreau, you were born in Algiers”, and the child repeated it, again and again… Our parents’ first names had to be changed too; it was not good to be called David or Sarah, who thus became Daniel and Suzanne. Moussa told us how much he suffered from this work. “I was an ‘identity thief’.” Since we are also paying tribute to Odette, I would like to tell you what an exceptional, extraordinary woman she was. Moussa, at the conference at the Senate in 1995, where he spoke for the first time, said: “Once the children were placed, the work was only beginning, and that is when Odette came in, under the name of Sylvie Delattre. It embarrassed me to say it, but truly, what she did, no one else could have done. What did the hidden children need? A little tenderness, friendship, love – and Odette ran everywhere, from Cannes to Grasse, to Nice”… and she brought us that love.
What is a hidden child? It was a child in danger who needed others.
Allow me a personal testimony: there were four little Jewish girls at the Jeanne d’Arc boarding school in Grasse: Marthoune, Denise, Jeannette and Françoise. We had decided to call Odette “Mademoiselle”, and when our Mademoiselle came, every two or three weeks, it was pure happiness. Mademoiselle had that gift, that teaching instinct, to give each of us what we needed, what was vital for us. She was strict: we had to work hard. Marthoune, the youngest, was eight and came top in catechism – didn’t you, Marthoune?! I don’t know where Odette found the strength to be entirely available, but we drew from her the strength we needed to keep going. Then, in April 1944, the horror: Odette was arrested by the Milice. She did not talk; then came Drancy, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, from which Odette came back. After a few days’ rest, she went back to Nice to help Moussa.
I would like to quote Moussa Abadi: “What is a hidden child? It was a child in danger who needed others.”
Finally, I would like to ask you to spare a thought – it is my own way of saying Kaddish – a thought for the children we could not save, whom we should have saved if there had been more of us.
Au revoir les enfants.