News 2023
Michèle Merowka’s testimony at the convent of the Poor Clares
December 16, 2023
For the past few days I have been immersed in my role as “witness to the witness”! First there was the farewell Mass at the convent of the Poor Clares. Yes, this order, present in Nice for 100 years, is leaving, shutting up shop… the Poor Clare sisters of Nice are too old, there are no more young vocations! It is sad… but apparently another religious community will take over!
Death of Daniel Sicky
October 30, 2023
At nine o’clock on the morning of October 27, Daniel Sicky decided that “he had had enough”. He had told those around him so for some weeks, and said goodbye to his wife and his son – not to me: we were to meet this week. He did not wait for me, but judged that for him the time had come, and he was right; yet my grief is great.
We were two months apart in age, and from my birth we shared our lives, for we were not only first cousins bound together by the war and its sufferings, but also milk brothers.
Like me, he was an “Abadi child”; with me, he was in Grasse at the Maison des Enfants, and my first jumbled memories of that time are linked to him. So it was throughout our lives.
In recent years illness gradually clipped his wings, but confined to his armchair he never complained, and bore it with a fighter’s courage.
Odette and Moussa saved us – him, the others and myself; thanks to them we were able to enjoy Life and reach a reasonable age, but it is always too soon to part, and many have already joined them. Dany is with me today as he was yesterday.
Andrée Poch-Karsenti
2023 commemoration for Odette and Moussa
October 30, 2023
Once again this year we gathered at Montparnasse cemetery around Odette and Moussa to honour the commitment that is the purpose of our association: Preserving the memory of Odette and Moussa Abadi and keeping alive the memory of the Shoah.
Memory is a volatile thing if we are not careful. It lives only through what carries it: writings, and the women and men who pass it on. We strive to leave writings, but they must be preserved, made to grow and made known. All this is possible only through us. Let us be the memory of Odette and Moussa so that their action continues to be known, so that it is part of History – the History that makes people want to save the weakest and to care for their neighbours.
Membership 2023–2024
10/07/2023
Dear Children and Friends,
As the new season begins, the time has come to renew your support for the association.
As you know, our association works to keep alive the memory of Odette and Moussa and of their work. We strive to keep communicating, to take part in events and to organise others so that forgetting does not replace remembrance.
This association is carried by the commitment of a few volunteers, but some things have a cost. We must maintain our presence on the Internet, travel to uphold the values the association defends, look after Odette and Moussa’s grave, organise each year the commemoration you take part in…
For all these reasons, we need you. We need you to help us preserve the memory of the Marcel network and of the women and men who brought it into being. Thanks to them, 527 Jewish children were saved from Nazi barbarity. But it is thanks to you that these children and their rescuers will not be forgotten.
As every year, we appeal to your generosity.
Below you will find the membership form allowing you to join the association.
Thank you for your support!
“Surviving objects” of Jewish sport, movements and youth
September 17, 2023
The 3rd Shoah Generations Forum will take place from May 18 to 20, 2024. You can already save the date in your calendar. Registration will open soon. But while waiting for the Forum… we are pleased to invite you to a Zoom workshop on the theme:
“Surviving objects” of Jewish sport, movements and youth
October 17 at 7 p.m.
Les Passeurs de Nuages (The Cloud Smugglers)
July 13, 2023
Les Passeurs de Nuages is a work of fiction inspired by historical events. It is a novelised account of the Marcel network, created in Nice under the German occupation by the Abadi couple, which saved more than five hundred Jewish children from deportation and death. It follows the intertwined paths of Odette and Moussa Abadi and of some of the hidden children. Hidden children, broken children, shattered lives. A journey into the heart of the storm and through the twists and turns of a dark period on which those involved found it hard to look back, even years later. From Paris on the eve of war to Nice in the dark years, by way of the hell of the camps, this epic is dedicated to memory.
Marie Gatard tells Odette’s story
June 29, 2023
Marie Gatard is a publisher and journalist and a prizewinner of the Académie de Médecine. She was editor-in-chief of two scientific journals. She is also a writer, the author of several books and of plays performed in Paris, London and Lisbon.
Marie Gatard met Odette immediately after the Liberation. Odette was then working in the department responsible for sanatoriums in France. The head of this department was Dr Gaston Baissette, who belonged to the circle of friends of Marie’s mother. Marie was 14 at the time. When Marie’s mother, who was older than Odette, died in 1991, her ties with Odette grew closer. They remained very close for more than fifty years.
Marie tells us about Odette as she knew her over those years.
Julien Engel – 77 years later at the “Rayon de Soleil”
June 29, 2023
Georges and Julien in 1946, after leaving the Rayon de Soleil
Julien and Georges ENGEL were hidden and protected children from 1943 to 1946 at the “Rayon de Soleil” in Cannes. It was the Marcel network that entrusted the two brothers, separated from their parents, to Monsieur and Madame Fort (the founders and directors of the children’s home) so as to give them a roof over their heads and shelter them from Nazi persecution.
Nearly 80 years later, Julien ENGEL returned there with his wife, Anne-Marie.
A commemorative ceremony was held on Tuesday, May 30, 2023 at the Rayon de Soleil (Foyer Montbrillant). The ceremony gave Julien and his brother Georges the opportunity to thank those to whom they owe their lives. (Unfortunately Georges could not be present.) Speech by Julien Engel
Death of Lucien Attoun
May 13, 2023
On June 22, 2009, our Association “Les Enfants et Amis Abadi” organised a conference on the theme “Theatre and Resistance”, for which we needed a venue. Lucien Attoun, who with his wife Micheline ran the Théâtre Ouvert in Paris, was approached and offered us the use of this space free of charge for a whole day.
Read the report “Theatre and Resistance”
He took part in these moments of reflection, allowed us to put on a fine exhibition and let his whole
technical team give us the benefit of their expertise: thank you again, Monsieur Attoun.
Le Monde of Wednesday, May 9, 2023 told us of the death of Lucien Attoun, news that deeply affected us. He was a Man of the Theatre, devoted to his Art and to discovering new talent, a friend of Moussa, with whom he shared these aspirations. We will not forget his kindness, nor the discoveries and pleasures of the evenings at the theatre he gave us over all those years.
Read the article on lemonde.fr
We offer his whole family our most sincere condolences.
Comic book: “Justes parmi les Nations” (Righteous Among the Nations)
April 24, 2023
This April 2023, the comic book “Les Justes” was published by Éditions Plein Vent. While it was being prepared, the authors asked us for our comments on the first pages.
The authors deal with how two networks saved hundreds of Jewish children in the Alpes-Maritimes during the Second World War. The two networks in question are, on the one hand, the Marcel network created by Odette Rosenstock and Moussa Abadi and, on the other, the network created by Pierre Merli. The authors have a fictional narrator tell how he was saved by these networks. With good-quality artwork, the comic aims to make the history of these networks known to a new and wider public.
Death of Marthe Kuperminc
April 9, 2023
It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of Marthe Kuperminc, née Artsztein, known as “Marthoune”, on April 7, 2023. Marthe was a child hidden by the Marcel network when she was 8. She was our sister and our friend.
Screening of the film “Le Réseau Marcel”
February 3, 2023
On Thursday, February 2, Andrée Poch-Karsenti and Emmanuel Gagnier presented the film “Le Réseau Marcel” under the aegis of LICRA 94 at the Maison des Associations in Vincennes.
Before a large audience, Andrée Poch-Karsenti presented the Marcel network and introduced the film. After the screening, Emmanuel Gagnier bore witness for the Righteous on behalf of his grandparents, Pierre and Hélène Gagnier. Many enriching exchanges followed.
The evening ended with a friendly drink
Day of January 26, 2023 in Nice Saint-Isidore
February 9, 2023
Do you know the Potager de la Fantaisie (Fantasy Kitchen Garden)? Had the association Les Enfants et Amis Abadi decided
to go green? Perhaps – but this kitchen garden is a leisure and culture association in
Nice Saint-Isidore, whose president and founder, Patrizia Gallo, is its heart. And what else?
What were we going to do there on Thursday, January 26 at 8.45 a.m., in temperatures unworthy of the Côte d’Azur?
First, represent the association Les Enfants et Amis Abadi at a ceremony
of tribute at the war memorial, in memory of Dante Gasperi, a victim of the war. The end of
January is the week of commemorations, and Patrizia had placed her day under the banner of “The International Day
in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust and the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity”.
Holocaust Memorial Day: How a Syrian man saved 527 Jewish children from the Nazis
January 26, 2023
Talk at the Romainville primary school
February 3, 2023
January 13, 2023: we are a little far from the usual commemorative events, the ones described as the “duty of Memory” – yet it was in that context that, for the third year, Armelle Gonzalez, head of the primary school in the rue de Romainville, invited me to meet the final-year primary class of their teacher, Vanessa Lucas.