Soeurette Levy de Joseph: Part I

These excerpts were originally posted online some six months ago. In order to correct various errors, Soeurette kindly agreed to sit down with me during her vacation in San Salvador in order to perfect this newly improved version.

Soeurette Levy de Joseph was born on April 29, 1923 in Metz, in the French region of Lorraine. She spent the war years in France and later arrived in El Salvador as the wife of Andre Joseph, eventually becoming the mother of Jean-Paul and Sylvia. She has five grandchildren and now lives in New York City. Here is a piece of her incredible story.....one you will want to follow closely.

(Well, what made the family get up and move to the south of France? What was the -)

It was when the war started and the Germans passed through the Maginot Line. They went to Holland, they went to Belgium, they went to Luxembourg, and they came into France and all of a sudden they were there. So we had no other choice than to leave and
go.

(So where did you move in the south?)

First we went to Belfort which is just south of Alsace.

(And this is in 1939.)

June 1940. We left actually the day I was supposed to receive my baccalaureate--that’s graduation. That day we left and we went to Belfort. And then we left – that was too near to Alsace. The Germans were already all the way into that region so we left and went to Dijon, which is a little further down. And then my father had a sister who went to a little town near Avignon in Nyons. They rented a house and we decided to follow them. And we passed that line – there was a line in France dividing the part in France that was occupied by the Germans and the part of France that was not occupied by the Germans. So we went south and went to Nyons following the family.

(So total there were many people in this town from your family. You all --)

No, it was my aunt, her husband, her children, her daughter-in-law and baby [baby of the daughter-in-law]. We were five, six people from the family. And we settled down there and we stayed there until more or less the end of the war.

(What did your father do during this time?)

He was a rabbi.

(He continued to -)

He continued. He was supposed to come to New York as a rabbi at the congregation that is on Lexington Avenue and he decided not to do it. He didn’t want to leave his sister and leave the family and come to New York. We had our tickets. We were supposed to go to Lisbon and then to New York and never did. Which was actually a good idea because my father had cancer and died in 1942. So we would have been miserable in New York. That doesn’t make too much sense.

(So what did you do in this town near?)

In Nyons? There it was south of France. It was a completely different life from what we knew. In the south of France life is much happier than in the north of France. The weather changes the mood of the people. It was nice. We lived there for a while and
then I was contacted in school by people who were followers of DeGaulle and we started with little things, doing things you were not supposed to do. And I got a job.

(What were those things that you weren’t supposed to do.)

Stealing IDs, stealing food stamps to give to people who were in need, a lot of things that we did, little things. And then I started working for the resistance headed by General de Gaulle who was in London. And there I started doing other things, transporting papers for people who were hidden, giving them false papers. We were doing a lot of things. That was part of the resistance. And it went so far that in April ’44 I had to leave. It was too dangerous for me, I couldn’t stay there anymore. I was too known by the police and I was traveling too much and I couldn’t stay there. So I left and went to Chateauroux in the middle of France. In the meantime I had finished my baccalaureate, I had a baccalaureate in philosophy and I was out of school. For a while I was learning how to sew because I had to do something not to be on the street, it was too dangerous to be on the streets. I went on with my work for the resistance and at the same time I was making long trips with children, taking children from one place to another who had to be hidden in some places. We would take them on the train, making convoys for the Red Cross, taking children from one place to the other. That was quite a job.

(Can you tell me more about that? Were they French children, German children?)

German children whose parents very often had already been taken, who had to be hidden somewhere, that we would take and place in villages. And it was a very, very difficult job.

(Can you tell me about one of these transports that you did?)

Not especially. It was always the same. You had the children and you didn’t want them to say their names. If the German would come into the wagon not to have them and have them being happy and telling them that we are taking them for vacations. We didn’t say
we were taking the children to hide them. So we were singing and playing games and being very loud so it would look very happy. It was extremely difficult.

(Did you have any close calls?)

There were close calls all the time. There were all kind of things happening. There were always things happening. One of the funniest stories is I got to a train station in Valence and all of a sudden I see German soldiers walking down and one of them looks at me and says, “Mamsel Levy, Mamsel Levy.” And I recognized the German. He was from my little town in Alsace. As Alsace was occupied by the Germans, the young men were drafted into the German army. He recognized me. I ran so quick and disappeared, got into a train who[sic] was going I didn’t know where and left. Later on – a few years later I met him again and he said, “I was so happy to see you. Why did you run?” He didn’t figure out that if he had told the other soldiers who I was they would have arrested me immediately. I ran as quick as I could. He was not smart enough to close his eyes when he saw me. That was war.

Transcription by Claudette Allison, Word-for-Word.com