Alice Lang Rosen - August 5, 1991
Being Put into Hiding in France
Do you remember what your mother said?
No. We--I remember us hugging--we hugged through the barbed wire, my last recollection of her.
And your grandmother, was she also there?
Grandmother too, my grandfather, my dad. My dad walked out with me and handed--he just handed me over to some women--a group of women, and there were other children there. And we went by train, and uh, I don't even know what the city we went to but we were in a children's home. That was my first experience with France--with French speaking people, in, in the children's home. And uh, I think um, I learned French pretty quickly. I even forgot how to speak German, when you're that young, you know. And we were in a children's home for a while and because the bombs kept coming we were always running to the shelter and um, one day we were across the street from the home--we were running to the shelter and the bomb fell right into the home--just demolished, the children's home. But the French Red Cross kept track of us constantly. They were always, they were always the ones to look after us and after that they took us um, to south... southern part of France to a convent. We, we spent quite a bit of time. Large convent, all nuns and uh, the nuns, um, it was a convent where the nuns didn't le...didn't leave the compound, you know, they were there. Uh, and I remember one nun was a shoemaker, one was a cook, you know, everyone had--and they showed us and they were very good to us.
Do you remember the name of the convent?
No.
Or what, what city was it was in?
That I, that I don't remember.
But, but it was in the South of France, near Gurs.
I know it was in the South of Fra...part of France and they all spoke French and they were very uh, good to us. And it was beautiful grounds and I remember fig trees. We used to pick, you know, the figs off the trees. And um, it actually was not a bad time, I think for us, you know, that we were, we were taken care of. They were, good, good to us, we ate.
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