Festivals | Yom Hashoah

Window on the Righteous

This year, for Yom Hashoah, we would like to invite true stories from people who were saved in the Shoah.

Our first is from Leah Attali, who would like to have the family which saved her acknowledged publicly for its quiet heroism and love. So far, the pictures she has, the records of meetings with her "adoptive" brother, have all proved insufficient to achieve this recognition. Time is running out and Leah has now recorded her story for the Spielberg archives. Leah has known emotional tragedy in her childhood, and great personal tragedy in her adult life. She would like at least this record to be set straight.

Send us your true stories (please explain how you can attest this to us) in English preferably (French, Hebrew, Russian also acceptable), but please keep them short like this one.

Leah Attali's Story - How I was Saved from the Shoah

I was born at the end of 1939 - the beginning of the Second World War - the youngest of 3 children, in a small town called Trouville, near the sea. My parents were merchants, religious Jews, simple people, who did not believe anything would happen to them because they were honest and upright... My father, of blessed memory, went to Paris with my brother and sister, while I (aged about two) remained with my mother, of blessed memory.

My mother and I were taken to the Beurron La Motte concentration camp, which was run by a Frenchman who had been appointed to the position (apparently against his will) and wanted to save us, and tried to persuade my mother to hide her Jewishness so that she would be taken for a "Pole" (she would then receive better treatment), but she refused, proud to be Jewish! He, that is Raymond Ettlein, the director, removed me to the orphanage attached to the hospital in Blois, which was run by a friend of his.

His friend, Pierre Allart, came to visit the hospital with his wife, Blanchette, and on the very day they saw me they took me to their own home (they had only one son of their own - Claude - who was already not a child). My stomach was swollen from the camp food, they helped me convalesce, they spoilt me and so I lived with them... through wonderful years at the height of the war!

They told me that I had a "real" father and mother, although my father was taken to the Drancy camp and sent from there to Auschwitz - I have no memory of him.

Life was very good with them, they were nobility, they had a maid, a gardener, a seamstress and other staff... They had an estate with hunting lands, and I can remember details of my life there - I had no friends, but there were lots of games, the gardener made me my own garden. Every year I would write to Father Christmas asking for games and presents for the rest of my family, and no less that he return my mother and father to me. The Allarts tried to maintain contact with my mother and even with my brother and sister (I have found letters to substantiate this).

The war ended, and my mother returned a broken woman - both physically and mentally. She was invited to the estate so that I could get used to her, but it was extremely hard for all of us: they had planned to let me go back to her, but had become very attached to me (I was with them for 5 years), while as for me... I didn't want to leave them and my mother was torn between her feelings of gratitude to them and the pain of my unwillingness to go with her - this was the beginning of the Shoah for me!!

Gradually, I did return to my mother, but I would go back to the Allarts at each vacation; my mother lived in poverty, had no home of her own, we moved from place to place, staying with other people, with or without electricity and water... and I would return to the castle (literally, to "Mama Blanchette", as if born there).

As I said, my mother had lost everything but her 3 children - her husband, her home, her belongings. The first thing that she wanted, however, was a set of candlesticks so that she could light the Shabbat candles: so Blanchette took her brass candlesticks from the display cabinet in the castle and gave them to her - I still use them myself. My mother agreed that I could continue to visit them, but insisted that I eat only kosher food. So they bought a Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) in French as well as glass plates, and would keep them in a separate cupboard for my visits.

Pierre even came to our wedding, the civil ceremony in the Paris Town Hall; he was a truly righteous man among the nations, may his memory be blessed.