Léa RAULET

A young Jewish woman caught up in the turmoil of the Second World War

Photo of Léa Nahmias (undated). © French Defense Historical Service, dossier AC 21P 648 308 in the name of Léa Raulet.

The “En …quête d’histoire” (“In search of history”) workshop at the Fosse aux Dames secondary school in Les Clayes-sous-bois, in the Yvelines department of France, carried out another historical investigation this year. Emma Audrain-Foulon, Romain Beuchey, Élise Bigle, Sarah Bougriane, Sofia Bougriane, Jean-Baptiste Colombani, Naël Costa-Veillard, Ranime El Atti, Camille Garcia, Capucine Garnot, Clara Michaud Gros-Benoit and Candice Vibert, with the guidance of their teachers Marie Hurtevent and Géraldine Kerserho, set out to retrace the steps of a young Jewish woman: Léa Raulet.

After being arrested on July 6, 1944, Léa Raulet was deported to Auschwitz on Convoy 77 on July 31, 1944.

The students began by examining a photograph of Lea and a small map supplied by the Convoy 77 non-profit organization. As the weeks went by, the budding investigators worked their way through various databases, including those of Yad Vashem, the Digital Deportation Memorial, the Shoah Memorial in Paris, the Bad Arolsen Archives and the French Defense Historical Service in Caen, and began to piece together the lives of Lea and her family.

However, it was mainly thanks to her daughter Danielle Dadoun’s testimonial recording, available online on the Shoah Memorial website, that the biography really began to take shape.

Lastly, the students and their teachers managed to track down Danielle. They began by exchanging e-mails and making phone calls, and then had a very moving online meeting. Danielle shared her mother’s testimony, which her sister Catherine had recorded on audiocassette and written down a few years later. Danielle also shared a number of family photos.

And that was how we were able to retrieve Léa’s own memories.

Léa, the youngest child of a Greek immigrant family

July 3, 1922 was the day that Léa Nahmias’ tragic story began. She was born in Paris into a religious Jewish family that had only recently moved to France.

Léa’s parents, Haïm Nahmias and Élise Modiano, both hailed from Thessaloniki, in Greece. Haïm was born on January 20, 1894, and Élise on February 27, 1904. Haïm migrated to France in 1916, while Élise arrived three years later, in 1919. “My grandparents […] came from Greece. They were married in France. My grandmother was 16”, Danielle explained in her testimony.

According to the Elise and Haïm marriage certificate, they were married at 10:58 a.m. on July 27, 1920, in the 15th district of Paris. Haïm was then living at 138 boulevard de Grenelle, and Élise at 150 rue du Théâtre both also in the 15th district. Danielle added: “My grandparents were travelling salespeople […]. They had two daughters, my mother and her sister Caroline Gawsewitch” [Caroline Nahmias, also known as Claire].

According to their first daughter Caroline’s birth certificate, when she was born on April 28, 1921, Haïm and Élise were living at 62 rue de la Croix Nivert in the 15th district of Paris. This is also the address given on Haïm’s foreigner’s file, which is kept in the Paris Police Headquarters archives. By the time Léa was born, on July 3, 1922, they were living at 6 rue du Commerce in the 15th district.

The Paris Police Headquarters’ foreign nationals register includes files on both Élise and Haïm. They must have been drawn up after they were married because they both have the same family number. They state that Élise and Haïm were both Greek citizens. Élise is listed as a “travelling merchant” and Haïm simply as a “merchant”. There is a date stamp from April 1931, on their card, which may have been added when they renewed their foreigner’s identity cards.

Meanwhile, on March 23, 1930, Haïm and Élise had applied to be naturalized as French citizens. According to a record in Haïm Nahmias’s political deportee application file, the request was put on hold on February 10, 1932. As a result of this decision, Haïm and Élise did not apply for a second time and never became French citizens.

According to the 1931 census, the family was then living at 123 boulevard Richard Lenoir in the 11th district of Paris. This address is also listed on Élise Nahmias foreigner’s file.

In either late 1936 or early 1937, the Nahmias family moved to 94 boulevard des Batignolles in the 17th district of Paris, where they rented a 3rd floor apartment. The spoliation file, held at the Shoah Memorial, reveals that they bought a business in March 1937. Haïm and Élise open a hosiery store, which they called Élysa, on the first floor of the building. It was just a small store, and they sold ready-to-wear accessories such as stockings, gloves, blouses and lingerie.

 

We were unable to find any information about Léa’s childhood. We presume she went to school in Paris, but changed schools whenever the family moved to a new apartment. Danielle told us that Léa spoke Italian with her parents, which was the only remaining trace of the Modiano family’s Italian roots.

Léa was only 15 when she met Jean Raulet, who was 19. Danielle explained how they met as follows: “My paternal grandmother, Thérèse Raulet, was a concierge at 94 boulevard des Batignolles [… ]. My grandparents Élise and Haïm […] had an apartment at 94 boulevard des Batignolles. My parents met there. During our conversation, Danielle added mischievously: “My mother married the concierge’s son”.

Jean was born in Laneuville-à-Bayard in the Haute Marne department on December 6, 1918. His parents were Louis Raulet and Thérèse Raulet née Roussel. He had two brothers: Christian, who was older than him, and Serge, who was younger.

A young woman caught up in the turmoil of the German Occupation

Léa was seventeen when the war broke out. Was she working in her parents’ store by then, helping them out? Did she help them on the markets too? Could she have foreseen what was about to happen? We have no answers to these questions…

A few months earlier, Jean, who was 21 by then, had joined the French army and was in an artillery regiment of the anti-aircraft division. We do not know where exactly he was stationed, but we know that he was involved in fighting the Germans in the spring of 1940. After the armistice was signed on June 22, Jean stayed on in the army. In October, he was posted to the 3rd Hussars regiment, garrisoned in Montauban, in the Tarn-et-Garonne department of France.

In September 1940, Caroline Nahmias married Jean Gawsewitch, a Russian from a Christian Orthodox family who had been naturalized as a French citizen. The bridegroom had recently been demobilized following the defeat of the French army. The couple moved into another of the apartments at 94 boulevard des Batignolles, possibly on the 4th floor.

The German authorities issued orders to all Jews living in the Seine department to register themselves with the authorities between October 3 and 19, 1940. We checked the Seine prefecture’s register of Jews, and found an entry for Élise Nahmias. Élise must therefore have gone to register as instructed. As she was Greek, and thus a foreign national, her record is orange. We found no records for Haïm, Caroline or Léa. This suggests that either their cards were lost or destroyed, or else that Élise was the only one who registered with the authorities.

On December 23, 1940, since it was a “Jewish business”, the authorities confiscated Haïm et d’Élise’s store and appointed a temporary manager, Georges Victor Etève. The Nahmias family thus found themselves caught up in a spiral of anti-Semitic persecution. We found the spoliation file for the Nahmias business, which provides details of the procedure. Mr. Etève wasted no time in looking for an “Aryan” buyer for the store. In fact, while some Jewish businesses confiscated during the Occupation were closed down, others were sold off, in order to avoid destabilizing the French economy. Of course, the proceeds of the sale were never intended to be returned to the owners. As a result, Haïm and Élise Nahmias were hardly told anything about what had happened to their store, and received nothing from the proceeds of the sale.

In May 1941, Jean Gawsewitch, with his parents-in-law’s blessing, tried to buy the store. He had every right to do so, given that he could prove that he was not Jewish, and identified himself as an Aryan. However, in September 1941, the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs), an organization founded by the French government in March 1941) refused to allow the sale to go ahead on the grounds that Jean Gawsewitch, as Haïm’s son-in-law, was “under Jewish influence”. 

Haïm responded in writing, saying how surprised he had been by the refusal, and urging the authorities to change their minds. His letter, which is still in the spoliation file, made no difference however, so the search for an Aryan buyer for the store continued.

The Paris Police headquarters summoned the Nahmias couple to report to them on November 5, 1941 in order to update the 1940 Jewish register. Two new index cards were drawn up: one for Haïm and one for Élise. These cards are beige, which confirms that they were still classified as foreign Jews. We do not know whether their two daughters registered at the same time, but we found no cards in their names.

On March 4, 1942, a Mrs. G. Bonnemaison bought the Nahmias’ store for 66,000 francs. She reopened the boutique in May, and renamed it Janjine. She sold fine lingerie and blouses. It wasn’t until October 1944, after the Liberation, that the store was impounded and entrusted to a new interim manager. Caroline Gawsewitch later managed to reclaim the property.

Despite the Occupation, the Raulet and Nahmias families gathered together to celebrate a happy event: Léa and Jean’s wedding, which took place in the town hall of the 17th district of Paris on September 3, 1942. The groom had been demobilized a few months earlier. Their witnesses were Solange Raulet, Jean’s sister-in-law, and Jean Gawsewitch, Léa’s brother-in-law. The couple set up home at 29 rue Dulong, also in the 17th district. At the time, Jean was working as a stagehand in a movie recording studio.

Thanks to Danielle’s testimony, we know that Léa and Jean also secretly got married in church: “My mother got married in church without telling her parents, so as not to upset them. She also thought that marrying in church, as she was Jewish… [would protect her]”.

On November 5, 1942, the French authorities carried out a roundup of Greek Jews in and around Paris. Haïm and Élise Nahmias were arrested. After the war, several witnesses reported that the arrest took place in the middle of the night. Their upstairs neighbor testified: “[I saw] Mr. and Mrs. Nahmias arrested and taken away by an officer and a plainclothes policeman on the night of November 4 to 5, 1942”. Haïm and Élise were then taken to the police department in Batignolles, in the 17th district of Paris.

On November, Haïm and Élise were transferred to Drancy internment camp. This camp, north of Paris, was founded in 1941 and was run by the French authorities. It was originally built as a low-cost housing complex known as the Cité de la Muette, and the unfinished buildings were later used as an interment center for Jews who had been arrested throughout France. The internees were housed in cramped rooms on three floors, in very tough living conditions.

We found their individual internment files in the Shoah Memorial archives. Haïm was searched on arrival in Drancy and had the sum of 400 francs confiscated from him. He was given a receipt, which we found in the Paris Police Headquarters archives.

Three days later, Haïm and Élise’s names were included on the Convoy 44 deportation list. On November 9, 1942, they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After a three-day journey, the convoy arrived at the ramp in Birkenau, most likely during the night of November 12.

We know that Haïm and Élise never returned from the camps, but we have no information about when or how they died. They were probably killed in the gas chambers in Birkenau soon after they arrived. Haïm was 48 years old and Élise 38.

Léa, who then lost track of what had happened to her parents, was still living with the anti-Semitic restrictions. As of June 1942, she was obliged to wear a yellow star. The fact that she later passed this star on to her daughter suggests that Léa must have registered with the prefecture. However, as she was a French citizen, she was not arrested during the 1942 roundups. She continued to live life as a young wife, despite the danger hanging over her.

From Léa’s testimony, we know that in April 1943, Jean set off for Germany, having been conscripted into the STO (Service du Travail Obligatoire, or Compulsory Labor Service) to help the German war effort. The STO was founded by the Marshal Pétain’s government in collaboration with the Germans. Jean was assigned to work as a laborer in an armaments factory near Berlin.

Léa, who was 21 by this time, then found herself alone in Paris. Danielle explains: “From the moment my father left to join the STO to the time he came back, I don’t have much information about my mother’s life. She went to stay with her sister, that much I know. But that’s all.”

From living in hiding to internment

In late 1943, Jean contracted a severe strain of scarlet fever. According to a file from the French Mission in Berlin (which was completed after the war), available in the Bad Arolsen online archives, Jean was hospitalized in the Prenzlauer-Berg hospital in Berlin. He was there from December 9, 1943 to January 15, 1944.

Jean was then granted leave to return to France, and joined Léa in Paris. At the end of the leave period, however, he decided not to go back to work in Germany, so he had to go into hiding; in the eyes of the law, he was now deserter. His mother, Thérèse Raulet, did not dare let Jean and Léa stay with her at 94 boulevard des Batignolles because the authorities knew where she lived, so that was the first place they would look. She therefore suggested that the young couple go into hiding in Chatou (now in the Yvelines department), where she had a little allotment garden with a shed on it. We know from various post-war testimonies that Maurice Pavy, Jean’s uncle by marriage, together with several neighbors, helped Léa and Jean out during this time.

Maurice Pavy had married Thérèse Raulet’s sister a few years earlier. They lived on rue des Chevaux Ruants in Chatou, with the children from their previous marriages. Maurice was a Communist sympathizer, and worked on the production line at the Renault car factory in Billancourt.

We have very little information about their time spent in hiding in Chatou. Léa later described the hiding place as “a tool shed [from which they] only came out at night”. Léa also remembers hearing about the Normandy landings during their time there, and celebrating.

However, Léa and Jean’s lives were turned upside down on July 6, 1944, when the Gestapo arrested them while they were visiting the Pavy family. According to Lea’s file, from the French Defense Historical Service in Caen, two witnesses made statements about the arrest. In a statement taken by the gendarmes on January 5, 1954, Antoine Pavy, Maurice’s son, confirms that his parents had kept Léa and Jean hidden. He stated: “On July 6, at around 7 p.m., while we were having dinner in the courtyard, a German inspector accompanied by a French inspector named Loreneo, and two German soldiers, appeared, and immediately asked for Mr. and Mrs. Raulet, and then carried out a complete search of our house, during which they discovered a leaflet written in English. When they had concluded their search, they took away my father, Maurice Pavy, and my cousins.”

A second statement, also taken in 1954, adds to the information that Maurice Pavy’s son gave. Marcel Herzog, a house painter, stated: “I knew the Pavy family, who were neighbors of mine, and their cousins, the Raulet couple. The husband […] had come to seek refuge at Mr. Pavy’s house, together with his wife, who was Jewish. I myself took them in for a while, and was well aware of their situation. On July 6, 1944, my son, then aged 7, who was out playing in the street with his friends, came home crying, saying that the police had just gone into the Pavy’s house”.

He assumed that someone had reported Jean and Léa: “I don’t know whether the arrest of my neighbor and the Raulet couple was because they were reported, but it seems likely, as many people in our neighborhood were aware of the Raulets’ presence”.

We found a report that the Prefect of Seine et Oise sent to the Ministry of the Interior confirming their arrest. It is dated July 17, 1944 and reads: “I write to inform you that on July 6, 1944 in Chatou, the German authorities arrested Raulet, née Nahmias, Léa […], of 29 rue Dulong in Paris. A person of the Jewish race, the woman had left her home to avoid being clocked in her neighborhood in Paris. It is not known where she is currently being held.”

Léa thought that it was one of Jean’s cousins, “cousin Lolotte”, who turned her in. She recalls a letter giving her maiden name: “a draft-dodger, Raulet”, “Jewish woman with the maiden name of Nahmias”.

The arrest records issued by the prefecture only refer to the possibility of Maurice Pavy having been denounced: “as a former member of the Communist Party, and harboring his draft-dodging nephew in his home”. Was it just this report that led to Lea being arrested? Had there been several different reports? This remains a total mystery… but on July 6, the Germans captured a man suspected of Resistance activity, a young STO draft dodger and a young Jewish woman…

After the arrest, the Germans let Jean go to say goodbye to his mother, who lived nearby. It was there that they confiscated a little box belonging to Léa. Inside, Léa had hidden a small sum of money belonging to her sister Caroline, and some of her parents’ jewelry.

Léa, Jean and Maurice Pavy were taken to the Kommandantur in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which was in a building that the Germans had requisitioned. A German officer interrogated all three of them. Léa later recalled that when the officer pointed a gun at them, Jean stepped forward. Fortunately, his uncle Maurice Pavy stopped him.

An officer then interrogated Léa on her own: “He spoke to me, he questioned me, and I just stood there like a stone.” The officer repeatedly insulted Léa, and got angry when she still said nothing. “He got so angry that he threw stuff all round his office”.

Léa and Jean spent that first night together: “We slept on a wooden board”. Before she was separated from her husband, Léa just had time to hand him a chain with a medal that she wore around her neck, which she inherited from her mother, Élise. This piece of jewelry was one of the few of her parents’ belongings that Léa managed to retrieve and keep after the war.

The next day, Léa was taken to the women’s prison in Versailles, where was put in a cell with common criminals. While she was there, Léa “realized that she was no longer menstruating. She asked to see a doctor. The doctor said it must have been the “stress” of the arrest. She later confided in her daughter, Catherine: “Nobody knew. As you can imagine, this was hardly the time to say to your father, I don’t have my period.” During her time in jail, her mother-in-law Thérèse visited her: “I told your grandmother that I was probably pregnant”. Three months later, in Auschwitz, when she still hadn’t had her period, Léa was absolutely convinced that she was pregnant.

We do not know exactly what happened to Jean after he was separated from Léa. According to the digital record in the Bad Arolsen database, he was sent back to Germany around August 31, 1944. At first, he was stationed in Greiz, in Thuringia, where there were factories that employed large numbers of forced laborers. It also says that Jean was then transferred to Pohlitz, a little village north of Greiz. After the Soviet army liberated him, along with tens of thousands of other forced laborers, Jean was repatriated to France on April 16, 1945.

His uncle, Maurice Pavy, met a very different fate. We tracked him down in the Bad Arolsen online archives as well. After he was arrested, Maurice was transferred to Fresnes prison, as he was deemed to be a Communist Resistance fighter. He was then interned at the Compiègne-Royallieu camp and deported to Buchenwald on August 20, where he was assigned serial number 77.029. On December 28, 1944, Maurice Pavy was transferred to the Mittelbau Dora camp. He was 51 years old and never came home from the camps.

On July 26, 1944, Léa was transferred to Drancy camp. Her internment card lists her prisoner number as 25,984. It also states that she was French, married to an Aryan spouse and had no children. She was initially assigned to a room on the 3rd floor on staircase 18. Immediately after she was checked in, she was taken to the search barracks. There, according to the search receipt that we found at the Shoah Memorial, the guards confiscated the sum of 1,950 francs and a checkbook from the Société Générale bank.

The letter B on her internment card means that Léa was “deportable” immediately. She moved room twice while she was in Drancy. Initially assigned to staircase 18, she was then put in a 3rd floor room on staircase 7 and lastly on the 4th floor on staircase 3. “During the day, she would walk around hoping to recognize someone, but to no avail. At the time, she was thinking she would be going to a work camp, like our Papa, until the end of the war. She even told me that she was optimistic, given the D-Day landings. She thought she’d soon be back…” her daughter, Catherine, recalls.

Deportation: a journey to hell

In her testimony, Léa told her daughter Catherine about the train journey: “We left on the 31st, 50 of us in each carriage, yes, about 50. I was wearing a flowery suit”.

When Catherine asked her if it was hot, Léa replied: “It was July, yes, it was the last convoy. […] three days we stayed on that train, three days with a bucket in the middle, people were thirsty, and we weren’t hungry, we were mostly just very thirsty”.

Her daughter then asked her if there were only women in there: “No, there were men and women in the car. There was a family next to me and the Germans opened the door to give us a drink, one glass each… after two days. We were very thirsty, and they gave me my glass, then the guy went crazy and started hitting his children and I threw my glass in his face… to calm him down…”

Catherine then asked if there were any children or babies: “No, they weren’t with us […] they were in other cars. In our wagon, there were only older and younger people, but no children. The children they had picked up in the roundups had been put with the people who took care of them, so they wouldn’t be alone.”

Then her daughter asked if they were able to sleep on the train: “I slept, we slept, all pell-mell. First of all, we were all in a daze due to the intense heat, the lack of hygiene, it smelled bad, there was such a stench!!!! … I slept, I slept [silence].”

Léa then described the last leg of the journey and what happened when she arrived at the Auschwitz Birkenau camp. She remembers hearing orders in German: “Nach unten, Nach unten, Nach unten”, which means “Get down, get down, get down”. “I had a hand-made trousseau and some hand-embroidered underwear that I’d never worn before, and I didn’t want to wear out. And then there was a big guy, very handsome, a German: he was Dr. Mengele, in uniform. He did the separations, the children on one side and the seniors on the other. All you had to do was have a sore lip or something and… We said see you tomorrow, see you tomorrow… He separated the men from the women.” Léa was referring to the selection process: the Germans chose only the prisoners who were “fit for work”. Next, she described Dr. Mengele: “[ …] he was doing experiments on blue eyes, I only found out about that later on”.

Léa continued her testimony: “We kept telling them see you tomorrow, see you tomorrow; we just thought the old people and the children were going one way and we were going the other. We arrived and they made us get undressed, at night, took off our jewelry, wedding rings and stuff… Then they made us strip naked, they made us go into a room, a big room with sprinklers, they could have used gas on us, but no, they used water and they showered us. […] We waited in another room […]. They took us into the barracks, five of us sleeping on a plank at an angle […] there were three levels. They made us get up an hour later.” Meanwhile, Meanwhile, Léa’s forearm was tattooed with a number that was to become her identity: A 16788. The letter A corresponds to Auschwitz camp A. She kept the tattoo for the rest of her life.

Catherine then asked about when they got dressed again. Léa replied: “They gave us something [to wear], I think it was a kind of dress; there was a tall woman about your father’s height, the dress only reached her navel, and mine went down to my feet. No bra, no stockings. At four in the morning, they sent us out to the courtyard, naked, kneeling on the ground with our arms up, until seven, seven-thirty in the morning, with female supervisors, […] kapos who were Polish women, common criminals (silence) […]” Léa mentioned the kapos several times in her testimony: most of them were people who had been arrested and deported for minor offenses (theft, assault, other crimes).

In the next part of her testimony, Léa described the camp itself: “There were huts on one side and huts on the other, with a path down the middle. There were no trees, not a blade of grass, just earth. At the far end was what we called the lazaretto; the infirmary. They’d give you black ointment to put on your sores, and when you went in there, you knew you weren’t far from the final journey.”

Léa spent three months in Auschwitz: she knew for certain by then that she was expecting a child. Even in the appalling conditions in the extermination camp, she managed to see a doctor and to get herself transferred to the Weisskirchen-Kratzau camp. She left at the end of October 1944, along with dozens of other women. Danielle continued the story: “It was October or November. Then she met a medic and told him she was pregnant. I think it was him who arranged for her to go to Kratzau.”

Kratzau, Chrastava in Czech, is now in the Czech Republic. In the 1930s, the town belonged to Czechoslovakia, but in 1938 it was annexed to the Third Reich, along with the entire Sudetenland region. The Germans built an annex to the Gross Rosen concentration camp nearby. There were two labor camps, an armaments factory, a storage depot, two concentration camps and accommodation for the SS men and women. The women who were sent there to work in the factory were Jewish, and mainly from Poland and Ukraine.

Léa explained what happened when she arrived in Kratzau: “When we arrived, we were shown to our quarters. It was a commandant […] maybe 55 years old, well this guy, really pale, tall and gaunt, but not Nazi, not SS, he did what he was told, and he told us: “You’re going to work in the factory, but first you have to unload the trucks, they’re potatoes for the entire winter, you have to put them in clamps”. There were trucks arriving, but nobody was translating and he was speaking German. I didn’t understand a word of German, so I just stood there in front of the truck. He thought I was willing and gave me a shovel, so I climbed in and unloaded the potatoes while the others scurried off. In the evening, we were given soup, and once the others had been served, [the commander] called me back and gave me a second helping of soup, and needless to say, I didn’t tell anyone.”

An unexpected birth

In Kratzau, Léa worked in a factory alongside the other deported women. She said in her testimony: “I felt unwell and they put me on a stretcher, while the others carried on working.” When she got back to the camp, Léa was taken to the infirmary. Another prisoner, Berthe Libers (who was also deported from France on Convoy 77), told her “the little feet are kicking”. To ensure her safety, the camp management assigned Léa to peeling vegetables for the prisoners’ soup. A short while later, she changed jobs again: “During the next inspection, as my belly was getting bigger, [I was moved to] the pressure-cooking area”.

In early March 1945, the guards had beaten Léa so badly that she could no longer feel the baby moving. She went to the infirmary and explained this to a woman doctor called Danielle. Léa later named her daughter after her. The doctor, who thought the baby was dead, gave her an injection to induce the delivery. “[the doctor] gave me an injection and the baby arrived in a flash, and it tore [my perineum]”. The doctor stitched her up: “I had five or six stitches, just like that, with no anesthetic.”

The camp commandant then asked her to kill her daughter because babies were never allowed to live. He said: “Now, you’ll have a good spot in the kitchen as long as you kill your kid with this pill.” Léa refused: “I said, “Me, never! I’d rather die than kill my child!””. In an attempt to persuade her, the commandant had some dead newborn babies put on her bed. During her testimony, Léa wept as she thought back…

She went on to explain that she and her daughter were then transferred to another concentration camp on a special convoy, together with some other women, who were sick, all guarded by “female soldiers”. First of all, Léa had to walk to Kratzau station: “It was then, when they made me walk fifteen kilometers [nearly ten miles] to catch the train, that all my stitches came out”. Fortunately, the Soviet army arrived at just the right moment and the convoy was diverted to “Ketchenau”. We checked this for ourselves and discovered that Léa was mistaken, and that it was in fact Reichenau, a small camp annexed to Gross Rosen in the Czech town of Rychnov u Jablonce nad Nisou: “The Russians were arriving from one direction, the Americans from the other, and we were diverted to another small labor camp […]”.

By early March 1945, the camps were starting to be liberated. Lea and Danielle could therefore no longer be sent back to Auschwitz to be exterminated in the gas chambers: due to a miraculous sequence of events, both of them survived.

They spent about three weeks in the Reichenau camp. Little Danielle only survived thanks to the generosity of a woman called Raymonde, who had had a baby boy a few days after Léa: “The other woman had plenty of milk, so she gave some to Danielle”. Léa gave her bread and soup in return.

Léa was liberated from Reichenau in early May 1945: “We saw that there were no guards at the gates, so we [she and three other deportees] took off like a shot and went into the village Raymonde then made off with a Frenchman, leaving Léa to fend for herself.

Homeward bound

We have been unable to trace the route that Léa took after she left the Reichenau camp. Our only guide is her testimony: “That day, we arrived in this village […], we came across an apartment that the [German] occupiers had abandoned. […] There were some supplies, [I found] some condensed milk for Danielle.”

Léa then bumped into some French prisoners of war: “They were looking for a French woman who had been deported and was pregnant. We told them, “There’s a French woman with a baby here in this apartment. […] Anyway, they weren’t looking for me, but I said, “I’m so happy to hear you speaking French. Me, I don’t speak German or anything else.” Léa went off with the French prisoners: “They said to me “you’re coming with us, we were working on a farm, we threw the bosses out, you’ll get some fresh milk for your little girl”.”

While she was at the farm, Léa got sick: “I had a fever, 40°C [104°F]” This helps to explain why her memories of that period are somewhat confused. Léa went on: “[the French POWs] gave me my own room, with a crib, and they called a doctor”. Shortly after that, the men said they were going to head for Prague to try to get repatriated to France, and Léa decided to tag along with them.

When they got to Prague, they took Léa first to the hospital, where she met up with a group of women volunteer workers. She then went to the French consulate to ask to be repatriated. She met with a civil servant, and said: “In the hospital, they put me with the volunteers, but I myself was not a volunteer, I was deported”. Léa added: “I showed him my mark [tattoo]. He said to me: “I understand, Madame, the first plane back to France, you’re leaving”.”

In the Shoah Memorial archives, we found a report from the Prague police dated May 26, 1945, and a certificate from the French Consulate dated May 28, 1945, both of which confirm Lea’s story.

The first confirms that Lea held a valid registration certificate from the Police foreigner’s unit. It lists Lea’s Auschwitz camp number: A 16788. On the back, it states that Lea had been given “300 crowns in aid” on May 29, 1945. It also bears two German stamps: “grocery cards” and “cards for potatoes and eggs”. Was she actually given these grocery cards?

The second documents Léa’s request to be repatriated: “Mrs. Raulet, née Léa Nahmias, and her baby Danielle […], a former political prisoner of the Germans, presented herself today at the Prague Legation with a view to requesting her repatriation to France, heading for Paris. Neither the Legation nor the Consulate are in a position to issue her with a State passport at present, but this statement has been drawn up in order to present her to the Czechoslovak and Allied authorities, as well as to the French repatriation mission […].

At the end of her testimony, Léa described how she got back to France. She was repatriated on a military plane: “I can still see myself getting on the plane, it was quite old. There were men lying on the floor, high-ranking officers who were very sick, and the Red Cross was taking care of them. And so on the first plane out of Prague, I came home. I arrived at the Lutétia Hotel with all the badly wounded and very sick people and the officers.” She went on: “On the plane, I slept with Danielle in my arms. They wanted to take her away to give me a break, but I didn’t want them to, and when I opened my eyes, I saw the Eiffel Tower through the window. Phew! I was in France”.

When they got to Paris, Léa and Danielle were taken straight to the Lutétia Hotel, an upmarket hotel that had been converted into a repatriation center for deported people. The staff asked Léa where she had come from and what had happened to her. They gave her some paperwork and milk and bread coupons. Léa explained how surprised she was when she ended up in a beautiful guest room.

The then put Danielle in bed, locked the door and went to her sister Caroline’s apartment. Caroline had moved to Place Pereire before Léa was arrested. It was the concierge of the building who told Léa that her sister had reclaimed their parents’ store on the boulevard de Batignolles.

Léa took the subway and headed off to find her. The two sisters were at last reunited, and Léa told Caroline that she was now a mother: “I explained to Caroline that I was staying at the Hotel Lutétia, and that I had to pick up my daughter.” Caroline did not understand how this was possible, so Léa explained: “[…] I was pregnant when I left”. The two of them then took a cab to the hotel to pick up Danielle.

When they arrived back at 94 boulevard des Batignolles with the baby, Léa was thrilled to see that her husband, Jean, was there. He had been out earlier, having gone to check the lists of repatriated deportees in the hope of finding out more about what had become of her. Léa introduced him to their three-month-old daughter, Danielle. Catherine added: “So much joy, so much emotion, so many questions. Mom finally felt free”.

Rebuilding their lives

Jean and Léa soon set about formalizing Danielle’s status. As she was born in the Kratzau camp, Jean was not allowed to officially recognize her as his child and they could not declare her birth to the authorities in the usual way. Jean therefore took on the task of registering her birth by a more complicated procedure.

First of all, Léa had to find some witnesses to her daughter’s birth. Fortunately, she happened to have been deported at the same time as two cousins-in-law, and they too had survived and been repatriated a few days earlier. In her testimony, Léa could not remember exactly who they were, but we believe they were two sisters who were deported on convoy 77 and also spent time in Kratzau: Rachel and Renée Hasson. They were related to the Nahmias family by marriage.

Léa therefore got back in touch with her cousins, who were also in Paris and agreed to testify about the circumstances surrounding Danielle’s birth. Thanks to them, Jean finally managed to get a birth certificate for Danielle, which in turn made it possible to get a food ration card for her.

Lea was very weak when she came back from the camps. She explained: “[I weighed] only around thirty kilos [66 pounds] and Danielle was less than 1.2 kilos [about 2llb 8oz]; I no longer had the strength to care for her.” In common with all the other repatriated prisoners, Léa and Danielle had several medical check-ups: “The doctor said we should move Danielle as little as possible. We changed her in bed, and only picked her up to bottle-feed her. She didn’t even cry. As for me, I could hardly eat, and as soon as I did, I vomited. It was eating black olives with bread that saved me, that was all that stayed down”. Later on, Léa told Danielle that in the summer of 1945, she had acute furunculosis: “Mum told me: we couldn’t touch you. You were a pimple from head to toe.”

After staying for a while with Jean’s parents on the first floor of 94 boulevard des Batignolles, Léa and Jean moved back to their apartment at 29 rue Dulong in the 17th district. Jean went back to work as a stagehand at the Boulogne-Billancourt movie studios, where he earned 6,000 francs a month.

Léa and Jean approached a Jewish welfare organization, the COJASOR (Comité Juif d’Action Sociale et de Reconstruction, or Jewish Committee for Social Action and Reconstruction, which was founded in 1945), for help. This organization coordinated social and financial support for Holocaust survivors in France. We were able to view a file in the name of Jean Raulet in their archives. The family first applied for help on November 12, 1945: “Mrs. Raulet came to ask us for clothes for herself and her child.”

As a follow-up to this request, a social worker from the 17th district town hall went to visit Léa and Jean, and wrote a report on the family: “Very interesting and deserving family. Mr. Raulet was deported as a wanted man and a deserter. Mrs. Raulet was deported on racial grounds to the Auschwitz camp, where little Danielle was born. As she was born in the shadows, her birth was neither officially recognized nor registered. Work is in progress to rectify her status, and only then will Mrs. Raulet receive the C. de C: 900 francs. We advised Mrs. Raulet to go to the Jewish Center. She has not been able to go, as she has been in poor health and has had to rest since she returned from the camps. We saw her at home, quite tired. The baby is doing well and often goes to his grandmother’s. A request has been made for the purchase of a crib or a stroller [for Danielle]”.

According to the information we have, the town hall authorities may have given Jean and Léa 2,000 francs in aid as a result of this visit. However, we found no confirmation of this payment in the COJASOR records.

 

Two years later, with the help of some money that Caroline Gawsewitch gave them (which represented her share of their parents’ store), Léa bought a store at 32 rue d’Orsel in Montmartre, and the family moved in.

Danielle explained this in more detail: “My aunt had reclaimed my grandparents’ property. And she had sold a lot of things, so she gave a little money to my mother.” She added, “That is to say, it wasn’t so much considering what it represented.”

In her interview, Danielle described the store as a hosiery business, which Léa ran for two years, possibly between 1947 and 1949.

 

 

 

In January 1948, Léa gave birth to her second child, Alain. Danielle, who was three years old by then, spent a lot of time with her paternal grandmother, who had moved into an apartment in Chatou, not far from where Léa and Jean had been arrested four years earlier.

Léa, meanwhile, embarked on a series of official procedures. First of all, she tried to have two deportation certificates issued for her and her daughter, which she received in July and August 1948. Then, with the help of her sister, she tried to register her parents’ deaths. Missing persons’ certificates in the names of Haïm and Élise Nahmias were drawn up in October 1946.

A few years later, Léa signed a power of attorney authorizing her sister Caroline to begin the formalities required to obtain “political deportee” status for their parents. We were able to view both of these files, which are held at the French Defense Historical Service in Caen.

At around the same time, Léa put together an application to have herself and her daughter Danielle recognized as political deportees. She received her own political deportee’s card on December 14, 1955, and Danielle’s in 1961.

In 1950, Léa, Jean and the children moved to Marseille, in the xx department of France, as Jean was offered a job as a sales representative covering the Marseille area. Léa therefore sold her store on rue d’Orsel. Danielle recalled: “My parents had a villa in Marseille, at 3 boulevard Ollivary, which my father’s company lent them”. Léa met up again with her maternal aunt, Mathilde Modiano, who had married Henri Usiel before the war. It was in Marseille that Léa and Jean’s youngest child, Catherine, was born in September 1953.

At this point in her life, Léa still did not talk about the details of what happened when she was deported. Danielle reminisces: “Dad didn’t really want her to talk about it, because she got into a terrible state, and it upset him.”

However, Léa told her children the basics. Danielle knew that she had been born in a camp and that her mother had been through a lot at that time. She remembers asking her mother about the number tattooed on her arm: “I asked her very early on. She explained to me that she had been deported to a camp. And that they tattooed everyone who came back.”

She also remembers that, as a child, her mother took her to see Berthe Libers, a fellow deportee who was there when she was born. Mrs. Libers wrote a poem about the Convoy 77 children, and sent Léa a signed copy: “She wrote her a note telling her what a wonderful mother she was”. Léa never had any contact with any of the other deported women.

Even though Lea came from a deeply devout Jewish family, she no longer followed any Jewish religious customs after the war. Danielle remembers that her mother did not eat kosher and did not want to celebrate Jewish holidays: “[Haïm] took care of the synagogue, he went all the time. He was there every Shabbat. And it didn’t save him from ending up in a crematorium oven. So don’t talk to me about religion,” Léa would say.

Towards the end of her life, Léa grew frail and weary. She had several major operations. She agreed to share her memories of the deportation with her children. In 1989, Léa’s second daughter, Catherine, interviewed her mother about her experiences. She recorded the interview on audiocassette. Thirty years later, Catherine transcribed it onto a computer.

Jean Raulet died of cancer on March 24, 1991 in Marseille. Léa only outlived him by three months, and died of a heart attack on June 17, 1991.

In memory of Léa

Léa’s son Alain and his family now live in Israel. Danielle has three children (Didier, Nathalie and Joël), and five grandchildren (Adrien, Lola, Laurie, Nell and Ken). They all live in the South-East of France, as does her sister, Catherine. Danielle passes on the story of her mother and maternal grandparents to her children and grandchildren. She has been to the Auschwitz camp twice to pay tribute to them.

We never had the chance to meet Léa, sadly, but we did have the immense privilege of speaking with Danielle. When Jean-Baptiste asked whether Léa had ever mentioned anything positive about her time in the camps, Danielle replied: “Mom had a hard time talking about it. It took several years for her to tell Catherine. There can’t be anything positive about deportation. The only thing that kept her going was me, the fact that she was pregnant, and she fought for that life inside her.”

 

When Élise asked Danielle if she remembered anything about the camp, she replied: “I have no images of it, I can’t picture it … I have images in my mind of what Mom told me … At night, I still have nightmares about it”. 

Naël asked: “Did the fact that you were born in a camp have any impact on your life?”. Danielle replied: “It gave my life meaning… I was a miracle child… it’s great to be here. I’m happy when I see happy people around me. At the local school, when I was younger than you, I was called a dirty Jew. As I was so sensitive, Mum often went to school to tell our story. Anti-Semitism still existed then, and it still exists now.” She suggested that the students visit Auschwitz to see it for themselves. She began to cry at the mention of the camp.

Camille asked her how she felt about us working on her mother’s story: “It means a lot to me. These days, we tend to forget, and that’s a catastrophe. Keep seeing people, because there are a lot who would like to testify again. You must never let this happen to you. It used to be the Jews! And what will it be next? It should no longer exist in this day and age: don’t judge, don’t be racist.”

Danielle told us that her mother remained a deportee for 47 years: “You can never forget. My mother was 69 when she passed away. It totally ruined her.”

Lastly, with much tenderness and admiration, Danielle concluded her testimony by saying: “Mom was an amazing woman, because to go through what she went through… to carry on with family life… to have more children… that was tough.” 

Sources:

We gleaned the information that enabled us to retrace Léa Raulet’s life story from various records:

• Civilian victim files in the names of Léa Raulet (AC21P 648 308), Haïm Nahmias (AC21P 519 648) and Elise Modiano (AC21P 519 644). © French Defense Historical Service
• Municipal censuses of the 17th district of Paris, held by and scanned at the Paris Archives (years 1931 and 1936).
• Paris civil register. ©Paris Archives.
• Serial number registers: D3R1443 (Jean Raulet) et D3R1450 (Jeau Gawsewitch) © Paris Archives.
• Jewish registers 1940 and 1941. © French National Archives/Shoah Memorial.
• Drancy camp internment card. © French National Archives/Shoah Memorial.
• Léa Raulet’s personal correspondence, kindly shared by Danielle Dadoun. © Shoah Memorial, Paris, France/Dadoun collection.
• Danielle Dadoun’s video testimony © Shoah Memorial.
• Paris Police Headquarters foreigner’s file (328 W). © Paris Police Headquarters archives
• Dossier 1977 in the name of Jean RAULET. © Archives du COJASOR/Shoah Memorial.
• Prefecture archives: letters from the prefecture relating to arrests by the German authorities (1W 280) © Yvelines departmental archives.
• Records in the names of Jean Raulet and Maurice Pavy. © Bad Arolsen archives, online
• Raulet-Dadoun family archives: Léa Raulet’s testimony and various family photos.