Perla ITTAH (knows as Perlette)

Born on November 4, 1916 in Mogador, Morocco, Perlette Ittah was the daughter of Elias Ittah, who was born in 1889 in Mogador and Bobot Mazalto, who was born in 1890 in Mogador. Perlette spent the first few years of her life in the mellah (Jewish quarter) in Mogador.

In the hope of finding a better life, the Ittah family left Morocco just before Perlette’s tenth birthday and moved to France. They settled in Saint-Fons, a small industrial town south of Lyon. In the 1920s, this town was already home to a number of “Moroccan Jews”, primarily from Mogador. The Ittah family was first registered in France, in Saint-Fons, in 1926. At that time, they were living at 55, rue du Port, a working-class neighborhood of poorly qualified immigrants, not far from the Rhone River, where most of the chemical plants were located.

Perlette was the last child of the sibling group: she had one brother (Gointole, born in 1909) and two sisters (Messodi, born in 1913 and Marie, born in 1914). Her father, a laborer, was a member of the cultural and charitable Israelite society of Saint Fons, which dealt with the religious and day-to-day problems of the town’s Jews. In 1931, her father was a laborer at Coignet and her brother at Tulèze, while her sister, Messodi, no longer lived with her family. In the 1936 census, at the age of 20, only she and her brother were still living in the family home on rue Jean-Jaurès. That year, she was listed as a casual laborer who worked for the Dumonteil company.

On March 17, 1940, Perlette gave birth to a daughter named Jacqueline Annette, in the second district of Lyon, who was most likely a child of an extramarital relationship.

His brother Gointole was declared to have “Died for France” on June 18, 1940, in Saint Germain sur Meuse, while serving as a volunteer in the French army since September 1939 (his name is inscribed on the war memorial in Saint-Fons).

In 1944, Perlette was working as a laborer in the Saint-Gobain factory in Saint-Fons. The working environment was very harsh: she worked with bleach without gloves and with nitric acid without a mask, and the wages were poor.

During the Nazi occupation, the Ittah family had not been greatly troubled until the Allies advanced into France. This made life more difficult for people of the Jewish faith, and the Germans stepped up the pace of arrests. As a result of being denounced by a couple called Goetzmann and Benamara, informers who instilled terror in the Jewish community in Saint-Fons, the Gestapo arrested Perlette on June 27, 1944, in Saint-Fons, just as she was leaving work. Her sister Marie Ittah (married name Bornand) was arrested on the same day, at her parents’ home, reported by the same couple of informers, but she was lucky enough to be released before she was transferred to Auschwitz.

Alice Sellam said that she saw Perlette pass by that day surrounded by plainclothes individuals who seemed to be taking her away. She asked Perlette in Arabic what was going on and she replied that she had just been arrested by the Gestapo.

Perlette was taken to Fort Montluc in Lyon, a German military prison run directly by Klaus Barbie. During the month that she spent there, the prisoners’ living conditions were appalling and inhumane. Up to 8 people were held in cells measuring about 4 square yards. Meals were increasingly rare and food parcels were banned. There were no washrooms and insects thrived in the prison. Paulette was detained in cell 14.

Next, on July 27, 1944, Perlette was transferred to the Drancy internment camp where she stayed for four days. The living conditions were equally harsh: malnutrition soon led to dysentery and some of the French gendarmes abused the internees and increased the number of arbitrary punishments and shaming.

Finally, on July 31, 1944, 17 days before the Drancy camp was liberated, Perlette was deported on Convoy 77 from Bobigny railroad station to Auschwitz. There were 1309 people aboard this convoy, many of whom were small children, all crammed into cattle cars. When she arrived on the night of August 3, 1944, she was immediately subjected to the selection process, which almost always resulted in people being sent to the gas chambers. Perlette escaped that fate, but she had to endure forced labor, abuse and deprivation. It was there that Marcelle Benchetrit, a friend from Saint-Fons, met up with Perlette, who had already been there for a month.

Around October 28, 1944, as the Russian troops were advancing, Perlette was moved to the Kratzau camp in Czechoslovakia, about 250 miles west of Auschwitz, to work in a munitions factory. She was eventually liberated by Russian troops on May 8, 1945 and repatriated to France on June 7, 1945. Perlette later testified that she had never been involved in the Resistance.

After the war, on May 11, 1946, Perlette married Robert Pâtissier, a barman, born on February 26, 1925. Her husband took her daughter, Jacqueline, as his, and from then on, she bore his surname.

On September 3, 1953, the Ministry of Veterans and Victims of War awarded Perlette the status of “political deportee” for the period of internment from June 27, 1944 to July 30, 1944 and the period during which she was deported, from July 31, 1944 to June 3, 1945. She was one of only 251 people who survived this convoy, out of a total of 1309.

She died on May 20, 2003, at the age of 86, in Lyon.