Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust

Armand Can Do Anything

114 Armand Can Do Anything Nicole Dreyfus Terry Everybody knew that my father, Armand, could do anything. We knew that wherever we would be, my father would always be there for us, especially when my sister, Simone, and I were in hiding, separated from our parents for months. My papa’s bicycles were never new. They did not have ten speeds, only one, when it worked. They never had new tires, only retreads, and used inner tubes that Papa constantly needed to repair. Chambois 1940 In May 1940, the Germans had invaded France and were approaching Paris. My father, stationed in central France at the Bourganeuf army base, contacted my mother and instructed her to leave Paris “immediately.” So she did. We piled into our Citroën, my Great Aunt Meme, my nine-year-old cousin Claude, nine-monthold Simone, and I, plus the baby bed, blankets, pail of wet diapers, little petit pot (baby potty), pillows, food, and clothing. As we passed the crowds of walking civilians , we were grateful not to have to walk carrying all these items. The roads were packed. We moved slowly. It was a horrible exodus scene. The main problem for my courageous mother was that she barely knew how to drive, not even how to drive in reverse. But for me, only six years of age, my main fear was caused by my cousin Claude, who on purpose kept murmuring, “Il y a des loups” (There are wolves). Not only was I squeezed into the backseat, but now I had to keep my feet up so I would not be bitten by wolves. One night we slept in a barn. The next morning Claude heard clanking noises. There were tanks passing. The Germans were now in front of us. Maman realized that we had to stop fleeing. We stopped going east. Claude told me later she had to ask a German soldier to turn the car around. Maman found lodging for all of us in a house in the small Normandy town of Chambois; we stayed there about a month. On August 5, 1940, Claude and I, sitting on the stoop in front of the house, saw a soldier in a French uniform riding a bicycle toward us. It was Papa. How excited we were. We hugged him and ran into the house shouting, “Papa est revenu!” (Papa’s returned!). He had “borrowed” a bicycle at the Caen train station and ridden the forty-one miles to Chambois to reach us. He knew where to find us from a telegram Uncle Paul, Claude’s father, who already was in central France, had sent to Papa. Uncle Paul’s telegram said, “Good news from Chambois. Irma and children are there.” Irma was my maman (mother). On August 6, between noon and seven, Papa loaded the bicycle in the Citroën and returned it to the Caen train station. On August 9, Papa took the wheel of the Citroën and drove us all back to Paris. A few days later we left Paris. The German authorities had requisitioned our car. We took a train to the Loire River that Hidden with Rescuers 115 divided the occupied from the unoccupied zone. A Christian man that we knew smuggled us into the unoccupied zone. From there we took a train to Brive. Brive-la-Gaillarde, 1943 Papa, Maman, Simone, our extended family, and I were refugees in Brive, central France. The food ration tickets we had were not enough to feed us. Papa rode his bicycle, this time his own, to surrounding villages to get food. One time he took me along, and I sat on the back carrier. As we rode back to town, with me sitting on a big sack of flour holding onto my father, I felt his back stiffen, and he was suddenly soaked with perspiration. We had been stopped by a gendarme who demanded to see Papa’s identification card, where the word juif (Jew) was stamped. All I remember was tension. Although Papa showed the gendarme his identification card, nothing happened. He let us go. I trusted Papa. “Armand can do anything.” Égletons, August 27, 1944 My sister, Simone, and I were hiding in a Catholic boarding school in Égletons, central France. We had been there for a few months. My parents were hiding about twenty-five miles from where we were hidden. It was a dry, rocky, poor area, sparsely populated by four small farms. They had a tiny...