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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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RAISSA'S STORY
Everyone has one
unforgettable event in his life, something that was either extremely joyful or
sorrowful, Raissa began. The night of September 30, 1943, has left its mark on
my entire life. I wantto tell you about it.
We were living in Nice,
having managed to get out of Paris in June 1940, just before the Germans
arrived. My husband had a friend, an engineer, who was in the Resistance. This
man told us to get a hiding place ready in case the Gestapo came, and he even
built us one, working at night. He put a false wall in the back of a closet and
painted it white. High up on that wall he put some shelves that I stacked with
bed linen, and below he put a pole on which I hung our clothes. There was a
door that closed from the inside, and to enter we had to stoop to the floor. We
had a hard time explaining to the children, who were usually pretty wild, that
they had to be absolutely quiet in there if the Gestapo came after us.
Up until that awful night the Gestapo had raided only hotels and
rooming houses. But that day my husband had come home in a gloomy mood. "From
now on," he said, "I'm not going out any more. In a few days we'll get out of
Nice."
We went to bed. After midnight I heard a truck outside –
there was usually no traffic after 8 P.M. – and suddenly our apartment was
flooded with light. This was it. I quickly woke my husband, and we grabbed the
children and put them in the hiding place. Then I went in. My husband stayed
behind for a few moments to straighten up the beds and hide our clothes. Then
he joined us.
The hiding place was a tiny triangle of space next to the
apartment of some people from Alsace: a mother, a father, a girl the same age
as my eleven-year-old, an eighteen-year-old girl, and a twenty-four-year-old
son. The father, M. Goetz, had told us they were Protestants who had left
Alsace to protect their son. As they were French, they wanted to stay in
France. They were really Jews like us, but in those days the Jews mistrusted
one another. Fear does strange and horrible things to people.
Their son
never slept at home; he probably had a hiding place somewhere else. When the
Gestapo banged on their door, the Younger girl opened it and asked for
identification. (During those troubled times many false policemen would show up
at Jewish
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
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