A story like Anne Frank's - only with a happier ending.

Date: April 15, 1999
Interviewer: Evaliz Rosado
Interviewee: Ruth Hartz
 

  Is there something you would like to add?

Yes, I'd like to step back a little bit and talk about my childhood and why I was born in Israel which really - when I was born there - was called Palestine.  It's not the Palestine that we hear in the news today.

My parents fled Hitler's Germany.  They came from Germany.  My family had lived there for many generations and of course when Hitler came to power, they wanted to immigrate to this country because from time in memorial, our place for the last two centuries, the country of choice when you're persecuted is the United States.  So they had an Uncle living in New York and that's why I came to New York because he had invited me but many years later.

In order to enter this country in the 30's, you needed what is called an affidavit, that someone had to be able to prove that they could support you financially because this country had gone through a deep depression.  The depression wasn't over in the 30's, but there were millions of people asking to enter this country and there were very strict quotas, especially from countries where there were many Jews.  Germany, of course, was one of them, Poland and then Russia.  So my great uncle, my father's uncle was unable to obtain an affidavit, quite frankly it is well known and documented that the State Department was extremely anti-Semitic and wanted to limit the number of Jews who could enter this country in the late 30's.

That's when my parents decided to move to what was then Palestine, which was another way to escape Hitler's Germany.  That's where I was born.  So it was sort of happenstance, but I was one of a twin.  Before Palestine became a state, Palestine was quite primitive.  My twin needed an incubator and they didn't have incubators and so she died after about a week.  And my mother was very distraught.  She became very ill, physically and psychologically.

She had a brother living in Paris who was already a French citizen and she prevailed upon my father to leave what was then Palestine and go to France, which was not a very smart thing to do because things didn't look good in Europe.  People knew that a war was eminent, but again they were hoping to get the papers to immigrate to this country.  So they arrived in early 1939 and the war broke out in September 1st 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland.  So for us being Jewish in France of German origin we were first undesirable by the French.  So we were put into a refugee camp where the conditions certainly weren't as bad as a concentration camp, but they were pretty bad.  My father there was given the option to join the French Foreign Legion because in exchange the French promised that they would release the women and the children.  So he was sent to North Africa for training and my mother joined my French aunt, her brother's wife and started to make her way south.

France lost the war very early on.  It's the only allied nation to have signed a treaty with Hitler.  It's a very dark period of French history, they are not proud of it, they have a very difficult time coming to grips with it.  So my father was released from the legion because for all practical purposes the war was over.  This private French history was known as Vichy France.  The man who signed the treaty with Hitler was Phillipe Petain, he was elderly.  He had been the World War I hero and he took as his prime minister Pierre Laval who was a staunch collaborationist and a virulent anti-Semite.  So all the anti Jewish laws were applied in France not only by the Nazi's and the Gestapo but also by the French police.  So not only had the Jews you know the problems with the Nazi's and the Gestapo but also they could be arrested by the French police and many Jews in France perished because the French police arrested them.

There were many camps in France, they were called internment camps and they were all operated by French police and surrounded by barb-wire.  By then the people were starved and beaten to death and given hard labor not unlike concentration camps and from there they were taken in the infamous cattle trains going east but nobody knew about the extermination camps during the war.

So, that's when my parents decided to go into hiding and my earliest memories date back to 1941, late 41, early 42, when I was 4 years old.  We were in a southern town called Toulouse and I did go to pre-kindergarden.  I had my older cousin Jeannette who came to pick me up and took me and she said, "From now on your name is Renee," and that's the title of my book.  "From now on no one must know that you're Jewish, no one must know where you live, no one must know anything about us or your parents and frankly don't make any friends - that would be a lot easier."  It became very dangerous to even go to school and so anyone who survived this period owes it to a tremendous element of luck and also to some very kind people who helped along the way.

So a man gave us false id's so we didn't have to wear the yellow star because if you wore the yellow star you could be arrested on the street or anywhere.  So not only did I have a false first name, I had a false last name, a false place of birth, of course, because I had to be born in France in order to be French, false date of birth, a false address, everything on that id was false.  So as a little girl I had to learn how to be this little actress and to have a different identity, really.  Then it became dangerous to live in Toulouse, again the man who got us the id's was able to warn us in time so we caught a train one day.  Sometimes we were [within] literally minutes or even seconds of being caught.  We took the train and my parents were able to make their way to a small village where some villagers really helped us.  We sort of went into hiding because the arrests were just all over southern France.  By then all of France was occupied in 1942, so the Jews not only had to contend, as I said [with] the Nazi's and the Gestapo, but also the French police.

So we were in a village, we were hidden in a cellar.  The people took a tremendous risk in hiding us because they had come to arrest my father, luckily he had been warned in time and so we went into hiding in the cellar.  The people built a wall parallel to their own wall and we were hidden behind that so It was a dark narrow space, especially for me, my parents could just about crouch, I could just about lie down and the slightest noise could give you away.  So since by then I was 5 1/2 ... I couldn't keep quiet I guess, the people who were hiding us said that they knew of a convent where the mother superior is willing to take in some Jewish children.  So I was sent to a convent - not by my parents - it was too dangerous.

This lady came, she was worried about her children.  She was French [and] half Jewish but her husband was Jewish so she was worried about her children and she had agreed to take me as her other daughter but I hardly knew her and didn't really know what was happening to me.  The mother superior was the only person in the convent who knew that I was Jewish. She was hiding 7 children at the time.  The Gestapo came one day and she rushed us into the chapel and hid us in the chapel.  We could hear the conversation going on above our heads because she had a trap door and told us to just climb down.  It was a Gestapo member and a French policeman translating for him because she didn't German.  He said, "We understand that you are hiding Jewish children," and she said, "Me hide Jewish children? Why would I do such a dangerous thing?"  So she left us down there for overnight and I saw the Gestapo, I mean I saw soldiers throughout the convent many times but I guess she felt she didn't have time to gather us up or she felt that it would be more natural if we mingled with other children.

Sunday was visiting day.  Of course, my parents couldn't come and I couldn't understand, I was too young to understand what was going on.  So finally the nuns who I came in contact with didn't know that I was Jewish. I said, "Why aren't my parents coming?"  The 6th, 7th, 8th Sunday.  Well. they said, "Monique is an orphan, Francois is an orphan, Danielle is an orphan, maybe something happened to your parents, this is war time."  And frankly I think one of them said, "Maybe they died but don't worry they'll take care of you."  So I was very distraught and I was hidden until the village was liberated.

A couple of weeks before the village was liberated, my parents had survived so I was very fortunate and my father had worked as a farm hand high up in the mountains and my mother had stayed in the cellar with the Valat family and that's how she survived.

We stayed in the village for another year and a half and we made our way to Paris and this is why I grew up and was educated in Paris.  But my father found out through the Red Cross that he had lost every member of his family.  His mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews - everyone.  My mother lost also many members.  Her parents were sent to the concentration camp called Terrazzine in Liechtenstein in the Czech Republic.  They were exchanged against German wounded soldiers so they did survive.  So I did get to know them but they were so distraught and so psychologically damaged from that experience that they never spoke about it.

Then I went to elementary school.  Even though my last name is not Jewish, my friends were Jewish and the other children knew.  So we were called "Sal Juif," which means dirty Jew.  So I didn't use my real name until I came to this country.  Of course, within my family my parents called me Ruth and my cousins on my mothers side, they had survived but other than that I was Renee for all practical purposes.  So really, that's why I felt so free in this country because I never felt totally myself in France.  I always felt somewhat persecuted.  So the uncle that was going to have us all come over before the war invited me after I graduated from the Sorbonne. My parents said they would give me the trip as a gift.  And that's how I came over.