March 13, 2024
Out of the Shadows: Survival in Nazi Occupied France
Michel Jeruchim and Joy Stocke
A conversation with the author and his editor
Out of the Shadows: Survival in Nazi Occupied France
Michel Jeruchim and Joy Stocke
A conversation with the author and his editor
Joy Stocke, editor;
​Michel Jeruchim, speaker; Henry Von Kohorn, introducer
Minutes of the 22nd Meeting of the 82nd Year
John Cotton presided over the meeting held on March 13, 2024. Frances Slade led the invocation, and Michael Lapp read abbreviated minutes of the meeting held on March 6, 2024. The following guests were introduced by Old Guard members: Jeff Hoisington (by Ernie Anastasio); Patrick Rulon-Miller (by John Guthrie); Michael Lupovici and his wife Doreen Babott, who was unable to attend (by Michael Roberts); Jeffrey Bishop (by Rogers Woolston); and Andree van Raalte (by John van Raalte). The meeting was attended by 120 members.
President John Cotton opened the meeting at 10:20 AM and thanked the members for observing the limitations on our use of the Springdale parking lot. He announced that all subsequent meetings for the current spring term will be held at Springdale.
Dr. Cotton welcomed our speakers, Michel Jeruchim and his editor/publisher Joy Stocke. He called upon Henry Von Kohorn to introduce the speaker and his editor; the talk was entitled “Out of the Shadows: Survival in Nazi Occupied France.” Henry noted that Mr. Jeruchim and his family had been living in Paris in July 1942 when the Nazi occupation of Paris and deportation of Jews forced the family to separate, with each of the three children being sent to different French families in order to survive. Mr. Jeruchim’s life story from that point on, and the story of his family, are captured in his recently published memoir, the subject of his talk.
Mr. Jeruchim began by noting that, but for the extraordinary events following his family’s separation in 1942, he would surely have perished in a Nazi gas chamber 82 years ago. He said that like many people who had undergone severe trauma early in life, as with combat veterans, he found it very difficult to speak publicly about his experiences. The psychological damage lasts many decades, even a lifetime. He was able to overcome it sufficiently to write his memoir, with strong encouragement from his wife, Joan, when he contemplated the birth of their first granddaughter, Sarah, and realized that it was essential for her and others in her generation to understand what had happened to him, his parents, and his siblings.
Mr. Jeruchim was also stimulated to record his life history by a reunion in New York of the French children who had been separated from their families and hidden during the Second World War. These were the survivors, and the reunion of more than 1200 of them was a moving and even cathartic experience.
Mr. Jeruchim’s biography, as recounted in his memoir, closely tracks the history of the Nazi occupation of France but with an intensely personal dimension. His parents came to France from Poland, where his father was a watchmaker, and he found work in Paris with another Polish Jewish émigré. When the German Army arrived in Paris in May 1940, the lives of the city’s population were upended and about two-thirds fled the city, to the unoccupied, but collaborationist, Vichy regime in the country’s southeast. Mr. Jeruchim’s family joined in this exodus but separated into two groups for greater safety. The refugee columns were strafed by the Luftwaffe. An armistice was signed in September 1940, and that month also saw the introduction of the requirement for French Jews to register as such and display a yellow Star of David. The first deportations began shortly thereafter and, in 1942, orders were given by the French police to detain and deport all French Jews to camps in the Nazi-occupied East. As many as 3500 Jewish children were among those arrested and deported.
Mr. Jeruchim recounted that his mother had learned, through a local pharmacist friend, who in turn had heard from a dentist, that the mass arrests were about to begin, and she took action to send Michel, then only 5 years old, to stay with the friendly pharmacist. His brother and sister were sent away to other families. Young Michel was subsequently moved twice more, finally to be taken in by a family in Normandy named Leclère, who treated him as their own son and, as he put it, “hid him in plain sight,” as he attended school and church with them, and effectively took on a new identity. Mr. Jeruchim was still with the Leclère family at the time of the Allied Invasion of Normandy in June 1944, and he described the intensive bombing and fighting in his village of St Aubin in the following weeks, until liberation by Canadian forces.
Mr. Jeruchim then described the events that led to his reuniting with his siblings, after an uncle from Paris appeared at the Leclère home and claimed him back for the family. Still Michel remained with the Leclère family in order to complete the school year and was then transferred to a maison des enfants (similar to an orphanage). The remainder of the story is one of triumph over great adversity, as he immigrated to the United States in 1949 to live with another uncle and his family in Brooklyn, attended public elementary and high schools, graduated from the City College of New York, became an aerospace engineer working for General Electric on satellite design, and reunited with his older brother and sister. Through persistent efforts by a French lawyer to document the fates of all deported French Jews, Mr. Jeruchim was able to confirm 24 years ago that his parents were sent to Auschwitz and gassed on arrival. Their names appear on a wall in Paris commemorating the tens of thousands of French Jews who met that same fate.
Respectfully submitted,
George L. Bustin
President John Cotton opened the meeting at 10:20 AM and thanked the members for observing the limitations on our use of the Springdale parking lot. He announced that all subsequent meetings for the current spring term will be held at Springdale.
Dr. Cotton welcomed our speakers, Michel Jeruchim and his editor/publisher Joy Stocke. He called upon Henry Von Kohorn to introduce the speaker and his editor; the talk was entitled “Out of the Shadows: Survival in Nazi Occupied France.” Henry noted that Mr. Jeruchim and his family had been living in Paris in July 1942 when the Nazi occupation of Paris and deportation of Jews forced the family to separate, with each of the three children being sent to different French families in order to survive. Mr. Jeruchim’s life story from that point on, and the story of his family, are captured in his recently published memoir, the subject of his talk.
Mr. Jeruchim began by noting that, but for the extraordinary events following his family’s separation in 1942, he would surely have perished in a Nazi gas chamber 82 years ago. He said that like many people who had undergone severe trauma early in life, as with combat veterans, he found it very difficult to speak publicly about his experiences. The psychological damage lasts many decades, even a lifetime. He was able to overcome it sufficiently to write his memoir, with strong encouragement from his wife, Joan, when he contemplated the birth of their first granddaughter, Sarah, and realized that it was essential for her and others in her generation to understand what had happened to him, his parents, and his siblings.
Mr. Jeruchim was also stimulated to record his life history by a reunion in New York of the French children who had been separated from their families and hidden during the Second World War. These were the survivors, and the reunion of more than 1200 of them was a moving and even cathartic experience.
Mr. Jeruchim’s biography, as recounted in his memoir, closely tracks the history of the Nazi occupation of France but with an intensely personal dimension. His parents came to France from Poland, where his father was a watchmaker, and he found work in Paris with another Polish Jewish émigré. When the German Army arrived in Paris in May 1940, the lives of the city’s population were upended and about two-thirds fled the city, to the unoccupied, but collaborationist, Vichy regime in the country’s southeast. Mr. Jeruchim’s family joined in this exodus but separated into two groups for greater safety. The refugee columns were strafed by the Luftwaffe. An armistice was signed in September 1940, and that month also saw the introduction of the requirement for French Jews to register as such and display a yellow Star of David. The first deportations began shortly thereafter and, in 1942, orders were given by the French police to detain and deport all French Jews to camps in the Nazi-occupied East. As many as 3500 Jewish children were among those arrested and deported.
Mr. Jeruchim recounted that his mother had learned, through a local pharmacist friend, who in turn had heard from a dentist, that the mass arrests were about to begin, and she took action to send Michel, then only 5 years old, to stay with the friendly pharmacist. His brother and sister were sent away to other families. Young Michel was subsequently moved twice more, finally to be taken in by a family in Normandy named Leclère, who treated him as their own son and, as he put it, “hid him in plain sight,” as he attended school and church with them, and effectively took on a new identity. Mr. Jeruchim was still with the Leclère family at the time of the Allied Invasion of Normandy in June 1944, and he described the intensive bombing and fighting in his village of St Aubin in the following weeks, until liberation by Canadian forces.
Mr. Jeruchim then described the events that led to his reuniting with his siblings, after an uncle from Paris appeared at the Leclère home and claimed him back for the family. Still Michel remained with the Leclère family in order to complete the school year and was then transferred to a maison des enfants (similar to an orphanage). The remainder of the story is one of triumph over great adversity, as he immigrated to the United States in 1949 to live with another uncle and his family in Brooklyn, attended public elementary and high schools, graduated from the City College of New York, became an aerospace engineer working for General Electric on satellite design, and reunited with his older brother and sister. Through persistent efforts by a French lawyer to document the fates of all deported French Jews, Mr. Jeruchim was able to confirm 24 years ago that his parents were sent to Auschwitz and gassed on arrival. Their names appear on a wall in Paris commemorating the tens of thousands of French Jews who met that same fate.
Respectfully submitted,
George L. Bustin