In the wake of the summer events, arrests were carried out on the flimsiest of pretexts, so that Paris was like a trap which could be sprung at any moment for so many who had something to hide. Train stations were now crammed full of people desperate to get out of the city; men and women were occasionally spotted with baggy overcoats over pyjamas, suggesting that they had had to leave through a back window in a hurry. The Métro and theatre exits were places of infinite danger where the Gestapo, usually in plain clothes, would often be hovering ready to ambush Jews, saboteurs, spies or even random hostages, especially alert for anyone turning round or going backwards at the sight of barriers.
Only very few of those arrested effected extraordinary escapes from the sports stadium; toilets which had windows had been blocked off for use so exits were few. And those who managed to slip out had to find other hiding places swiftly. Cécile Widerman Kaufer was just eleven years old when ‘soldiers banged on our door loudly, pointed guns at our heads and forced us to leave our apartment’. She never forgot being driven to the sports stadium, spending several days without food and water and then her father somehow convincing a French guard to let her and her younger sister, Betty, leave the stadium and go with their mother to the nearby Rothschild Hospital. It was the last time they saw their father and elder sister.
While at the hospital, I convinced a woman to pass a note on to my grandparents letting them know where we were. Next, we persuaded a French guard to let us free from the hospital, while my grandparents arranged for my sister and me to be taken into hiding by a Catholic French woman from Normandy who was already hiding five Jewish children. We called her Mémère, which means grandmother in French …
Like the thousands of other hidden children, we went for days without food. I was scared all the time and worried constantly about caring for my little sister. But I promised my mother I’d take care of her. And I still take care of her.
As Cécile told an interviewer in 2012, ‘Every July, my stomach churns from the memory.’
Most were taken from the Vélodrome by cattle train to Beaunela-Rolande. There Malka Reiman, a German-speaker, found a job as a translator in the camp. Working in an office she saw documents which made her realize they would soon be taken from there to somewhere worse, so she came up with a flimsy ruse, telling the authorities that before the round-up she had hidden vital material, furs as well as sewing machines, that would be useful to the Germans. If she was allowed back to Paris with her children she would show them where. Amazingly, they allowed her and the two girls to travel unaccompanied on a military train back to Paris where they were due to be met. Her daughter Arlette recalled:
My mother, realizing that the train was very slow, regularly stopping, saw a chance. She told us, when she gave the nod, we would have to jump out and lie low between the wooden sleepers and that we would be fine. We had to trust her. She would come back to collect us. It was terrifying but we did it. The whole thing is still today like a dream to me, but she saved our lives. We then walked into Paris and stayed with a friend until my mother found a family outside Paris to take us in.