Born in 1931 in Hungary, Edith is the last born of a four-children jewish family.
In 1935, the family emigrated in Belgium and settled down in Brussels, next to Saint-Gilles neighbourhood.
On the 10th of may 1940, all the family hit aimlessly the exodus road, avoiding bombings, to end up at last in a small village of south of France. Solidarity was still proper and Edith refers to it as "one year in paradise" - until a day of winter 1941, when the entire family got arrested upon denunciation.
Saw as indesirable par the Vichy government, the family was interned at the french concentration camp of Récébédou. Three months later, the father succeeded in bribing a guard, and the family ran away, accross the border and back to Brussels.
Life took up again in a climate of terror until the egde of the large roundups in 1942. Only just escaping, Edith's father put each child in a different family, hiding them away just for a while. Edith spent her time in an attic, then, the situation outside tending to be dangerous, her father interned the young girl in a catholic institute for mentally handicaped ones. Edith stayed two years and a half there under a fake identity.
The entire family survived.
Edith did not mention the war episode until 1970.

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portrait, colour, woman, memory, survival, deportation, testimony

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memory

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