Here again, our family was faced with a decision. Would the French police come back to try to “catch” the Jews it missed the first time, or not. It turns out they did not, but how would anyone know? Earlier I had mentioned that my mother had made many friends in Vincennes, the location of our first apartment, and there she went to work, that is to say, she visited the stores and merchants she had befriended to ask for help. A few of the merchants she knew let us hide in their, store-rooms for a few days but that could only have been temporary. However, eventually, Madame Garnier the owner of a pharmacy told my mother she had a “solution”, which was to connect us to a family by the name of Bonneau. How that connection had been made is open to speculation. It appears, however, that Monsieur Bonneau was connected to an “underground” network to save Jews, but, I suspect, children in particular. And I was a child.

The story is somewhat more complicated than what actually transpired, but, within a very few days, I was placed in the household of a French Catholic family named Leclere: Marcel and Suzanne and their son Gaston who lived in the town Saint-Aubin-lès-Elbeuf in Normandy.

Below is a photo of the Leclere family and me. You can see from the body language that the Lecleres had adopted me, so to speak, and in fact had intended to do so legally, whatever that means when there is no family. There were probably thousands of children in hiding who were adopted by their protectors, when the children’s parents or other relatives never emerged to claim them because they had been murdered by the Nazis.

I could have been one of those children. I’m told that the Lecleres had had that intention, and it’s true that my parents never returned (more about that shortly). I don’t know if my siblings would have had the power to object, but my uncle David did.

In the initial photo above, there is a good-looking young man who was my mother’s youngest brother. He had also come to France under circumstances I’m not familiar with, but because he too was a watchmaker he probably had a similar story as my father. However, sometime in his earlier years, he and his wife had had a falling-out with my mother. David and his wife and son survived the war in a small town, le Grand-Lucé, in North-western France, just about 17 miles south-east of Le Mans, the location of the famous race track. When the war ended, David did not know if his sister and her family had survived.

So, I did not know who he was when he came knocking on the door of the Lecleres’ house. He had come to reclaim me on behalf of the family. Since he was the closest (adult) blood relative, he had legal priority. However, because of the estrangement with my mother, he (David) did not know if I was alive, or where I might have been taken to hide. How he found me is a bit of a story, but find me he did. And just like that, from one day to the next, I was taken from the Lecleres, with no explanation. I may have mentioned elsewhere that in those days, children were not consulted about decisions made for them.

Joan says that this was the second pair of Parents that I lost and deepened the trauma of this little boy that I was.

I have wondered what would have happened to me if my uncle hadn’t found me or my siblings. I don’t think that the adoption could have take place because my closest relatives were still alive – my brother and sister. But, they were not in a position to take on this burden (me). Perhaps the Lecleres would have taken me on a care-taker basis? Nevertheless, had this been the case, I would have spent my life in France. There are a lot of what-ifs after the war, but this is just idle speculation because my Uncle did find me.