Arrival in Vignaux

Awkwardly perched on the edge of a steamer trunk, I demanded to get down and walk. A tall, frightening stranger, meanwhile, was pushing the trunk and me in an old fashioned wooden wheelbarrow. We had left the small town of Cadours in southern France a couple of hours before for the 10 kilometer hike to our new home in Vignaux. My beloved nurse, Nana, was walking beside this man, carrying some large sacks and holding our little dachshund, Micki, on a leash. Everyone was hot and tired on that sunny July day in 1941. I was especially cranky because I had to ride at an uncomfortable angle, grasping my knees with my arms. My legs, arms and back were all sore and tired. I really wanted to walk. The man pushing the wheelbarrow was in no mood to humor his spoiled two-year old daughter, so he kept threatening punishment.

This man, whom I was supposed to call “Papa,” was a virtual stranger to me because I had not seen him for over a year. The French police in Paris had arrested him in the spring of 1940 as the Germans were crossing France. The French feared that German refugees like him might actually be a “fifth column”, working to overthrow the French government from behind the lines. Papa had then been sent to an internment camp in southern France. After France fell to the advancing German army, he was released from the camp and spent a number of months in Toulouse, trying to get a visa for some other country. Through a French protestant refugee aid organization, he found a house in a tiny village about 35 kilometers northwest of Toulouse. The house, owned by the Catholic Church, was empty because the village priest had died two years previously. Vignaux was so small that Church officials decided that it did not need a resident priest, so they agreed to rent half of the house to my father.

He moved to Vignaux in January, 1941. The village was very primitive, having only two outhouses, one for the entire village and one in the basement of our rented house. Laundry was done by hand in an open-air roofed area with a spring to provide water. Soap was in extremely short supply. The house was filthy, and my father spent many days trying to clean it up. There was no running water or electricity, no heat in the winter except for a large fireplace, if he could get wood.

By summer, he decided that Nana, whom he called “Schwester Lina”, and I should move to this little village to be with him. Nana cleaned up and closed our apartment in Vanves, a Paris suburb. Then she and I took a train to Toulouse where we met Papa. We then took a bus to Cadours and from there walked to Vignaux.

On August 12th, he wrote a letter to a friend:

“Mely and Schwester Lina are well. In the beginning the latter was horrified by the simplicity of the living conditions. She is slowly becoming used to our rural life, especially after she saw that most of the inhabitants of the place live much worse than we do. The priest died two years ago; I have rented one half of the house: sitting room, bedroom, kitchen, attic and cellar. Cleaning took a lot of work, but I took care of it before the arrival of Schwester Lina. To us belong one of the two W.C.’s (without water) of the place! What a luxury!”

Mely has forced me to raise my standard of living. However, that takes time. Scientific work – negative report. Schwester Lina helps me as well as she can. In fixing vegetables and salad and in doing laundry she is better than I. On the other hand I have more luck cooking and more patience in cleaning the cooking pots and bottles. Yes, bottles, dear Hedwig. Clean bottles are not to be had. One can find dirty bottles, as many as one wants. I bought a 10 liter flask of wine and had on Sunday the lovely job of cleaning the necessary bottles. Lacking the proper tools and detergent, it took a lot of time and stopped me from writing to you on time for your birthday.

The grain harvest turned out well here. Without twine to tie the sheaves the harvest was especially hard work and threshing is a problem because of the lack of fuel.”

This little village would be our home for the next three and a half years. We were indeed fortunate to live in a sparsely populated area where the war did not often intrude on our daily lives.