A day after September 11, 2001, I received a call from Thérèse Naffrechoux, a young woman from a small town in Southwestern France whom I’d met on a 1997 trip.  She’d been trying to call since hearing the terrible news from the day before – She and her father, André, wanted to make sure my wife Fran and I were all right. Holding back tears, I assured her we were fine, and let her know how touched we were to hear from her.

The story of the relationship between the Naffrechoux family and my own began some 60 years earlier in an even darker time when an unusual family of three fled the town of Thiaucourt in Eastern France and began a several-hundred-mile journey west through occupied territory.  My great uncle, Dr. Iliazar Israel Schaechter, 65, was a hero physician in the First World War, winning the Legion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military honors.  Elly, 44, his wife of just two years, was a German whose father had been a police chief in Alsace-Lorraine when it was under German control before the Great War. Charles Lang, 68, was Dr. Schaechter’s live-in patient for thirty years, a great bear of a man afflicted with autism or some other illness.

After graduating from medical school in Nancy, France in about 1900, Dr. Schaechter became the town doctor in a sleepy little village called Thiaucourt. The town was just outside of Alsace-Lorraine, the hotly contested region that changed hands from France to Germany just thirty years before. He married Marie Berthe Victorine Rapp from nearby Metz, and took in Charles in exchange for a monthly pension from his family. Charles stayed with the doctor for the rest of his life.

The doctor’s peaceful routine of making house calls on his bicycle was shattered by the beginning of World War I. He enlisted and served all four years of the war, earning him his French citizenship, and taking him to all fronts, including the Dardenelles in his native country of Turkey. In September and October 1918, he was with a motorized unit in Belgium that came under heavy fire during one of the final allied offensives. His “great courage and sang-froid” treating wounded drivers under heavy bombardment earned him the Croix de Guerre, and later the Legion d’Honneur.

Returning to Thiaucourt after the war, Doctor Schaechter found his home reduced to rubble by wartime bombs. A postcard photograph to my Grandmother bears witness to the post-war scene, showing the remains of the “Maison Shester” (spelled phonetically), and identifying the town as the first French town reconquered by the Americans. Rather than rebuilding in Thiaucourt, the family moved to the once-again-French Alsace-Lorraine, settling in the border town of St. Avold, directly west of Germany and right on what later became the Maginot Line. Doctor Schaechter rose to prominence in the town as a respected physician, as well as a member of the Municipal Town Council.

Israel’s wife Marie died in the ‘20s, and sometime in the mid-1930’s, he hired Elly Sukowski as a nurse and housekeeper. Elly was a German whose father was a police chief in Metz when it was under German control. Her ex-husband Charles lived in Germany with their teenage son Hans, who was an active member of the Hitler Youth. In 1939, with German troops just steps away over the Maginot Line, the doctor, Elly and Charles left Saint Avold for the relative safety of Thiaucourt. On December 13, 1939, he and Elly were married there.

A remarkable letter written by Israel in 1940 provides wrenching insight into his situation during that grim period. The letter was given to me by Bertrand Cerf, now a prominent member of the Jewish community of Saint Avold. Bertrand's parents and grandparents were very close friends of Dr. Schaechter (he delivered Bertrand into the world in 1929), and our visit kindled very warm memories of Uncle Israel and his own family from his childhood. His father, a resistance fighter, survived Auschwitz, and upon liberation, returned to St. Avold, where he and Bertrand built a successful real estate business. Bertrand found the letter in his basement and read it aloud to us:

Thiaucourt, October 10, 1940

Chere Amie,

If you know, far away, in occupied France, someone you can trust, who is Christian, send him what you think should be saved, and perhaps you’ll have a chance to recover them after the war. I myself have sent some linen, the only thing that I still possess of my valuables, far away in occupied France.

They are making it difficult for me to exercise my profession . . Although I may be able to overcome these problems, I find I have no desire to continue practicing medicine now.

The news from St. Avold is not happy. All are poorly housed. They sleep at home, but on the floor, without mattresses, and cover themselves with their clothes. . . . The Gestapo has not yet reached S. Avold and it is they who will sort out who will be allowed to stay and who will be expelled.

Many good thoughts to your dear mother and Petit Bertrand.

Have heart and hope!

“Petit Bertrand,” now 68, finished reading the letter with tears in his eyes. Again, he felt the presence of his family’s dear friend, as well as his own parents, in the fading yellowed pages. He gave us the original letter, keeping only a copy for himself.

As of August 1941, Jews no longer could practice medicine in France, forcing Israel to depend entirely on the monthly pension sent by Charles' family. On June 6, 1942, all Jews in the occupied zone over the age of six were required to wear the star of David on the left side of their outer garments. One of my cousins kept a striking photograph of Israel and his wife, Elly, during that time, smiling and holding a neighbor's baby. At first glance, it's an idyllic scene, but then you notice that Israel is wearing the star of David with Juif written on it, and Elly is wearing a cross. It’s a disturbing, layered tableau with jarring images -- the innocence of the infant and the Schaechters' smiles, undermined by the sinister star. Elly's cross adds yet another level of complexity, deepened by the knowledge that she was not only Christian but German, with a son fighting for the Nazis at the time. Around the same time as the picture, Elly’s son was killed fighting on the Russian front.

Sometime in 1941, it became unsafe for Israel, Elly and Charles to stay in Thiaucourt. They fled the town and somehow made their way all the way across occupied France to the town of Couhé-Verac (also called simply Couhé), just ninety miles from the Atlantic. They settled in a modest house on Couhé's main street, across from the Garage François, operated by Azenor François and his wife, Valerie.

Israel feared the Germans might intercept the monthly pension checks sent to him from Charles' family and a neighbor, Gaston Motillion arranged to receive them for him. He also took a box of valuables Israel gave him and buried it under the garage at his country home outside of Couhé in Bois-de-Messé. No one really knows what was in the mysterious box, which Israel apparently retrieved after the war -- family recollections range from stock certificates to a small statue of Victor Hugo.

In January 1944, the mother of Israel’s neighbor Azenor François died and the garagiste went to the Couhé City Hall to report the death. While there, he overheard Germans asking for Dr. Schaechter's address. He quickly left the building and sent a young girl on a bicycle to warn the doctor.

The girl warned Israel in time, and by the time the Germans arrived at the door, he had escaped to the countryside outside town. As people in Couhé recounted to me, Elly answered the door that day with a picture of her son in uniform prominently displayed.

Who’s that?” they asked, surprised at the photo.
“My son, Lieutenant Sukowski,” she answered in German. “He was killed just a few months ago at Orel, on the Russian front.”
“But you’re married to a Jew named Schaechter.”
“I had my poor son with my ex-husband, Charles. They lived in Germany.”
“And you’re German?”
“Yes -- I was born in Metz when it was part of the Fatherland.”
“How could you marry a Jew?”
“Liebe kennt keine grenzen.” [Love has no boundaries.]
“And where is your Jew-husband?”
“He’s gone to the country for some supplies. What do you want him for?”
“He’s been chosen to work in camps in the East.”
“What use could he be to you? He’s almost seventy -- what kind of work can he do?”
“He can sweep the camps, can’t he?”
“Well, I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

The Germans hesitated, deciding whether to wait or perhaps to take Elly into custody until Israel returned. Then they looked again at the picture of Elly’s dead son.

“We’ll be back tomorrow for your husband,” one said, and they left.

Dr. Schaechter hid outside of town until nightfall, when M. François arranged for he and Elly to be driven to his in-laws’ farm in a remote town called Chevais. The farmers, François and Leontine Naffrechoux, took them in without hesitation.

In 1997, my wife, Fran and I visited the farmhouse, and spoke with their son, André then 75), about his late parents and the arrival of Uncle Israel.  Just as we began the interview, it began to rain hard -- not just a downpour, but a pounding, violent outburst that hammered the roof of the ancient farmhouse.  The kitchen/dining room where we sat was dominated by a long table that stretched the length of the room to the far wall, where an ancient grandfather clock rose up and loomed over the crowded space like a benevolent icon presiding over our journey to the past.  As we sat around the table, the sound of the driving rain enveloped us like a cocoon, insulating us from the present and transporting us to occupied France in 1944.  

I asked if it had been a difficult decision to accept the Schaechters into the household.

“They arrived and there was never any doubt that we would take them in.”

This was quiet heroism, without flourish, debate, or argument -- just an act of extraordinary kindness and bravery by simple French farmers.  And the Naffrechouxs’ heroism went beyond just sheltering my great uncle and his wife.  In 1943, the Germans imposed the Service de Travail Obligatoire (the “STO”), which conscripted young Frenchmen for forced labor in Germany.  Several hundred thousand men went to work in Germany, but there was widespread evasion and protest against the measure. The Naffrechouxs hid two young STO resisters, as well as a German army deserter named Herbert Schmitt.

More than fifty years later, André, with great relish, described the wartime seating arrangement at the same table where we now were sitting.  His father sat to his right, he said, at the head of the table, and next to him were Dr. Schaechter and Elly.  Israel’s place at the table made it clear that, even though he came as a refugee fleeing in the night, André’s father accorded him great respect. Continuing around the table, André pointed to where Herbert Schmitt, the two STO dodgers and the rest of the family sat.

Marie-Louise, the Naffrechoux’s maid, kept watch periodically through the porthole window.  If she saw anyone suspicious approach she rang a bell, and Israel and Elly rushed out the back door to the woods about fifty yards away.  Sometimes there wasn’t time and they had to stay frozen in their room, dreading the prospect of a Gestapo search.  On one tense occasion, the Wehrmacht held all-day maneuvers right outside the front gate, while inside, the Schaechters waited tensely until the exercises ended at dusk.

Just a few days after the Schaechters arrived, Marie-Louise looked through the porthole and saw a teenage girl on a bicycle pedaling toward the gate.  When she went out to the gate, she saw that the girl was carrying a bouquet of flowers.

“I have a bouquet for Dr. Schaechter’s anniversaire [birthday] from his friends in Couhé,” the girl said.

“You must be mistaken.  There’s no one here by that name,” Marie-Louise said, and the girl rode back toward Couhé, still holding the bouquet.

Marie-Louise correctly suspected the girl was a collaborator, trying to find out for the Gestapo or the milice (their French allies) where the doctor was hiding.  Her intuition about the fille aux fleurs, as André called her, saved Israel, the others who were in hiding, and the whole Naffrechoux family.  André, the gentlest of men, startled us by saying that had he run into the girl in the late 1940s, he would have killed her on the spot: a declaration that was convincing precisely because of its jarring contrast with his gentle demeanor.  Even so, André later hired two of this woman's sons to work on the farm, never mentioning their mother’s treachery.

Toward the end of the interview, an adorable five-year-old girl -- André’s granddaughter -- walked in.  She proceeded to come up to each of us at the table, even complete strangers, and kiss us on the cheek.  Having made her rounds, she said “au revoir” and left -- a sweet break from André’s tense story.

Returning to 1944, André told us that when the Schaechters first arrived at the farm, only his parents knew that Israel was Jewish and a physician.  It was his enthusiastic participation in a dinner table conversation one night that gave away the secret.  The group was discussing religion and, in particular, the Catholic belief that a dying infant must be baptized to avoid purgatory.  Israel suddenly pronounced: “Even though I am a Jewish doctor, I would baptize a dying child!”

The group at the table was stunned.  Sheltering a Jew was a much greater risk than hiding an STO draftee or perhaps even a German deserter.  Then one of the STO men told Israel that his wife, who just gave birth, was ill.  She lived in Pers, about three kilometers away, and had been unable to see a doctor, either because none was available, or out of fear that her husband’s hiding place would be discovered.  Would Israel go to see her?  For him to venture out of the house was extremely dangerous, especially since, after the fille aux fleurs incident, he knew that he was a target.  Yet he decided to go.  Walking the distance at night without a flashlight, guided only by the moonlight, he found his way to Pers, where he successfully treated the woman.  His courage was not news to us – we knew he’d won the Croix de Guerre for his “remarkable conscience and devotion” and “sang-froid” on perilous missions during the 1914-1918 war.  Now in his late sixties, he still had the same daring he had shown as a young doctor during the Great War.

The allies liberated the area around Chevais in September 1944. On October 20, 1944, Israel sent a postcard to his sister Mina's family:

My dear ones:

            We are both healthy and safe.  We were saved from the Gestapo, who came to arrest us.  We fled at night to a small village in Deux-Sèvres.  The mayor took us in and hid us on his farm for nine months.  Now, everything is all right.

Kisses to you and all of the family.  We may only write one letter now.  More will follow later.  Kisses also, from my wife Elly.  Your very happy

            Dr. Schaechter.

Israel’s relief and happiness pours out of the card --  a stark and wonderful contrast to the somber letter to the Cerfs from Thiaucourt exactly four years earlier, when he struggled to maintain hope amid the terrible signs of imminent disaster.

The Schaechters stayed in Couhé until the final German surrender in May 1945, when André Naffrechoux drove them back to Saint Avold.  His postwar letters from there show the toll the war took -- many friends lost, savings gone and long hours of work, even as he reached his seventies.  In November 1945, he wrote to Jacqueline's Bernard’s parents:

We don’t go out much, first because we’re so busy putting our house back in order, but also because our old friends and acquaintances have disappeared in the tourmente, sent away by the Boches as political deportees or for other excuses, never to return.

In a letter dated April 23, 1947, Israel wrote that, at the age of seventy-one, he was still putting in long days as a doctor:

An eight-hour day is unknown in my profession.  I get up at six, begin work at seven, and work until nine at night.  I barely have time to eat at noon and kiss my wife.

Later that year, in November, he wrote poignantly:

I’m beginning to get old.  After a time your machine begins to run down  --- pains here, sickness there, you begin to stoop over.  If not for the war, I could have “hung up my apron.”  But with things so expensive, this is impossible and I must stay “in harness” to the end.  To the grace of God!

Two years later, on December 13, 1949, Israel died in Saint-Avold.  In 1997, we visited his grave in the Jewish cemetery there.  About thirty feet away from Dr. Schaechter’s grave, on the eastern wall of the cemetery, is a striking monument to the Jews of St. Avold not lucky enough to escape deportation.  Granite steps lead up to a wall on four short pillars, inscribed in raised letters with a list of the names and ages of all of the victims of the Holocaust from St. Avold.  The list ends with the words Martyrs morts pour la France et pour leur foi [Martyrs who died for France and for their faith].  Below that in larger letters is a quote from the Torah in French and Hebrew: “I am the only one; there is no other God than me.  It is I who take away life and I who give life; It is I who wound and I who cure.”  Finally, at the foot of the monument is a small rectangular box with the brass inscription Cendres de déportés d’Auschwitz [Ashes of the deported to Auschwitz].

Seeing the memorial so close to Israel’s grave brought new and deeper meaning to the story of his rescue -- if not for chance and the heroism of people like the Naffrechouxs, his name would be on that wall.  Israel died at 73, five years after his rescue.  But what about Maurice Libbman (50) and Blanche Libbman (42), now just names chiseled on the wall, robbed of many more years of life; and what about Monique Lion, only five years old, who barely tasted life at all?  What must it have been like for Israel to return to a town where so many friends had suffered and perished?

 Just a few steps from the Jewish cemetery in Saint Avold there's an American military cemetery where 10,000 G.I.’s are buried, the largest number in any Second World War cemetery.  It's dominated by a stark white monument rising about 250 feet into the sky, with several levels of long steps below, leading finally to rows and rows of thousands of graves arrayed in neat sections, stretching to the edge of the woods.  Like other huge military cemeteries in Europe, it’s the most beautiful and the saddest sight you can imagine.

We happened to be in Saint Avold on American Memorial Day.   Until a few years ago, there was just a small commemoration of American Memorial Day at the St. Avold cemetery, attended mostly by the American staff.  But through the efforts of Bertrand Cerf and others, it has come to be a major Franco-American event, with equal participation by the French military, clergy and elected officials.  Bertrand invited us as guests of honor at the ceremony, which included color guards of French and American troops and veterans, and a flyover by four American jets.

The most impressive speech was by the American consul general from Strasbourg. That day was also the Fête des Mères in France (two weeks after our Mother’s Day) and he spoke of the pain of the mothers and families whose children lay at the cemetery. It was also election day in France, and the consul-general pointed out that those honored in the ceremony died to protect the rights symbolized by voting: “Americans do not vote in the French elections,” he said, “but we see here before us the evidence that Americans did vote for France to have elections.” The ceremony ended with a presentation of wreaths by French veterans to the children of American soldiers. Afterward, we walked briefly through the cemetery’s sea of crosses, interspersed with occasional Stars of David, each with a small American and French flag posted in front. I looked closely at one star that read "Arthur Summerfield, d. May 4, 1945." Arthur died just four days before the end of the war. Like Paul, the hero of All Quiet on the Western Front, his life was cut short just at the brink of peace.

That afternoon, I returned alone to the Jewish cemetery to take photographs and videos. It was a gorgeous day, with the sun glancing brilliantly off the graves and the Holocaust monument. As I walked around the somber yet brightly illuminated grounds, I wondered if it had been a good idea to return, or whether the day was too steeped in death and memory. Yet the link was clear: Without the deaths of the Americans buried at St. Avold, there would have been many more names on that terribly sad wall of Martyrs morts pour la France et pour leur foi. Without the sacrifices of those Americans, the cemetery and monument might not have been there at all, and Uncle Israel may not have survived.

Walking in Uncle Israel's footprints changed my life, providing strength in moments of doubt or crisis by thinking about his life, and the kindness and courage of those like François and Leontine Naffrechoux, who knew and helped him.  In a ceremony in Paris in June 1998, Thérèse Naffrechoux accepted the medal of the Righteous Among Nations, awarded posthumously to her grandparents for their rescue of Dr. Schaechter.  In August 2000, we named one of our newborn twin daughters Isabel, in part after Uncle Israel, her spiritual ancestor.  And on September 12, 2001, when the very foundations of our lives had been shaken, it was no small comfort to know that Uncle Israel’s rescuers and their family were still looking after the Doctors’ descendants.

Peter Janovsky

2007