a Jewish child hidden during the Second World War returns to the house of his saviors

77 years after the Second World War, Marcel Cohen returns to Guipry-Messac (Ille-et-Vilaine), where he had been hidden as a child. “Mathurin and Annette deserved the death penalty, because it was punishable by death at the time, so it’s not nothing”, says Marcel Cohen, a Jewish child in hiding during the Second World War. The couple’s great-grandchildren did not know this family history. It was a local historian who made the link between the two families.

He was interested in the story of Anne-Marie Voland, known as Annette, who had brought Marcel Cohen from Paris to Brittany. “Nobody knew him and we didn’t send him to school because it was too risky”, explains Jean-Claude Bourgeon, local historian. For two years, the young Marcel is hidden by Mathurin and Annette, while his family is killed in a concentration camp. After the war, Marcel Cohen never saw his benefactors again, to whom he owed his life.