“I did what my father would have liked me to do for France”, Arlette Testyler, survivor of Vel’ d’Hiv, continues her work of memory

Every day, a personality invites itself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Monday June 24, 2024: Arlette Testyler, one of the rare survivors of the Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup on July 16, 1942. She publishes with Hugo Doc “I was 9 years old when they rounded us up”.

Born Arlette Reimann in 1933 in Paris, Arlette Testyler is French and Jewish through her parents of Polish origin. She was arrested with her sister and her mother on July 16, 1942, during the Vél’ d’Hiv roundup. Today, as a survivor of this roundup carried out by the French police in the service of the Nazis and as a survivor of internment at the Beaune-la-Rolande transit camp, she has become a valuable witness to the Shoah. With the contribution of Alexandre Duyck, she published the testimony with Hugo Doc: I was 9 years old when they rounded us up.

franceinfo: It is estimated that there are fewer than 100 adults who managed to survive the Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup and four children in total. Tell us about July 16, 1942. It’s 5 a.m. and there’s a knock on the door.

Arlette Testyler: I get up with mom. She asks who is there and there are two police officers who tell us: “We are coming to arrest your husband Abraham Reimann“. There, mom replied: “But he has already left, and even, to an unknown destination“, since my father had been rounded up during the greenback roundup and they, without breaking down, had this list in their hands. They said: “It doesn’t matter, it’s you and your kids“. And there, I saw my mother who did not lose her composure and who fought with them. And they took us in these horrible buses. We left for this Winter velodrome. We are in July and the weather is a little gloomy. There are small drops of rain falling as if the sky was crying with us.

“Tell you what the Winter Vélodrome was like in July 1942? It’s unspeakable.”

Arlette Testyler

at franceinfo

I remember, I told my mother, I want to go to the bathroom. She tells me : “Go with Lazare, the little neighbor” and we went up. The higher we went, the more there was this smell and when we arrived at the top, there was no water on the ground since there was no water. What were the people? Modestly, against the wall, at the end, they relieved themselves, the others hid them And then I’m nine years old and I know nothing about life And I see linen, pieces of cotton with it. blood and I start screaming: we’re killing everyone, we have to tell mom, everyone, look at the blood that’s there. I don’t know that this blood is the ones. rules, the girls are indisposed and I’m sure we’re going to kill everyone.

Your father’s absence will weigh very heavily. He never returned from this raid. He initially went to Pithiviers, then he was deported to Auschwitz where he died in 1942. Do you understand, at the age of nine, what was happening at that time? There is the story of the square you have been going to since you were little, with the guard who asks you if you can read and who tells you that it is forbidden for both Jews and dogs.

That’s when I started to lose confidence in what my dad was telling me all the time. He was telling me : “If you get lost, you will ask a guard or agent and they will take you home“. But I’m losing confidence in this square. The day they put the yellow star on me, I felt lower than the earth even though I was proud to be French. Dad always said: “You must be proud to be French“. I heard him say in 1938: “If there is war, I sign up to fight for France“. My father was more French than a Frenchman.

You give very important details, which very few know. For example, the yellow star was not free.

We had to give clothing tickets. So we were deprived of clothes to buy this horrible yellow star.

Tell us about this family who saved your life and to whom you owe a lot.

It must still be said that in all of Europe, it is in France that the most Jewish children have been saved. And it’s very important because those who saved us were not high-ranking officers, I’ll tell you right away, they were little people, simple people. From this cattle car, my mother sent a little note that she wrote to neighbors explaining that we had been arbitrarily arrested. There were no stamps, no envelope. When the train started, she threw it onto the tracks. I don’t know who picked it up, but it arrived at its destination. It was from this time that the French woke up. When people saw these cattle cars, with these little children’s hands, these old men’s hands, they said to themselves: “These don’t go to work in Germany”. And it was from this time that France woke up.

Did it relieve you today to put words to your pain?

Yes, it makes me feel good because when I arrive in a high school, in a college, it’s the students who are there for me. I don’t ask for much. Only 10% of them, later, faced with these revisionists, these deniers, will say: “No, they existed“. I think I did what my father would have liked me to do for France.