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Video length: 1 min
In the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the inhabitants of Fanget remember a shelter that for a long time housed a dozen children who tried to escape the Nazis.
Maxime Allouch was 9 years old in 1943 when his family narrowly escaped a roundup. Entrusted to the Children’s Relief Organization, he ended up in a chalet with his two brothers. Eighty years later, the nonagenarian returned to the chalet, of which only the foundations and a brick chimney remain today. “It’s really strange. Everything has changed, it’s not the same nature anymore.”comments Maxime Allouch, very moved.
“Apart from one little thing we were made to do in the middle of the night, we suspected that the militia was going to come by, so we were made to go down into the woods two by two, he remembers. But I have nothing to say, I was the darling.” From the spring of 1943 until the Liberation, a dozen Jewish children were hidden in this youth hostel. A somewhat unusual story, because it ended well, which is not the case everywhere.