The text was published in October 2019.
Summer 1939. Dziunia’s mother writes to her, advising her not to return to Poland.
She doesn’t return. Instead, she is preparing to move from Nancy to Nice, where she will continue her dental studies. She likely thinks there will be plenty of opportunities to visit her family. But there weren't.
Dziunia's mother, Basia Tauba Alfabetowa, was a dentist from Bałuty, a poor Jewish district of Łódź ("Zgierska St. 11/9b, tel. 118-50, open from 10 AM-1 PM and 3-7 PM" - reads the listing in the Medical Directory of Łódź Province). On August 19, 1944, she and her son were taken from their tenement house—now within the ghetto, on Hohensteiner Strasse—to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was gassed immediately. Dziunia’s brother, Henryk, survived Auschwitz and the death march but died in Bergen-Belsen a few days after the official end of the war in Europe, on May 11, 1945. He had turned 20 just three months earlier.
The Łódź of Poles, Jews, and Germans...
It's 1936. Seventeen-year-old Dziunia, Jadwiga Alfabet from Łódź, moves to Nancy, France. Due to the numerus clausus—a policy limiting the number of Jewish students—she can forget about studying her dream of medicine in Poland. Five years earlier, Jews made up 46% of doctors in the country. In 1933-1934, Jewish students comprised 17% of medical students. But those days are over. Dziunia is determined to become a dentist, like her mother, preferably an oral surgeon. It’s a prestigious and well-paid profession. Her mother can even afford an assistant, despite being the sole breadwinner—her husband (likely named Leon Alfabet) had died before the war.
In France, Dziunia has family. Her mother’s younger sister, Salomea Ejbuszyc-Berliner, had moved to Nice from Łódź with her husband Jakub three years earlier, where they ran a weaving business. So Dziunia has support, and likely received financial help from her mother. She manages to bypass the numerus clausus, not knowing that this would likely save her life.
At the University of Nice, Dziunia quickly meets cultured Paul, who comes from a wealthy and influential Vietnamese family. Both were born in 1919, separated by a few months and 8,829 kilometers. She was born in Warsaw, he in Cochinchina—then a French colony, the southern part of Vietnam, now known as Nam Bo. She wanted to be a dentist, he a physiotherapist. Their friendship quickly turned into love.
"In France, there is now only one ruler, and that is Hitler"
In 1939, Germany invades Poland, officially starting World War II. On May 10, 1940, the Nazis attack France, and on June 22, France signs an armistice. The country is divided into two zones: the occupied north and the southern zone, not occupied by the Germans but controlled by the collaborationist government based in the famous Vichy resort.
By spring 1942, more and more Jews, including Dziunia and Paul's friends, are being arrested. Anti-Jewish decrees are imposed in both zones. The Vel d'Hiv roundup from July 16-17 is the largest mass arrest of French Jews during the war. Thirteen thousand people from Paris and its suburbs, including 4,500 children and nearly 6,000 women, are captured and sent to transit camps, and then to Auschwitz. Over 100 people commit suicide. Of the victims of this roundup, only 25 survive the Holocaust.
The police knock on the door of the Berliner’s apartment in Nice with an arrest warrant in the morning. Dziunia’s aunt and her family are lucky. "They’re out, not home," Dziunia says. She is even luckier. The police admit they lack an arrest warrant for Edwige Alfabet, but promise to return for her at 5:00 PM. They are already gone; the police haven’t come for her yet.
Paul has no intention of letting his beloved be arrested: before noon, Dziunia is already at his apartment on rue de Paris. She doesn’t leave until their wedding—almost two months later.
Paul knows the risks he’s taking. He knows what happens to Jews and those hiding them every day—in France, they aren’t shot on the spot, or entire families wiped out as in Poland, but sent to concentration camps instead.
A few streets away, in an elegant house where the social elite of the Côte d'Azur, including painter Henri Matisse, gather, Helena Stachiewicz, an artist and wife of the Polish consul, is also hiding Jews. A year later, she will be sent to Auschwitz for this and murdered. On August 31, 1942, over 550 Jews living in the Alpes-Maritimes, Basses-Alpes, and Monaco regions are arrested by the police and handed over to the Gestapo. Almost all are deported from the Darcy camp to Auschwitz. Only three percent survive.
Love in the Time of Plague
On September 5, 1942, Dziunia and Paul get married. Meanwhile, the Great Szpera begins in the Łódź ghetto. Mainly children under 10, the sick, and people over 60 are murdered. Dziunia's brother, Henryk, is 18, and her mother Basia is only 46. They survive—for now.
Dziunia is now married and still living with Paul. But Nguyen—the surname of nearly half of Vietnam’s citizens—is not enough. She can’t pretend to be a pure-blooded Frenchwoman either. Paul arranges false documents for his wife. It’s crucial, as about 10 times more stateless Jews end up in Auschwitz than those who are considered "French" citizens. Jadwiga Alfabet no longer exists, Edwige Nguyen hasn’t yet emerged. Now Dziunia is called Edwige Masson, like the famous French painter André, who had to flee France from the Nazis.
Dziunia knows she’s not safe in Nice. Where to go? Perhaps nearby Clermont-Ferrand, where Strasbourg University professors teach. Dziunia and Paul can continue their studies.
But the political situation changes quickly. From November 1942, Italian troops are stationed in Nice. Jews from all over the country settle on the Côte d'Azur. In 1943, Dziunia and Paul move back. The area seems safe—for now.
On September 8, 1943, Italy capitulates. Nice falls back into German hands. On September 10, SS officer Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s aide, enters the city. He now oversees deportations to Auschwitz. And he will do everything to find the Jews who managed to survive in the relatively safe Italian-occupied zone. Just in case, he always wears gloves—to avoid touching any of those he hunts.
Paul now hides not only his wife but also the Berliner couple and their two-year-old son Roland. He doesn’t treat them like family; they simply are family.
At the same time, Jean Chaigneau, the new prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes region, shelters several families in his apartment and destroys the list of Jewish people that was the basis for preparing a deportation transport planned for early 1944. Persecutions intensify.
Paul’s Jewish family must flee again. Traveling as a group would be madness. For safety, they must split up. In late autumn 1943, Paul travels with only Jakub by train to Annecy, a small Alpine town near the Swiss border—previously under Italian control but occupied by the Nazis since September 1943. Soon, he makes another trip along the same route: Salomea and her son join Jakub. Before Paul can contact the smuggler who promised to lead the Berliners across the border, they hide for free with a French family. Collaborators occupy the neighboring house. Once again, they were lucky—they knocked on the right door.
"We owe him our lives"
The names of Jakub Berliner, Salomea Ejbuszyc-Berliner, and their son Roland can be found on the list of those registered at the French-Swiss border during World War II. The official border crossing date—according to the Geneva State Archives—is November 4, 1943. Bloody Wednesday at Majdanek.
Dziunia and Paul didn’t leave France. They managed to survive the war and fulfill their dreams. She became a dentist, he a physiotherapist. They had two daughters.
On April 30, 2007, Dziunia accompanied her wheelchair-bound husband when he received the title of Righteous Among the Nations in Antibes, awarded by the Yad Vashem Institute. It is Israel’s highest civilian honor, awarded to non-Jews. Paul Nguyen Cong Anh is the only Vietnamese person in history to be honored in this way. He also received France’s highest decoration—the National Order of the Legion of Honor. In an interview, his daughter said that he never wanted to talk about those events, but it was very important to Jadwiga to pay tribute to her husband. "We owe him our lives," she said. Paul died a year after the ceremony. In 1939, nearly 230,000 Jews lived in Łódź.
From August 9 to 29, 1944, approximately 72,000 Jews were deported from Łódź's Litzmannstadt to Auschwitz-Birkenau. It’s estimated that seven percent survived. Basia died quickly. Henryk barely survived the war.
In total, over 45,000 people died in the Łódź ghetto. Historians estimate the number of victims deported from Łódź to Nazi camps at 143,000-145,000. The tenement house at Zgierska Street 11 still stands today.
I used official Yad Vashem materials, articles about the history of Dziunia Alfabet available in the French press, archives, and statistical yearbooks. The words: "In France, there is now only one ruler, and that is Hitler" are attributed to French Prime Minister Léon Blum (quoted in: Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the Twentieth-Century French, translated by Michał Filipczuk, Political Critique Publishing House, Warsaw 2013, p. 108).
