In 1940, My great great grandfather Isaac Padawer had a decision. In early 1940 his daughter, Simone Padawer Blum and her husband Samuel Blum had left Paris when Samuel decided it was time to escape. He was from Leipzig, a city in Germany, and he had already been through Nazi occupation before. Months later, Isaac Padawer, his youngest daughter Alice, and his wife Rosa were still in Paris. They realized they had to leave soon or they were risking their lives. The family was well off with properties in Paris and the French countryside. They left it all behind, only taking as much cash as they could scrape up and their car and driver down to the South of France, the only area that wasn’t under Vichy control at the time. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough room in the car for him, and he gave up his seat to his cousin. To make his way down South he rode his bike, over 500 miles down to the Southern coast of France passing through multiple checkpoints and talking his way through run-ins with the Nazis. At the coast he met up with his family and paid off a Nazi, taking a boat from France to Cuba and eventually meeting back up with his daughter Simone and her husband after the war had ended.

– Samantha Wilcox

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more