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    My Voice: Suzanne Harris
    My Voice: Suzanne Harris
    My Voice: Suzanne Harris
    Ebook74 pages30 minutes

    My Voice: Suzanne Harris

    By The Fed

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    About this ebook

    Suzanne Harris was born in Paris in 1919. When World War II broke out, her father signed up for the Foreign Legion and later became a prisoner of war. Suzanne, her sister and mother stayed in Paris for 2 years during the war, but it became too difficult and risky for Jews there. In 1943, they fled to Argenty in the countryside to join their extended family, only reaching it safely with the help of brave strangers.

    After liberation, Suzanne and her family returned to Paris, to find that her grandparents’ flat had been given to French collaborators by the Germans. After moving to England in 1947, Suzanne married, settled down and started a family. She was very active in Manchester’s Jewish community and was closely connected with many charities and her local synagogue.

    Suzanne’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherManchester University Press
    Release dateSep 10, 2024
    ISBN9781526186904
    My Voice: Suzanne Harris

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      Book preview

      My Voice - The Fed

      Chapter 1

      Growing up in Paris

      I was born Suzanne Schusterman in Paris on 16 July 1929. My parents, Therese and Henri Schusterman, married in 1925. I had one sister, Yvette, who was 14 months younger than me and we were very close. My sister Yvette and I had a happy childhood. Before the war my life in Paris was fine. We were a working class family. My dad was a mechanic and he had his own garage, although we were not wealthy. My parents worked together, and Mother did the paperwork for Dad.

      My parents came to France as children and were both brought up French, so they only spoke French to us. But my mother, not my dad, spoke Yiddish because my mother was brought up with Yiddish in the house. Although my mother spoke French to her parents, my maternal grandmother never spoke proper French, or read the paper, or ever even signed her name. Grandpa learned to read the newspaper, and he could sign his name. But between the two of them, they always spoke Yiddish, always.

      There were quite a lot of Jewish people where we were living in Paris before the war, and we never experienced any antisemitism or restrictions then. Around us in the flats there were quite a few Jewish families, as our apartment block was built by the Rothschilds, but my parents were not very religious. I didn’t have many Jewish friends. My closest friends were not Jewish, and my parents didn’t have a very orthodox way of life really, because that’s the way they wanted it.

      A one-story building directly next to a cobbled road. The word 'GARAGE' is transcribed on the side in large, black letters.

      1 Dad’s garage in St Denis, just outside of Paris

      A baby in a white baby grow sits on the lap of a woman with short brown hair.

      2 Me at two months old with my mum, Paris, 28 September 1929

      A family pictured outside a house with a wooden door. The man stands, in a white shirt and trousers. The woman is seated, with a baby rested in her lap.

      3 Me with my mum and dad, Paris, 1930

      Chapter 2

      My grandparents

      My maternal grandparents did have a very Jewish life, of course. Their name was Lipkine and they were very orthodox. My grandfather, Isaac Lipkine, came from Russia originally and so did my grandmother, Rose. They were already married when they came to France with my mother, Therese, in 1903. My mother’s sister, Berthe, who was just 16 months younger, was born in Paris. Her brother, Maurice, was born about two or three years later, in around

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