In this video, Sarah Engelhard describes the first night that her family fled from their home and hid in someone's home. They had been living under false Christian identities in Toulouse and had been warned that they would soon be discovered. Source: Montreal Holocaust Museum, 2011
[00:00-00:07]
Video begins with inter-title in white text on black screen while instrumental music plays and fades into the next frame: The Engelhard family was living in Toulouse (France) under false Christian identities.
[00:08-00:42]
Cut to Holocaust survivor Sarah Engelhard, sitting in front of a black background, and looking to the left of the camera. The camera shows her face and shoulders as she speaks during an interview conducted in Montreal in 2011.
>> Sarah Engelhard: We had false papers and I had to learn my new name, which was Thérèse Beaulieu. So, and you know, and my parents…
[00:15-00:21]
The name “Sarah Engelhard” and the location of the filmed interview, “Montreal”, appear in white text above Sarah's right shoulder.
>> …they all had their names. And I was really the only one who spoke French, properly, and we were all supposed to have been born in France. Except my brother was born in France. And so it was just, everything was very – [pause] there was no security, you know. You just had the false papers and you hoped nobody would talk to you. It was… it was beyond normal, you know, you didn't live normally.
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Cut to second inter-title in white text on black screen while instrumental music plays and fades into the next frame: One day in 1942, a priest came to warn them of imminent danger.
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Cut to Sarah Engelhard in front of the camera.
>> The abbé came right around the corner and came into the house. I used to like him, you know, with his long black robes, and his big cross here [motions to her neck]. And he said, “Noah”, my father's name is Noah, “you must leave right away. Pack a suitcase. The person who did, at the Gendarmerie, who falsified papers was arrested. He's going to be questioned on every name that he worked on. So you have to leave immediately.”
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Cut to black-and-white portrait of a mother holding a baby in her arms, with a young girl smiling behind them. The photo caption appears in white text in the top-left corner, “Sarah Engelhard with her mother and brother, 1942”.
>> And so, we packed, my mother packed the suitcase. And, we were allowed only one suitcase. I mean for a family of four, you know, she took pictures and she took a change of clothes for us, and diapers for my brother.
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Cut to Sarah Engelhard in front of the camera.
>> But that first night we left in a fiacre, a horse-drawn carriage, and we hid in the home of this particular person that the abbé had set up for us. And so we hid there for the night, and there was a knock at the door in the middle of the night. And he came to knock at our door, where we were sleeping in a bed, he had put us up. And we went to hide in the sous-sol, in the sous-sol [pointing downwards], in wine barrels. And they told us not to make any noise, because we didn't know who was knocking at the door at two in the morning. So anyway, we heard footsteps coming down, and then going back up again and out.
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Music plays for the remainder of the video. Three credit pages appear in white text on black screen: Interview conducted by Audrey Mallet, Witness to History Program, Montreal, 2011, Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Images: Sarah Engelhard Family Collection
Directing and Colorization: Helgi Piccinin; Editing and Colorization: Michaël Gravel, Helgi Piccinin; Audio Mix and Original Music: Pierre-Luc Lecours. [Logo for Chaire de recherche du Canada en patrimoine ethnologique]
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, copyright 2017.
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End of transcript.