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La Petite Mama
The (Previously) Untold Story of a Mother in the Maquis
By Barry S. Willdorf
 
 La Petite Mama - 2 -
 Copyright © 2008 by Barry S. Willdorf All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whether in print,electronically, by mechanical means or otherwise, including information storage and retrievalsystems without the prior written consent of the publisher except by a reviewer who may quotebrief passages in a review.Inquiries should be to the Publisher atwww.agauchepress.com.
 
- 3 - La Petite Mama
abbi Samuel Zaitchik stood at the bimah in his Lynn, Massachusetts synagogue. It was1991. He looked out at the sparsely attended funeral for Rebecca Senders lamenting: "If the Jewish community had known the heroine Rebecca was, this place would be filled tocapacity."He might have been speaking directly to me. I was her step-grandson for forty-two years. As she'ddone with the Nazis and the Ukrainian nationalist anti-Semites before them, Rebecca kept silentwith her family and her congregation about her exploits.The Rebecca I knew was shy, obsequious and often seemed uncomfortable. She did not talk muchabout the war, or her experiences in it, though the opportunities to do so in my typically Jewishfamily was plentiful enough.I knew that she'd come to America from France after World War II and that she'd lost her entirefamily in the holocaust. I could only imagine the rest because she did not talk about it. So I imaginedthe typical — a Jewish family rounded up and taken from their home to the inevitable concentrationcamp. She'd been lucky enough not to have been present at the time of the raid and so survived. Icould not have been more wrong. It was only long after her death that I stumbled upon thedocuments that validated Rabbi Zaitchik's observation.From 1941 through the liberation of Paris, this diminutive, middle-aged, Jewish mother had been afighter in the Maquis, rising to command a communications and supply unit. During that time, shesaw death close up. She participated in two of the most daring operations undertaken by the Maquisin Paris. She crossed German lines innumerable times, transporting Jewish children to the relativesafety of the Vichy zone. She lost her husband and two children — who were also combatants. Andthen, after liberation, she made many more painful trips south to recover these children.I call this story
 La Petite Mama
because that was the term of endearment used by her children todescribe her. But in making my discovery, I came to learn that there are likely hundreds of Jews
of 00

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