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Police on 10
December, pertaining to the control of Jews, had stipulated
that “subsequent changes in the family situation must be
reported.” I doubt if Dora’s father would have had either the
time or the inclination to get her inscribed on a file before her
escape. He must have thought that the Prefecture of Police
would never suspect her existence while she remained at the
Saint-Coeur-de-Marie.
    What makes us decide to run away? I remember my own
flight on 18 January 1960, at a period that had none of the
blackness of December 1941. Along my escape route, past
the hangars of Villacoublay airfield, the only point I had in
common with Dora was the season: winter. A calm, ordinary
winter, not to be compared with the winter of eighteen years
earlier. But it seems that the sudden urge to escape can be
prompted by one of those cold, gray days that makes you more
than ever aware of your solitude and intensifies your feeling
that a trap is about to close.
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    Sunday 14 December was the first day that the curfew had
been lifted for almost a week. People were now free to go out
after six o’clock in the evening. But because of German Time, 1 darkness fell in the afternoon.
    At what moment of the day did the Sisters of Divine Mercy
first notice that Dora was missing? It is certain to have been
evening. Perhaps after Benediction in the chapel, as the
boarders went up to the dormitory. I expect the Mother Superior
tried to reach Dora’s parents at once, to find out if she had
stayed with them. Did she know that Dora and her parents
were Jewish? According to her biographical note, “Many
children from the families of persecuted Jews found refuge in the
Saint-Coeur-de-Marie, thanks to the courageous and
charitable actions of Sister Marie-Jean-Baptiste. Supported in this
by the discreet and no less courageous attitude of her nuns,
she shrank from nothing, whatever the risk.”
    But Dora’s was a special case. In May 1940, when she
entered the Saint-Coeur-de-Marie, the persecutions had not yet
begun. She had missed the census in October 1940. And it was
not till July 1942, after the great roundup, that religious
institutions began to hide Jewish children. She had been at the
Saint-Coeur-de-Marie for a year and a half. In all likelihood,
she was its sole Jewish pupil. Was this common knowledge
among the nuns, among her fellow boarders?
    The Café Marchal on the ground floor of the hotel at 41
Boulevard Ornano had a telephone: Montmartre 44–74; but
I don’t know if it had a line to the hotel, or if that, too, was
owned by Marchal. The Saint-Coeur-de-Marie boarding school
is not listed in the telephone directory for the period. I’ve
found a separate address for the Sisters of the Christian Schools
of Divine Mercy, but in 1942 this must have been an annex to
the boarding school: 64 Rue Saint-Maur. Did Dora go there?
It too had no telephone number.
    Who knows? The Mother Superior may have waited till
Monday morning before telephoning the Café Marchal or, as
is more likely, sending a nun to 41 Boulevard Ornano.
Unless Cécile and Ernest Bruder went to the boarding school
themselves.
    It would help to know if the weather was fine on 14
December, the day of Dora’s escape. Perhaps it was one of those
mild, sunny winter days when you have a feeling of holiday
and eternity—the illusory feeling that the course of time is
suspended, and that you need only slip through this breach
to escape the trap that is closing around you.
    Â 
    1. The occupying authorities had brought the clocks forward by one hour to
correspond with German Reich time.

.................
    F OR A LONG TIME, AFTER HER ESCAPE AND THE NOTICE about the search for her that was printed in Paris-Soir , I
knew nothing about Dora Bruder. Then I learned that, eight
months later, on 13 August 1942, she had been interned in the
camp at Drancy. The dossier showed that she had come from
Tourelles camp. On that very 13 August,