Yad Vashem's Berthe Badehi on the split-second decision that saved her life

After 14 months of being cooped up in her apartment in Jerusalem, Berthe Badehi returned to work on Sunday, and was thrilled to be able to do so.

Asked why she returned, her initial reply was “because they need me,” but if truth be told, it’s a mutual need. 

Badehi, 89, is a French Holocaust survivor, who tells her story in French or English to local and visiting groups that come to Yad Vashem, and to whom meeting an actual survivor is a very meaningful experience.

“Going back to Yad Vashem was going back to life, meeting people,” she said. “It has been a very special part of my life.”

For Badehi it is particularly important to tell of good Christians who risked their freedom and even their lives to provide a haven for a little Jewish girl, which she recalls as the happiest period of her childhood.

Don’t talk to her about age, because the only place it matters, she says, is on her ID card. She hopes she inherited the genes of her mother, who died a decade ago at age 104. The strikingly independent Badehi, who lives in a walk-up apartment in Jerusalem’s Old Katamon neighborhood, continues to drive her car, attend lectures and other events, keep up with the news via her television set and the laptop open on her coffee table, and remain in contact with the Christian family to which she feels she owes her life. In fact, the relationship is so close that she regards its members as part of her extended family. They have been to Israel, and before the pandemic she used to visit them in France at least once a year – and made sure to attend all their weddings.

As she talks about the late matriarch of the family, Madame Massonnat, she says, “Her name is in Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations – but her place is really in my heart.”

Before the pandemic that forced her to sit at home, Badehi worked at Yad Vashem on a daily basis for 25 years. Now she’s limited to three days a week, because there are still not enough group visits to necessitate a more frequent presence on her part.

Despite several tragedies in her biological family, Badehi – with her lacquered fingernails and toenails, her striking mane of hair reminiscent of an eagle, with white framing the top of her face and pitch black from the crown to the nape of her neck – remains upbeat. She smiles easily, her back is straight and despite recent surgery on one of her legs, she moves with speed and doesn’t remain seated for very long, getting up in the course of the interview to bring cold drinks, then rising again to bring us homemade cookies that she quips her grandchildren call “petit Berthe” (as distinct from the actual name of “petit beurre”).

One of her nine grandchildren, a soldier, was killed in 2002 near Ramallah during the First Intifada. His photograph is prominently displayed, as are those of two daughters-in-law who each died of cancer while in their 50s. In the course of our interview, three of Badehi’s grandchildren call – one from abroad – to ensure all is well with her. It is obviously a very loving and supportive family.

BADEHI WAS born in Lyon in 1932. Her Polish-born parents had come to France as teenagers and had joined the French Jewish Communists. She had a fairly ordinary childhood but for the fact that her parents were busy working or engaging in politics, and didn’t seem to have enough time for her.

Hitler invaded France on May 10, 1940. Realizing, as fighting intensified, that cities in France were not safe for children, the French Jewish Communist movement, whose members were all resistance fighters in one way or another, instructed them to send their children to villages in the country.

When Badehi’s mother packed a suitcase for her in September 1941, the little girl was under the impression she was going on vacation. She soon learned this was not the case. She was strictly instructed not to tell anyone she was Jewish and was sent to the home of an elderly widow, who presumably knew she was Jewish, but never mentioned this to the child nor to her own children. She was treated as part of the family, and no one ever questioned this.

It was quite common in France at the time for urbanites to send their children to board with rural families, so none of the Massonnat neighbors found it unusual for Badehi to be there.

She went to school where there were two other Jewish girls, who likewise had been instructed not to divulge their true identities. She knew they were Jewish and she suspects they knew she was as well, but none of them gave any indication of such knowledge as it would have proved dangerous for all of them.

In the three years Badehi lived with the Massonnats, she wrote letters to her mother and received letters in return, but in 1942, when the Petain Government decided to confiscate Jewish businesses, Badehi’s parents had to go into hiding, staying a few days here, a few days there, just a step or two ahead of the Gestapo. Badehi then addressed her letters to the home of a former neighbor, who passed them on to her mother.

In order to eat, her parents worked illegally in hand-to-mouth jobs. French people were not supposed to employ Jews. From time to time, money came in from HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society founded in America in 1881.The funds were funneled from Switzerland and distributed among needy Jews.

For much of the time she spent with the Massonnats, Badehi was not afraid. The people in the village did not really know what a Jew looked like, so even if there were some individuals with antisemitic tendencies, they would not have known this particular child was Jewish.

BUT THEN the Nazis came to Aix-les Bains in the southeast of France where the Massonnat home was located. The Gestapo raided all area villages, in search of young Frenchmen. A few months earlier Petain had sent young Frenchmen to work in Germany and take the places of men who had been drafted into the German army. After they had worked for a certain period of time, they were permitted a home visit to see their families. Many did not return to Germany, but instead joined the resistance.

It was for these young men the Gestapo was on the hunt.

The carefree little Jewish girl became frightened by the Nazi presence in the village, walking always with her head down and looking at her shoes, for fear someone might recognize her Jewish facial features.

But then in May 1944 came the true test. Badehi’s mother wanted to be sure her daughter was all right, and even though riding on a train could have had dire consequences, she took the risk and arrived in the village, staying for a few days with Mme Massonnat.

One day the two women were in the kitchen when they saw a vehicle approaching. In those days only the police and the Gestapo had cars or vans. The vehicle belonged to the Gestapo, and as its passengers alighted, Mme Massonnat, in an extraordinary display of courage, went out to meet them. They were looking for a young French deserter with the same surname. Somehow she persuaded them it was not her son but someone else, and in the final analysis, they went away without crossing the courtyard into the house.

Had they entered, they most certainly would have arrested Badehi’s mother – who looked very Jewish and spoke French “with an atrocious Polish-Yiddish accent.”

In retrospect, Badehi commented that while looks can be disguised, a bad accent cannot and is a certain giveaway.

Had the Gestapo arrested her mother, she said, they would have surely taken her as well “and I would not be here to talk to you.”

By way of example, she said that before the war there had been a yeshiva in Aix-les-Bains with a number of Jewish families. When the Germans came the Jewish families moved to a rural area, but the Germans discovered them and killed them all.

AFTER THE Americans liberated Lyon in September 1944, Badehi returned to live with her parents and finish high school.

When she was about 20, she met a young Israeli student by the name of Benzion Badehi at a dance. Later they went for coffee and a movie and one thing led to another and they fell in love and got married. 

He wanted to return to Israel, and her father wanted them to remain in France. Israel won out, and Benzion went back ahead of her in 1956. When she arrived a few weeks later with their infant son Avner, the customs official looking at her documents snorted that Badehi was a Yemenite name. She had never heard of Yemenites; she just knew that her husband was Israeli. It pained her that people of Yemenite background were regarded as inferior by the Ashkenazi hierarchy.

Aware of the economic hardship and security situation, her father did not expect Badehi to stay long in the Jewish state, “but I instantly fell in love with the place,” and it did not bother her that the Kiryat Hayovel apartment the young couple received from the Jewish Agency covered an area of only 47 sq.m. and was sorely lacking in amenities. 

“It was small, but it was enough. We didn’t have a refrigerator or a stove, but neither did anyone else. We were all the same, and we didn’t lock our doors at night.”

Only one person – who was the head of Israel Radio’s English News department – had a phone, and if anyone needed to make a call, they used his.

In summer, the women waited together for the man who came by horse and wagon to deliver the ice, and in winter he delivered kerosene for heating. 

“No one had anything, but we were all good friends. The milkman used to come and leave a bottle of milk on the doorstep every morning, and every week we paid him by leaving money on the doorstep. Unfortunately, things did not stay that way.” 

When everyone was poor, there was no envy, no greed – since everyone was in the same boat. The post-war economy, with its blessings, also brought with it many negative elements. “After 1967, everything changed.” 

Yet Badehi persisted.