[Leica] Nathan's PAD 29/11/2015: my French family

[Jay Burleson]

Pensive mood is a powerful portrait, thanks for sharing.

Jay

On 12/1/2015 12:53 PM, Nathan Wajsman wrote:
> As some of you know, the Wajsman clan has a branch in France (and a branch of that branch in Brussels). Actually, it was the first part of the family that emigrated from Eastern Poland, when Shmuel Wajsman left Lublin for Paris in 1920 in seach of a better life. He settled in to a working class existence in Paris and had three children, one of whom was Joseph, who is not technically my uncle (I think the correct term is granduncle or some such, but is totally immaterial—he is simply “mon vieux oncle” when we speak). Joseph was born in 1930, and in 1942, like most other French Jews, he and his family were rounded up and sent to a transit camp, from where most were sent on to Auschwitz and perished there. But Joseph managed to escape the camp with a friend and was hidden by villagers in the Loire valley during the remainder of the war. He later settled in Le Mans where he lives to this day in an old house in the centre with a great wine cellar. In 2010, the story of his
  captur
e and escape in 1942 was made into a movie, La Rafle, the premiere of which I had the pleasure to attend at a theatre on Champs Elysées in March of that year (the English title is The Roundup).
>
> Anyway, yesterday I had meetings at the OECD in Paris which required me to travel there on Sunday, and thanks to the French TGV it takes only 50 minutes to travel from Gare Montparnasse in Paris to Le Mans, so I spend Sunday night visiting Joseph. While I have seen him on various occasions here in Alicante or in Brussels in recent years, I had not been to Le Mans for 10 years or so. So it was nice to spend a quiet evening talking with him, and also having dinner with his daughter (so my cousin) Isabelle who lives just 100 meters away. Of course I took pictures:
>
> A portrait of Joseph in a pensive mood:
> http://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-pxv9nwz/A
>
> At his desk in his home office (explanation in the caption):
> http://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-9vTh6DD/A
>
> Isabelle:
> http://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-gRq72bT/A
>
> The portrait of Isabelle is technically deficient, but I still like it as it portrays her personality very well.
>
> Cheers,
> Nathan