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

[leica at jayburleson.com (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 Elys?es 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