Monique Bental (née Alexander)
Introduction
Monique Bental was born in Marseille, France, on November 19, 1929. Her father worked as a ship chandler and owned a shop; her mother tended to the home. Many French Jews, including the Alexander family, were fully assimilated into French life and culture.
In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France, which prompted Monique's father to take the family to Nice to be baptized, hoping it would protect them. The family lived in the unoccupied zone (called Vichy France) until 1942, when they relocated to a hotel in the small village of Garonne as the German military moved further south. Monique's eldest sister, Michline, remained in Marseille with her Christian husband and in-laws.
In June 1943, Gestapo men arrested Monique's mother and father, leaving her, her younger sister, Simone, and her grandmother behind. First, her parents were sent to the Drancy transit camp and then to Auschwitz. Soon after, Monique, Simone, and her grandmother relocated to a farm owned by her aunt's landlord to evade the Gestapo and French collaborators. They had no water, electricity, or sanitation facilities. They moved from location to location until they found a safer hideout.
In 1944, American Allies liberated France, and Monique returned to her family's apartment in Marseille but never saw her parents again; both died in Auschwitz. At seventeen, she emancipated herself and worked for a Jewish agency in Paris for one year, and soon after joined the Israeli Army as a volunteer driver on the front lines. Later, she moved to Jerusalem to work as an ambulance driver and dental assistant. After meeting her husband, Elie Bental, in Israel and then again in Paris, they immigrated to the United States.
A photograph of the "customs canal" in Marseille where Monique's father, Jules, worked as a ship chandler and owned a shop. When the Nazis invaded France, it was taken from him for "Aryanization."
Portrait photographs of Monique's parents, Jules and Valentine Alexander (née Levy). Her parents died at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp shortly after their deportation from Drancy.
The letter Jules and Valentine wrote to Monique and her grandmother informed the family of the situation at Drancy and their impending deportation to Auschwitz. A "charitable person" delivered the letter to Monique's grandmother.
Drancy transit camp in northeastern Paris, France. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Learn more HERE
Translated Letter from Jules & Valentine Alexander
Dear Meme (grandmother), after having spent eight days in Toulouse [a city in the south of France], we are now in the camp of Drancy. We do not know how long, and then deportation. If they come back, play dead but do not let them take you away. Any sign of alert, Monique should leave on her bicycle and you should leave as well and not return to Marseille until the end.
Alert Mimiche (Monique’s older sister, Michline) as soon as possible to go, after having the baby, to her in-laws. They [the Gestapo] try by all means to lure all the family here.
Maybe, when it is over, we will have the joy to see you again. Only God knows! Here it is hell! Do not tell the neighbors where is Mimiche, warn her, they take everybody. Here there are infants and elderly people.
Dear Monique, think about us and do your utmost to help your grandmother. Be a mother to Momone (Monique’s three-year-old sister, Simone). She is so young, maybe she will forget us. It is better that way, so she will not worry about us.
We hope that one day we will see each other again.
Kisses from both of us to you darlings.
Maman et Papa
Alert Alfred (Monique’s uncle). If a charitable person is going to forward this letter, do not tell anybody over there. [The next lines are illegible.]
Call Mimiche but not from our home in Marseille.
Be careful! If they force me to write asking you to come here, ignore it.
By May 1942, the German military commander in France ordered all Jews over 6 to wear a yellow star. The star, about the size of a person's palm, had the inscription, Juif ("Jew" in French). Monique did not wear the identity badge because she hid with her sister Simone, grandmother, and aunt.
By 1940, Nazi Germany was waging war on the Western front to expand their occupied territories before turning toward Eastern Europe.
In France, though a newly established "Vichy" government declared neutrality in the war while Nazi Germany occupied the north, the government closely collaborated and cooperated with the Nazis. Vichy officials enacted their own antisemitic policies, which mirrored the actions of Nazi Germany. French Jews were transported to transit camps, like Monique's parents, and then they were sent to other camps, mostly to Auschwitz. In 1942, the Vichy government's efforts to meet the Nazis' quota demands for deportations failed to earn them more independence from their German occupiers. Nazi soldiers moved further south into France, occupying the whole of the country.
The Office National des Anciens Combattants et Victims de Guerre (The National Office for Veterans and Victims of War) sent a "certificate of disappearance" concerning Monique's mother, Valentine. The certificate did not recognize that she died at Auschwitz. (Select to enlarge the image.)
"Active Membership" cards from the Union Nationale des Associations de Déportés, Internes et Familles de Disparus (National Union of Associations of Deportees, Internees, and Families of the Disappeared). The second card recorded that Monique was an orphaned child of war and that her mother and father died at Auschwitz.
Postcards sent to Monique from her youngest sister, Simone, when she stayed at a convent after the war. Simone marked an "x" to show Monique where she slept. It is unknown how long she stayed at the convent, possibly until age 6.
Papers (Laissez-Passer) from the Consulate General of France in Jerusalem allowed Monique to return to France from Israel since she secretly left without papers.
The Certificate de Nationalite (Certificate of Nationality) confirmed Monique's citizenship in France. Displayed is Monique's French passport.
A magazine honoring female volunteers of the Israeli Army during the Independence War, which featured Monique on the cover. (Select to enlarge the image.)
Monique (front and center in a black blazer) with her family, where she was honored at West Point for her volunteer efforts in the Israeli Independence War. (Select to enlarge image.)
Monique's capstone paper titled "The Holocaust Generation, The Survivor Children," which she submitted to Professor Peter Katopes. She recognized early on the generational trauma of survivors and their children.
Learn more about Monique's story from her recorded testimony here.