Manuela Mendels Bornstein
“It’s your job, your role, as children and adults, after you hear this story of my survival, to do your best to prevent hatred, racism, and antisemitism.”
—Manuela Bornstein
Born: 1933
City of birth: Paris
Ellen Hess and Frits Mendels married in the summer of 1930. Ellen hailed from Hamburg, Germany and had to give up her German citizenship when she married Frits, who was Dutch. After their marriage they moved to Paris, and Frits went into the food import/ export business. Although they spoke German at first, the couple soon adopted French in their daily life and became integrated into French society. In 1933, they welcomed their first child into the world, Manuela. Two years later, a second daughter, Jacqueline, was born. The family led a happy life. Manuela continued her family’s long musical tradition by taking piano lessons. Family from Holland and Germany visited often, and they had many friends in the city, both Jewish and Catholic.
In November 1941, Ellen received a letter from her mother, Sophie, who was still living in Hamburg. Sophie wrote that life had under Nazi persecution had become unbearable. For years, she had invited friends over regularly to play music together in her apartment, but each week fewer and fewer friends came. She applied for visas to every country imaginable, but few places were accepting Jewish refugees and there were no exit visas available. She told her daughter she would not continue waiting for her inevitable deportation to a concentration camp. She decided to take her own life.
Mendels Family Archive.
When the war reached France, Manuela’s life did not change significantly at first. It was not until Paris was occupied by the German troops that she started to sense the danger. When air raid sirens sounded, the family would go into the basement of their house to wait for the bombing to end. Once the sirens went off while the family was out for an afternoon stroll, and they had to spend the night in bomb shelters beneath a nearby park. To keep her children from being frightened, Ellen would compare the sounds of the bombings to thunder.
Frits feared that if the Nazis occupied Paris they would target Jewish residents but believed that they would not be bold enough to target Jews with French citizenship, so he had his daughters naturalized as French citizens.
The French signed an armistice agreement in late June that divided the country. The Northern, occupied half would be administered by the Nazi regime, while Southern, unoccupied France would be administered by a French collaborationist government, referred to as the “Vichy regime.”
Jews were forbidden to use park benches, public swimming pools, or shop during the day. Jewish doctors could no longer treat non-Jewish patients. Jewish teachers and professors were forbidden from teaching. Jewish people were no longer allowed to travel freely through the country, or even to different neighborhoods in their own cities. Jews were no longer considered citizens. Jews had to register at the city hall, and their ID cards were stamped with large, red letters that read “Juif.” (Jew) Jews were forced to wear a yellow cloth star at all times, and they had to buy the cloth themselves.
Yet, there were kind members of the community who did what they could to resist this state-inflicted hate. Local merchants who were friends of the family set aside extra food for them. When Manuela came to school wearing a yellow star for the first time, her teacher asked her to stand up and then told the other children in the class to be especially nice to her. Manuela remembers her teacher: “She was a brave lady, Madame Bargain.”
Astoundingly, the police never came to the Mendels’ door. In Manuela’s eyes this, truly, was a miracle.
At the end of July, the Mendels went to the house of their Catholic friends, Maurice and Genevieve Paris, to spend the night. There, Maurice lit the furnace and burned the Mendels’ yellow stars. Had Maurice been caught doing this he would have faced grave consequences. Genevieve gave them medals with Catholic saints engraved on them for good luck.
Early the next morning, the family got on the train and waited for it to leave. Time passed, but the train did not budge. After inquiring, Frits found that there had been a roundup of Jews on the train on the adjoining track. Their train, however, was not inspected. Had they been caught, they would have faced fatal consequences. Had the police inspected their ID cards and discovered they were Jewish, the Mendels would have been arrested for traveling illegally throughout the country and for not wearing their identifying yellow stars. They would have been deported to concentration camps, where they would have, most likely, perished.
A voice called out, in French, “who goes there?”. The voice belonged to a soldier in the French Army of Armistice, and the guides called back “It’s us, and we have a family.” They had made it safely into Free France - but they would not remain free for long.
The next morning, Ellen and Frits were arrested for illegally crossing the demarcation line. They were told that once they settled in a local village, they had to report their location regularly to the authorities, they were not allowed to travel, and they would be kept under watch.
The Mendels were the only Jewish refugees in the village, but they felt welcomed by the mayor, Paul Delpech, who took many risks to assist them. Mayor Delpech created false identification cards, circulation cards, ration tickets, and work permits for the family. He also arranged a job for Frits with a local farmer “leading horses,” or so Frits told the family. In truth, Frits was cleaning stables.
Manuela and her sister walked to school every day with the other village children. Manuela said that: “Everyone knew we were different. I know that my parents and myself are very grateful to the French for their help, because without those French people that we came in contact with we would not have survived. Anyone could have denounced us.”
At one point, Nazi troops came to the house to arrest their downstairs neighbor, whom they suspected of being a resistance fighter. Manuela and her sister were at school, but Ellen and Frits were at home listening to an outlawed BBC news broadcast on a borrowed radio. Fortunately, the Nazi troops did not hear them. They detained the neighbor and tortured him for over a month, but he never revealed that a Jewish family was living upstairs.
Often, when Frits was out working on the farm he would receive notice that German patrols were in the area and he would head into the woods around Le Got to hide. The farmer he worked for had an old house with a hidden cellar that was sometimes used as a hiding spot. Frits was often not alone, as other resistance fighters and refugees were also avoiding detection. At one point, Ellen and the children had to join him in the forest for a day. The family created a secret code for Frits to let him know when it was safe to come home. Ellen would hang a sheet in the window if the patrols had left town.
Although they lived in constant terror, the family remained optimistic that the allied forces would emerge victorious. In August 1943, Ellen gave birth to a baby boy, whom the family named Franklin, in honor of the American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Mendels considered Roosevelt and the United States their only hope for the future. When the Nazis had first stormed Paris, Frits and Ellen had even made their daughters memorize the addresses of distant cousins in California and New York, hoping that the girls would somehow find their way there if they were separated.
Two thirds of European Jewry were killed in the Holocaust, but the Mendels returned from hiding with more members than they had started with, thanks to the birth of Franklin. However, their luck only extended to their immediate family. When Frits consulted with Red Cross records immediately after the war, he discovered that thirteen members of his extended family had been murdered by the Nazis. In time, the Mendels would discover that over 200 members of their family, including aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, had lost their lives to the unbridled hatred of antisemitism. By the time Manuela was old enough to know how large her family was, most of them had been murdered. Manuela and her siblings grew up like many other Holocaust survivors - with almost no extended family at their holiday tables; no doting grandparents, no silly uncles, no loving aunts.
In 1976, the Mendels-Bornstein family moved to Atlanta, as Murray was brought in to help design MARTA, Atlanta’s public transportation system. Manuela had a career as a travel agent for many years before retiring in 2013. Her children started families, and she became a proud grandmother. Her passion for music never left her, and she played violin in the Atlanta Community Symphony Orchestra for many years.
To ensure the world stays vigilant against injustice, Manuela has volunteered at the Breman Museum since 2005, telling her story to visitors and students even though, as Manuela notes, “It is not pleasurable. I get emotional every time I speak; every time I am asked to retell the story of my family. Every time I tear up.”
But Manuela continues, because, in her own words: “Unfortunately hate exists today. Racism exists today. Antisemitism exists today.” To those reading this, she says to you: “It’s your job, your role, as children and adults, after you hear this story of my survival, to do your best to prevent hatred, racism, and antisemitism.”
For children, Manuela implores: “Keep your ears open. If you see something bad happening tell your parents, tell your teachers, and protect as well as you can people who are suffering. Don’t stand by for bullying or nasty remarks about someone because they are a little bit different. Maybe they look different from you or they have a different ability, but they are people. They are human. Do what you can to protect them.”
Name at Birth: Manuela Mendels
Married Name: Manuela Bornstein
Parents’ Names: Frits Mendels and Ellen Hess Mendels
Sibling(s) Name (s): Jacqueline Mendels Birn and Franklin Mendels
Spouse(s) Name(s): Murray Bornstein
Children’s Name: Not Available
Date of Birth: 1933
City of Birth: Paris
City of Birth: Paris
Country of Birth: France
Religous Identity (Pre-war): Jewish
Religous Identity (Post-war): Jewish
Ghetto(s), Name/ Year(s): Not Applicable
Camp(s), Name/ Year(S): Not Applicable
Place of Hiding: Le Got, France
Liberated By/ Date: Allied Forces/August 24, 1944
Displaced Persons Camp(s): Not Applicable
Year/City/Ship to U.S.: 1960
Georgia City of Residence: Atlanta
Occupation: Travel Agent
Themes: Rescue, Resillience, Resistance, Resourcefulness