Joseph Joffo (France, 1931-2018), Holocaust survivor
Joseph Joffo (M / France, 1931-2018), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <France> <Hidden Children>
- MEMOIRS : Un Sac de billes (1973)
Biography
NOTES : Joseph Joffo was born in France in 1931 to a Jewish family. When Joffo was ten, his father gave him and his 12-year-old brother Maurice five thousand francs each and instructions to flee Nazi-occupied Paris by foot, train and bus, and join their older brothers Henri and Albert in Menton on the Mediterranean coast. Joffo and Maurice travelled alone, managing to survive, until liberation. Joffo reunited with his mother and brothers in Paris in the family's barber shop--although sadly not their father, who perished in a concentration camp before the end of the war.
Book : A Bag of Marbles (1973)
- Un Sac de billes <French> (1973). English trans. A Bag of Marbles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).
"When Joseph Joffo was ten years old, his father gave him and his brother fifty francs and instructions to flee Nazi-occupied Paris and, somehow, get to the south where France was free. Previously out of print, this book is a captivating and memorable story; readers will instinctively find themselves rooting for these children caught in the whirlwind of World War II."--Publisher description.