Nicole Guggenheim / Nicole Yancey (F / France, 1941), Holocaust survivor

Nicole Guggenheim / Nicole Yancey (F / France, 1941), Holocaust survivor

Nanette Guggenheim (F / France, 1938), Holocaust survivor (?)

• KEYWORDS : <France> <Hidden Children> -- <France> <United States>

Biography

Nicole Guggenheim was born July 26, 1941 in Saint-Amand-Mont-Rond, France. She survived in hiding, hosted by a French family. Was reunited with her parents after the war. Emigrated to the United States.

USHMM Oral History Collection

Nicole Yancey (née Guggenheim), born July 26, 1941 in Saint-Amand-Mont-Rond, France, describes having one sister, Nanette, born November 1938; being separated from her family when she was two years old and sent to a farm to live in a safe and secure environment; still today calling the farmer and his wife her real grandparents; members of the French Resistance coming in for meals because the farm was close to the demarcation line and there was lots of Resistance activity; her daily routine of working, hiding, and eating; how her relationships were all very harmonious; being moved back to Orléans, France when she was five years old and starting school; the severe personality changes of her parents because of their experiences during the Holocaust; the torment her father experienced because he was not able to save his brothers from being murdered; being sponsored by a French/American agency to attend William and Mary College, where she met her husband; remaining in the Tidewater, VA area; converting to Catholicism because her husband is Catholic as are her children; her position now as Consul for the French Embassy in Norfolk, VA; and her assertion that tragedies like the Holocaust will continue as long as people do not learn to accept each other and their differences.