Ruth Kapp Hartz (F / France, 1937), Holocaust survivor

Ruth Kapp Hartz (F / France, 1937), Holocaust survivor.

• KEYWORDS : <Hidden Children> <Christian Orphanage>
• MEMOIRS : Your Name Is Renée (1994), by Stacy Cretzmeyer.

Biography

Ruth Kapp Hartz (b.1937) -- Ruth (Renee) Hartz, nee Kapp, born in Palestine of German-Jewish parents in 1937, moved with her family to Paris in 1938. After the invasion of France in 1940, they were sent with other non-French to Colombers, a sports stadium outside of Paris. Her father avoided deportation by joining the French Foreign Legion in Morocco. With the help of the Resistances, Ruth and her mother fled to Normandy, with false papers, hiding on a farm, then to Toulouse and Arthes near Albi in the French Free Zone, where father joined them in 1942. She describes flight, hunger and painful separation from her parents when she was hidden in a Sorēze convent in Sortčze. After one year, the family reunited and was helped with food and hiding by two generations of a Catholic family, with whom they remain in contact. After the war, the family moved to Paris. Ruth experienced antisemitism in school and later at the Sorbonne and found protection hiding her Jewishness as she had during the war. Joining the Jewish scouts (Les Éclaireurs) and WIZO reinforced her Jewish identity. She emigrated to the US in 1958.

Book : Your Name Is Renée (1994), by Stacy Cretzmeyer

• Stacy Cretzmeyer, Your Name Is Renée: Ruth Kapp Hartz's Story as a Hidden Child in Nazi-Occupied France (Brunswick, ME : Biddle, 1994). Repr. New York : Oxford University Press, 1999. French ed. Tu t'appelles Renée (Wayne, Penn. : Beach Lloyd Publishers, 2005).

"Tells the story of Ruth Kapp, a young Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France in 1941, who, after being separated from her family, lived out the war hidden in a Catholic convent until being reunited with her parents in the final months of the conflict ... In Nazi-occupied France in 1941, four-year-old Ruth Kapp learns that it is dangerous to use her own name. "Remember," her older cousin Jeannette warns her, "your name is Renee and you are French!" ... A deeply personal book, this true story recounts the chilling experiences of a young Jewish girl during the Holocaust. The Kapp family flees one home after another, helped by simple, ordinary people from the French countryside who risk their lives to protect them. Eventually the family is forced to separate, and young Ruth survives the war in an orphanage where she is not allowed to see or even mention her parents. Without the trappings of lofty language or the faceless perspective of history, this first-person account poignantly recreates the terror of war seen through the eyes of an innocent child. Your Name Is Renee is a tale of suffering and redemption, fear and hope."--Publisher description.