The Reluctant Traveler: Memoirs of World War Two

By Paul Katzaroff

This is a must-read for World War II buffs!

The narrative was written from the perspective of an Eastern European youngster growing up on the losing side of the conflict during the war years.

This is a saga that spans Paris in the 1930s to Sofia, Bulgarias capital, in May 1940, just prior to the victorious Nazi armies that paraded in Paris on June 14, 1940.

At the time of their arrival in Sofia, Bulgaria remained neutral. On March 1, 1941, Bulgaria joined the Axis and later on declared war on the USA and Great Britain. That action invited the systematic bombing of Sofia, resulting in the family having to relocate to a safer location. The chosen location was in what used to be Northern Greece, a city called Serres, where the family lived until the fall of 1944 when the German armies were forced to retreat, which meant that the family had to move back to Sofia. At the end of the war, the family decided to leave Bulgaria as soon as possible. In spite of many obstacles, the family was able to reunite in Prague and, from there, spent some time in a couple of displaced persons (DP) camps in Rome and Naples. Eventually, they sailed from Naples to Buenos Aires and five years later, flew to New York City, the final desired destination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546204015

Paul Katzaroff

Upon their arrival, Robert and Paul stayed briefly at Uncle Eddie’s apartment after which they moved to Upper Manhattan. In the fall the happy duo enrolled in English classes at CCNY, however they were drafted into the Army in early January 1954. Assigned as interpreter/translators at the Armored School in Fort Knox, KY, they were able to become naturalized US citizens while still in uniform. Once discharged, Paul pursued a career in engineering in New York City. After working for various engineering firms for over 20 years, Paul obtained his professional engineering license and started his own consulting engineering firm in Los Angeles and later added an office in New York City and in Phoenix, Arizona. Paul had to close the offices in 1989 due to various health issues. Now retired, Paul enjoys a quiet, happy life, living in a small college town in North-Eastern Kentucky with Janis, his wife of over 30 years. This is Paul’s first book.

Book preview

THE

RELUCTANT

TRAVELER

MEMOIRS OF WORLD WAR TWO

PAUL KATZAROFF

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2017 Paul Katzaroff. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/26/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0402-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0401-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017912512

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Prologue

Historical Perspective

Chapter 1   Paris 1937

Chapter 2   Paris 1930

Chapter 3   Life With The Grandparents

Chapter 4   Life In France Before The German Occupation

Chapter 5   Life In Bulgaria, War

Chapter 6   My Encounter With The First Germans

Chapter 7   Life In Occupied Greece

Chapter 8   Moving Back To Sofia

Chapter 9   Bulgaria Under Soviet Occupation

Chapter 10   Czechoslovakia

Chapter 12   Dp Camps

Chapter 13   Buenos Aires

Chapter 13   New York City

Epilogue

Appendix

Correspondence: 1939 To 1944

Family Tree

Chronology And Timelines

Author’s Notes

Bibliography

Photos

About The Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to all the kind folks for their assistance and encouragement provided throughout the entire cycle, beginning with the basic conceptual efforts through the completion of the finished product.

Although they certainly know who they are, it is quite appropriate to mention the name of the individuals who provided the most assistance. First, my oldest son, Jim, helped me formulate the basic topic. And his wife, my daughter-in-law, Maren, helped by converting the work into the Kindle format, so that the book may be self-published. My daughter Michelle helped by editing the finished product.

Two individuals on the staff of the local library, The Morehead Rowan County Library, were extremely helpful by helping me with the inevitable technical difficulties I encountered due to my technological obsolescence at age 87. Without the continuous support provided by Georgi Ramey and William Hampton, it is fair to say that I most likely would not have been able to finish writing this book.

Also quite helpful was the Creative Writing Group headed by Carol Ann Mauriello. Finally, without the encouragement, critique and editing by Janis, my wife of 30+ years, I probably would not have been able to complete this project any time soon, if ever.

To all of the above, my heartfelt appreciation for their continuous help and support.

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PREFACE

This is a book inspired by actual events as remembered by the author. None of the events described herein are invented or exaggerated. This book is not a study of 20th Century history. The events described herein are told as experienced by a growing boy in a world engulfed in a cruel, desperate war and as remembered by this same individual many years after those events took place. No diaries were kept since that would not have been the prudent thing to do. While historical inaccuracies may be occasionally found, the events occurred substantially as described in the narrative. Unfortunately, too many - actually most - of the individuals involved have already died so the opportunity to verify locations and dates is no longer available.

Since the beginning of time in human history, wars have erupted as a means to settle conflicts and disputes between nations. In many cases wars were conducted due to ambitions of a particular ruler or government in order to expand its territory at the expense of another country. One of the byproducts of wars has been the effect that the hostilities have had over the civilian population which did not participate actively in the war but were forced to leave their homes to look for safety in other places outside of the boundaries of the war zones. During WWII many civilians were forced to evacuate to other safer locations in the hope that when the war was to finally end, they would be able to return to their homeland. Many of the civilians originating from Eastern European countries were unable to return to their homes after the hostilities ceased due to the politics of the time. The triumphant Soviets wanted to keep all of Eastern Europe under their complete domination as an expansion of their territory as well as a buffer zone between their borders and the Western European countries. This event lasted almost half a century due to the agreement reached by President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Marshal Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference (a city in the Crimea on the Black Sea in Southern Ukraine), which took place near the end of WWII on February 12, 1945.

The people who had left their countries and were lucky enough to find safety in the West could not go back home and so they became Displaced Persons (DP’s for short). Sadly, this tradition has continued and will most likely continue into the future. For example, during the conflict in Iraq well over two million people had to leave their homes and are presently living mostly in Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere. They obviously will not be able to return to their homes until the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds as well as the coalition forces from the West find peaceful solutions to the present situation in Iraq. Likewise, in-fighting in Somalia has coerced more than one million people to abandon their homeland. Presently, the civil war in Syria has forced a couple of million of the civilian population to seek refuge in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and other countries.

It is reasonable to expect that this historical trend will continue to repeat itself as wars continue to erupt all over the globe. It is painfully obvious that once war is started, the bombing of civilian non-combatant targets will follow.

This book is dedicated to all displaced persons who lost their ability to return to their homeland.

PROLOGUE

World War One started on June 28, 1914. Four years later after many millions of casualties, The Great War ended on November 11, 1918. In January 1919 the victorious Allied leaders met at Versailles, a suburb of Paris, to start the peace conference. The result of this effort was the slicing of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire. The successor nations were Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In addition, the frontiers separating many other countries in other parts of Europe were redrawn to favor the victors over the vanquished.

Furthermore, all the previous German colonies in Africa were divided between the British, French and Belgium. On top of everything else, the Allies imposed stiff penalties to be paid by the conquered countries as reparations for the damage they caused during the conflict. How these countries could possibly come up with the stipulated amount while they were starving due to the war activities was of no concern to the Allies.

Compromises were made where physical geography seemed more important than the ethnic details. The Czechoslovak frontier ran along the mountainous rim of Bohemia (part of Czechoslovakia) although two million Germans lived inside this line. There were all those Germans in Czechoslovakia but no Czechs in Germany. There were Austrians in the south of Tyrol in Italy but no Italians in Austria. There were a lot of Hungarians in Romania but very few Romanians in Hungary, etc. One of the glaring infringements of the principle of self-determination was the prohibition of any union between Austria and Germany since the Allies could hardly allow Germany to emerge from the war bigger than before the war.

The peace treaty was signed under extreme duress and great resentment by the conquered countries. The War to End All Wars solved nothing. The peace terms were so harsh that they set the stage for the next world war. The Second World War started twenty years later on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, having previously annexed Austria in 1938 and most of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Between 1939 and 1945 when WWII ended in Europe, immense losses were suffered by both, the military establishment and the civilian population on both sides of the conflict. Six million Jews hailing from the nations occupied by Nazi Germany lost their lives during the conflict. In addition, the Soviet Union suffered in excess of 25 million lives, counting both, civilian and military casualties.

One of the major outcomes of WWII was the domination of all of Eastern Europe by the Soviets. Another was the outbreak of the cold war and the ensuing arms race. Eventually, facing both, moral and fiscal bankruptcy, the Soviet Empire crumbled into many pieces - a process that remains incomplete and may continue to develop further into the future.

Against the background of conflicts, most individuals and their families were captive to the political and/or military events of the day. When the Czechoslovak Republic emerged after WWI from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Moskowitz family and others in the Eastern part of Slovakia found themselves to be part of a minority of Hungarian speaking Jews amid predominantly Slovak natives. Suddenly the official language changed overnight from Hungarian to Slovak; the school system, the currency, the banking system, the press, practically everything, changed forever.

Our family was forced to move from one country to another in order to find safety as the war exigencies dictated the various events. Regardless of where we happened to live, our family was considered to be foreigners. We gradually absorbed the language, culture and customs of the new country and were able to function and get assimilated in each new country, city or state. We found out time and again that there were many good and bad sides to the people in any society. So it was up to us to choose who to befriend and who to stay away from.

Sometimes in jest but mostly in nostalgic terms, Herbie, a dear friend who hails from a town near Prague, claims to have resided in five different countries since he had been born in the mid-thirties, although his family never actually moved away from their home:

1. Until 1919 - Austro-Hungarian Empire

2. 1919 to 1939 - Czechoslovakia as an independent republic

3. 1939 to 1945 - Czechoslovakia as a protectorate of Nazi Germany

4. 1945 to 1989 - Czechoslovakia as a Soviet satellite

5. 1989 to Present - Czechoslovakia as a free democracy

This then is the background of the story that you are about to read.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

The history of the Balkans is replete with conflicts fomented by the Great Powers (France, Great Britain, Russia/Soviet Union, USA) due to their selfish vested interests in the area. Yugoslavia, Greece and Romania were the traditional protégés of Great Britain and France; Bulgaria in turn was the favorite of Tzarist Russia. In the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, Bulgaria’s aspirations for a just settlement in the Balkans encompassed Southern Dobrudja where the Danube River flows into the Black Sea; it included some portions of Macedonia gifted to Yugoslavia after WW1 and also included the Aegean coastline in Thrace which was given to Greece after WW1. Bulgaria was trying to work out a peaceful arrangement with Romania for the restitution of Southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria. The agreement was signed on September 7, 1940. Northern Dobrudja remained under the authority of the Romanian government. Subsequently the Bulgarian and Romanian populations in the two zones were exchanged in an orderly manner. While Great Britain and France did not oppose the restitution of Southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria, the agreement on the part of Romania was largely due to the influence by the Third Reich. The public jubilation in Bulgaria took the form of enthusiastic gratitude to Germany. Many Bulgarians not yet committed to the German side were swept into pro-German enthusiasm.

The pressure exerted by Nazi Germany on Bulgaria to take sides was greatly intensified after Germany, Italy and Japan signed on September 27, 1940, the Tripartite Pact. Bulgaria made it quite clear to Germany that it intended to remain neutral. During that period of time the German armies achieved spectacular successes on all fronts. Events in the Balkans accelerated after Mussolini invaded first Albania and then Greece on October 28, 1940, without consulting Hitler. Unfortunately for the Italian military, the Greek army with some help from Great Britain inflicted serious defeats on the Italian invaders which jeopardized the German war plans including the planned attack on the Soviet Union. In March 1941 a major Italian attack failed and Germany decided to help its ally partly due to Hitler’s concerns of having to eventually fight the British forces in the Balkans. The German armies amassed a significant amount of manpower and weapons in Romania which by then was totally committed to the German side. By February 1941, the Germans had 680,000 troops in Romania. On March 1, 1941, Wehrmacht forces began to move into Bulgaria on their move southbound towards Greece.. On April 6, 1941, German troops invaded Greece through Bulgaria after Hitler made it quite clear that with or without Bulgaria’s consent, his 680,000 strong army was going south from Romania through Bulgaria on to Greece. Three days later, on April 9, German troops seized Salonika, Greece’s second largest city and an important seaport in the Aegean Sea. The combined Greek and British forces were vastly outnumbered and Athens fell on April 27. The Greek campaign ended in a quick and complete German victory. It was all over in 24 days.

On April 19, 1941, three Bulgarian Divisions entered German occupied Yugoslavia and reclaimed the disputed for centuries portions of Macedonia as well as Thrace in Northern Greece. And that is how our family was later on to relocate to Seres (Serrai), a city in Thrace, presently part of Northern Greece. Other cities annexed to Bulgaria were Drama, Kavala and Xanthi. Salonika was considered of strategic importance by the German Army and off-limits to Bulgarians.

CHAPTER ONE

PARIS 1937 - Meeting With Father

The train started to lose speed as it entered the outskirts of the city. As it approached the train station, it slowed down even more. The trip originated all the way back from the far eastern end of Czechoslovakia from a town named Michalovce where my mother’s family came from. Michalovce is very close to the border where Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Ukraine meet, so the train had to cross the entire country, go through what the Germans called the Sudetenland where two million ethnic German speaking citizens lived and was assigned to Czechoslovakia at the treaty of Versailles in 1919, following the armistice on November 11, 1918, at the end of World War One. As the train approached the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany, it became very obvious even to a casual traveler on that train that the buildings on both sides of the border were pretty much of the same general type of architecture, except that the signs on stores and various business establishments on the Czech side were in the Slavic language unlike the German gothic type signs on the buildings located on the German side. This area became a sore spot in the German psyche that eventually led to the occupation of the entire Czech Republic by the Nazi regime in March 1939.

The train had to cross all of Germany, parts of Belgium and the northern part of France, all the way to Paris. The trip took what appeared to be several eternities to travel a total of about 1500 km. (930 miles) and eventually reach Paris, the final destination. My brother Robert, Mother and I gathered our travel gear and got off the train. As we stepped on the platform, Mother smiled at us kids and said in Hungarian, Boys, come meet your father. We had been living with our maternal parents for several years and had not seen our Dad. In the three or four year span that we stayed in Michalovce, Czechoslovakia, our Dad never came to visit us unlike our Mom who came once a year, usually during the summer months. So we knew her but not him. The strange part was that now that we had finally met him, we had no way to communicate with him. Robert and I were fluent in Hungarian and Slovak which were the languages used in Michalovce but could not speak French. Our Dad could speak fluently French, Spanish and Bulgarian but not Slovak or Hungarian (a Gypsy language in our Dad’s opinion). Thus communications became somewhat of a dilemma. Fortunately, our Mom was there to provide the necessary translation services. From the train station, we took a taxi to the suburb where our Dad had rented a house for us. The name of the suburb was Neuilly-sur-Marne and Neuilly was approximately 14 km. (9 miles) from the Paris city limits. The Marne river bordered the town and at the time, in 1937, the town was not considered particularly special but as I now understand it, due to the waterway, the town has become a somewhat more exclusive destination. Neuilly Plaisance was situated right next to our town and was of approximately the same size as our town. Further, next to Neuilly Plaisance was Pereux, closer to Paris and somewhat larger than the two previously mentioned towns.

As soon as we went into the two story house, I was told to find something to do while Robert, along with our mom and dad started to unpack the suitcases and placing their contents into the various rooms. I was not needed to do any of that stuff, as I was the youngest and considered unreliable, since I obviously had more important things to think about and do. I wound up going outside to explore our immediate vicinity. Our house was situated on a fairly spacious plaza, facing the Catholic church. At the corner of the street, immediately adjacent to our house was another house somewhat larger than our place. As I was looking at the surroundings, a little boy, somewhat smaller than I came out of the corner house and said something in French which I did not understand and he apparently realized that there was a communication problem, so he came closer to me and shoved a handful of marbles into my hands, and showed me how to play with them. Since marbles were not a novelty to me, I managed to win several games and he indicated that I should keep the marbles and we would play again some other time. Our next door neighbor introduced himself as Roget Daviet and as I learned later, he was the same age as Robert, a year older than I in spite of being shorter than me by at least one inch. We wound up going to the same school and all three of us ended up in the same class. We remained friends until such time as we had to leave a couple of weeks before the German army invaded France, about three years after our arrival. Roget was the youngest of four kids of the Daviet family. The dad was a utility employee and commuted to work on his bicycle. The oldest kid of the bunch was Marius, 18, a slender, thin as a rail youngster who worked as a bicycle messenger in Paris, a popular type of occupation due to the heavy automobile traffic. Marius owned three bicycles. One of them was a racing type Peugeot which could only be used at the velodrome during bike races, never on the pavement, because in order to keep the weight of the bicycle down to a minimum, the width of the tires was only about ½ inch and if the brakes needed to be applied, it could result in catastrophic situations. Marius actually did run in bicycle races but never made it to the Tour the France, his dream, which remained elusive. On racing days, usually on weekends, Marius would hop on his street bike and maneuver the racing bike with his left hand and pedal in this fashion the 20 kilometers or so to get to the velodrome on the other side of Paris through some of the heaviest city traffic. Even though he never won any major event, his passion for the sport never diminished. Considering that bicycle racing was so popular in France, second only to soccer matches, it is not surprising that Marius had such a devotion and passion for bicycle racing. Marius spent a lot of his spare time performing maintenance tasks in order to keep his precious bikes in top conditions. All three bikes were custom made at a bike shop in town. Custom made bikes were quite common in Paris and probably in most of France during the prewar years. The other two kids were the girls, Sisters Jeanne, 17, and Marie-Claire, 15, both of them were quite attractive. The mom looked pretty worn out from having to take care of all the kids as well as the whole family but she was always pleasant to both of us.

Robert and I had to learn to read and write French so we could enroll in school promptly. Our Czechoslovak school grades had to be translated into French to allow the school authorities to evaluate our academic standing and thus be able to assign us to the proper grade level. All of which took time and we used it to advantage by learning the French language as fast as possible. At home we only spoke French, not Hungarian nor Slovak. Eventually the decision by the school authorities was made to place us in accordance with our age, disregarding the fact that I was a year younger, since that was how the school authorities determined my placement in Czechoslovakia. That decision turned out to be the proper one since we both were able to skip a grade during each of the the next three years and in a school of about 1200 students we were considered to be the very best. When that fact came to the attention of the school principal and he was told that we were not French citizens, he made an appointment with our parents to talk to them about becoming naturalized French citizens. Although a devoted francophile, due to the political situation at the time, our dad refused the invitation. He felt that war was imminent (this was in early 1939) and thought that we should find some other place to live, before the Germans invaded France.

A few months after our arrival, a new family moved in next door to us, on the other side of the corner house where the Daviet family lived. That house had been vacant ever since our arrival. The new neighbors, the Fernandez family were Spanish refugees. There was Madame Fernandez, her older son, Fernand and his younger brother Simón. There was no Mr. Fernandez. He was killed in the civil war although at the time of their arrival, Madame Fernandez did not know that he had lost his life during the civil war in Spain. The French people were very sympathetic towards the Spanish refugees and were helpful to the extent they could be. But the French government was not willing to get involved in the conflict and the best they could do was to have the border guards look the other way and let the refugees cross the border to seek asylum in France. In our town in particular, it was remarkable that so many people were welcoming the refugees, contrary to the usual attitude of disdain that most French people had regarding foreigners whom they referred to normally as sale étrangers (dirty foreigners). Fernand was the same age as Robert and Simón was three years younger. Fernand eventually became a professional soccer player, a very distinctive occupation in all of Europe. We all became good friends and played soccer on the plaza in front of our house.

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The Spanish Civil War started on July 17, 1936, and ended on April 1, 1939. The uprising started in Spanish Morocco by the military, led by General Francisco Franco, a well-known military fascist leader and the rebel army crossed over to the Spanish mainland. Germany and Italy joined the hostilities, siding with Franco.

Members of the duly elected leftist government were referred to as Republicans and included the socialists, communists, anarchists, labor unions and the like; the rebel forces were called the Nationalists and they were joined by the Falangistas - members of Franco’s right-wing party, the Falange. Falange leader Primo de Rivera, was killed by the Republicans in November 1938.

The German intervention consisted of the Condor Legion, ten thousand strong with tanks, armored vehicles along with ammunitions, and included 100 aircraft and 5,000 airmen. Italy sent a fully armed force of 50,000 troops. The Soviet Union sent a handful of military advisers and a certain amount of weapons and ammunition, provided they were distributed to the trusted communist party and not the various splinter groups such as the Trotskyites, anarchists, and others who did not get organized into a united front against the far right forces and who the Kremlin considered to not be trustworthy. France, Great Britain and other western powers including the United States sent no help and no weapons - they just watched the action passively, not wanting to get involved and not willing to do anything to help the leftists as they were concerned about the spread of communism throughout the western democracies. Volunteers from various countries totaling some 40,000 went to help the legally elected leftist government. Most volunteers were not trained in military combat techniques and had to pay for their fare to Spain. The International Brigade included the US contingent, the Lincoln Brigade, a member of which was writer Ernest Hemingway who went to Spain as a journalist. Another notable personality was George Orwell who participated actively in the conflict on the leftist side and was seriously wounded in one of the battles. Fortunately, he lived to write a book about the war entitled Homage to Catalonia which Orwell considered to be his best book. What started as a Spanish internal conflict became a war between the left wing sympathizers from the western democracies and the fascist countries determined to stop the spread of communism over the entire globe. For the same reasons, the western democracies did not want to get involved so they remained passive, except for the sale of armaments by British interests - a welcome necessity in any armed conflict, large or small.

On April 28, 1937, the German air force bombed a small town in northern Spain named Guernica, a town with no strategic value whatsoever. The devastated town was immortalized in a well-known painting by Pablo Picasso. The western powers again remained silent when this event occurred in spite of the publicity accorded to Picasso’s work of art. This act became the precursor of the bombings that were going to define the type of warfare in the soon to start (five months) World War Two hostilities, resulting in massive bombing attacks undertaken by both sides against the civilian populations as well as strategic military targets.

The involvement by the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) in Spain provided the opportunity for Hitler’s forces to develop new skills based on the use of the latest aircraft developments. It also provided an opportunity to improve the bombardment techniques which had not been quite developed during the final phases of World War One, the so-called ‘The Great War as well as The War to End All Wars". The bombing of Guernica in April 1937 was the beginning of the bombing of defenseless non-strategic targets aimed at terrorizing the enemy non-combatant civilian population. In 1940, Nazi Germany started their assault on Western Europe and the Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam even though the government of The Netherlands had already signed the armistice and had surrendered to the Nazi occupiers. That bombing resulted in many civilian casualties, over 30,000, according to some estimates, as well as the leveling of the business section of the city and the destruction of many dwellings. Later on as WWII developed, the action in Rotterdam was followed by the frequent massive bombing of London as well as many other British cities. Not to be outdone, the British RAF bombed Hamburg in August 1943 mercilessly for five consecutive nights, killing an estimated 50,000 civilians. And the USAF bombed Dresden in February 1945 and Tokyo in early August 1945, followed by the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What started as an internal conflict in Spain which was rightfully called the Spanish Civil War became a struggle between the fascist dictatorships of Germany and Italy and the left-wing sympathizers from the western democracies. The western powers avoided getting involved because they were mostly concerned about the spread of communism and, unfortunately, did not realize what was actually happening and the possible consequences of letting the fascists provide military assistance to Franco’s regime. It is also fair to say that Franco’s forces would have lost the civil war without the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

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Our town had a monthly fair along the river with a whole lot of rides, shooting galleries and food kiosks, managed mainly by ladies from Bretagne in full custom regalia who had some amazing skills such as flipping eggs way up in the air with the eggs invariably landing in the skillets very deftly, to make an omelet or a pair of perfectly shaped sunny-side up eggs. Of course, there were the customary baguettes, croissants, a variety of cheeses, brioches, milles feuilles, petit fours, éclairs and other French pastries, and above all, pommes frites (French fries), the very best in the world. There also was entertainment, particularly Spanish dancers using castañets to accompany the traditional Spanish bullfight music as well as flamenco type music. I was totally fascinated with the castañets and when I did purchase a pair, I asked the young lady vendor to show me how to use them. She gladly obliged but it turned out that neither I nor Robert had the talent required to play the castañets. Since we were born in Cuba, not in Spain, we were hopelessly inept at playing the Spanish instruments and so eventually we had to abandon that brilliant idea.

One of the attractions at the fair I have never seen elsewhere before or since was the use of motorbikes inside a heavy duty steel wire mesh globe with the whole assembly mounted above ground somewhat higher than eye level with one motorcyclist riding in circles within the nearly 30 foot diameter enclosure. I never did find out exactly how the competition was staged but I imagine it was an endurance type contest which seemed to last a long, long time, perhaps a half an hour or so. I cannot understand how the cyclists didn’t get dizzy after the first five minutes of riding furiously in that contraption as it was necessary to run at a fairly high speed in order to keep going to overcome the centrifugal forces. The most daring feat was demonstrated toward the end of the contest for the day when two cyclists would drive in the enclosure at the same time while managing to avoid any collisions.

Many residents came to the fair from our own town as well as from neighboring towns. In addition, weekend ‘sailors’ visited the fair by navigating the many rivers in France using various type and sizes of sail and motor boats and barges. Some of those folks were weekend river rats on vacation but quite a few others lived on their vessels pretty much permanently and some of them included small children and pets, not unlike some families in the US who years later lived in motor homes or recreational vehicles, driving all over the countryside.

In the summer months during the second and third year of our stay in Paris, Robert and I went to summer camp for a full month. We were given a choice of going to a mountain based camp or the ocean. Since we had never seen an ocean, we decided to go to the ocean and we enjoyed it so much that we went to the same ocean side camp during both years. The location of the ocean side camp was Ile de Ré (Ré Island), an island across from the city of La Rochelle on the Atlantic Ocean about halfway between the extreme north and south end of France. La Rochelle was made popular by Alexandre Dumas in his famous book. The Three Musketeers, one of our all-time favorites. Ile de Ré was famous for two other activities; one was the production of sea salt, which is still on-going these days on the island and the other is that at the time, convicts destined to be shipped to the French Guiana penal colony at Devil’s Island (Ile du Diable) were confined to a holding prison on the island until the arrival of the next ship traveling to Devil’s Island. The prisoners were guarded by soldiers from the French Colony of Senegal in West Africa. We never saw any of the condemned prisoners but we certainly often saw the guards. They were quite dark-black skinned with distinctive blue uniforms, rather slim and each of them at least six feet tall. They seemed to be mean but they were certainly very nice to us. Their working knowledge of the French language was very rudimentary, presumably picked that way on purpose by the French authorities. The penal colony was eventually closed in 1946.

Another interesting destination on the island was a medieval castle that served as a tourist attraction despite its primitiveness and lack of tour guides. Robert and I wondered several times into the castle and it was quite an experience. There were very few electric lights so it was difficult to see where one was going which was particularly important when approaching the dungeon which had an opening of about six feet by six feet. In spite of several warning signs one could see how some people could fall into the dungeon. There were no railings around the opening to the dungeon, so one could easily fall into it. Upon closer examination, one could tell that the dungeon had no natural light, no windows or opening of any kind, no stairs to get into the dungeon so if one fell into it, assistance had to be provided from up above by someone on the main floor as the dungeon was at least 15 feet high and measured possibly 20 x 20 feet.

The island had a fairly large forest populated with evergreens, mostly pine trees and there was a lot of sand all around. All sorts of sea shells were abundant and all of us kids were happy to collect them. One of the notable achievements of the population living on