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The Bar Mitzvah Paris, France 1942 Chiel Mendel Melman, Bar Mitzvah Chiel Mendel Melman (now known as Max Melman) is the son of Abraham Yitzchak and Bracha Goldblum Melman. He was born in 1929 in Ozarow, Poland where his father made a living in the grocery business. Max had two sisters named Ida and Madeleine. Max was educated in a cheder (a religious, private school) until he left Poland at the age of seven. In the early 1930s the Jewish community of Ozarow experienced numerous anti-Semitic attacks. The deteriorating conditions led Max's father to leave for Paris in 1932. There he lived with his wife's sister-in-law and opened a wholesale tailoring business. By 1937 he was sufficiently established to bring his family to Paris from Poland. After moving to Paris, Max was sent to public school which he attended until June 1942. The Melmans remained in Paris after the German occupation, though many of their relatives fled to Vichy. Beginning in the Spring of 1941 with the deportation of foreign-born Jews, the family's situation deteriorated rapidly. For a time, Max's father was forced to leave home every evening to avoid arrest. In June 1942, just ten days after the decree was issued that required that all Jews wear a yellow star, Max had his bar mitzvah ceremony in a synagogue at the rue Notre Dame de Nazareth. Three weeks after the bar mitzvah, on July 16, nearly 13,000 Parisian Jews were seized from their homes and interned in the Velodrome d'Hiver. Fortunately the Melmans were tipped off beforehand and were able to find refuge during the most dangerous time in the house of their concierge.... |
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Max Melman returned to Ozarow in recent years and visited the neighborhood he was most familiar with. He described life in Ozarow before the World War II, the relationship between the Jews and the Polish people of Ozarow, and talked about his grandfather, the caretaker of the Ozarow Cemetery. Listen here.
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