He'd miss his grandfather's sense of humour, his affectionate embraces
and most of all, his immeasurable wit.
But beneath his gregarious nature lay uneasiness.
"He was always very anxious -- he was very Jewish in that respect. He
was worried about the future, always pessimistic," recalled Denis.
"He'd had a difficult youth and had the Jewish spirit -- he was always
thinking that things were going to be difficult. But maybe that saved
his life because if he wasn't pessimistic maybe he would've stayed in
Paris and ended up in Auschwitz."
Perhaps his wife possessed a bit of that pessimism, too.
Before she and Alfred fled to Britain, she warned Raymond that if the
situation in Paris became too volatile he and his wife should escape
with their four children into the countryside. She gave him the name of
a woman to contact and wished him luck.
...................................
By the spring of 1943, it had become far too dangerous to stay in Paris,
so Raymond fled with his family, hoping to find refuge with the woman
his mother had recommended.
And when he finally found her, she was only too eager to repay the debt
of gratitude her family owed to the Lindons.
"She was a peasant woman and she was feeding her cows in the courtyard,"
remembered Denis Lindon of the fateful day his family arrived.
"My father opened the gate and said 'My name is Raymond Lindon' and she
dropped her two buckets and ran to him and said 'I've been waiting for
you all my life.' "
"She opened her house to my whole family at the risk of her life," he
remembered, fighting back tears.
"We were saved from being taken by the Germans by a family of French
peasants, who were helpful and generous."
After two years of living in hiding, Denis returned with his family to
Paris at the end of the war. Because they had no home, they moved into
his grandparents' home. Remarkably, much of it was intact because the
Gestapo had set up office there.
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