Reiman Family
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Biography
In 1995, Arlette shared her testimony with the Shoah Foundation. The text below is a transcription of her testimony intermingled with memories from her sister Madeleine. This account in two voices, which are sometimes dissonant, tells us the life of two little girls torn from the warmth of the family nest by History "with its great axe" (G. Perec). Rounded-up on July 16, 1942, interned in the Vélodrome d'Hiver and then in the Pithiviers camp, hidden and "playing the game" so as not to arouse suspicion, orphaned of father and then mother, they sadly had to learn to grow up fast. Too fast.
Note: Arlette uses the spelling Reimann in her oral testimony and Reiman in her book. With the exception of the transcript of the testimony, the form Reiman is the one we have kept.
Click on the points on the map to follow the Muller family's story within the Parisian landscape.
Testimony
The Reiman family lived at 114 rue du Temple in the 3rd arrondissement. Abraham and Malka emigrated from Poland to "the country of the Enlightenment and Zola" as this father in love with his new homeland liked to say. He made a very nice living in Paris, which allowed him to treat his wife and daughters, Madeleine and Arlette, like princesses. As soon as war was declared, Abraham naturally volunteered. He was demobilized after the armistice, but was arrested during the Green Ticket round-up in May 1941. From that moment on, the Reimans' lives were turned upside down. Interned in the Pithiviers camp and then sent to an "unknown destination", Abraham probably never knew that his wife and children had been rounded up on July 16, 1942, interned in the Vélodrome d'Hiver and locked up in the Beaune-la-Rolande camp. He probably never knew that his daughters then had to live in hiding while Malka was forced to work for the German occupiers. He did not return but Malka, unable to live without her childhood sweetheart, joined him. In January 1946, Madeleine and Arlette were all alone. Contrary to what Arlette thought, her father's friends, Zola and Voltaire, never came to help them.
Stunning in their resilience, courage, and uprightness, the little girls turned young women married two brothers, Charles and Joseph Testyler. These drifting young men had just returned from the camps. They lost all their relatives, experienced the unimaginable, and looked at death in the eyes. The four of them chose life and rebuilt a family.
Arlette and Charles never stopped sharing their stories, especially in schools. They wrote a book, Les Enfants aussi ! (The Children too!) The grandeur of their souls and their joie de vivre is an invaluable gift to us all.
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