An IMMERWAHR Reunion

Visite à Sanary-sur-Mer (21-25 September 2012)

As soon as I got into contact with Micheline in 2009, she was urging me to come to Sanary-sur-Mer so that we could meet.   From my perspective, and I think hers as well, the goal was to re-connect our families after 70+ years of separation.  Each time I planned a “research trip” to Berlin and Breslau, I considered a trip to meet Micheline, her husband Robert, and her brother Maurice who lived in the same house.  Each time, I could not make the logistics work (in the short time available for those trips).

From the beginning Micheline had a sense of urgency.  She wanted me to make the trip while she could still see me.  Her vision was getting progressively worse.  In January 2012, her younger brother Maurice died suddenly.   I think this, and Micheline’s approaching 90th birthday, finally prompted me to act.

Even though Don and I already had a trip planned to Munich, Kojetin, Breslau, towns in Poland, and Berlin for November, we planned a separate, short trip for the end of September to Sanary-sur-Mer to finally meet Micheline.   We had an easy flight from Philadelphia to Brussels to Marseille, and then a 2-hour line to get a rental car that was not there because our reservation had been made for the day before.  Fortunately, they found a car for us and we set off for Sanary.

We had done little advance planning, so we got turned around a couple times on the highways leading away from the airport.   We also got confused by the highway we planned to take, and were briefly on, until it unexpectedly disappeared.  After another couple loops, we got on a slower road heading east through the hills above the Mediterranean coast.   We dropped back down to the coast at Bandol, and then had a short drive to get on to the map that Micheline’s son Dominique had sent us.  With that aid, we got to the right street and the right driveway.

When we rang the bell at the gate, a woman appeared at the second floor window (le premier étage, for her) to say she was coming down.    Micheline came around to let us in the gate.  We had lovely meeting en français, as all our conversations with Micheline would be.   She showed us our rooms on the first floor, and then took us upstairs to meet her husband Robert.

When we went upstairs, I brought Micheline the only gifts I had brought her
(1)  a scarf from Wroclaw made in connection with the re-dedication of the “zum weisen Storch” synagogue in 2010, the synagogue whose original construction was financed in the late 1820s, by Micheline’s and our ancestor Hillel Philipp SILBERSTEIN (1761-1837) or his son Jakob Philipp SILBERSTEIN (ca.1785-1845); and
(2)  copies of the copies of the military records of her great grandfather Colonel André Albert LAFFITTE-ROUZET and his son Colonel Charles LAFFITTE-ROUZET.
Of course, she could not really see these things, but Robert and others can describe them to her.

She told us stories; we went for our first walk — down to the beach (la plage), and then up the hill and down the steps to the marina (le port);  on past the lighthouse, through town, and back to Micheline, who had prepared a meal of fish, zucchini, and salad.

The first evening, Micheline showed us an old old photo album with images of Mathilde IMMERWAHR, her husband Le Colonel, André Albert LAFFITTE-ROUZET, their children Le Colonel Charles, and Gabrielle, her husband Alphonse CLERC, his father Maurice, and the children of Gabrielle and Alphonse, Maurice, Albert and Jean-François.  That album had photographs from the 1890s to the 1920s.   Micheline was amazing.  She cannot see the photos, but she knows that album (and others also) so well that she could find the pages she wanted to show and tell us who was in the photos without really seeing them anymore herself.

Then she showed us a family history she had written and illustrated mainly with copies of those photographs, but with the occasional original photos, documents and artifacts (French military ribbons).  Among the original photos was the “puzzle-piece” image of Micheline’s father Albert CLERC with the man they earlier did not know, my grandfather Dr. Walther FREUND.  I previously thought that photo was taken when Albert visited Breslau, but Micheline was clear that it was taken in a room in Le Mollard, her family’s home in St. Marcellin.   There were two other originals from the same batch as that one — two women sitting on the same sofa in Le Mollard.  We only saw those photos briefly; Micheline may have commented that one of the women was her grandmother Gabrielle CLERC, née LAFFITTE-ROUZET.   She offered our mother the original photographs of their respective fathers Albert and Walther – which we accepted on our mother’s behalf.

She always knew the man in that photograph was someone important to her father because he did not smile much and rarely has a smile in photographs, but with that man, he was smiling.

On Sunday morning, we went upstairs with the scanner.  We copied 30 pages from the old photo album and about 10 pages from “L’Histoire” by Micheline.  When we scanned the two photographs of the women on the sofa and the image came up on the computer screen, Don and I both immediately recognized the other unknown guest as our grandmother Ellinor FREUND geb. BACH.   Dear Reader may remember a similar surprise and pleasure that we had 16 months earlier seeing and scanning photographs in New Mexico when we also ran across a rare glimpse of our grandmother.  As then, I made photographs of the photograph with my iPhone to e-mail to my mother at the first e-mail opportunity.

I believe it was
Micheline who suggested the photographs must have been taken during a
visit that Walther made to Le Mollard to introduce his new wife to his
favorite cousin Gabrielle and her family.  This would date the
photographs to the second half of 1922, since they were married on the
4th of July, 1922.
 
For the second year in a row, our never-met and little-seen grandmother Ellinor won “best in show”.