Laplace Robert & Annunciata

Laplace, Robert and Annunciata Biasion, Giovanna Maria Annunciata Laplace, a pious Catholic of Italian origin, lived in Soissons (Aisne) with her husband, Robert, a French construction worker. They had four sons: Jean, Pierre, Maurice, and Marc. Annunciata’s mother, Maria Giovanna Biasion, lived nearby. Annunciata worked for the Ehrenkranz family as their daughter Lisette’s nanny. Jacques Ehrenkranz married Germaine (Gittel) in 1930. At first they lived in Paris, where their son, Daniel, was born in 1934, but they moved to Soissons, about 100 km from the city, before their daughter, Lisette, was born in 1936. Jacques and Germaine owned a fashion house where they designed women’s clothes and worked very hard. The family lived in large house with servants, and they had a nanny for each child. Jacques joined the French army in 1939 and was taken captive as a prisoner of war. Germaine continued to work as usual, under the (false) assumption that she had protection as the wife of a POW. On the night of July 17, 1942, two French gendarmes arrested Germaine and Sylvia, her sister. (They were deported and perished in Auschwitz.) Their mother remained in the house with the two children. The following morning, Robert Laplace arrived at the Ehrenkranz house and took the children and their grandmother to his home, which was on the outskirts of Soissons and surrounded by fields and woods, near a small lake. The grandmother and Daniel remained for about a month, and then Annunciata accompanied them on a journey by train to Lyon, in the free zone in the south of France. Such an undertaking was fraught with peril because there were many obstacles along the way. Robert and Annunciata continued to care for Lisette as their own daughter. Their sons treated Lisette as a younger sister (they were between 8 and 12 years her senior). They taught her different subjects, since she did not attend school, for fear of betrayal. Soissons had a very active resistance, and the French militia was constantly on the lookout for suspected activists—offering monetary rewards to people who came forward with information as to the whereabouts of Jews in hiding or other suspicious enemies of the state. Lisette slept in a small bedroom but was placed in a storeroom in the cellar whenever there was danger. She found a treasure trove of books there and passed much time reading. Lisette spent one particularly stressful period of three weeks at Giovanna Maria’s house, forbidden to go outside for fear she would be arrested. One day a German officer appeared on their doorstep, wanting to billet some officers in their house. Annunciata convinced him that their home was not fit for German officers, because it had no running water or indoor plumbing. The officer insisted on billeting German soldiers in place of the officers. They remained in the yard for two weeks, during which time Lisette remained in the cellar. Lisette’s father survived the war, and they were reunited in February 1945, but only for a short period. He left her with her guardians until 1947, when the family returned to their house in Soissons. Daniel became ill and died in 1948. Lisette (later Galel) move to Israel with her father in 1950. In 2008 Lisette returned to France on a visit and met with Annunciata’s sister. On March 20, 2012, Yad Vashem recognized Robert and Annunciata Laplace and Annunciata’s mother, Giovanna Maria Biasion, as Righteous Among the Nations.