Miltsztayn Lucienne (Daniel)

Miltsztayn, Lucienne (Daniel) Jacob and Sarah Miltsztayn, originally from Poland, lived in Paris before the war broke out. They had five children: Gabriel-Marcel (b. 1918), Mireille (b. 1923), Annette (b. 1926), Maurice (b. 1928), and Rosette (b. 1930). Jacob worked at the Citroen Company, and Sarah stayed at home with the children. In 1940 Gabriel Miltsztayn first met a laundry woman who worked in Paris—Lucienne Daniel—who was then 22 years old. In 1941 Gabriel was arrested along with other Jews and sent to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp. Lucienne managed to smuggle him out of the camp and bring him back to Paris. Gabriel stayed hidden in her laundry shop to avoid searches—because he had escaped the camp, he feared the police would come for him. In July 1942 the situation for Jews in Paris became almost impossible, and there were frequent arrests. Lucienne decided to hide the whole Miltsztayn family—Jacob and his wife, Sarah, all their children, and an aunt and her husband, Rosette and Maurice Rybak. All nine Jews were then hidden in the laundry shop and were under Lucienne’s care. To feed everyone she smuggled food from outside of Paris, hidden under her clothes. After some time had passed, Jacob Miltsztayn understood that the situation was too risky, that they were too many to continue staying there, and he decided to be sent away by the UGIF (Union Generale des Israelites de France: General Union of Jews in France) to work. He and Maurice Rybak left the laundry shop and went to Chaumontagne. Soon Sarah, Mireille, Maurice, and Rosette Miltsztayn and Rosette Rybak joined them there, leaving only Gabriel and Annette in Paris. Before leaving, Jacob asked Lucienne to write down everything she had bought for the family, so he could reimburse her after the war: Lucienne refused on the spot. In 1944 Jacob and Mireille, along with Maurice Rybak, were arrested and sent directly to Auschwitz: none of them survived. When she heard what had happened, Lucienne immediately went to the other members of the family and brought them back to her place. She kept them safe there until the end of the war, despite the great danger of having so many people hiding with her. She never hesitated to help the Miltsztayns, even though the risk to herself was great. Thanks to Lucienne’s courage, most of the Miltsztayn family survived. In 1949 she married Gabriel, and they later had a daughter they named Mireille. When testifying on behalf of her mother’s actions during the war, Mireille wrote that “my mother risked her own life, and they would all have been shot if they had been caught. I think she showed great courage and audacity. She was only 28 or 30 years old. For me, if Annette, Maurice, and Rosette managed to have their own families, it is mainly thanks to the fact that they survived, mostly due to my mother’s actions.” On June 17, 2014, Yad Vashem recognized Lucienne (Daniel) Miltsztayn as Righteous Among the Nations.