Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a three-part series. Click here to read the previous installment.
By Avraham Dimenstein
LOS ANGELES — Rabbi Henry Soille continued his job as librarian and Rabbi for L’Ecole Rabbinique de Paris after he and Esther were married, as well as taking a pulpit in Paris.
On May 10, 1940 the Nazis invaded France. Rabbi Soille packed up all the books of the library in boxes and prepared to send them off to America for safe-keeping. The director of the Yeshiva discovered what Rabbi Soille had done, and instructed him to unpack everything. He believed the French forces would route the enemy out of France. Rabbi Soille never did unpack the boxes, and when the Yeshiva was abandoned, the Nazis would have discovered the books in boxes.
Rabbi Soille believed the Nazis no doubt would have realized the books had value and would not have destroyed them, but their whereabouts remain unknown.
The Nazis had occupied France and Rabbi Soille and the president of the synagogue decided it was no longer safe to have a minyan during the week as several communities had been captured en masse at synagogue during prayers, for example in Lyon. However, in order to maintain the morale of the community, prayers would continue with a minyan on Shabbat.
Once, while davening Shacharit at home, Rabbi Soille heard a woman screaming from the neighboring building. Rabbi Soille was told that the woman screaming had seen her husband taken away by the Nazis, and she was leaning out the window from the second floor. It looked like she was going to jump. Esther suggested that they go and comfort her. The woman’s husband was Jewish, though not religious. He would show up for Yom Kippur davening but only for five minutes. His wife was not Jewish. Rabbi Soille had very little interaction with him as he was dealing in the black market, and he was collaborating with the Nazis. The Nazis’ method was to allow a person to get rich on the black market, and then to confiscate their money and arrest them.
Esther suggested that they put on some shoes as Rabbi Soille was wearing slippers. Rabbi Soille pointed out that by the time he had put his shoes on, the woman would have already jumped. They began to walk towards the woman’s house when they saw the red car belonging to the Nazis approaching their apartment. Esther suggested they make a run for it into the field, but Rabbi Soille thought they might decide to shoot them if they saw them running. They continued to walk straight and they walked right past the car. The car’s occupants didn’t notice them. They walked into a field, and they stayed there for several hours, and then went to return to their apartment.
They were stopped by Righteous Gentiles who told them a sentry had been posted at their home. They later found out that the same woman who they were on their way to convince not to commit suicide, had told the Germans to leave her husband alone and instead take Rabbi Soille as a prisoner since he was the Rabbi of the community, who lived in the building next door. That way she argued, they would find out the names of all the Jewish members of the community from him.
Rabbi Soille went first to the mayor’s house and asked if the Germans could legally seal off his apartment. The mayor, who was somewhat of a collaborator, as he never would have had his position had he not been, told them that he did not know if it were legal. However, in these times might was right. He then went to the president of the shul. The president had rented an unregistered apartment and he loaned the apartment to Rabbi Soille to live in. The president told him that the Nazis were circulating Rabbi Soille’s picture throughout the community, and the president felt that he had become a danger to the entire community.
Rabbi Soille needed to get back into his apartment first, to get clothes. Also, one of his students had left him false papers to be delivered to Jewish families so that they could get food stamps. The false papers identified them as Gentiles. He tried to deliver the papers but could not find the families, and the papers were now hidden inside his Gemara. He didn’t want the Germans to find the papers and thereby endanger the lives of the people named in the false papers. He asked his neighbors to arrange for a ladder to be brought so that he could enter from the back window, as the front door had been sealed off. The sentry was no longer at the front, so it seemed safe.
Esther Soille decided to go up the ladder through the back window to the apartment, for she believed that if the Nazis found a man up there, they would shoot immediately but would hesitate for a woman. The Gentile neighbors agreed with her, so Mrs. Soille went up the ladder and threw down clothing into sheets on the bottom floor, and all within a matter of a few minutes. The bundles were thrown down and from there the clothing was thrown into a neighbor’s yard and again into another neighbor’s yard. After she had already come down the ladder and the ladder was removed, Rabbi Soille told her that he’d forgotten to tell her about the false papers hidden in the Gemara. She responded, “I know which Gemara you are studying now. Do you think I would not have included that?”
The Nazis had discovered that the apartment had been broken into, and they were searching all the local hotels for Rabbi Soille with his picture from the apartment. One of the elderly women in the shul who was very religious, had two wealthy sons who had earned their money in the black market. They decided that it was no longer safe in the city. They bought a house in the mountains, the French Alps. The mother said she would only go if Rabbi Soille and his wife would be allowed to come along with them. So, they left the unregistered apartment and moved in with the woman and her sons.
While living up in the Alps, Mrs. Soille suffered a miscarriage, and her life was in danger. It happened to be D- day when this occurred, and the Nazis announced a general curfew, which meant anybody outside would be shot on sight. Mrs. Soille pleaded with Rabbi Soille not to go for help, but he insisted on going as he felt that she would most definitely not survive if she did not get medical attention.
Rabbi Soille entered a village at the foot of the mountains, and he encountered a policeman. With his hands up Rabbi Soille yelled,” Do not shoot!” Rabbi Soille explained the situation, and the policeman loaned him a bicycle and directed him to the village veterinarian, at the local bar.
Although drunk, the veterinarian followed Rabbi Soille up to their mountain hideaway and gave Mrs. Soille an injection which resolved the medical emergency. In his drunken state the veterinarian had forgotten to sterilize the needle which had last been used on a farm animal. As a result, Mrs. Soille later developed an extremely painful abscess at the injection site. She went to a Catholic hospital and the nuns, who acted as nurses, cleaned the abscess daily. She recovered under their care.
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Next: Part III tomorrow will tell of the Soilles’ immigration and lives in San Diego.
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Avraham Dimenstein is an 8th grade teacher at Toras Emes Academy in Los Angeles.