As a child, Marie Kaufman was hidden from the Nazis, but it wasn't in a secret room like Anne Frank.
Kaufman was "hidden" in the open, in plain sight of German soldiers, thanks to the clever efforts of caring people in the village of Albi, France.
"It was a quiet conspiracy of goodness," said Kaufman, addressing hundreds of teens at Roy High School on Thursday. She will continue speaking at the school today.
The 68-year-old licensed clinical social worker from Los Angeles told the students she and her parents owed their lives to many people who risked their own lives to hide Jews.
One rescuer was a Catholic priest who gave Kaufman's mother, Anna, a false identification card stating she was Polish-Catholic and provided fake baptism papers for Kaufman.
Another hero was the manager of the cement plant where Kaufman's father, Michael, worked. When French police, under Nazi order, came to the plant to take him to a labor camp, the manager said he was out for the day.
Michael Kaufman left the plant and immediately went into hiding. The plant manager kept him on the payroll, but records stated he had been taken away to a work camp.
"These people were really taking their lives in their hands for helping," Kaufman said.
Inspired by the movie "Freedom Writers," Roy High teacher Paul Fawson worked to bring Kaufman to his school. She spoke free of cost.
Fawson hoped to emphasize messages on bullying and gangs. "I want the students to realize what happens when people don't speak up," he said. "Somebody has to make a stand."
Roy High sophomore Garrett Mower, 16, said students have learned about the Holocaust in class but pointed out "this is a firsthand experience."
Kaufman has served as an interviewer for Steven Spielberg's project to record the stories of Holocaust survivors. She is also president of the group Child Survivors of the Holocaust.
"We don't want the stories to die with us," she said.
The village, Albi, was designated a free zone in 1941, but German authorities soon ordered the French to turn over the Jews.
When Michael Kaufman had to "disappear," the family's landlady showed him a cave outside the village, and he lived there for three months. Anna Kaufman, dressed in black, would sneak to the cave at night to bring him food.
At the time, German soldiers would pay people to turn in Jews. Kaufman found out years later that many villagers saw Anna on her moonlit trek but never said a word. A farmer also watched Michael Kaufman sneak out and steal fruit from his orchards but kept mum.
"These were all little silent ways of people resisting the Germans," Kaufman said.
When it got too cold for the cave, Michael Kaufman switched to hiding in the crawl space under the house. He would come out at night to eat and play with Marie, who was almost 2 years old. Her parents never taught her the words "papa" but referred to her father as "other mother" so the talkative toddler wouldn't identify her "papa who lived under the house" to the Nazis.
A French policeman would come by periodically and ask Anna Kaufman where her husband was. She would say he had been taken away to the camp. The officer never searched the house but simply reported to his superiors that Michael Kaufman could not be found.
Teen neighbors tended Marie while her mother worked at nearby farms and kept her Jewish identity a secret.
"These people all had this knowledge and all decided, with their hearts, their conscience, their morals — being good Christians — they would just keep quiet," Kaufman said. "They didn't have a meeting to discuss it. They just plain did it."
The family was liberated in 1944 and migrated to Los Angeles in 1951.
E-mail: astewart@desnews.com