© Erwin Blumenfeld
“(…) when the old world collapsed, I was there, playing my own personal part in it all; it was ugly, stupid and life-threatening. It was only a matter of luck that I and my family managed to escape with nothing more than the fright of our lives.”
When the war breaks out in France in September, Blumenfeld and his family live in Burgundy, in Voutenay-sur-Cure and in Vézelay. In 1940 he is interned as an undesirable alien, at the camps of Montbard-Marmagne, Loriol (Drôme), LeVernet d’Ariège and Catus (Lot).
His daughter Lisette is interned at 18, in the camp of Gurs in the Pyrénées.
When Catus is dismantled, the family lives in Agen and manages to regroup with Lisette. Blumenfeld obtains visas for the family in Marseille from the vice-consul Oliver Hiss. They flee to the U.S.A. in May 1941 on the Mont Viso steamship.
But they are stopped and detained in Morocco, in the port of Casablanca, then in the camp of Sidi-el-Ayachi in July, but finally, thanks to the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, they can continue the journey on a Portuguese liner, the SS Nyassa to New York, arriving in August 1941.

Camp Sidi El Ayachi © Erwin Blumenfeld