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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 8332458, member: 110350&quot;]Thanks so much, [USER=128351]@GinoLR[/USER]. It remains a small world, especially for me with respect to anyone living in Germany, France, or even England (where my mother spent most of the War), given my family background. I will have to let my son know that the building at 8 rue d&#039;Ormesson still stands. I don&#039;t doubt that the building is old. And I suspect that the building at No. 1 Passage St. Pierre, already there in 1796, was already old then. Although probably not as old as the house where another of my grandparents (my maternal grandmother) was born, in a small village in the Black Forest: that house, which had been in her family since the 18th century, has been dated to approximately 1565 through dendrochronology! And has the remnants of a Roman wall in the back.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yes, my great-grandfather was Jewish (like the rest of my family!) and a capmaker, and continued in that occupation on the Lower East Side. Unfortunately, he died young, in his 50s, after a long illness that resulted in my grandfather dropping out of school at 13 to go to work in the garment industry. The official cause of death was lung cancer, but the story in the family was always that it was some sort of occupational disease like mercury poisoning (the origin of the &quot;Mad Hatter&quot; concept). Comparing his signatures from the 1880s and 20 years later, the latter is certainly shaky enough for me to believe that he had neurological problems.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I always think of the various tenements where my grandfather lived with his family on the Lower East Side as slum housing, which it was. The first building they lived in, for a number of years after they arrived in 1888, was at 176 Suffolk Street, and actually still exists. It&#039;s still pretty shabby, although I&#039;m sure it&#039;s been modernized:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1477004[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1477005[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Still, compared to the Marais, it probably seemed like luxury housing. I imagine that there were sewers, and running water, and some plumbing, at least.</p><p><br /></p><p>Regarding what you said about the deportations during the War, my father&#039;s family was all long gone from France by then. But what happened very much affected my mother&#039;s family, many of whom had either fled from Baden across the Rhine to France during the 1930s, or were sent to camps in the Pyrenees in October 1940, when the Jews of Baden were all deported there. Most died, including my great-grandparents on that side. A few survived, including my mother&#039;s Uncle B. and his family, who narrowly escaped the Vel d&#039;Hiv roundup and then lived with false papers in places like Dieulefit and Nice until the Liberation, after which they were able to reclaim their apartment at 18 Ave. de Versailles. Which I&#039;m pretty sure was not in the Marais![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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