4. Charlotte Sorkine Noshpitz and the Nazis
In 1925, Charlotte Sorkine Noshpitz was born in Paris to a Romanian mother and a Belorussian father. Her Jewish family were among the educated upper crust, and one of her grandfathers was an anthropology professor. Charlotte was raised in a highly intellectual household, whose routines included a weekly salon that often hosted French luminaries of the arts, letters, sciences, and academia.
Her life took a drastic turn for the worse after the Nazis defeated France in 1940. The collaborationist Vichy regime enacted a raft of discriminatory laws that revoked the French citizenship of naturalized Jews, and authorized the internship of foreign Jews or the restriction of their residence. When out in public, Charlotte and her family were forced to wear yellow stars of David sewn to their clothes to identify themselves as Jews.