Mrs. Bornstein writes of her experiences making the film:
I came back from the trip with a variety of impressions and feelings. The people in Le Got are a wonderful lot. They all remembered us, the Jewish refugees from Paris, with the two little girls, well dressed (at least at the beginning), with the very lovely mother, and the father going to work in his wooden shoes and grey, suit-looking jacket, both parents not talking very much and not mixing very much with the people, obviously very afraid. When asked how they thought we had survived those terrible times, they said "luck", not one said "because we kept quiet and helped them". They were humble and modest, and very willing to help others in need; there were other refugees in the area (not Jewish), for instance Mme. Belledent, who lived in the same house we lived in, downstairs from us. The baker, Mr. Duport, was very generous with his bread, so was the Vigie family, where my father worked and hid, with the farm products.
They all said how afraid and suspicious they were all the time, of each other, as they did not know who was for whom, and they therefore kept very quiet, which did not prevent them from helping us – in particular the mayor of Mazeyrolles, Mr. Delpech, who fabricated false identification papers for my parents, and evidently for others as well (according to his son), and also put his life in great danger to run errands to help others as needed.
The other neighbors downstairs from us, Mr. & Mme. Garrigue, evidently knew a lot about our situation – they are probably, besides the mayor, the only people to whom my parents spoke openly; they told us that in case my parents were arrested, not only would they swallow the poison my mother carried on her at all times, but that we the two little girls should go to the Garrigues, who would take care of us. Between their apartment and ours there was a door that we could pass through discreetly. In Paris, we told Marie-Therese Paris that her brother (with another teenager) helped us leave St. Mande by purchasing backpacks and train tickets, placing the filled backpacks in the holding area of the station, and then giving us the backpacks and train-tickets at the time of departure, after their parents had burnt the four yellow stars in their furnace, and prepared our last meal in Paris. She knew that her brother was somewaht involved in some illegal resistance activity, but she did not know to what extent he was.
We also met with a former neighbor, Mme. Contini, who remembered us well, and put us in contact with Mr. Langlet, who, with his wife, kept my mother's piano during our absence. Neither one of them played the piano, and for the 29 months, nobody touched it, including their young son Jacky, who was 5 or 7 years old at the time... they couldn't run the risk that some neighbor would hear the piano and wonder...
When Marie-Therese was asked why she thought we survived, she made a very touching statement that "the love that [my] parents had for each other and for their children is what gave them the strength to leave and do whatever was necessary to survive".
29 Months in Exile Copyright © 1997-2005 Nathaniel Bornstein and Jessica Mendels.