Henry Slucki’s escape from France
Henri Slucki’s escape from France
And its remembrance tour in 2022
Contents
(clickable)
Summary
This article is in two parts:
– The Story of a Remembrance
– The Origins
The Origins tells how Henry Slucki (aged 8) and his family fled France in 1942 as Jews were persecuted by the Nazis.
The Story of a Remembrance explains the tour I organised and led in 2022 so that Henry and his friends could follow in Henry’s footsteps as he crossed the Pyrenees in 1942.
If you find this story interesting, please read on and sign up for our escape across the Pyrenees Tour. [This tour will be ready in June 2025]
Map of Henry Slucki’s escape from France
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The Fight for the Larzac.
The story of a remembrance
In June 2022 I received a long email, much longer than usual, more than 30 lines. Lydia, an American woman in her 70’s living in Los Angeles asked me if I could organize a “very specific kind of trip”, as she wrote.
Lydia, James, her husband, and Henry, Lydia’s adoptive brother, wanted to follow the trail Henry and his family walked in 1942 when they fled France to Spain to escape the Nazis. Henry, Jewish, was eight when they fled and 88 when I received the email. Henry had not returned to the trail since the original journey.
That email arrived like a blessing descended from heaven. World War II and the Middle Ages are the two historical topics I am most committed to. I read and reread the email many times, thinking “My Goodness, this is happening to me!”
I had run two previous tours guiding customers to follow the footsteps of people who escaped from France in WWII. But this time was different! The star of the escape was alive; he would tell me the story. No need to read a book to know what happened — Henry would tell me.
In her email Lydia described the itinerary Henry followed, so that I could figure out where Henry crossed the border, where he walked while still in France, where once in Spain, etc. With the clues Lydia gave me at that moment it was very difficult to know the saddle Henry crossed. Nevertheless, I was determined to sort out the enigma.
After the first email, Lydia and I interchanged many emails; I was avid for more information which might lead me to the correct pass. There were only three possibilities. Lydia patiently tried to help me whenever possible.
In my emails I explained that Henry could not follow his own footsteps now because the elevation gain you have to overcome to reach the border (whichever the pass) is more than 1500m. It is an impossible task if you are 88.
Lydia and I had a video call. Some weeks later, we had another one, this time with Henry. Henry was a bit disappointed because he did not recall the escape being as challenging as I described, nor so steep. Nevertheless, he admitted that he had slept for many hours during the escape while being carried by a French guide.
During the video call, Henry remembered something that helped me to establish the French valley his family followed before reaching the border. Knowing the valley, I could infer the pass. That matched the information I found in some books which suggested that the other two passes have barely been used for the last 200 years.
Good. Now that I was sure of the saddle I could design the tour.
Eventually the tour took three walking days.
The tour begins
I met Lydia, James, and Henry on 2 October 2022, near Lannemezan, in the French Pyrenees. We drove to Arreau. My idea was to walk to Saint-Lary-Soulan. After four km we all realised that was too much for Henry. So I walked back to my car and picked them up in Arreau. We stayed overnight in Saint-Lary-Soulan.
On 3 October my trusty 4WD Suzuki took us to the head of the Rioumajou Valley. We did a circular walk but did not try to reach the pass Henry crossed in 1942 because the hillsides below it were too steep for Henry to climb. Nevertheless, all of us enjoyed the beautiful landscape of that part of the Pyrenees. Henry could now recognize how steep the Pyrenees are, much more than he had imagined for the last 80 years.
We then drove to Spain through a tunnel and stayed overnight in Bielsa, a village which suffered a lot during the Spanish civil war.
The third day, 4 October, was the ‘D-day.’ Our Suzuki followed a 12 km dirt track which would take us to a strategic path. After 10 km on that track my Suzuki ‘said’ the terrain was too challenging to continue, so we had to park and get out. Henry slowly walked the two km between the car and the ‘strategic path.’ This two km took us one hour and a half. But now we were closer (distance: 1050 m; elevation gain: 130 m) to the saddle Henry crossed in 1942.
After five minutes climb, Lydia decided to stop and wait for us. Ten minutes later, Henry made the same decision. The path was too narrow and rough for him. Despite Henry using poles and my holding him by grabbing his belt all the way up, my tack did not work. The goal was too ambitious.
James and I continued while Henry sat on a rock, exuding satisfaction, looking at the horizon, alone at 2310 m. Many things must have crossed his mind at that moment regarding those mountains which he had been picturing for 80 years, those mountains which separate France and Spain, those mountains which separated freedom from death in 1942.
James and I walked the last 500 m and reached Urdiceto pass (2405 m) at 13:10. We were there, between France and Spain. While James was shooting footage for a video, I tried to imagine how that saddle was in 1942, whether there was a path on the Spanish side, how Henry’s family members were dressed when they crossed, etc. My mind remained lost in the past for a while.
Henry was not disappointed at not having reached the saddle. That was a relief for me.
Farewell
We drove to Zaragoza, where Henry, Lydia and James stayed overnight. I continued to home, satisfied with having helped somebody to realize his dream.
Lydia, Henry and James will stay with me forever. I thank them for such a marvellous experience.
The origins
Solomon Slucki, Henry’s father, was born in 1906 in Warsaw. He was a tailor. Rachel Gura Slucki, Henry’s mother, was also born in Poland in 1907. She was a fur finisher.
They met in Poland, but they had to leave their country due to pogroms against the Jews. Rachel left Poland in 1925 and Solomon in 1927. They went to Paris and got married in 1931. That same year they had a son who died of an illness when he was 14 months old.
Henry was born in 1934 in Paris.
WW2
In 1939, when Henry’s family was living in Paris, Solomon volunteered for the French army. After the defeat of the French by the Germans, Solomon was demobilized in Septfonds, in southwestern France.
Between 1940 and 1942 Henry’s family lived in Montauban, capital of the département Tarn-et-Garonne. Jews were being rounded up by the French at that time. At 6 AM on 26 August 1942, the French police knocked on the door of the flat where the family lived. Everyone remained silent for one hour and a half to avoid capture.
In Montauban, Henry’s parents became friends with many Spanish Republican soldiers who had fled to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War (1938-39). Montauban was in the part of France which was not yet occupied by the German army.
The escape
The situation changed dramatically in November 1942 when the Germans occupied the so-called Free France. Henry’s family decided to flee. Henry was eight years old.
At Bagnères-de-Luchon, in the French Pyrenees, Solomon made the necessary arrangements to escape with a passeur (a guide).
25 November 1942 – 1st day
They reached Lannemezan by train. There, Henry and his family waited for the passeur in the railway station, while six passeurs, plus six refugees were waiting for Henry’s family outside on the street. That was a “lucky” misunderstanding because during the wait the Gestapo arrested the 12 who were outside!
Eventually, the organizer of the passeurs appeared at the railway station in the afternoon. That man organised on the fly a new group of passeurs, who would be waiting for Henry’s family at a different point. The first passeur and Henry’s family took the bus, but they did not talk each other. When the passeur got off, Henry’s family stood up from their seats but the driver told them “Not yet. I’ll tell you when.”
The bus drove for more than an hour. Suddenly, the bus stopped, and the driver told Henry’s family “Get off now.” It was a point on the road in the middle of nowhere. Just a few seconds later, three passeurs came out from the woods nearby.
They headed south to Spain and walked until 10 PM. They stayed overnight in a cabin in the Rioumajou valley.
26 November 1942 – 2nd day
They got up early and walked all that day. When it got dark they did not stop. Nobody slept that night except Henry, who was carried by a guide during part of the route.
27 November 1942 – 3rd day – Spain.
Late in the morning they were already in Spain, on the south side of the Pyrenees. Henry remembers he found bullets – probably left behind from a battle during the Spanish Civil War.
They reached the house of a Spanish family that had a log fire. They tried to keep warm and slept there until the afternoon. Henry’s family met Joseph Cohen in this house. Mr. Cohen was the chief of the Jewish community in Toulouse and local head of the UGIF (General Union of French Jews).
From then on, Joseph Cohen would remain with Henry’s family.
When it got dark, they (3 adults + Henry) resumed the escape.
28 November 1942 – 4th day
On their route, they passed by a shelter located on a rocky plateau. Eventually they arrived at a road. It was already dark. A car picked them up and drove the group towards Barcelona.
Henry remembers that on the way they passed by a military base.
29 November 1942 – 5th day
They reached Lleida, in Catalonia, at 8 AM, as the day was getting clear. The driver asked the adults to get out of the car and walk across town to avoid suspicion. But he told Henry to remain in the car with the luggage while he went to get gas.
At the other side of the town the car was supposed to be waiting for the group. The group crossed the town on foot to reach that point, but they realised no car was waiting for them.
In the meantime, Henry was still in the car. Eventually, the driver told Henry to get out on a corner, dumped all the luggage with him and left.
Henry was alone in the middle of Lleida surrounded by the luggage of the group. Fortunately, after a while the group found Henry. Then Mr. Cohen paid for a taxi to take them to Barcelona.
A new life in Barcelona
Henry and his parents spent nearly a week in a flat in Barcelona. The owner was the mother of Catalan refugees living in Montauban who had escaped during the Spanish Civil War. The house was near La Monumental, a bullfight ring.
Henry remembers that the fascist authorities set up blackouts at night at the flat because they knew Republicans lived there.
Then, Henry’s family moved to a house located near El Tibidabo. They stayed there for two weeks.
Later on, they joined a woman and her son, and they all rented a room together. They stayed there for a month.
Finally, Henry and his family moved to 9, Peu de la Creu street, at the very core of Barcelona, in the Raval neighbourhood. Henry’s parents were not allowed to work because they did not have papers. The JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) and HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) helped Henry’s parents economically and, eventually, they got papers for them.
USA
Henry’s mother had an uncle and an aunt living in New York. Henry lived with them for two and a half years, until his parents arrived in 1946. Solomon and Rachel followed this itinerary: Barcelona to Vigo (in northwest Spain), then to Cuba, where they stayed for 2.5 years before moving to New York.
The “Serpa Pinto” achieved a kind of celebrity as it transported over 110,000 passengers across the Atlantic Ocean during WW2.
Even for neutral ships, crossing the Atlantic Ocean was an extremely dangerous affair. Thirteen Nazi submarines mercilessly hunted Allied vessels, sinking them whenever possible.
This is the story I was told by my client Henry Slucki in October 2022 as we walked the path he and his family had followed to save his life at the age of 8.
The story of this remembrance tour is explained in the first part of this article.
Finally, if you want to follow Henry’s footsteps across the Pyrenees, do not miss this trek. [This tour will be ready in June 2025]
[Click on each image to see the photo in its original size]
