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Play, download and edit the free video A Hidden Identity in a Village Sanctuary.

Friday, October 15, 2021
A VIRTUAL SEMINAR

SPEAKER: Holocaust Survivor, Betie Newton
Holocaust survivor Betty Levensonas was born on April 22, 1935 in Orleans, France. Her family stayed in Orleans until Betty was 5 years old when her parents then moved to Paris where her father opened a clothing store.

Around 1940 Betty recalls explosions in the area and the family would have to seek shelter in the basement of their home while wearing gas masks. In the need to flee Paris she can even remember hiding under the seats of a train and covering her ears so she wouldn’t hear the destruction and bombardment in the area.

Betty’s parents fled to a small village called Velles. Only two people there knew that her family was Jewish, the mayor and a remarkable strong willed person, Julie Couillard. She was a single Christian woman with a wooden leg. When Julie would hear that the SS were in the neighborhood she would tell Betty’s father so that he could run away to hide in the fields. If the Nazis’ entered her home she would tell them they were all family. She literally saved their lives – even though she did not know anything about them or their backgrounds.

While in Velles, Betty went to school and regularly attended a Catholic church where she prayed to baby Jesus and a cross near the corner of her bed. Around 1945 Betty’s parents invited a Jewish American soldier, who was stationed in the village, to come and eat dinner with them. The soldier, Morris Berkowitz, asked Betty if she knew she was Jewish and Betty replied, “No, I am Christian,” believing she was. Following the war Betty’s father explained everything to her. Betty was confused for a long time which later led her to study many different religions and their varied beliefs.

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