NPR

Waiting Out Coronavirus In The French Alps, 'Cooped Up In The Great Outdoors'

A 73-year-old French woman in confinement in Chamonix recalls her Jewish father, who survived World War II hiding out in a nearby village. Others sent him smoke signals to warn when Nazis were near.
Jacques Enoch with his bike in the Alps in 1941. Danièle Enoch-Maillard's father, who was Jewish, survived World War II in an Alpine village with the help of a deputy mayor and a postal worker who sent smoke signals every time the Nazis headed up the mountain road to the hamlet.

In a chalet in Chamonix, in the French Alps, 73-year-old Danièle Enoch-Maillard waits out the coronavirus epidemic — and thinks of her father.

He also took refuge not far from here, in the village of Notre Dame de Bellecombe, though at a different time and for entirely different reasons.

"My father survived the Second World

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