Ahlyce Kaplan collection

Ahlyce Kaplan was born Elyse Goldman in 1930 in Paris, France to Jules and Yolanda Goldman. The family lived at 66 Rue Labolse, near the Champs Elysee. Elyse had a younger sister, Nicole, born ca. 1938, who was intellectually disabled. Upon the declaration of war in 1939, Elyse was sent to western France to live with other children evacuated from Paris in anticipation of war. She reunited with her family in the fall of 1940. In the meantime, Jules, who fought with the French Army, was captured and sent to the Oflag VI prisoner of war camp near Frankfurt. In 1942, Yolanda took Elyse and Nicole to Bueil, a village outside of Paris, and came to visit them frequently. The girls used the false last name of "Godet." Since she was the wife of a prisoner of war, she escaped arrest during the Vel d'Hiv roundup. In August 1942, while visiting her daughters, Yolanda heard someone wonder whether Elyse might be Jewish, so she took her daughters back to Paris. On September 2, 1942, Yolanda disappeared, leaving Elyse in charge of three-year-old Nicole. Elyse heard a rumor that her mother had escaped to the south of France and traveled with her sister to the Spanish border. They met a man who took them to a hiding place, then helped them escape into Vichy France. They reunited with Yolanda and remained in southern France until the end of the war. After the war, they learned that Yolanda's mother, Rose Waldman Korn, had been sent from Drancy to Auschwitz, where she perished.