- Biography
- Renee Sachs (born Lyszka, later Lisse) was born on March 13, 1940, in Paris, France to Abraham Juda and Sara Cwajgenbaum Lyszka. Her father was a tailor. Her parents were both born in Poland, but Abraham (born November 20, 1896) came to France as a young child and had French citizenship. Her mother Sara arrived in the mid to late 1930s. Their marriage was arranged by Sara’s brother, who had asked Abraham if he would marry her so that she could get out of Poland. It was agreed that it would be a marriage of convenience, and that once Sara was safely in France, they could separate. Sara gave birth to a child that died in infancy, and then Renee was born, so the couple stayed together. Only two months later, In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France.
One day in 1944, when Renee was only four years old, Sara needed to leave the apartment and warned Renée not to open the door. After a while, Renée heard footsteps and assumed her mother was returning. She answered the knock on the door and discovered a stranger who asked for her mother's whereabouts. Renee honestly answered that she didn't know, but she feared her mother would return while he was still there. When her mother returned, Renee explained what had happened, and her mother told her that it was no longer safe to remain at home. Renee was sent across the hall to live temporality with a neighbor. Shortly thereafter, either the French or German police returned to the house, arrested Sara and sent her to the Drancy detention camp. Renee's father did not want to tell her what had happened to her mother. Instead, he said that she was ill and had been taken to the hospital. Renée's father, using false papers under the alias Claude Bernard, managed to bribe the French camp guards of Drancy and secure Sara's release. Although Sara had been released, she and her husband decided that Renee should go into hiding. As a family, they had been denounced and It was simply too dangerous for her to stay with her parents.
Renee was sent away alone and hidden with her Aunt Renee and her companion Uncle Alexandre, who also had false identities, in St. Pardoux. Renee attended church, learned the prayers and always sat in the rear of the church so she would remember when to stand up and when to sit down.Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944, and the war ended in May 1945. Renee returned home to her parents. In 1951, her mother became ill and died. Renee was sent to live in an orphanage in Brunoy. In 1954, her maternal uncle Michael, who had immigrated to the United States, wrote to Renee and offered to sponsor her immigration. She went to live with him in York, Pennsylvania, where she finished high school. She Americanized her surname to Lisse. Renee earned an undergraduate and graduate degree and enjoyed a long career as an honored foreign language teacher. She married Keith Sachs in 1969 and they had two children. Her father Abraham, 74, died in 1970, in the US. Renee, 75, passed away on March 8, 2015. She was active in the Hidden Children’s Foundation and shared the story of her wartime experiences to diverse groups. She would end her presentations with this thought: "In a terrible world, there are always good people and you can be one of those people.
