This June 16, in the classroom of the Jacques-Prévert college in Bourg-sur-Gironde, the emotion is palpable. On a table, photographs of Rachel Taytel and her parents have been placed, alongside her school certificate, obtained in Teuillac, near Bourg, on June 6, 1942. A filing cabinet carefully lists the ration cards of the family, greeting cards, birthday cards, official documents…
In the center of the room, a wicker trunk is presented. In turn, the students of 3e from the Rachel-Taytel class present a school year of work around the story of the 16-year-old girl and her parents, deported in 1944 to Auschwitz. An important moment for these young people who are part of a special class whose ambition is to deepen the classic school program on the Second World War.
Santa’s hood
At the end of the ceremony, a man approaches. Alain Pons leans on his cane to reach the center of the room. “This trunk, which is now a century old, was for many years the basket of Father Christmas of Teuillac”, announces the man who was mayor from 1979 to 2001. In 1978, one of the inhabitants of the village must disguise himself as a bearded man dressed in red and white. But it lacks a hood.
“From there, I understood that we had found something special. I saw people cry and I looked at my population differently. »
A grandfather of a pupil from the municipal school, Gérard Juin, brings back a trunk found in his attic, which should do the trick. Residents add iron handles to it, and voila. But everyone ignores the past of this hood. It was not until 1985, when Alain Pons asked his constituents to search attics and attics to unearth objects, as part of the preparation for the centenary of the school in the town.
Among these treasures, he was told school notebooks belonging to a young girl. On the first page, written in purple ink, a name: Rachel Taytel. Anyone who has lived in Teuillac since 1955 is surprised to have never heard of this family, in a village of 600 inhabitants where everyone knows each other. Alain Pons discovers that these objects and school notebooks were in this trunk, which had been used for nearly ten years as Santa’s basket.
The aedile begins to ask questions. “From there, I understood that we had found something special. I saw people cry and I looked at my population differently. All these people I had known forever had never spoken of the tragic fate of this family,” says Alain Pons.
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