Josette’s Story

Nine years ago, when I was invited to spend a weekend in France to work with a small start-up congregation, I realized that my French was very rusty.Remembering that Josette, who was a member of the synagogue I was serv-ing in New York, was a retired French teacher, I asked if she could help me.Josette invited me to her home, where we sat at her dining room table, andshe gave me countless French tutorials. Over grammar lessons and sermon translating, we began to share ourstories with one another.

I find Josette inspiring. Her breadth of experienceand depth of knowledge combined with her passion and energy make her aforce. At 98, she is sharp in intellect and physically spry. Part of me hopes thatby spending time with her, some of her secrets for aging will rub off on me, but mostly, I spend time with Josette because we have developed a deep and loving bond.

It has been years since that trip to France, and I have since left Josette’s synagogue, but we have stayed in touch, and now that I am back in New York, I am also back in her dining room to work on my grammar and swap stories. I asked Josette if I could interview her for Lilith, as she has lived a life filled with adventure and unexpected twists, and Lilith’s mission includes amplifying women’s untold and under-told stories.

MY NAME IS JOSETTE AMSELEM. I was born Josette Azoulay on April 29, 1927 in the Villa Marcel [in Algeria] that used to belong to my mother. And when I was young, until about 10 years old, life was enjoyable. There was a separation between Jews and non-Jews, but some- times it did not really occur. 

And when did things change? 

The first tragic incident I witnessed was in 1936, and I was nine years old. When walking with my mother, coming back from Les Beaux-Arts, where I used to take dancing, piano, et cetera, we saw on a balcony a banderole (banner) with the saying Death to the Jews. And we saw a young man climb on that balcony and take it down, and someone came out from the apartment and shot him down. And he fell almost in front of us, dead. So that was the first encounter with what it meant to be Jewish.

Did you understand what was happening when you were so young?

Oh, yes. Because Léon Blum had just beenelected Prime Minister of France, and we knew that people were protesting and so forth. So we went, and my mother said, “Do you see what’s written there?” “À bas les Juifs (kill Jews).” And she said, Well, that’s life. And she told me at the time a story that happened in 1898 with the Affair Dreyfus. So that was the first encounter. Though my father had been a soldier during the First World War, received five medals, was wounded three times, we, the three children were thrown out of the school in 1940. Because I was the youngest, they kept me until December of 1940. And then they told me not to come back…. All the teachers, all the doctors, all the dentists, everybody Jewish was out of work. Then they took back the Decret Crémieux [The Crémieux Decree], which had given in 1870 the citizenship of France to all the Jews.

And at that time I was told there had been a lot of problems. Suddenly all the Jews were becoming French—and this did not please the Arabs nor the Christians. Anyway, it was revoked. We had to go and be registered as Jews. So we were given papers, which I still have today, where it was written, Juif, Juif, Juif, Juif.

Do you remember the impact that had on your parents?

My parents were shocked. And I was so troubled by [the war] that in 1945, I joined the Dror, which was an organization of young Jews who wanted to go to Palestine.

And how old were you then?

It was in 1945. So I was 18 years old. And in 1947, the group decided to send people to get trained and to hear more about what is going to be needed because at the time, in 1947, the creation of the State of

Israel was at the U.N., discussed at the U.N. I was sent to Italy. And I could not ask my parents to let me go to Italy. So at that time, there was a younger Jewish girl from Tunis. Her name was Shoshanna Cohen. She stayed at my house while she was here in Algiers for the meeting of all the Dror of North Africa. She invited me to go with her to Tunis. And since she had been spending a few days at home, my parents said okay. Instead of going to Tunis, I went to France. This was differ- ent than sneaking out for an overnight slumber party at a friend’s house. And from France, they changed my papers and sent me to Italy. I went to Cannes with two shlichim (emissaries) from Israel, I was alone next to them. And we were supposed to take a boat, a little rowboat from Monte Carlo to Ventimiglia in Italy.

But the first time it didn’t work, we

were arrested by the police. And they said, we understand where you want to go, but you are not going to go from here. They thought we wanted to go to Palestine. So they sent us back to Cannes, and then we tried again. We were able to get on the rowboat. And it started to rain. We arrived in Ventimiglia. There, we spent the night in a little hut. And the following day, I took the train with two shlichim. But unfortunately, they left me alone to continue to Milano.

And what happened next?

And they said, don’t worry. You get off in Milano, you take a taxi, and you say, “5 Unione” So I went off, took a cab, say, “5 Unione.” The driver looked at me and he said, “Oh, Yerushalayim.” And he dropped me there. And that was a camp. The people there had been in [concen- tration] camps, and they survived. And now, nobody wanted them. And there were families, mothers, little children, et cetera. It was the most terrible to see those people, all with a number, even the children. And at the end of each meal, they were looking around and taking pieces of bread and putting them in their pockets. Anyway, after that, a group came to take me to go next to the pope’s mansion in, I think it was, Serrano—the summer place for the pope.

Were you nervous about taking this journey by yourself?

I was terrified But I was young, so it was a new adventure. I had prepared letters that Shoshanna was supposed to send my parents. “From Tunisia.” I forgot to tell you that Claude Amselem, who became my husband, when I joined the Dror already had been there since he was seven years old. He has prepared himself, sleeping on the floor, not drinking water, to go to Palestine. I was told that every day my brother would go to see him and say, where is my sister? Where is my sister?

So were you already dating by this point?

We were dating at the end of, at that point, in 1947. So what did I learn during that mission? I learned how to be in a dark room and take an arm, arming it, in the dark, I learned how to jump from one floor down. I learned how to run—if we attack, we attack and then we run. And we were explained the Palestine geography.

So you left Algiers on May 9th. When did you finally arrive in Israel?

We finally arrived in Israel toward the end of May. And we stayed in the camp Bernadotte for a while. Then they sent shlichim from our kibbutz Regavim, from Kvar Sabah, they sent them to take the ones who were going to that kibbutz.

We had a young friend with us, Jean [Ghénassia]. He had just finished fighting in the Second World War and he was ready to fight again. So anyway, we went to Kvar Sabah and we stayed there for a while. For the whole year, I slept over a box of grenades. Everybody has either a rifle or a submachine gun. And the submachine guns were terrible. So the first thing we did was to erect a tower. For during the day. And also to allow us to have a big… cistern. I don’t know what the word would be. Full of water. Because we didn’t have any water.

One morning, after being attacked every day over a month, one morning we got up and said, what’s going on? Silence.

They had left.

Then…we did the sikulim (prevention). We removed all the stones. We planted a forest. Wow. Yes, of 6,000 trees. And when we went back to Israel, we went back and they were tall… Oh. It was wonderful. We were lucky. I think they could have killed us very easily. You know, we were about 40 people.

Your post in K’far Saba, where is it today?

Batimat is still in the triangle… When I was on Shemira, on guard and Claude was the one going around, and he came and spent some time with me, and he said, “You see that? That’s Syria. The lights. You see there? That’s Jordan. You see there? That’s Lebanon…You see there? That’s Israel, and that’s the sea.”

And were you in touch with your family this whole time?

Yes. I was writing. My mother…well, my father was very proud of me. Poor Claude, he received only reproaches from his family—You’re crazy! Anyway, why did we come back? His mother fell sick, and they thought she was going to die. So they had an asefah (meeting) to let him go. And he said, you come with me? And I said I’m not coming with you. You’ll come back. He said, and if I cannot come back?

When we arrived toward the end of May, and two days after, he was taken by the army.

By the French army? In Algiers?

He was taken by the army, and he stayed in the army for two years. In Algiers. In 1949. It was at the end of the war.

Was Claude able to see his mother before she passed?

She was able to survive. And then we arrived, then we got married, then we had a child. So even when he finished the army, I became too heavy to move. So we stayed in Algiers. And for a few years, it was okay. And, November 1, 1954, the Arabs revolted, and they were telling us, either you choose the [suitcase] or the coffin.

That’s quite a choice.

So then Claude was taken again in the army. They called him. So he went on a Friday. He had to join the French army on a Friday. He took his father’s car and he drove. The officer was there and voilà.

He Claude said, where are your guns? And he said oh they are locked up. He Claude said, they are locked up? And you know he came back from Israel where everyone had his machine gun or submachine gun or rifle… “What do you mean?”

So he said, “I’m married, I have a child, it’s the weekend, I’m going to spend the weekend with my family and I’ll come back on Monday.” He went back on Monday. Everybody had been killed by members of the FLN (the Algerian independence movement). And Claude said, “I am not going to stay in the army.” And since he had had a terrible accident when we were in Israel, in his head, they told him, no you cannot stay in the army.

And then you left?

And then we said, it’s the end. Almost. In 1954, my sister who was married to an American, came with her husband to visit us in Algiers. She was living in New York with her husband. So they came and he wanted to visit all around Algeria. So we took the car with my brother, and at one point, my brother-in-law said, “if, if you had an accident, what would you do? Would you stay or would you run?” And Claude said, “I would run. Otherwise I would be killed.” So he said, “Well, you are building in the sand.”

In November 1954 they attacked… some people would say the Battle of Algiers…but there was no war. There were terrorist actions. Bombs in school buses, with bombs in cafes, bombs in movie theaters, bombs everywhere. And at one point, Claude, when he went out, he had a bat. Then he bought a little gun. A Baretta. Then he gave me the Baretta and he bought a Colt. We missed being killed at least three or four times. One time in particular, they had just opened a new cafeteria that they call it Cafeteria where they had a wonderful café, milk bar, et cetera, and we had gone there one afternoon. A Saturday afternoon. And they served us cafés and croissants, and it was about 4:30 in the afternoon.

And Claude said, “Let’s go.”

And I said, “I’ll pay and just go.” So we left. And he said, “I saw an Arab woman dressed as a French woman go into the bathroom with a package, and come back without it.” Five minutes later, ten cafés in the main places of Algiers went, one after the other with the bombs. So that’s when we said, it’s time to go.

–Rabbi Jaymee Alpert is the founder of Neshama Body and Soul and a former congregational rabbi.

Image captions: Kosette and Claude in Israel in 1948; Josette and her mother (you can see her face) in the villa in Algiers in 1942, when Josette is 15–16 years old; Rabbi Jaymee Alpert with Josette in 2022.