Bernard's Story and Full Video Testimony
Born in Paris in 1934, Bernard Biderman was the youngest of three boys in a Jewish family originally from Warsaw. His parents had left Poland for France in 1922 to escape poverty and antisemitism, hoping to build a safer future.
Both worked as tailors, and although the family lived modestly, Bernard remembers a happy childhood before the war, with Yiddish spoken at home and family life at the center of everything.
By 1941, Bernard was already experiencing the growing antisemitism of occupied France. Forced to wear the yellow star, he was insulted and beaten at school by children calling him a “dirty Jew.”
Everything changed on July 16, 1942, during the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup. French police came knocking at the family’s door, but a policeman who knew the Bidermans secretly warned them that the roundup was about to begin. The family quickly hid upstairs in the apartment of a Greek Jewish neighbor while thousands of Jews across Paris were being arrested.
Soon after, Bernard and his brothers were hidden with a paid caretaker, but the conditions were horrific. The children were neglected, beaten, barely fed, and suffered from lice and scabies. After four months, their parents managed to retrieve them and paid their last savings to have the boys smuggled across the demarcation line into southern France.
The three brothers were eventually entrusted to Abbé Antoine Dumas, the priest of Saint-Just-en-Doizieux in the Loire region, who hid dozens of Jewish children during the war. Bernard and his brothers would remain there for nearly three years.
Bernard often says he became an adult at the age of eight. Too dangerous to attend school, he spent his days helping gather food for survival — walking miles in wooden clogs through the countryside to collect eggs and milk, often with frozen feet and an empty stomach. Yet despite the hardship, he remembers the kindness of Abbé Dumas, who cared deeply for the children and treated them with humanity and dignity.
During those years in hiding, Bernard developed a strong connection to the Christian faith of the village. He rang the church bells during Sunday Mass and prayed constantly for his parents’ return. In 1944, while praying in church to the Virgin Mary for his mother to come back, his prayer was answered just days later when she arrived to find him. The experience remained deeply meaningful to him throughout his life.
After the war, the Biderman family helped ensure that Abbé Dumas was honored as Righteous Among the Nations for risking his life to save Jewish children.
In a moving moment of resilience and continuity, Bernard celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at the age of 85 alongside his grandson Alex. In 2018, he moved to Tel Aviv to be closer to his family. Today, his story stands as a testament to survival, faith, and the courage of those who chose humanity in the darkest of times.
