Surviving War and Occupation

Abstract Experiencing the turmoil and losses of another war, in June 1940 Ségal and Auclair evacuated with Marie-Claire to Lyon. One year later, Vichy’s Jewish Statutes cost Ségal her job. She went underground and helped a resistance movement prepare tracts. Auclair continued to work for Marie-Claire, supporting her three children and her mother. She and her ex-husband Jean Prévost, also in Lyon, shared parenting of their children. In 1944 Prévost joined the Resistance in the Vercors mountains. He was killed in the fighting after D-Day. The war’s traumas destroyed the comfortable lives Ségal and Auclair had created before the war, forcing them both to start over and, once again, draw on their internal strengths and resources.