Powerful Story About Chocolate During The Holocaust

In this short five-minute interview with Francine Christophe from France tells an extraordinary tale. Francine was born August 18, 1933, and she shows the star that she was forced to wear on her chest as a child, like all Jews. She comments how large it was for an eight-year-old child, and how she was sent to the Bergen-Belsen camp. She makes mention that the children of war were privileged because they were allowed to bring a bag of small items.

Francine’s mother packed two little pieces of chocolate and said, “We’ll keep this for a day when I see you’ve collapsed completely, and really need help. I’ll give you this chocolate and you’ll feel better.” Francine’s mother was the barracks chief and brought the chocolate to a woman in labor. She told Francine that it might help the woman feel better after giving birth. After the woman had given birth to a feeble child, the camp was soon liberated. Decades later, when Francine had a child of her own, she organized a lecture on the theme, “If the survivors of concentration camps had had counseling in 1945, what would have happened?”

Many people came to the lecture, but one, in particular, stood out. She came to the podium and asked for Francine, where she took out a piece of chocolate and said, “I am the baby.”