When Freeport resident of 57 years and Holocaust survivor Mireille Taub began documenting her family’s journey from Nazi-occupied France to the United States, she did not intend to publish a memoir about these experiences, let alone a book.
Taub will discuss her book, “The Last Train from Paris: Escape and Refuge 1940,” at Sparkle on Stage Cultural Arts Center, 195 Woodcleft Ave., in Freeport, beginning at 3 p.m. on Sunday.
The afternoon will include a book talk and light refreshments, and copies of the book, which was published in the spring, will be available for purchase.
That first story, sparked by her grandson’s school project, grew into a decades-long quest to record lost histories — a long search that culminated this spring with her collection’s publication through Lamberson Corona Press, based out of West Babylon.
“I started writing the first one about myself when my grandson was 9 years old,” Taub recalled.
Taub, 87, now an active educator and speaker, explained that the book is not only about her experiences as a Holocaust survivor, but also a collection of stories that she assembled about her family and her extended family. Each tale centers on different relatives or friends whose experiences were shared with her over the years.
Her own earliest memories belong not to herself, but to the stories told by others.
“I was 2 years old when we escaped from France to the United States in 1940, so my memory is certainly not there,” she said.
The book centers around her family’s perilous escape from Paris in June 1940, and its title comes from a remark Taub’s father had shared with her.
“He produced the title ‘The Last Train from Paris,’ because my dad had told me that we took the last train out of Paris as Paris was about to surrender to the Nazis,” she told the Herald.
As they were fleeing, Taub recalled, the train they had boarded was being bombed en route to Bordeaux — an experience she said they were fortunate to survive. Targeting civilians in this manner was a common Nazi tactic during what became known as the Paris exodus, when masses of residents tried to escape from the city, she explained.
Their journey to the United States involved many improbable acts of luck and kindness. After being stranded before reaching Bordeaux Taub’s father found help from an American consulate officer, with the family landing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn when they first made it stateside.
“She took us across France, from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean coast,” Taub said, “and we crossed the border into Spain and then Portugal.”
Later, she would learn that the Portuguese consulate’s heroic decision to issue visas to fleeing refugees made their escape possible — which she only discovered decades after the war.
While much of the book came from family lore, painstaking corroboration was necessary, the Freeport author said.
“I have a good memory, and a lot of the stories were confirmed by other members of the family,” Taub explains, “so other relatives, you know, overlap in their accounts of what was going on.”
Her research also included stories from friends and acquaintances — anyone with patience for “an inquisitive child,” she said.
However, not all of the stories in the book end with survival. One chapter memorializes her cousin, Madeleine, who was killed in the Paris roundups of 1942. Others, like Taub’s Uncle Leon, are remembered for the resourcefulness that saw them through peril.
Taub’s objective for writing the book is larger than her own family’s legacy. “We, as survivors, are a diminishing population,” she reflected, adding that her hope is to bear witness to “man’s inhumanity to man, about resistance and courage in different aspects.”
For Taub, the slogan “never again” is not merely words but a personal vow.
All proceeds from her book’s private sales will benefit the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County in Glen Cove, where she is a longtime docent and educator. She also chairs the center’s film program, choosing works that address the plight and resilience of many different groups.
Looking to the future, Taub encourages others — regardless of their background — to become “family historians” and share their own stories.
“I think it’s important, no matter what one may feel about one’s family,” she said. “Whether it’s trivial or extraordinary or whatever, from a family point of view, it’s nice to know what went on in the past and how it created the present and probably the future.”
By writing and sharing these experiences, she ensures that the stories she carries remain a living part of her family and community for generations to come.
“I’ve known Mireille Taub for a couple of years now, as we sit together on the executive board of the Long Island Arts Council at Freeport,” Robyn Workman, owner of Sparkle on Stage, said in a text message. “She’s a wonderful woman with many stories to tell. But after reading her book, I am touched more than ever by her story.
“I am lucky to personally know a survivor, and we must continue to tell the stories of the Holocaust so that we can preserve freedom and democracy,” Workman added, “especially in the times that are occurring now in our own country.”
More information about Sunday’s book discussion is available at sparkleonstage.org and liacf.org.
