Peter Feigl grew up in Berlin. When he was seven, he and his family fled to Prague, then via Vienna to Belgium. The 1940 German invasion forced them to flee to southern France. In the summer of 1942, Peter Feigl was in a vacation camp when he heard of his parents’ arrest. Hoping to see them again, he began to write a diary for them.
A Quaker aid organization arranged a US visa and a ship’s passage for Peter Feigl. Shortly before the planned departure German troops occupied southern France, preventing his escape. Peter Feigl was put into the Les Grillons children’s home in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. After nine months, he was given forged papers and moved to a boarding school in Figeac under the name of Pierre Fesson.
In May 1944, the Jewish Sixième resistance group arranged Peter Feigl’s escape to Switzerland. An escape helper took him and other Jewish children to an unfenced section of the border at Soral, near Geneva. Their escape succeeded. He spent two years in a series of internment camps, homes, and foster families. Peter Feigl never saw his parents again. He joined relatives in the United States in 1946.
Children and teenagers with staff outside the Les Grillons children’s home, including Peter Feigl (back row, 2nd from left) and the home’s manager Daniel Trocmé (back row, right, partially obscured), Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, 1943. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., 86055
Entry in Peter Feigl’s diary describing his arrival in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, January 16, 1943 (facsimile). Source: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Original: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., Gift of Peter Feigl, 1992.59, Foto: Georg Engels
