When we watch “Le Cahier de Danièle Kahn”, a film by her son Didier Roten, screened at the Rex (1), we cannot help but think of Anne Franck’s diary. Certainly, a stroke of luck allowed Danièle, 12 years old in 1944, to escape the arrest which took away her parents, sister, brother, uncle and aunt. A trip of no return to Auschwitz, when they were thinking of going to a work camp.
She will live without them, but not alone. Second stroke of luck, Danièle finds people on her way who will save her. In Paris first: Lilly Lafont who, for greater safety, sent her to the countryside in Côte-d’Or with the Lefèvres, resistance fighters. From now on, to blend in better with the villagers, her name is Daniel Martin.
For the little Parisian, the countryside is a revelation that alleviates her anxieties. At school, she makes friends. A teacher warned them: “Be kind to the new girl and don’t ask her any questions”
Nightmares
The nightmares don’t go away, however. “They are passed down from generation to generation, the one that my mother told, where she was chased by the “boches” in a dark forest to a cliff from where she plunged into the abyss, also haunted my sleep as a child,” admits Didier Roten. “I suppressed the idea of making a film about my family for a long time. But there is always a new generation of audiences to whom we must address. »
Thomas Duranteau helped him a lot as a graphic designer to bring Danièle’s drawings to life and extend them, as a specialist of the period from a memorial trip with former deportees to the extermination camps.
As for Danièle’s story, of a family of veterans and where the mother wrote poetry in newspapers, it is of good quality for a 12 year old child.
Shortly before dying at the age of 90 in 2022, she was able to return with her son Didier to Petit Jailly, the village where she had taken refuge in 1944. At the Lefebvres she found Michel, the son who was her age and friends from the time.
(1) It can be found on France tv.replay “Le Cahier de Danièle Kahn”. And in 2025 on the History channel.
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