Dr. Pierre Chanover: " I often speak to groups about my life. I show them my yellow star, and I bring rutabaga, the food on wish I sustained myself". During the war, I was in Gurs, one of the twenty-three concentration camps in France. I watched other children escape the camp by climbing under a truck and hanging onto the axle. When the Nazis entered Paris, my father, a tailor and designer, was taken away immediately. My mother and I escaped to Vichy, France, but this was taken over, and I was captured and taken to Gurs. But, like the other children I had seen, I managed to escape as well. The French underground then cared for me. Eventually I was taken care of by a family who raised me as their son and sent me to Catholic church. One of the priests cared for me and, until he was killed, protected me as well as a number of other children from the Germans. I returned to Paris upon liberation to discover that, though her apartment had been entirely devastated, my mother’s neighbors had kept her safe. Since she was a seamstress, she worked for the Nazis as forced labor. In the background of the portrait I have placed the yellow star we were required to wear. I often speak to groups about my life; I show them my yellow star, and I bring a rutabaga, the food on which I sustained myself. But the survival skills I learned through my trials later made me an excellent soldier in the Korean War. Dr. Pierre Chanover is a professor of French at Florida Atlantic University.