On Friday, September 29, 2023, at 12:45 p.m. in the Holocaust Resource Center, Holocaust survivor Daniel Kochavi visited Stockton University to speak on his experience hiding in Paris during the Holocaust.

Kochavi came to Stockton with his son, John, and sister, Monique. During a 7-month period (January 1945 – August 1945), the resistance was able to hide Daniel in an all-girls Catholic boarding school. He was very fortunate that he was never able to draw attention to himself. His sister, Monique, was born in 1947 and would leave France after the war.

“Toward the end of the occupation, by late ’43, early ‘44, my mother was active with the resistance. They started deporting everybody. She was afraid she would be arrested and she decided to go into hiding and put me in that school. It was a boarding school for girls. I wasn’t passed as a girl, I was passed as a son of the director,” said Kochavi.

“We left France to go to Israel in 1950. We were there until 1957 and 1958. In 1958, I went to Paris and lived there for another month. My parents went to the U.S. and I went to Canada in Quebec. In 1959, I moved to The U.S. and joined my family in Boston,” said Kochavi.

After Kochavi shared his experience, Professor Micheal Hayes gave a brief presentation on what he had been working on. He found that Holocaust survivors in South Jersey, most of whom have settled here, started chicken farms. He presented a map of all the local chicken farms with connections to local Holocaust survivors. It provides a new perspective on how survivors of the Holocaust can be so local and connected to our community.

“It is important to keep these memories alive and keep telling people. I may be one of the last, and my generation may be one of the last people who are still living from that time. But on the other end, those kids are probably the last generation to meet in person the survivors. That’s why it is important to learn to read about the Holocaust,” said Kochavi.