Background
Genevieve Pitot was born on August 29, 1930, in Mauritius. She grew up there.
(In 1940 thousands of Jews were trying to flee Nazi persec...)
In 1940 thousands of Jews were trying to flee Nazi persecution in Europe. This is the little-known story of a group of 1,600 Jewish refugees who, having escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe, were refused entry into Palestine by the British in 1940 because they were considered illegal immigrants. Their deportation after landing in the Promised Land, Eretz Israel, was unique. As a deterrent to others, they were deported to Mauritius, a remote island in the Indian Ocean. They were detained in a Mauritian prison until the end of the war and were deprived of all basic human rights even that of family life. This story sheds light on the British government's lack of understanding of the critical problem of Jewish refugees at that time.
https://www.amazon.com/Mauritian-Shekel-Detainees-Mauritius-1940-1945/dp/0742508552/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=The+Mauritian+Shekel%3A+The+Story+of+Jewish+Detainees+in+Mauritius%2C+1940-1945&qid=1593440144&s=books&sr=1-1
1998
Genevieve Pitot was born on August 29, 1930, in Mauritius. She grew up there.
There is no information, where Genevieve Pitot received her education.
In view of her career as a structural engineer first in London and then in Frankfurt, Genevieve Pitot would not seem inclined to write a book of this nature. However, living in Germany made her sensitive to the dark Nazi era and, in particular, to the fate of the Jews. Her childhood memories of the wartime Jewish detainees in Mauritius prompted her to find out more about the reasons for their exile to that remote island.
On the small island of Mauritius off of the southeast coast of Africa, nearly 1,600 Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe landed in December of 1940. The British government had prevented them from going to Palestine (now Israel) and forced them to stay on the island in barbed-wire enclosed internment camps. The 1,300 survivors were allowed to return to Palestine in August of 1945. These are the difficult years which Geneviève Pitot details in her first book, The Mauritian Shekel: The Story of Jewish Detainees in Mauritius, 1940-1945.
She never knew of these detainees, however, until years later, while working in Germany, she recognized the paintings of her former art teacher in grade school. The teacher, Madame Anne Frank, had only been at her school for a year and then disappeared without explanation. As it happened, Madame Frank was one of the Jewish refugees. The coincidence with the paintings promoted Pitot to investigate further, and she managed to contact several former refugees and some of the children born on the island.
(In 1940 thousands of Jews were trying to flee Nazi persec...)
1998