Francine Ajzensztark Taylor papers

Francine Ajzensztark Taylor was born in Karczew, Poland, in 1928. In 1931, she moved with her parents and older sister to Paris, France, to escape Polish antisemitism. Ajzensztark and her sister, Suzanne Ajzensztark, learned French but spoke Yiddish at home.

Ajzensztark and her family continued to live in Paris after the German occupation of France in 1940. In 1942, her father's involvement with the French underground led to his arrest. He was deported to Auschwitz and killed shortly after his arrival. Ajzensztark's mother, Germaine Königsberg Ajzensztark, and her sister went into hiding in Toulouse, and Ajzensztark, who had earlier been sent to the countryside in LeMans for health reasons, fled by train and bicycle to join them.

After Ajzensztark rejoined her mother and sister, they obtained false identification cards and moved again to Saint-Fraimbault, a small hamlet in occupied France. They stayed with the Hertaux family, French peasants who believed the women were victims of bombings outside of Paris and did not know they were Jewish for most of the time they housed them. Once the area was liberated by the Allies, the women returned to Paris, where Ajzensztark and her sister found work at the Orly Air Base. While there, Ajzensztark met Harry Taylor, a member of the United States Army Air Forces. They were engaged and returned to the United States in 1949 and married in 1950. Harry Taylor was eventually transferred to Charleston, South Carolina, where the couple settled with their two sons.