Shaul Reichman was a textile merchant who lived in Lens, France with his second wife Hela and his children, Sophie, Esther and Paul. With the German invasion of France in May 1940 the family moved southwards but were stopped in Rue, and finding the routes blocked they returned to Lens. A few months later, the family attempted to flee to the south again. Shaul and Hela sold all their belongings, hid their money amongst their clothes and set off. They reached Paris in February 1941, and boarded a train bound for Puyoô. Upon arrival there, they were caught and taken to the police station. The hidden money was discovered, and the family was accused of smuggling and traveling without a license. Taking the blame for smuggling the money, Shaul was sent to three months' imprisonment in Bayonne. Hela and the children were detained in Biarritz for three weeks and then returned to Paris, where they stayed with relatives and awaited Shaul's release.
In April 1941, the Reichmans escaped to the village of Bénéjacq in southwest France. They paid a resident, Jean Badi, to request permission for them to live with him as his employees. The permit was granted and they lived there for approximately 18 months.
In August 1942, 8-year-old Paul was moved into hiding in a convent, with the assistance of the OSE (Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants, a Jewish children's aid society). He recalls that before he parted from his family, his father told him: "Always remember that you are a Jew, but you must never tell anyone. Try to wash and go to the bathroom alone." That was the last time Paul saw his father.
In November 1942, the Germans took control of Vichy France. Shaul was arrested in Bénéjacq in February 1943, and was sent first to the Gurs transit camp and then to Drancy. He succeeded in sending a postcard to Hela from Drancy, in which he entreated his family to be brave, and expressed the hope that they would be reunited soon. In March 1943, Shaul was deported to the Majdanek extermination camp and murdered.
After Shaul was arrested, Hela decided to escape. She left her belongings with Jean Badi, who signed a document pledging to return them to her on demand. In the summer of 1942, Paul and the children in the convent were evacuated to Saint-Martin-Vésubie in the Alps, on the Italian border. Hela went there too, and then fled to Rome and hid in a convent.
Sophie and Esther were smuggled out to a farm near Toulouse, where they became active in a Zionist underground movement, hiding and smuggling Jews and issuing forged papers. Paul was smuggled to Switzerland and adopted by a Jewish couple. Later he was sent to a Jewish children's home in Bex, where he stayed until the end of the war.
After the war, Sophie and Esther helped to locate children who had been hidden during the war period, and move them to children's homes. Sophie came to collect Paul, who didn't recognize her at first. When Paul came to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) in 1945, he changed his name to Pinchas. When he had to obtain his own ID card at the age of 16, he changed his family name from Reichman to Ben Shaul, in memory of his murdered father.
![Paul Reichman (Pinchas Ben Shaul) on board the "Mataroa" headed for Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) after the war](https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/9720_14.jpg "Paul Reichman (Pinchas Ben Shaul) on board the "Mataroa" headed for Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) after the war")
_2.jpg?itok=gYdTa_Sy "The Siddur (Prayer Book) that Gabriele Kohn Received after Liberation")
