Do Je Ws Believe in Beinv Bon Again
JTA — The heartwarming story has been difficult to miss: A law professor is shopping at his local grocery store when sees an elderly woman struggling to get her favorite jam from a high shelf. Why is it her favorite? "I am a Holocaust survivor," she says. "During the war, the family that owns the company hid my family in Paris."
Tens of thousands of people — at least — take shared the story since it began circulating on social media this weekend. It has prompted countless people to vow to buy simply Bonne Maman-make jam, whose 26 varieties are almost all kosher, in the future.
Merely is Bonne Maman, with its tin't-miss crimson gingham jar lids, really an anti-Nazi jam?
The company, whose founding families are famously secretive, isn't taking any credit for the activity of its founders' families during World War II.
Incident in a NJ Supermarket
At the supermarket today, I found a pocket-sized, elderly woman standing in front end of a loftier shelf holding @BonneMamanUS preserves. She was having trouble finding the flavor she wanted because the jars were set up back on the shelf.
— Michael Perino (@ProfessorPerino) February 14, 2021
"The family prefers to maintain privacy and does non annotate on inquiries near personal matters," Bonne Maman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement.
Michael Perino, the St. John's University professor who originally posted the story on Twitter, told JTA that the incident happened on Lord's day morning in his northern New Jersey grocery store. He said he was surprised by the woman's sophistication and power to shop lonely at her age, which he estimated to be late 80s or early on 90s. He didn't ask for her proper noun, non wanting to pry.
"Information technology was a beautiful moment," Perino said. "When she gave the explanation, you know, it'south one of these things where your kind of your heart stops for a moment, because it's totally unexpected."
Bonne Maman, founded in 1971 by members of the Gervoson family, is based in Biars-sur-Cère, a town in southern France. Neither the boondocks nor any of its inhabitants are listed on the registry of "righteous gentiles" — non-Jews who rescued Jews from the Holocaust — that is maintained by Yad Vashem, Israel'due south Holocaust memorial and museum.
Nor is anyone with the proper noun of the company's founding families in the database, which is comprehensive and thoroughly researched only does non necessarily include every possible person who might be eligible for it.
At least i person has publicly described his family's experience being sheltered in Biars-sur-Cère: A New Bailiwick of jersey man named Eric Mayer told the Jewish Standard in 2016 that he and his siblings had hidden there after leaving their parents behind in Frg. He even noted that the town, which he said had 800 people at the fourth dimension he lived at that place, later became the home of Bonne Maman.
Some internet sleuths seeking to verify Perino's grocery shop encounter — or at least to rebut skeptics — noted that Mayer told the Jewish Standard that his sister had been with him in Biars-sur-Cère, suggesting that she might have been the mystery shopper. Merely the story says that Mayer'southward sister died prior to 2016.
The Town Hall of Biars-sur-Cère (Père Igor/Wikimedia commons)
Certainly, other Jewish children could have wound upward in the same town. Many Jewish children who were being sheltered in Paris were moved to southern French republic after the Nazis invaded the capital city. Biars-sur-Cère is nigh a four-60 minutes bulldoze from Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, the French mountain boondocks that is 1 of two municipalities honored collectively by Yad Vashem for its efforts to salve Jews. In that location, nigh 2,500 Jews received shelter during the state of war. (One of them left the town more than than $2 meg when he died at 90 on Christmas Day.)
Only Perino'due south story says the woman said her family was sheltered in Paris, more than 250 miles from Biars-sur-Cère. Jean Gervoson founded the company with his brother-in-law, Pierre Chapoulart; the Chapoulart family was already established in Biars-sur-Cère past the war. Gervoson died in 2018, his wife Suzanne in 2015.
Could the cocky-identified bubbe in the grocery shop be confused virtually where and by whom she was sheltered as a child more than than 75 years ago? Could the Gervoson or Chapoulart families have hidden Jews from Nazis and never gotten credit for it? Could Perino — who after thanked those who added details he had non — have asked a few more questions before posting his story to Twitter?
Yes, yes and, well, yeah. But for some who appreciated the story, the facts may not matter.
"Please don't make me fact bank check the Bonne Maman story," Jennifer Mendelsohn, a journalist who is widely known for her genealogy sleuthing online, tweeted on Wednesday morning. "Can't it exist like Santa Claus?"
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Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/is-bonne-maman-the-anti-nazi-jam-the-internet-wants-to-think-so/
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