The last tycoons: the secret history of Lazard Frères & Co by William D. Cohan

1942, the chief of the State Department's visa division wrote both Pierre and Altschul, informing them that a "preliminary examination" of the requested visa "has not resulted in a favorable recommendation." But the matter had been sent for further review to the Interdepartmental Visa Review Committee, and Pierre was invited to appear before this committee, if he desired, on September 18. Pierre's personal appearance in Washington, accompanied by Altschul and Ballantine, did the trick. The official word from the State Department came to Altschul on October 10 from the chief of the visa division. The immigration visas had been approved for the entire family, with the appropriate American officials being so notified in Nice and Montreal. Altschul had pulled off the near impossible. Pierre was free to stay in the United States, and his wife and children were free to immigrate.
    Four days later, though, it had all gone off the rails for Pierre's wife and children. Berthe David-Weill had cabled her husband that the French authorities had blocked the family's departure from Nice. Berthe had consciously missed the deadline to leave France because she wanted to see if she could help her son--Michel's half brother--who although not Jewish had been captured by the Nazis for his role in the French Resistance. Altschul shot off a letter to the State Department to see if the unfortunate decision preventing the rest of the family from leaving France could be reversed. But it was of no use. Pierre's wife and children were out of viable options, despite their considerable wealth and having actually obtained the coveted visas. They spent the remainder of the war in hiding. A few months after being denied the chance to leave France, Berthe and her two stepchildren left Cannes "in a huff," Michel explained, after Michel's grandmother, who was Belgian, "was on the list to be arrested as a foreign Jew." He left Cannes by train, alone with his governess, and sat silently while listening to the other passengers engage in anti-Semitic conversation. "I was not completely foolish," he said. Using falsified papers given to them by sympathizers in Nice and under the assumed named Wattel--chosen because the name started with a W, like Weill--the family then moved to stay with a friend, the countess of Villy, in Aveyron, a small town in the Massif Central. The Weills stayed with the countess for a few months until she found them the castlelike Chateau de Beduer to rent. While plenty nice, the chateau had no running water. They stayed there for two years, from Easter 1943 until Easter 1945. Michel's official papers explained that he was now "Michel Wattel," born in Amiens (not Paris) and in a year different from his actual birth.
    Even in hiding, the family kept their maids and butler. Michel rarely went to school during the war years. "It was wonderful," he said years later. "We had a great time. It was like being on holidays and I read a lot," including the literature of Flaubert, Stendhal, and Gide. But clearly this is the perspective of a child eager to keep the horror at a distance. In reality, there was constant danger. His father was away in New York. And his stepmother worried ceaselessly that the family's Jewish roots would be discovered and their fate sealed, as happened to other family members. Michel would never forget the implications of the whispered conversations on the train leaving Cannes. In an attempt to avoid detection as Jews, Michel and his sister were baptized in the middle of the night and raised from then on as French Catholics. Michel recalled: "My father told me, 'Look, you're French. It's more practical to be Catholic. France is a Catholic country. I will get you baptized.'" (Pierre David-Weill himself converted to Catholicism in 1965.) Michel said this nighttime conversion was of no great import to him as none of his family members were particularly religious. "It was perfectly ordinary," he said. "Frankly, I had no idea I was