I know of eight places where my grandparents lived in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. I've found the addresses in my grandfather's writing, in letters from his brother-in-law, from archivists who looked them up in city records, and historian friends who traced previous owners of properties (when I knew the actual names of the people they lived with, but not the location of the property). This doesn't count places my grandfather lived separately from my grandmother (when he was in the maquis, for example).
Of those 8 places (in chronological order)
- One is the apartment where my grandparents were probably living when they got married in 1935. I don't know when they moved in, or how long they lived there, only when they moved out (and into their next apartment).
- One is the apartment in Brussels they were living in when my aunt was born and war broke out. They moved there on August 24, 1937, and moved out when they escaped from Belgium in the fall of 1941.
- One is farm in France where they lived for several weeks in June 1940 as refugees prior to the fall of Belgium and France, before returning to their apartment in Brussels. I know what town they were in, but that's all.
- One Brussels address is almost certainly fake, or rather, it was a real address, but they never lived there. They supposedly moved into the apartment 5 months after they'd escaped Belgium. I'm guessing it was some sort of false forwarding address (and I have evidence they were in France when they moved in according to Belgian city records).
- One early address in France is unknown, and I doubt I'll ever identify it. Grandpa told me they lived in three places in Beaumont-lès-Valence, but only ever described the one where they lived for several years. He refused to talk about the other two.
- I identified one of the two Beaumont addresses Grandpa refused to discuss through letters he sent and received from an American consulate in Vichy, France. However, the address is incomplete by modern standards, identifying only the name of the homeowner and the town. In those days "Chez Mouriquand, Beaumont-lès-Valence, France," was enough to get a letter to the right person. My historian friend was able to identify that it was a farm and its physical location, but after the war, the farm was sold and developed into the Le Granges neighborhood, and we don't know which house is the one where they stayed.
- The third Beaumont address is one where they lived for about three years. It had been a disused cottage on a farm, originally at 11 Rue des Faures. The cottage was torn down after the war, and the farm has also been developed into housing, but the stone well they used for water is still there (and is considered a historical landmark).
- The first address in Valence where they moved not long after the liberation of France (probably in late 1944 - I have a letter dated from December of that year, mentioning that they had moved). It was a tiny apartment. I got that address from letters he received from his brother-in-law in America, and it's also listed on my mother's birth certificate. From other letters, I know they were still living there in May 1946, but I'm not sure when they moved out.
- The final address in Valence where they were living when they immigrated to the US in early 1947. They lived there less than a year.
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