French jewelry blog reveals address of Liebman villa in Neuilly
Joanne is in Paris visiting her friend Carrie, who is ill. She emailed Walter and I overnight asking did we have Hilda's old address in Neuilly. She said she would be in Neuilly today visiting her high-school exchange student pal Sylviane.
Walter replied that he and Joanne had looked for the house once before, in 2007 when their paths crossed in Paris, but that they had not found it. As for me, my only memories of that grand maison go back to early childhood.
So I googled "Joseph Liebman Clerc Neuilly". That is the name of Aunt Hilda's husband, the French jewelry business he owned for a time, and the Parisian suburb where they resided. Up pops a juicy page from a French jewelry history blog chock full of information, including the address of a house at 31 Rue de la Saussaye in Neuilly-sur-Seine that was listed as a Clerc business asset in some Nazi-era litigation in 1944.
The page is a trove of information that explains how Joe came to control this important jewelry brand and store, how he fled Nazi occupation with some of the assets, and how he appealed for restoration after the war. The original of the page is in French and I am working from a Google Translate translation, which is fairly rough.
Obviously there is much more than just the address of the house in Neuilly that we can find here, but it is going to take some time. Walter says he will read it carefully this evening and possibly post further thoughts.
I passed the address info on to Joanne but I don't know yet if she got it in time for her visit with Sylviane.. If so, I'll ask her to post, too.
For now, here is the link to the English translation of the web page and to the original French.
