Liliane S. Dockett papers

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 

Liliane S. Dockett (1934- ) was born Liliane Sophie Hirsch in Paris to Paul Hirsch and Nety Hammer Hirsch. Her sister Jacqueline was born in the month before the German invasion of France. Her maternal grandfather, David Hammer, was a furrier whose ability to supply the German army with vests protected the family from arrest for eighteen months. The girls spent part of the war hiding under false identities in a village near Beauvais, their mother under a false identity in Paris, and their maternal grandparents behind a false wall at their fur workshop. Dockett immigrated to the United States in 1947 with her mother and sister. 

Liliane S. Dockett papers 

folder 1 

The Liliane S. Dockett papers consist of identification papers, a memoir, photographs, and a store sign documenting Dockett’s childhood experiences as part of a Jewish family in occupied France.Identification papers include identification cards for Nety Hirsch (made in the name “Sarah Hirsch”) and her mother, Rose Hammer, and a photograph of David Hammer’s 1926 French naturalization certificate authorized by Pierre Laval. Dockett’s seven page memoir describes her childhood experiences during World War II, being protected from arrest and then going into hiding, the fates of some of her Jewish school friends, and immigrating to the United States. Photographs depict Rose Hammer wearing the yellow star and Dockett with her mother and sister. The store sign reads “Jüdisches Geschäft” and “Entreprise Juive” and had been placed on Liliane Dockett’s grandfather’s furrier business. 

The Liliane Dockett papers are arranged as a single series: I. Liliane Dockett papers, 1926-1998 (bulk 1942)