Bertha Miller suffered nightmares believing she didn’t do enough to help Jewish children in Nazi-occupied France.
Actually, as a member of the French underground, she did a lot.
“But she always felt guilty that she didn’t do enough,” said daughter Anne-Marie Miller of Berkeley. “We always tried to assure her that was not so.”
Bertha Miller, a resident of Berkeley, died on March 29. She was 96. Another daughter, Odette Meyers, who was very active in the Berkeley Holocaust survivor community, died of cancer in February 2001.
Born Brucha Gutrajman in Poland on July 5, 1905 into a poor family, Miller had no formal education.
At 18, she was part of a Warsaw metal workers’ union. She and four girlfriends who were as poor as she was pooled their money to hire a tutor who taught them such subjects as history and literature.
“They hardly had enough to eat,” said Anne-Marie Miller. “But with what little money they did have, they spent it on that.” She added that all five girls were in love with the tutor.
Miller moved to Paris in the late 1920s, where she met and married another Polish emigre, George Miller. In 1934, Odette was born.
At the outbreak of World War II, George joined the French army. He was soon captured and taken to a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he spent the duration of the war.
In 1942, Miller and Odette were saved from deportation by the concierge of their building, who pushed them into a broom closet.
After that, Miller sent Odette off to the countryside, to be raised by a Catholic family while she stayed in Paris. She worked for the French underground, helping to match Jewish children to non-Jewish families who could hide them.
In July of that year, a sister of Miller’s was taken to Drancy, the transit concentration camp outside Paris, with her children. Putting herself at risk, Miller went there to visit them.
Eventually she joined Odette in the countryside, where they stayed until the war ended. Their experience is recounted in Odette’s 1997 memoir, “Doors to Madame Marie.”
Shortly after the birth of Anne-Marie in 1949, the family moved to the United States, settling in Los Angeles. For the next 30 years, both Miller and her husband worked in the garment industry. In 1994, they moved to Berkeley.
“Bertha was a very tiny woman, but very strong,” said family friend Shirley Stuart of Berkeley.
Bertha and George Miller are featured in a 1996 picture book, “Living Happily Ever After — Couples Talk About Lasting Love.”
“She had a lot of tragedy in her life, but had a really optimistic, hopeful outlook,” said Anne-Marie Miller.
Miller learned to swim at 72, and took classes in yoga, current events and writing.
“She was very curious and interested in everything,” said her daughter. “She was taking classes up until the last years of her life, anything they offered, she would try it once.”
In addition to her daughter, Miller is survived by her husband, George, of Berkeley; grandchildren Anat Silvera of Oakland and Daniel Meyers of Paris, and many nieces and nephews in the United States, France, Argentina and Israel.
Donations in her memory can be sent to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Development Office, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, S.W., Washington, DC, 20024.