Max and Flora Hakkert left the Netherlands in late July 1942 with their two children, Ans (born 1918) and Philip (born 1920), and with Ans's fiancé, Andries Davids (born 1916). The young couple hurried to marry (religiously) one day before their departure. They arrived in non-occupied France on August 12 and settled in Lons-le-Saunier (Dept. Jura), maybe planning to flee to Switzerland. The whole family was arrested on August 26 by the French police. Being Dutch citizens, they were not immediately deported, but sent to Rivesaltes camp. After Nazi Germany invaded the southern zone in November, Rivesaltes was closed, but like hundreds of foreign Jews, the Hakkerts remained kept in the nets of the Vichy internment policy and sent to a camp specially set up for Dutch citizens in Châteauneuf-les-Bains (Dept. Puy-de-Dôme). They did not try to escape, which could have saved them, but seem to have felt relatively safe in that Châteauneuf accommodation. Flora and Ans asked Alice Ferrières, a French teacher deeply involved in helping the Jews, to find for them a job outside the camp. But before they could leave, the three men, Max, Philip and Andries, were seized by the French police on February 24, 1943, as three of 2'000 hostages to be deported, to avenge the assassination of two German officers in Paris. They left on Feb. 25 for Gurs, then Drancy, and were deported on March 5 to Sobibor or Majdanek (transport Nr. 51). Ans received two postcards in Châteauneuf, one from Andries, telling that he was leaving for an unknown destination, and one from her father, thrown from the deportation train. Then nothing more.
After that, Flora and Ans hid near Lyons and sought protection at the Dutch diplomatic representation (Office néerlandais). They tried to flee to Switzerland, maybe helped by Jean Weidner. Three times they were turned away at the Swiss border, before finally managing to enter the safe haven on January 20, 1944. Ans remarried later with a Dutch refugee.
Sources: Geneva State Archives; Patrick CABANEL, «Chère Mademoiselle...». Alice Ferrières et les enfants de Murat, 1941-1944. Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 2010