Huguette Dreyfus

Pauline Huguette Dreyfus was born in Mulhouse, Alsace, France, on 30 November 1928 to Fernand and Marguerite Dreyfus. At age 4, she began piano lessons. With her cousin Nicole (later a famous lawyer), and also her older brother Pierre, she played duets and improvised, still a child. Her family was well off, her father an industrialist with factories in Mulhouse and Vichy.[1][2]

After WWII was declared, Jewish families were evacuated from the Alsace region. The Dreyfus family fled to Vichy, where young Pauline enrolled in the Clermont-Ferrand conservatory under a pseudonym, finishing her studies with a first prize in piano. She must have taken on students then, as she said later that she had started teaching at age 14. In December 1942, she, her brother, and her father escaped into Switzerland and settled in Geneva where they had relatives.[3]