When I received an invitation from the senior assistant to the mayor of Montégut-Plantaurel (Ariège), Annick Vigneau, to attend the inauguration of the Musée des Enfants du Château de la Hille, I instantly accepted. For the 98 children being honored in this village of 263 inhabitants, outside Toulouse, France, had been my pals 67 years ago in the Home Général Bernheim, and my brother’s in the Home Speyer, in Brussels. With them, in three crowded cattle cars, we barely had kept ahead of the Germans’ advance into France on May 14, 1940, and then had shared a primitive granary as a hideout from the Nazis in bucolic Seyre par Nailloux. Because my brother and I had received our American visas on May 6, 1940, we left for New York that September. The other children remained behind until the following spring, before finding refuge for four more years in Montégut-Plantaurel, an hour or so farther south in the Pyrenees.

With the exception of Ilse Garfunkel, whom I ran into a few years ago, I had lost touch with “the children.” Ms. Garfunkel told me that one of them, Werner Rindsberg (Walter Reed), had contacted her because he was writing a book about his former companions. He already had been in Australia, South America, Israel, and Europe. In January 2006, he and I began to exchange information and discuss the difficulties of sorting out true memories from reconstructions. He also informed me that by the spring of 1941, our boys had restored the ramshackle Château de la Hille, at the instigation of the Croix-Rouge Suisse Secours aux Enfants. Our Brussels saviors — Mesdames Marguerite Goldschmidt-Brodsky, René deBecker, Louise Wolff, and Lily Feldeggen — had convinced the Red Cross to protect “their” children. Only after Mr. Reed received Madame Feldeggen’s files did we learn that these women had also secured the American consulate’s promise for transit visas through Spain and Portugal, and the exit permit from Vichy France, to allow the entire group to get to America. Alas, our State Department’s approval never came.

Before flying to Toulouse, I read David Gumpert’s book, “Inge: A Girl’s Journey through Nazi Europe.” Mr. Gumpert had known of Inge (Joseph) Bleier’s efforts to overcome the loss of her mother and the nightmares — caused by her capture by Wehrmacht and gendarmes, which had landed her three pals in Auschwitz — that persisted even after she was married, had become a nurse, and had adopted a daughter. Seriously depressed and sick, she committed suicide in 1983 at the age of 56. Mr. Gumpert also noted that my friend Inge Helft had died in Auschwitz; that Inge Berlin had gotten out, and that her 15-year-old brother, Egon, after joining the Resistance, had been shot by the Germans and clubbed to death. His comrades were sent to the death chambers.

On June 22, I attended the inaugural dinner for the museum, with 14 of the “children,” about 15 relatives and friends, around 30 Montégutians, and a group of Spaniards who had also found refuge (from Franco’s Spain) at the Château de la Hille. The lingua franca was French or English. None of us thought of reverting to our native German. Inevitably, no one recognized anyone else. But even before Walter, our master of ceremonies, suggested that we briefly introduce ourselves, that changed in a flash when Toni (Rosenblatt) Parolini took charge of seating arrangements.

Now we recalled the scary train ride to Toulouse from Brussels, recounted shared dangers and escapades, remembered how we had dealt with the lack of toilet facilities and other calamities. Gray-haired, frail participants spoke of their teenage worries, of their (puppy?) loves and brave deeds. They had known that when they turned 18, the protection of the Swiss Red Cross would end, that the gendarmes and gestapo could round them up at any moment, and that they would have to get across the Swiss or Spanish border illegally. (They crawled below electrified barbed wire to elude would-be captors and their searchlights, took endless chances, and suffered inhuman deprivations.)

Remembering and forgetting were inextricably entangled, and friendships were being renewed. Trying to catch up, avid listeners interrupted to augment or correct details of the past, or to tell their own stories. I connected with individuals I no longer remembered, and wondered what was behind the pensive or haunted expressions of men and women who, so obviously, were concealing some thoughts, were doubting what they heard, or were (silently) recollecting past rivalries.

My confrères had waited for mail from parents who had been deported, and for the end of a war that seemed to predict a German victory. I learned about carefree excursions into the surrounding woods, and about the moyens’ (the younger children’s) watch duty to spot the arrival of the gendarmes and give the endangered grands (the over-16) time to disappear into the secret hiding place, a sliding closet door that led to a hidden space. My dinner companions praised the Swiss guardians who had taught them French, and Sebastian Steiger, whose book, “Die Rettung der Kinder von La Hille,” sadly downplayed the part played by Rösli Näf — who had organized dangerous escapes and had put her life on the line.

I suspect that while Mr. Reed read aloud the writer Jacques Roth’s reminiscences, most of us were reflecting on our subsequent lives, and on the invisible ties to the “brothers and sisters” with whom we had shared what should have been the most carefree days of our lives. Many of the “children” had lost both parents; the faces of participants who no longer spoke a common language expressed understanding. I read contentment in the countenances of the two Israelis, Ruth (Schütz) Usrad and Else (Rosenblatt) Stern, and was surprised that neither of them seemed to be as worried about the state of their country as those of us who watch CNN or Fox News. When at the end of that overly abundant meal the former “girls” started to sing the La Hille marching tunes, our emotions got the better of us. I almost was sorry that I had not been with them back then.

This feeling extended to Saturday morning, when the museum was officially inaugurated. Over 100 people from the surrounding area came to hear the mayor of Montégut Plantaurel (Ariège) emphasize the plight and courage of the children of La Hille. He and two officials from Toulouse and Ariège praised the French citizens who had helped keep so many of them alive, and those who had resisted the Germans. He did not whitewash the gendarmes or the collaborators. Still, I was most touched by the 8- and 9-year-old children from the area who, one after another, began the proceedings by reading a detailed history of les enfants de la Hille. They empathized and understood the importance of the occasion. When these children sang the La Hille songs at the end of the ceremony, I felt uplifted by their enthusiasm, almost convinced that we had not suffered for nothing, that children like these might serve as a bulwark against future genocides.

In pictures and prose, the walls of the small museum told stories of les petits, les moyens, and les grands more than six decades ago, as did the books and paraphernalia on the tables. During the reception that followed, visitors freely mixed with locals, answered their questions and exchanged addresses. With the Reeds and the Usrads, I visited the concentration camp of Le Vernet, and the nearby railroad station — deserted, and dominated by its locked cattle car.

After Sunday lunch at René and Marie Thérèse de Laportalière’s Château de Bonnac, we drove to Seyre to admire the faint wall paintings of Disney characters one of our girls had made for les petits. When I mentioned that I was leaving on the following day, the Laportalières insisted that I stay with them.

Noting my upbeat mood, René said only a handful of French villages are as aware as the commune de Montégut-Plantaurel is of French collaboration and anti-Semitism. And that without Annick Vigneau’s curiosity, sensibility, and passion, there would be no Musée des Enfants de la Hille.

Ms. Kurzweil is the former editor of Partisan Review and University Professor Emeritus, Adelphi University. Her most recent book is “Full Circle: A Memoir.”