In August 1944, 10-year-old Fanny Kraus watched from a window of the children’s home where she was living near Huriel in central France. Retreating German soldiers fired toward the window, injuring one girl and sending the children under their beds.

The soldiers were gone the next day, but Kraus did not know whether her parents were alive. She returned to the window each day, hoping they would come for her.

Fanny Kraus Partow, who survived the Holocaust as a hidden Jewish child and later built a life in Iran and the United States, died on Aug. 13 at The Hearth at Drexel in Bala Cynwyd. She was 92.

Partow was born on Oct. 3, 1933, in Paris to Rosa and Gustave Kraus. She grew up with her older sister, Rachel, and younger sister, Helene. Her father volunteered for the French army and spent about five years in a German prisoner-of-war camp.

As persecution of Jews increased, the family was required to register with police and wear yellow stars. A sympathetic French police officer named Maurice warned Rosa that the family was on a list for an upcoming roundup. A former landlord, Mr. Mondinot, who was connected to the French Resistance, helped Rosa find places to hide her daughters.

Partow had to conceal her Jewish identity while separated from her mother.

She was sent to two children’s homes. Before reaching the second, she waited about 48 hours with approximately 200 children in the railway station. They slept in potato sacks. She later became lost and waited alone at another station for two days before receiving help.

Conditions at the second home were harsh. The children received soup three times a day, sometimes with worms in it, and followed strict, military-style rules. Partow’s hair was shaved. When she refused to eat a piece of fat, a monitor kicked her and locked her in a dark storage room for two nights.

Her daughter, Isabelle Tennenbaum, said her mother rarely discussed those years when her children were growing up. She would leave the room when a movie about World War II was shown.

“I think it was very difficult for Fanny and her family to talk about that period,” Tennenbaum said.

Partow finally told her story in detail in 2000, when her granddaughter Rachel Tennenbaum received an eighth-grade assignment to interview someone who had lived through a war. The two talked for about six hours. The assignment called for five pages, but Rachel produced about 20.

“I don’t think she necessarily felt like her story needed to be written down,” Rachel Tennenbaum said. “I think the reason my grandmother agreed to share her story was because she cared so much about her family.”

Partow’s mother reached the children in May 1945, and her father returned from captivity. All three sisters and both parents survived.

After high school, Partow attended secretarial school and worked to help support her family. She wanted to attend college, her daughter said, but the family’s circumstances made that impossible.

At 21, she met Nemat Partow, an Iranian Jewish man, at a Jewish dance in Paris. They married in 1956. The family moved to Iran, where they lived for 19 years and raised Isabelle and their son, Felix.

Partow learned Farsi by ear, worked for Air France and became one of the early women drivers in Tehran, her son said. She embraced Persian food, music, history and culture, and traveled widely with her family.

“She adjusted remarkably well, given her age and the difference in cultures between France and Iran,” Felix Partow said.

The family immigrated to the United States in 1977. Nemat Partow remained behind for about two years, leaving his wife to establish the family in New York. She explored starting a lingerie-import business, then worked as a bookkeeper and office manager until age 77.

Partow and her husband were married for 50 years. He died in 2006.

She moved to Philadelphia in 2012 to be near her daughter and lived in the area for the final 14 years of her life. At the Watermark at Logan Square, now called Fountain View, she sang with a choir, appeared in the musical “Still Kicking” and led an informal French conversation group. She attended High Holiday services at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El and at the Watermark.

Music remained important throughout Partow’s life. She made a vocal recording as a teenager and was offered a contract, but her mother did not want her to pursue a performing career. She sang French lullabies to her grandchildren and later performed Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” during her granddaughter Charlotte’s wedding.

Family members remembered her as curious, kind and devoted to her children and grandchildren. In 2004, while caring for her ailing husband, she arranged help for him and flew from New York to California for 48 hours so she could attend two granddaughters’ graduations.

She also remained attentive to her appearance. Several months ago, Rachel found six tubes of pink lipstick in her grandmother’s purse. Even after developing dementia, Partow wanted her clothes coordinated, her hair styled and her lipstick in place.

Partow’s family said she passed down perseverance, responsibility, fairness and loyalty. Felix Partow said his mother continued moving forward despite war, displacement and the demands of beginning again in different countries.

“She could have been so bitter,” he said. “Yet she embraced life and chose to live happily.”

Ellen Braunstein is a freelance obituary writer. She welcomes suggestions for individuals who had meaningful ties to the Philadelphia Jewish community. Email csix@midatlanticmedia.com.