‘I don’t feel safe having kids in France’

Growing up in Le Marais, a neighborhood in Paris, Julia Buchwald, now 29, always dreamed of one day being a mother.

But when three young students were killed at their Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012 — murdered, along with an adult, by a Muslim man with a gun — her maternal hopes began to waver.

“I don’t feel safe having children in France. There are armies standing guard outside of every Jewish school,” she said.

She left her native country in 2014 and is happy with her decision. Now settled on the Upper East Side and employed in marketing (which is how she obtained a work visa), Buchwald said she feels “more in control of my life.”

Moving from Paris to New York, Buchwald — as with the other women in this story — chose not to apply for refugee status, nor would they likely be eligible, as their home country aims to protect them from persecution.

She sees a certain irony in her situation. Like her Polish-born grandparents before her, she chose to leave her country because of anti-Semitism. But while they fled to France, she had to turn her back on that country.

“It’s funny,” she said. “There is an old expression [derived from old Yiddish] we used to say: ‘ Happy as a Jew in France.’ ”

But now she is looking for a new happy ending for herself in America.

“If I find the right guy, I’d be happy [to have Jewish children in New York] — without fear.”