Daniel,

La Machine is a small town (8,000 inhabitants in 1970). Nievre is a
departement (number 58), an administrative subdivision of the country: there
are 96 of them in continental France. The chef-lieu of the Nievre (a kind of
capital of the departement) is Nevers. The former provinces (replaced, with
several changes, by the regions) are usually composed of two to eight
departements.

In La Machine there is a mairie (town hall), you could write there (58260 La
Machine), but as you know the "100 years law" would prevent you >from getting
complete birth or marriage records unless you indicate the complete names of
both parents. Excerpts (with the marginal notes), and death certificates, are
available to anybody. If the person died after 1945 this should have been
indicated, with the corresponding data, as a marginal note on the birth
certificate (I know you have it).

Basile Ginger, CGJ
(Cercle de Genealogie Juive, International JGS in Paris)
http://www.genealoj.org

Searching for: GINGER (Yavorov, Brody, Kishinev), BLUMENFELD (Lublin,
Kishinev), PRISMAN (Kretinga, Liepaja), GRINFELD (Brody, Kishinev),
HIRSCHBERG (Jelgava), KLEIN (only >from Odessa).