set up their own little one-room synagogues—what are called
shtibls
in Yiddish—where they could murmur their ancient five-tone Hebrew chants. In 1934 the president of the Consistoire, the official Jewish establishment, complained that the influx of all these immigrants would slow down the process of assimilation.
While there had been little possibility for Jews to assimilate in Poland, in France it was expected of Jews. When the French Revolution addressed “the Jewish question,” it was said that “there cannot be a nation within a nation.” Therefore, it was decreed, Jews were free Frenchmen and would henceforth have the same rights as all other Frenchmen. But in exchange, Jews had agreed to act like all other Frenchmen. In order to make Jews more like Catholics and therefore easier to understand and regulate, Napoleon had the Jews reorganize their community into a hierarchy like that of the Catholic Church, with a central authority, the Consistoire Israélite, and a central synagogue with a head rabbi known as the Grand Rabbi of France.
One hundred years after the French Revolution, there were 85,000 Jews in France. Of these, some 500 were thought to be traditional, but the rest were not very different from Catholics. Rabbis wore priestlike robes. Jewish children had little celebrations at the appropriate age that corresponded to baptism and first communion. The adults offered flowers to the dead instead of the traditional stones, and they played organ music in synagogues instead of the traditional five-tone Hebrew chants. There were even discussions about shifting the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.
T HE K ORCARZ BAKERY was on a corner in a narrow, dark, and particularly dirty street named Rue des Rosiers, “Rosebush Street,” not out of irony but because in the early thirteenth century it hadled to a royal rose garden. The corner was sunny, though, and the Korcarzes decorated the building’s facade with cheerful bits of blue-glazed tile in a bright modern mosaic. In 1933, back in Poland, Dwojra said good-bye to her parents, her sister Bella, and her baby brother Sacha in their little village outside Kielce, and moved to Paris to join Icchok. They found a little apartment at 14 rue des Ecouffes, just around the corner from the bakery.
In 1937 their son, Henri, was born. When he was three years old, the Wehrmacht took Paris. One of Henri’s earliest memories was a train trip with his mother, for which they carried big packages. They were going to see his father. He can’t remember much more. It was 1941. That year, concentration camps were built in Poland. In September all Jews were ordered to wear yellow stars. But even before that, on May 14, when the nationality of French Jews was still more or less respected, there had been a roundup of four thousand foreign Jews. Icchok Finkelsztajn had been caught on the street. Even if he had had the right papers, he had the wrong accent. He was sent to a prison—or, as it was officially labeled, a “lodging camp,” in Pithiviers, just a little south of Paris.
Soon after Dwojra and Henri went to visit him, Icchok escaped. The family hid in the town of Tarbes, in the Pyrenees. The Korcarzes fled to a neighboring town. Since they had been forced to flee in 1941, the Finkelsztajns and the Korcarzes were not among the Jews who were rounded up the following year on Rue des Rosiers and Rue des Ecouffes and shipped off to gas chambers in Poland.
Icchok found work in the Pyrenees. A group of Republicanos—Spanish leftists who had fought Franco and had taken refuge across the border in 1939—hired him, knowing he was Jewish and knowing he needed work. His job was chopping firewood in the mountains, sometimes for weeks at a time. Dwojra and Henri tried to stay indoors as much as possible. Only Icchok would venture out on his bicycle to shop for food or go off to work in the mountains.
Many of Henri Finkelsztajn’s memories of Tarbes are glimpses from behind curtains.
shtibls
in Yiddish—where they could murmur their ancient five-tone Hebrew chants. In 1934 the president of the Consistoire, the official Jewish establishment, complained that the influx of all these immigrants would slow down the process of assimilation.
While there had been little possibility for Jews to assimilate in Poland, in France it was expected of Jews. When the French Revolution addressed “the Jewish question,” it was said that “there cannot be a nation within a nation.” Therefore, it was decreed, Jews were free Frenchmen and would henceforth have the same rights as all other Frenchmen. But in exchange, Jews had agreed to act like all other Frenchmen. In order to make Jews more like Catholics and therefore easier to understand and regulate, Napoleon had the Jews reorganize their community into a hierarchy like that of the Catholic Church, with a central authority, the Consistoire Israélite, and a central synagogue with a head rabbi known as the Grand Rabbi of France.
One hundred years after the French Revolution, there were 85,000 Jews in France. Of these, some 500 were thought to be traditional, but the rest were not very different from Catholics. Rabbis wore priestlike robes. Jewish children had little celebrations at the appropriate age that corresponded to baptism and first communion. The adults offered flowers to the dead instead of the traditional stones, and they played organ music in synagogues instead of the traditional five-tone Hebrew chants. There were even discussions about shifting the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.
T HE K ORCARZ BAKERY was on a corner in a narrow, dark, and particularly dirty street named Rue des Rosiers, “Rosebush Street,” not out of irony but because in the early thirteenth century it hadled to a royal rose garden. The corner was sunny, though, and the Korcarzes decorated the building’s facade with cheerful bits of blue-glazed tile in a bright modern mosaic. In 1933, back in Poland, Dwojra said good-bye to her parents, her sister Bella, and her baby brother Sacha in their little village outside Kielce, and moved to Paris to join Icchok. They found a little apartment at 14 rue des Ecouffes, just around the corner from the bakery.
In 1937 their son, Henri, was born. When he was three years old, the Wehrmacht took Paris. One of Henri’s earliest memories was a train trip with his mother, for which they carried big packages. They were going to see his father. He can’t remember much more. It was 1941. That year, concentration camps were built in Poland. In September all Jews were ordered to wear yellow stars. But even before that, on May 14, when the nationality of French Jews was still more or less respected, there had been a roundup of four thousand foreign Jews. Icchok Finkelsztajn had been caught on the street. Even if he had had the right papers, he had the wrong accent. He was sent to a prison—or, as it was officially labeled, a “lodging camp,” in Pithiviers, just a little south of Paris.
Soon after Dwojra and Henri went to visit him, Icchok escaped. The family hid in the town of Tarbes, in the Pyrenees. The Korcarzes fled to a neighboring town. Since they had been forced to flee in 1941, the Finkelsztajns and the Korcarzes were not among the Jews who were rounded up the following year on Rue des Rosiers and Rue des Ecouffes and shipped off to gas chambers in Poland.
Icchok found work in the Pyrenees. A group of Republicanos—Spanish leftists who had fought Franco and had taken refuge across the border in 1939—hired him, knowing he was Jewish and knowing he needed work. His job was chopping firewood in the mountains, sometimes for weeks at a time. Dwojra and Henri tried to stay indoors as much as possible. Only Icchok would venture out on his bicycle to shop for food or go off to work in the mountains.
Many of Henri Finkelsztajn’s memories of Tarbes are glimpses from behind curtains.
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