involved in other eras, other lives, love affairs that you don’t tell your father about, in struggles and revolutions intended to wipe away the past.
Little by little, I allowed myself to be carried along by my generation, its chaos, and I felt what it was like to be young. I wanted to make something of myself, without really knowing what, Iwanted to become part of a story that was greater than my own, discover the world, learn, laugh a little, join in the endless discussions in the bistros of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. From the Rue Condorcet where we lived, I’d take the 85 bus to the Latin Quarter, full of students and intellectuals, but also dropouts like me. I could feel the desire to live stirring within me, the desire that made me sing while we were shivering in the snow at Bergen-Belsen.
I tried to push Birkenau into the past, I never talked about it anymore, I hid my number. I was often with a friend, Dora, who had also been deported and come back; she’d lost her mother and her little sister there, she was unhappy, I could sense it. I knew that unhappiness was deeply rooted within us, whatever happened. So, to distance myself from unhappiness, I became the opposite of Dora. She was frightened at the idea of going into cafés, I pushed the doors open proudly in a way that was unusual for girls in those days. I can picture both of us sitting in theDupont-Latin. She tried not to draw attention to herself, I sat up tall. Boys came to talk to us, they were carefree, funny, I could have dived into their laughing, joking mouths, I thirsted for lightheartedness and knowledge, two words that summed up Saint-Germain-des-Prés. There we found everything the war hadn’t taken with it; anti-Semitism was still strong, but what was important was to talk about things. It was a strange mixture: the bourgeoisie, left-wingers, former Resistance fighters. All around me were a circle of orphans I felt close to, and at the same time, I was fed up with the Jews, fed up with being crowded in, a legacy from the camps. I needed to be with other people.
I especially didn’t think about what you would have wanted for me—I feared the answer too much. The same as Mama probably, a nice Jewish marriage and a lot of children. She used to shout and rip up the pants I wore like all the other liberated young women, and she’d tell me off whenever someone came to the house. Marriagewasn’t for me. I was headed for a life that you probably wouldn’t have approved of. And yet, I like to think that you wouldn’t have complained about me. That after what we’d lived through, you would have wanted me to be free. But deep down, I don’t know what kind of man you would have been. I feel as if I didn’t really know you. We were separated at the very moment when we would have begun to find out about each other. I remember that walk in the woods, the war had already started, you were warning me about boys. I was already pretty shy with other people, and you were very strict. We would have had fights, in any case. I even miss the ones that would have been fierce battles. I would have liked to have doors slammed, to have reconciliations. And then I miss the words we would have spoken as time went on, so we could return to the past and heal its wounds. If I still wonder where I could have lost your letter, if it changes according to the day—Did I hide it under a seat in the steam room when we had to change our clothes? Did I lose it at Bergen-Belsen? InTheresienstadt?—if I still search deep within my memory for those missing lines even though I’m sure I’ll never find them again, it’s because they are etched somewhere in the recesses of my mind, the place where I sometimes slip away with the things I cannot bear to share, a blank page where I can still talk to you. I know all the love those lines contained. I’ve spent my entire life trying to find that love.
5
I no longer bear your name, and I miss that. But I often add, “ née
Little by little, I allowed myself to be carried along by my generation, its chaos, and I felt what it was like to be young. I wanted to make something of myself, without really knowing what, Iwanted to become part of a story that was greater than my own, discover the world, learn, laugh a little, join in the endless discussions in the bistros of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. From the Rue Condorcet where we lived, I’d take the 85 bus to the Latin Quarter, full of students and intellectuals, but also dropouts like me. I could feel the desire to live stirring within me, the desire that made me sing while we were shivering in the snow at Bergen-Belsen.
I tried to push Birkenau into the past, I never talked about it anymore, I hid my number. I was often with a friend, Dora, who had also been deported and come back; she’d lost her mother and her little sister there, she was unhappy, I could sense it. I knew that unhappiness was deeply rooted within us, whatever happened. So, to distance myself from unhappiness, I became the opposite of Dora. She was frightened at the idea of going into cafés, I pushed the doors open proudly in a way that was unusual for girls in those days. I can picture both of us sitting in theDupont-Latin. She tried not to draw attention to herself, I sat up tall. Boys came to talk to us, they were carefree, funny, I could have dived into their laughing, joking mouths, I thirsted for lightheartedness and knowledge, two words that summed up Saint-Germain-des-Prés. There we found everything the war hadn’t taken with it; anti-Semitism was still strong, but what was important was to talk about things. It was a strange mixture: the bourgeoisie, left-wingers, former Resistance fighters. All around me were a circle of orphans I felt close to, and at the same time, I was fed up with the Jews, fed up with being crowded in, a legacy from the camps. I needed to be with other people.
I especially didn’t think about what you would have wanted for me—I feared the answer too much. The same as Mama probably, a nice Jewish marriage and a lot of children. She used to shout and rip up the pants I wore like all the other liberated young women, and she’d tell me off whenever someone came to the house. Marriagewasn’t for me. I was headed for a life that you probably wouldn’t have approved of. And yet, I like to think that you wouldn’t have complained about me. That after what we’d lived through, you would have wanted me to be free. But deep down, I don’t know what kind of man you would have been. I feel as if I didn’t really know you. We were separated at the very moment when we would have begun to find out about each other. I remember that walk in the woods, the war had already started, you were warning me about boys. I was already pretty shy with other people, and you were very strict. We would have had fights, in any case. I even miss the ones that would have been fierce battles. I would have liked to have doors slammed, to have reconciliations. And then I miss the words we would have spoken as time went on, so we could return to the past and heal its wounds. If I still wonder where I could have lost your letter, if it changes according to the day—Did I hide it under a seat in the steam room when we had to change our clothes? Did I lose it at Bergen-Belsen? InTheresienstadt?—if I still search deep within my memory for those missing lines even though I’m sure I’ll never find them again, it’s because they are etched somewhere in the recesses of my mind, the place where I sometimes slip away with the things I cannot bear to share, a blank page where I can still talk to you. I know all the love those lines contained. I’ve spent my entire life trying to find that love.
5
I no longer bear your name, and I miss that. But I often add, “ née
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