Shouts from a Third Act

Art explaining Life. And Life reflecting on the artist’s rendering.

Last Thursday was a night to remember for those of us gathered around Eileen’s dinner table. As the host, she’d chosen the book we were to read and discuss for February. The Nightingale had been on bestseller lists for months. At the outset Eileen knew it was set in Nazi-occupied France, where two estranged sisters face moral questions and life-or-death choices. What she didn’t realize until finishing the novel was that part of the plot mirrors what happened to her friend’s mother, a Jewish child saved from the Nazis by a chain of good-hearted souls.

Meanwhile, friend Tricia had also read the novel at her sister’s urging. Eileen wanted Tricia to share her mom’s story with our Book Club, and we all gratefully rescheduled the date so Tricia could join us.

You’ll be happy to hear that Mom is still alive. She speaks English with a slight French accent even though she was born in Germany in 1933, the year Hitler became Chancellor. Her father said to his wife, we’ll be all right, never daring to believe things wouldn’t be all right. By 1939, France and England were at war with Germany. Belgium remained neutral, and the father travelled there alone, probably to get a sense of whether it was a safe place to relocate his family. Without warning, the Germans invaded Belgium in 1940; the father was picked up and taken to France. His wife and 6-year-old daughter went looking for him and were also picked up and put in various refugee camps. The family’s reunion was bittersweet: a holding camp called Riversaltes. This was in 1941, a year before the infamous Vel D’Hiv Roundup in Paris when 13,000 Jews–men, women and children–were arrested and crammed into a winter cycling stadium, prior to being sent to the Concentration Camps.

It’s the summer of 1942. The girl and her parents are still at Riversaltes. The situation is dire. The only real food and hope come from a group of Quakers, part of the American Friends Service Committee. This group was active in the south of France in 1939, organized to help feed refugees fleeing Spain’s Civil War. It never got the chance to disband. Once these good people learned that the Nazis were holding children in order to deport them to Concentration Camps, their mission became to save as many as they could. Smuggling them out in the back of their cars, they placed them in children’s colonies or orphanages that housed children of all religions. Tricia’s mom, age 9, was one of them. At least her parents knew they’d made the right decision to let her go. They were shipped out to Auschwitz in September, and by December, they were dead.

The girl is now eleven, and she’s in a French orphanage in an old chateau where she’s one of five Jews. A nice French couple who lives in the town visits every Sunday to spend time with the children. They tell one of the workers there to let them know if she hears anything about the Jewish children being in danger. One Sunday they are told something’s about to happen. They take all five children to their home and eventually place them with other families. Tricia’s mom lives with them the longest, but they have two daughters of their own, and it’s safer for the girl to be placed with a childless couple. After the war, the girl’s relatives in Peru, a married aunt and uncle, bring her to live with them. She’s 13 and must leave the French couple who would have otherwise adopted her.

Her future husband’s family also ended up in Peru, but they got out of Germany in 1933 before all the horror started. His career brings the young couple to Dallas. This month they will have been married for 64 years and raised three daughters.

By the end of our Book Club evening, there was much to think about. Like the fact Tricia knew her grandparents were sent to Auschwitz in Convoy 30 on September 9, 1942. The Nazis kept meticulous records. What most of us didn’t know was that IBM’s German subsidiary sold them the tabulating machines and punch cards (the precursor to computers) that enabled them to track, hunt down and transport the Jews to their final destinations with such efficiency.

Something else that I continue to think about: if not for the good-hearted souls, Tricia’s mom would have died. Tricia would never have been born. She’s a lovely and accomplished person. Her son is about to graduate high school. He’s proud of his Jewish heritage, but he wants to help find a way to bring about peace in Israel–not just as a Jew but as a human being interested in both sides. As for those good French saviors, Tricia and her family have stayed in touch throughout the years. Some have been awarded one of Israel’s highest honors, “The Righteous Among the Nations.” The phrase on the certificate says, “Whoever saves one life saves the entire universe.” In 2008, Tricia and her son travelled to France for a medal ceremony that included the daughters of the couple (then deceased) who risked their lives to save the five Jewish children. Tricia was struck by the humility of the heroes. They felt they didn’t do anything extraordinary. Anyone would have done the same.

As I follow the news about the fighting overseas—not just with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict but in Afghanistan-Iraq-Syria and the growing refugee crisis in Europe and elsewhere–it’s clear that not everyone would do what those ordinary French citizens did. And if the news and history books aren’t enough to make us think about this, Art is here to prick our consciences. Novels like The Nightingale, All the Light We Cannot See, Little Bee and films like Beasts of No Nation and Schindler’s List to name just a few.