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Letter from Paris: The Presence of Absence
The French police came to arrest the Jews before dawn. On the first of the two-day roundup—July 16, 1942—George and his mother, Thérèse, were taken.
Two men burst into their apartment without warning. Thérèse ran toward an open window, but the tall gendarme in the long black coat pulled her back. Dragged down five flights of stairs and into the street, George’s mother hysterically fought the gendarme as she screamed for George to run. The policeman holding the tall, fair, blue-eyed 12-year-old’s arm may have decided the boy “French enough,” because once in the street he released his grip and looked away. When he did, George ran.
It was 1999 and George, my husband of two years, had been trying to get into his childhood home for 55 years, the first time being when he returned to Paris from hiding. After France was liberated in 1944, he wrote to the French government, asking their permission to enter, but permission never came. Whenever he visited Paris after moving to America, he would make another attempt, yet never succeeded.
“I would wait outside,” he said. “Hope someone would be coming in or out. Someone to ask about getting in. I never could.”
So on a Saturday during the month of August, the time French people leave Paris for their month’s vacation in the countryside, George asked me to go with him to Place Voltaire—his old neighborhood. George again wanted to try to enter, and I agreed to accompany him. There appeared to be a mystique surrounding his getting into the apartment, one I didn’t understand and one that he couldn’t explain. Normally he refused to discuss the years surrounding World War II, but this was the exception. Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation had asked for his testimony, as had the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. He told both he had nothing to tell. “I don’t remember, I was only a boy,” was his standard reply.
The area of the 11th Arrondisement where George had lived remains a lightly trafficked, middle-class neighborhood—what the French would call bon bourgeois. Flower boxes filled with red geraniums decorated several windowsills while clothes hanging to dry draped the railings of many others, a sign that North Africans had arrived.
George’s building—25 rue de Belfort—is part of a set of attached buildings that make up a grander edifice shaped like a flat iron and made of tan sandstone. On the ground floor, occupying the building’s curve, is a small neighborhood café, Bar des Boulets. The storefronts of the other shops on the block had their iron shutters closed and displayed signs reading, “Fermeture Annuelle,” with the reopening dates written by hand underneath.
On his other visits, George said he buzzed his old apartment, maybe a few others too, but no one responded. He was not positive about having buzzed the other apartments, though. “Americans are more forceful than the French,” he told me. Over time, I have learned that George has strong feelings about violating people’s space or imposing himself on others. This translates into not continuously ringing strangers’ buzzers. I do not have George’s problem.
As we got close to the building, a change became apparent. His building’s metal outer door was propped open, as was the inner door. All we had to do was walk through the looking glass.
“It’s a miracle,” George said, hesitantly yet steadily moving toward the staircase. There was no elevator so we started our walk up the five narrow flights of stairs. George had had several heart operations and he was no longer 12, but his slow gait, I assumed, was caused more by his emotions than his physical condition. Finally, what had obsessed him for so long was in reach, and what would happen upon seeing it was unknown.
We got to the fifth-floor landing, and George surveyed the area.
“There used to be two apartments, not three,” he said.
“Who lived in the apartment next to yours?”
George didn’t remember. He only remembered a Jewish family who had lived on the first floor.
“After the war I met them again. They were also trying to get back into their old home. They offered to take me to Palestine, but it was too soon. I still believed my parents might return.”
George rang the apartment’s buzzer as we spoke loudly in English, hoping that someone might be curious about Americans shouting in their foyer. No one came out. I began to write a note with our names and why we wanted to speak to whoever lived there. George moved away from the buzzer to read what I was writing. As he was correcting my French, the door opened and a thirty-something man wearing a T-shirt and khakis appeared in the doorway. He had four gold studs running up his left ear, a soft boyish face and looked as if we had awakened him. George introduced himself and explained why we had come.
“May I make an appointment to come back?” he asked.
Opening the door fully, the young man introduced himself as Raphael Rizola. “Please, come in now,” he said.
The rectangular apartment was divided into two areas by a center corridor. On the left, overlooking the street, was the living room and the room where George’s parents had slept. Shafts of sunlight came through the windows brightening the area. The kitchen and the bathroom occupied the other side of the corridor. Their windows faced an open courtyard. George’s room no longer existed, probably cut off to form part of the third apartment, but he couldn’t figure out how it was done. Walking back to the bedroom, we stepped around three guitars leaning against a wall. “Are you a musician?” I asked.
“A group saw me play in Bordeaux and said to call if I ever came to Paris. I’m subletting for six months and hope things work out.”
As Raphael and I talked, George walked through the rooms again. His coldness told me his defenses were on high alert: The more turbulence he felt inside, the more he encapsulated his emotions. It took time and a lot of fights for me to understand this. I prefer loud reactions to silence.
Speaking in a low, calm voice, George showed Raphael how things in the apartment had changed and how things had remained the same.
“This is where we had a big closet,” George said, then corrected himself. “I’m wrong, it was in the hallway.” He couldn’t locate where the bathroom had been and moved it in and out of the foyer three times before deciding it had been near the living room, although he wasn’t certain.
“The overhead fixture isn’t here, in my parents’ room,” George said. “And I’m sure the ceiling was higher. But maybe that was to a child.”
George spoke about space, where things had been or hadn’t. He spoke about things, but not about his parents.
“Do you understand what happened to George?” I asked Raphael. He said he did. I waited, to give him time to say more, but he didn’t. “Do you know where Jews were taken?” I asked. “Where George’s family ended their lives?” George and Raphael looked troubled by my questions.
“He knows,” George said. I was being told to stop.
“That’s why it is so kind to let us in. To allow George to see again where he grew up. After the occupation, those were terrible years.”
“I know. My grandfather was taken to do slave labor,” Raphael said, “and my grandmother fought in the resistance.”
“Then you know, but we discovered not everyone does. We went to Crédit Lyonnais last week. George has two letters sent in 1941, the first letter freezing his parents’ account and the second confiscating their money. Under recent legislation, the banks are supposed to be making restitution. Why did they act like they knew nothing about what had happened?”
“There are people who are not interested in the past,” Raphael said, “and there are people who do not want to know about the Nazi collaboration. Either way it is criminal.” The words of this 30-year-old guitarist from Bordeaux gave me a glimmer of hope for the next generation. I started to ask more about his grandparents.
“It is time to go,” George said.
Raphael wrote his telephone number on the back of a piece of paper, in case we wanted to return. George thanked him and we said our goodbyes. I heard the door close behind us.
At the top of the staircase was a window that looked onto the courtyard and onto the back of George’s apartment. George stopped and pointed at a window in the apartment.
“That’s where my mother tried to commit suicide when they came to arrest us. She tried to jump through the window. They stopped her.”
“Does it hurt to see the window?”
“I don’t know.”
That George’s mother preferred suicide to internment told me she knew what would happen if arrested. George’s father had been interned in Pithiviers, a work camp near Paris, the year before. He was transported to Auschwitz in August 1942, the same month as Thérèse.
“Did you stay in Paris to be close to your father?” I asked.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “I was only a child.”
Turning toward the stairs, George motioned for me to go down first. Reaching the first-floor landing, we saw that the doors were now closed.
“I wonder why they were open?” George said.
“To let us in.”
We walked toward the Métro, stopping once for George to put Raphael’s number away. Passing a North African restaurant, George suggested we go inside. “They have very good couscous. I had some when I came before.”
The luncheon crowd had left so we had the room to ourselves. We ordered our meal and the house wine.
“How long do you think the doors were open? Five minutes, an hour, less?” George asked.
“Was it like you imagined it would be?” I said. George shrugged. “If the arrests came on the second day, maybe someone could have warned you.”
“No one was left to warn us.”
“What was it like for you ‘before’? Do you remember a special dinner in the apartment? Did you play hide and seek there? At night, where did you wait for your father? What did you think you would find? What made you keep coming back?”
“I hoped to see it as it was,” he said. “But it isn’t like it was. It is like it is. My parents aren’t there, so how can it be the same?”
“Let me write Raphael’s phone number down,” I said, “so it isn’t lost.”
“I won’t lose it.”
We finished our meal and continued toward the Métro. I put my arm through George’s and he pressed my elbow against his ribs. The placid August streets of Paris surrounded us. At home, Ge
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Annie Abbott says
Hi Marlene,
I’m very moved by this story, told with such care and tenderness for those who had to live it. The title so beautifully embraces the moment wished for, as well as that expressed. I’m so glad you guided me to your work.
I’ll try to call you tomorrow(Tuesday, 8/9). By the way, are you in touch with Kenny Rosenberg(Vance)–he’s had a tremendous career in Music and writing film scores. I ran into him at the Beacon Theatre, (I think)…many years ago in NY. Looked him up recently, but it looks like he may have had to take time off because of health issues. Look forward to catching up. best, Annie(Ann Rita Deutsch)
Glenn Krasner says
Hi, Marlene! Just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your article with me. Aside from bawling like a baby for an hour, the article is important for all of us to read in our current environment of intolerance towards all groups of people. Although your article was of intensely personal nature, its ramifications are also political and sociological. Since it was not a history article per se, it is also important to note that the French Police began rounding up people, mostly Jews, BEFORE the Nazis invaded Paris. What makes human beings turn on one another like this? It is fascinating and incredibly depressing to see that only a thin layer of decorum and civilization just barely separates us from acting like inhumane animals towards one another. I sincerely hope that your husband George found some closure and peace after that visit where he finally got to see his childhood apartment, although an episode as traumatic as one that he experienced is one that nobody ever really gets over. I am sure that you have many more stories about George that you can share with us, and I definitely look forward to hearing them.
Sincerely yours,
Glenn
Kate Lyra says
Thank you, Marlene. Thank you. Love, Kate