A talk to Ideas Left Outside, August 5, 2017
In the winter of 2017, I received an invitation to spend a week giving media interviews and talks to high-school students in Clermont-Ferrand, the main city in Auvergne, a rural area in Central France. My topic was how I had been hidden in Auvergne during the Nazi occupation almost 75 years ago. The initiative came from the main Jewish organization there. They had heard of me during a previous visit to Auvergne, when reporters tracked me down for interviews.The invitation came from a religiously and politically conservative mainstream Jewish group, while I am an outspoken Socialist, environmentalist, and activist for social justice. I would have to find common ground with my hosts and avoid falling into controversy on other important issues. I would be speaking on the record, in schools and to the media, in a language in which I am not fluent. (I lost my ability to speak French fluently when in the United States for a number of reasons which are enumerated in my forthcoming book Hidden Child: From War to Resistance. Nonetheless, I faced the challenge and spoke, although haltingly, entirely in French.
For me, the main issue in this instance was my obligation to the Auvergne community that saved me and so many others. Despite misgivings, I decided to trust the good judgment of my hosts. I accepted the invitation and hoped for the best.
On May 1 John, my life partner and I arrived in Chalinargues for a few days of rest and preparation. It’s a small village in Auvergne, notable mostly for the herds of cows that parade down its streets going to pasture.
It was the final week before the decisive second-round presidential election in France. We could feel the tension through overheard snippets of conversations and posters on official election billboards. Much of the debate was about fascism.
A leading party, the Front National, includes supporters of Vichy, the French government that ruled during German occupation. Vichy willingly took charge of rounding up Jews for the death trains to Auschwitz. The wounds are still felt deeply today.
As my friend Jeannot in Paris says emphatically, “It was the French police that handed my family to the Nazis. La po-lice fran-çai-se ! They did so voluntarily without being asked.”
And that happened to my mother as well. She was arrested by the French police and transported to Auschwitz where she was killed.
Marine Le Pen, head of the Front National, warns against Islam and says France has no responsibility for the crimes under Vichy. Her party is widely viewed as a continuator of Vichy and its fascist philosophy.
On May 7 John and I watched returns on television with our friend, an ethnologist and historian, Martin. At 8 p.m. we learned that the supposed “centrist” Emanuel Macron was new president, with a big margin over Le Pen. Martin jumped for joy. “The danger of fascism has been pushed back,” he shouted.
Days later I heard the same reaction from our hosts in the Jewish community of Clermont-Ferrand. Many of them are Jewish exiles from North Africa (Algeria), conservative in politics and orthodox in religion. They feared a victory for Le Pen and a fascist comeback in France. “We are safe with Macron,” they said.
I realized then that for my hosts, my visit was closely linked to their feelings about Le Pen and modern-day fascism. They warned me, “You are not allowed to speak of politics in the schools.” OK, so I would not mention Le Pen. But my topic – fascism – is in fact a most contentious issue in French politics.
My hosts understood I am neither a religious Jew nor partial to Israel. We focused on what we had in common. We worked together closely and grew to trust and like each other.
During my stay, I made three presentations to about 200 high school students in classroom and synagogue settings. I gave an interview to La Montagne, which resulted in a full page of coverage, as well as to a TV network and a researcher working on a film. I took part in a commemorative meeting of veteran resistance fighters. I attended religious functions and had many long talks with Jewish community members.
Now I will translate for you what I said in part to the students.
I was brought to Auvergne when I was two years old. As a Jewish child I was destined to be killed by the Nazis. It was the peasants of Auvergne who saved me. I owe my life to their humanity and hospitality. The Auvergnats saved the lives of thousands of people fleeing persecution.
I remember little of this time. But I know that I was in a peasant farm, that I was happy with the family that protected me. They loved me and hoped that I would stay with them. The woman who adopted me in that family was like the Auvergnat woman described by Georges Brassens in his most famous song:
You who, without any fuss,
Once gave to me four bits of bread
When in my life I was hungry.
It was merely a bit of bread
But it warmed my body through
And in my soul, it burns on still
Just as a great feast would do.
When Liberation arrived, my birth mother had died in Auschwitz. My father arrived at my farm refuge, wounded from a bomb blast, to take me from my Auvergne family and return me to the Jewish community in Paris where I had been born. The family protested; they wanted to keep me. Four years old, I was angry and unwilling. But my father was insistent, taking my arm and pulling me away. He died shortly thereafter.
I was then entrusted to the Union des Juifs pour la Resistance et l’Entraide (UJRE), the movement that had found me a refuge in Auvergne. It is still active today. In its complex of orphanages (Commission Centrale de l’Enfance – CCE), I was taught the values of solidarity and dignity which had inspired the anti-Nazi resistance. Angry at my loss, I embraced these values, which led me to be a fighter for justice and peace throughout my life.
I left France against my will, when I was nine years old. I was adopted by an American Jewish couple who broke my ties with France. As a teen, I began a search for my past in France that continued off and on for several decades. In 1986, with John my life companion, I went back to France to research the links to my early life.
I found my father’s friend, Michel B, whom my ailing father had named as my guardian. B had been a fighter in the military Jewish resistance. I met his children and grandchildren, nephews and grand-nephews, who are now my family in France. But I did not learn much about my years in Auvergne. I could not uncover where I found refuge and who cared for me.
So I made visits to Auvergne to learn about the experience of the Jewish children who were hidden there during the war.
I had discussions with people there whose families lived through the war and also with those who have studied the history of that time.
What I learned surprised me in many ways.
First, there were many Jewish children in Auvergne during the occupation. A number were placed in orphanages, others lived with their parents, and a number, like me, were distributed to farm families.
The majority of these hidden children lived in plain sight of all in the villages.
Protecting Jews was illegal and dangerous. The Vichy government and its police endeavoured to grab the Jews including their children to hand them over to the Nazis to be deported and killed.
The Jewish families very quickly understood that they had to hide their children. They passed on the word, “Save the children by dispersing them.” Spontaneously, individually or with the aide of an organization, they found solutions.
I can well imagine the anguish of my mother when we lived in Paris. She was born in Poland. Her name was Fajga Berliner. She was an active socialist and had to entrust to me to unknown persons in unknown territory. But she had confidence in a resistance organization, the UJRE.
A passeuse or guide smuggled me to the city of Lyon and to Lisa B of the Union des Juifs, who was part of its children’s network. She was the wife of my future guardian. She sent some children to Switzerland, but since I had blond hair and blue eyes, Lisa decided that Auvergne was a safe place for me.
But why Auvergne?
A historian with whom I spoke, Eugène M, explained that “It’s a land of welcome. Auvergne traditionally warmly received people who came for vacations.” The peasants had also gladly accepted the refugees from the Spanish Civil War in 1937.
Eugene’s colleague, Louis S, told me “The region was poor but there was always food available and a lot of work to be done cultivating the fields.”
During the occupation there was a diversity of refugees in Auvergne. There were children, both Jewish and non-Jewish — the latter fleeing bombardment of their cities. There were refugees from Alsace. There were trade unionists and politicals, and young men escaping the STO – Vichy’s deal with the Nazis to send workers to Germany for forced labour.
There were Muslims who had fled the German army. There were the Roma. And there were handicapped people as well. One Jewish friend, Nina, told me that her brother was killed not because he was Jewish but because he was deaf.
So now I will continue my personal story…
Lisa B in Lyon entrusted me to another passeuse who brought me to a village in Auvergne and spoke to an influential person, perhaps the mayor. He chose a family in the village and introduced me to them perhaps saying, “I have here a charming little cousin who will live with you.” And conforming to local customs, the UJRE gave the family a stipend to cover the extra food and other things necessary to take care of an addition to their family. And I was welcomed with love.
Why did they take the responsibility of hiding me? According to Floriane B, a historian, “There were as many reasons as individuals.”
I collected a few.
Rene Raoul, who contributed in saving 130 Jews in his town of Malzieu, told me: “I didn’t do anything special. It was the only human thing to do.”
Jean C said that his hosts in the town of Valuéjols were told by the Vichy authorities that the Jews were evil and dangerous, but the peasants held that the government was not to be trusted.
Eliette in the town of Florac said: “Love the entire world. That is our tradition.”
Floriane told me “For the most part, Jewish children were in fact hidden by whole communities. The children took part in the life of the family and the community. They went to school and celebrated Christmas. Acts contrary to the will of the community such as denunciations were rare.”
I thank the Auvergnats for the humanity and the generosity which they demonstrated in welcoming all — Jews and non Jews — who fled from Nazi persecution.
Drawing from the collective traditions of dignity and hospitality in their faith and convictions, thousands of people wove a fabrique of solidarity. The small links and ties converged and built a long chain which not only saved lives, but also changed the course of history.
It is up to us to apply this spirit to the challenges that face us today, especially to refugees escaping wars, and those also fleeing climate change.
That was my presentation
In the question periods, I used the seemingly uncontroversial example referring to wars and dangers of climate change to draw the link between France under the fascists and what we face today.
Under fascism people fleeing persecution and death became refugees in their own country. People in Auvergne protected and valued them. Today and in the near future in the time of many wars and climate calamity, many more refugees are seeking safety.
‘How should we respond?’ I asked
I explained that faithful to the spirit of my childhood experience in Auvergne, I participate with John in building a movement for action against climate change, which threatens to create hundreds of millions of refugees. The climate does not have a frontier. To meet this challenge, peoples must cooperate in the same spirit of solidarity that spurred the Auvergnats who protected the Jewish children long ago.
My teenage audiences were attentive, serious, thoughtful in their questions. The press quoted one of the students as saying, “We must face the realities of today with the same courage and humanity demonstrated by the Auvergnats then.”
Another student asked, “What do you know about people who used methods of sabotage against the Nazis?”
I explained that It took a broad people’s movement, both military and civilian, some taking initiatives and some just failing to fall into line with fascist orders, or carrying out isolated acts of solidarity. “Together and apart and in many different ways they mobilized feeling against the fascists, isolating and neutralizing them. That’s our course for today as well.”
The major local newspaper, La Montagne, highlighted my statement, “All my life I’ve been a resister – someone who wanted to change the world for the better.”
My message was warmly received by the students and media. After the sessions broke up, there were many embraces and exchanges of emails.
The next week, I went to Paris to visit our circle of family friends who come from a different Jewish tradition: secular Jewish families, socialist by tradition, who had backed the resistance to Nazism. They too had almost all voted Macron as a way to vote down fascism. So Le Pen brought these two Jewish communities to common ground.
The victor, Emanuel Macron, is in some ways comparable with our own Justin Trudeau, youngish, charming, vocal on climate change, but representing the neo-liberal agenda – the very status quo that drove so many French people to support Le Pen.
But my Paris friends disliked Macron. He supports austerity, attacks on workers’ rights, and police repression, they said. Such status-quo policies lay the groundwork for fascism, as Naomi Klein says in her new book, No is not enough.
John and I also met with the French Jewish organization I belong to, l’Union Juive Française Pour la Paix (UJFP). It calls for freedom for Palestine. In addition, it explains that Anti-Jewish prejudice must be addressed as a form of racism, similar to anti-Black racism or prejudice against Muslims. And it is Islamophobia, not Judeophobia, that is the main weapon of right-wing racists today in France and across Europe. An effort to defend the Jews which does not also defend Muslims and other victims of racism will fail.
The fascist Front National keeps mum about its anti-Jewish views and campaigns against immigrants and Muslims. Macron offers no alternative here. That’s why most of our Paris friends initially supported Jean-Luc Mélanchon, a socialist candidate, whose first-round vote was close to that of Macron.
One of our Paris friends, Stéphanie, worked in the Mélanchon committee in St-Denis that has several dozen members. She says it attracts many young people normally not engaged in politics. It has great potential – but only if such local committees can join in a structured and democratic movement, she says.
Whatever Mélanchon does, I believe Stéphanie is on the right track. The Left is fragmented and pulling in different directions. But the Mélanchon campaign, like that of Jeremy Corbyn and, in its way, Bernie Sanders, shows that a bold alternative can rally broad and diverse forces. Fascism can be stopped by a broad massive movement working for solidarity with racialized peoples and for a new and better society.
John and I also visit Prof. Hassan Diab, a Canadian who is unjustly incarcerated in solitary confinement in at the Fleury-Merogis prison 30 kilometers south of Paris. (See “Hassan Diab: France’s new Dreyfus affair”