The Paris Children : A Novel (2020)

by Goldreich, Gloria

  “When were you in Drancy?” Claude asked.

  She did not answer. The bus doors yawned open.

  “Schnell, schnell. Inside,” the guards shouted, beating at the frightened prisoners with their spiked batons.

  She gripped Claude’s hand and they stumbled inside, finding a seat on a narrow, backless bench. She leaned against him and answered his question, speaking softly, dreamily.

  “When Simone and I were little, my grandfather hired a car one afternoon, and he took us to Drancy on a surprise holiday. It was a new suburb, he said, just north and east of Paris.”

  “A surprise holiday,” Claude repeated.

  Yes, once there had been a world in which a grandfather could spirit his pretty granddaughters away for a pleasant afternoon, a surprise holiday. Claude tried to imagine Madeleine as a small girl, her luxuriant dark hair braided into fat pigtails, her sweet face bright with pleasure.

  “My grandfather was so proud that Paris was expanding. He was proud of everything French,” Madeleine continued.

  Claude frowned. Alfred Dreyfus would not have been proud to learn that the new suburb of Drancy had become an internment camp. He would not have been proud of the so-called revolutionary government of Vichy nor of his own comrade in arms, Márechal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, now Hitler’s puppet.

  He thought to say as much to Madeleine, but she was still lost in memory of that long-ago surprise holiday.

  “Drancy was to be a modern community,” she continued. “We saw high-rise apartment buildings being built. A school. A library. It was going to offer working French families a wonderful way of life. It even had a lovely name. Drancy: Un Cité de la Silence. Drancy, a City of Silence.”

  “Today it is known as un Cité de la Souffrance, a City of Suffering,” Claude said bitterly.

  He did not share with her the reports he had read of Drancy. It had been taken over by the Germans immediately after the invasion. The residents had been arbitrarily dispersed and the buildings converted into police barracks that then became “detention centers,” concentration camps for “undesirables”—Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Communists. Barbed wire encircled its perimeters, and it was now used by the Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs as a holding area for Jewish prisoners until they could be herded into cattle cars and sent east to Auschwitz. Yes, Drancy was truly a city of suffering, the metropolis of torture ruled from Berlin by Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, administered on-site by Alois Brunner, an SS officer rumored to be crueler than even Klaus Barbie. Terror awaited them there, Claude knew, and he shuddered to think of how it would affect Madeleine. He understood how vulnerable she was, despite her daring. He knew how she struggled to contain her fears, to retain her courage, to chase her dreams.

  Seated beside her, he was relieved that she had fallen asleep, her head resting on his shoulder. A smile played on her lips. He had forgotten that she often smiled as she slept. He kissed her brow, still wet from the rain, and stared through the grime-encrusted window.

  A mother and two small children stumbled to the empty seat beside him. The frightened wails of the small brother and sister competed with the pounding rain.

  “Papa. Papa,” they called.

  Their weary mother sighed.

  “André. André.” Her voice was so laced with sorrow that Claude thought his heart might break.

  Instead he turned to them, forced an apologetic smile, and held a finger to his lips.

  “Please,” he said softly, “do not awaken ma bienne amie.”

  They nodded, oddly reassured by his tender words. All love had not vanished from the world. The weary mother sang softly, her children nestled against her. Claude held Madeleine close, willing the warmth of his body to banish the chill of her fear.

  * * *

  Drancy was the nightmare he had feared. Chaos and cold haunted the stark camp. Families struggled to stay together. Nursing mothers huddled in corners and wept because milk had ceased to leak from breasts withered by thirst and starvation. They cradled their emaciated, weeping infants, knowing that they were destined for death. They longed for their own hearts to stop, their breath to cease.

  Men, half-mad with frustration, paced back and forth, their fists clenched, muttering at their helplessness. Others gathered in prayer minyans, swaying from side to side, sharing phylacteries and prayer shawls.

  “El maaleh rachamim—God full of mercy,” they intoned, but there was no mercy, only cold clouds of their sour breath as their murmured petitions floated through the cavernous room.

  Parents called shrilly to their children. Names were shouted in anger. Names were murmured with love.

  Now and again, small contingents of nuns, Quakers, and Red Cross workers appeared, wheeling in urns of water or soup, pyramids of stale bread, piles of thin, coarse blankets. They wore white masks for protection against the stench of urine, feces, and vomit, but their eyes were bright with tears.

  Madeleine and Claude struggled to create a semblance of order out of the turmoil that surrounded them.

  “We are trained scouts, éclaireurs,” Claude said. “We know how to organize.”

  She nodded and bravely copied his confidence, false as she knew it to be.

  He managed to arrange for basic sanitation, demanded orderly queues for the toilets, harangued guards for water, for medical supplies, enlisted a cadre of younger men and women to assist the elderly.

  Madeleine summoned all her skills and concentrated on helping the children. She organized them into orderly play groups with leaders chosen from among the restless wandering adolescents. Games were invented. Stories were told. Teachers began to hold small classes. Amid the desperation and despair, there were small eruptions of laughter, sudden spontaneous bursts of joy.

  It was Claude who fashioned a pile of rags into a ball and created teams of small scurrying players briefly restored to a childhood interrupted by a war they did not understand, by hatred beyond any human understanding. In a courtyard surrounded by barbed wire, the small players raced about playing catch and tag, tossing their ball of rags into a hoop crafted of branches fallen from dying trees.

  The days at Drancy passed slowly, but they saw each morning as a reprieve, each night as a triumph. They had survived, resisting still, their efforts undeterred, their love enduring.

  Claude and Madeleine were outside in the barren courtyard, gathering the children together for an impromptu relay race, intent on distracting them from the sad knowledge that two toddlers had died in the night, when an elderly nun approached them.

  “Mademoiselle Levy, Monsieur Claude?” she asked hesitantly.

  They nodded, no longer restrained by suspicion. The worst had already happened. They were released from fear. They could answer to their own names.

  Wordlessly, the nun handed Claude an envelope and hurried away, adjusting her mask, not daring to look back.

  They retreated to a secluded corner and Claude opened the envelope, worn thin from being handled by too many couriers, his name barely legible beneath smeared fingerprints.

  “A letter from Serge,” he said, and Madeleine stared at him, willing herself to be courageous. It would be bad news, she thought. A revelation of death. But whose death? Her parents? Her grandmother? Her brothers? Simone? Oh, not Simone. Never Simone. And not Anna. Names fluttered through her mind. Who? When? How? Where? Questions collided. She gasped for air. She wondered that Claude did not hear the too rapid, too loud beat of her heart. But he did not look up from the letter. His lips were moving. He was reading aloud, but his words were lost to her.

  “I can’t hear you,” she cried, digging her nails into his arm, leaving tears of blood on skin worn to a thinness through which his bones shimmered. “Louder! Louder!”

  He turned to her, held her close, read it again, speaking directly into her ear, enunciating every word, and she listened, leaning in to him, her
breath coming easier and easier as his voice gathered strength. Wondrously, a smile formed upon her lips. She had not thought to know happiness ever again, but joy filled her heart.

  Serge had written that her family, her parents, her brothers, Simone and the children, her grandmother were all alive, all in places of safety. There had been word from Robert Gamzon. The small group of children from Lizignan-Corbiere, her children whom she had so carefully trained, all had successfully made the trek across the Pyrenees and were in his Algiers encampment, soon to sail to Palestine.

  Anna Hofberg, your precious Anna, is safe, Serge had written.

  “Anna is safe,” Madeleine repeated.

  A stone was lifted from her heart. Her grandmother’s words, so true, so powerful, came to mind, weighted with truth, with power.

  This life is worth its grief, Lucie Dreyfus had said.

  “This life is worth its grief,” Madeleine Levy repeated.

  It was a cold day, but the sun burned with an odd radiance. She heard the improbable laughter of the assembled children, watched two very thin, small girls grasp hands and whirl about in a playful dance. A miracle that children laughed, that children played.

  “Come,” she called to them. “I will teach you a new game. A new song.”

  They rushed toward her.

  “Entends-tu le coucou, Malirette? Do you hear the cuckoo, Marilette?” she sang, holding her hand to her ear, her grandfather’s gesture remembered.

  “Entends-tu le coucou, Malirette?” they sang back in sweet chorus, their small hands fluttering to their own ears.

  “Coucou,” she sang as she pirouetted, bent, and swayed.

  “Coucou,” they repeated and imitated her dance.

  She clapped her hands and turned to Claude.

  “You see,” she said. “My grandmother Lucie was right. This life is worth its grief.”

  “Yes,” he replied, looking at the dancing children. “This life is surely worth its grief.”

  Hand in hand then, as the melancholy pastel rays of a wintry sunset streaked the darkening sky, they followed the singing children back into the grim prison fortress. They did not speak. Their certainty had no need for words. They knew that no matter what was yet to come, their lives, their love, had been worth its grief.

  Epilogue

  On November 20, 1943, two days after Madeleine Levy’s twenty-fifth birthday, she and Claude Lehmann joined Convoy Number 62, the fifteenth to leave Drancy. They were among the 1,200 Jewish prisoners who were herded into freight cars at the Bobigny station. The train arrived at Auschwitz at 2:00 a.m. on November 23 after a journey of unimaginable hardship. In January 1944, Madeleine Levy, weighing less than seventy pounds, died of typhus at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

  Claude Lehmann survived the war, as did Madeleine’s parents, her siblings, and her grandmother Lucie Dreyfus. Simone and Serge Perl were the parents of six children whom they raised in Paris. Ironically, Pierre Dreyfus was killed in a plane accident in Ireland in 1946. Madeleine Levy’s remains were never found. Her name, age, and the inscription “deported by the Germans to Auschwitz” were etched onto the gravestone of her Dreyfus grandparents in the Montparnasse Cemetery.

  In 1950, the French Fourth Republic awarded the granddaughter of Alfred and Lucie Dreyfus, the daughter of Jeanne and Pierre Paul Levy, the Military Medal, the Croix de Guerre with palm, and the Medal of the Résistance.

  Zichronah l’vracha. May her memory be blessed. Her life was surely worth its grief.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. Madeleine, with her grandfather Alfred Dreyfus as a role model, commits herself to the dangerous role of rescuing Jewish children as a Resistance fighter. What other historic or personal figures might serve as a role model to young people confronting choices that call for daring and dangerous action? Take, for example, Martin Luther King Jr., a heroic health worker, or a relative or friend whose ideals and actions you admire.

  2. Given her dual roles, one as a covert Resistance fighter and the other as an agent for the Vichy government, Madeleine must often hide her true feelings. How does she accomplish this, and how might you act in similar circumstances?

  3. Madeleine must balance her love for Claude against the importance of the life-saving work that engages them both. How might you confront a similar struggle in your own life? Should the needs of a larger community be prioritized rather than the yearning of an individual?

  4. When Madeleine’s credentials are questioned, she flirts with her interrogator. This is counter to her usual modesty, but it is a ploy that she uses to protect the children she is intent on saving. Do you think that end justifies the means? Can you think of other situations that parallel her dilemma?

  5. The dean of the Institute of Social Work speaks of lighting small candles against the darkness of tyranny. Describe the small candles that glow in various chapters of The Paris Children. Take, for example, the cooperation of the masons, the efforts of the nuns who shelter Lucie Dreyfus, and the bus driver. What small candles have you yourself ignited against darkness?

  6. Madeleine’s physician father insists that he must treat anyone who needs his help, ally or enemy. Would you agree with his attitude?

  7. Although Madeleine’s primary goal is to rescue endangered Jewish children, she also becomes a demolition expert. How does she confront each role? Do they require similar skills, similar courage?

  8. The Resistance demands secrecy for the protection of its members. Do you think more openness would have been helpful to their operations?

  9. Madeleine commits herself to helping the downed pilot before she knows whether he is English or Axis. She avers that she must help no matter who he is because he is a human being in trouble. Do you think a Nazi combatant deserves the kind of care and concern she offers?

  10. Resistance victories met with severe reprisals from the Nazi occupiers. How did the reprisals affect the surviving freedom fighters? Do you think that the greater good outweighs the suffering of the few?

  11. Madeleine’s grandmother assures her that “this life is worth its grief,” an assurance that Madeleine accepts and embraces. How do you respond to that concept?

  A Conversation with the Author

  What kind of research did you undertake to bring Madeleine and her France to life?

  My undergraduate and graduate studies in history at Brandeis University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem prepared me to delve into many different texts. I explored the necessary background of the Dreyfus family and the tragic years of World War II with the requisite emphasis on the German occupation of France and, more specifically, with the systematic war against the Jewish community, a genocide with a demonic focus on Jewish children. I visited both Paris and Toulouse and developed a feel for the locales. During my student days in Jerusalem, I met French Jews who had lived through that period, and their stories influenced my writing.

  The Jewish Scout program figures prominently in your story. Have you yourself participated in scouting programs?

  I was a very reluctant Girl Scout for a very brief period, but my two daughters and my son, during their adolescence, were avid members of Young Judea in the United States, which partners with the Tsofim, the Israeli Scout movement. Through their affiliation, I came to know many Israeli scouts and their leaders, who were often guests in our home. I also attended their meetings during my trips to Israel and listened to stories of the role that Jewish Scouts played in their heroic efforts to rescue endangered Jewish children.

  Do you, like the Dreyfuses, place great emphasis on family?

  My husband and I have always prioritized our children, and we are proud that, as adults, they, in turn, are caring and involved parents to our eight widely scattered grandchildren, transmitting the values that we have always held dear. Compassion, honesty, and courage are important in our family. Humor and laughter are our lodestones.

  Did
you have family members who, like Madeleine’s grandfather, inspired you?

  The short answer is that my family served as my inspiration. My parents were both born in Poland, and the stories they told of the families they left behind, many of whom became victims of the Holocaust, greatly impacted my life. My mother and father were involved in efforts to save their surviving relatives, and they emphasized the importance of helping those in need, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. There is no word for ‘charity’ in Hebrew. We speak of tzedakah, which means “justice,” and it was justice and compassion that motivated Madeleine, words that were as important to my parents and grandparents as they were to the heroine of The Paris Children.

  What inspired the words “this life is worth its grief”?

  Given the sadness and injustice that often surrounds us, it is important to remember the joy and goodness that is possible. Literature, fiction and nonfiction alike, gives us the opportunity to recognize that balance and to understand that beyond grief, there is value in the lives we live and how we live them.

  What does your reading list look like these days?

  Poetry (I seek out Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, A. E. Housman, and Yehuda Amichai.), novels (I read and reread George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, and Cynthia Ozick.), and for true comfort, I travel to Venice with Donna Leon and her marvelous detective, Brunetti. I also try his recipes. Yes, I love cookbooks.