The Young Survivors

by Debra Barnes

  ‘When were you last here?’

  ‘I come every week, so exactly seven days ago,’ I said.

  ‘We’ve had a list of names through from the Jewish Scout Movement. Let me check. Wait a second, I think we have something…’

  Samuel

  Perreux

  November 1944

  The south of France was liberated by the Allies. All twenty of us travelled from Monsieur Fournier’s country house in the Pyrenees to Perreux, north of Toulouse. Perreux had provided a safe home to over three hundred Jewish children during the war, and now the Jewish Scout Movement had taken over a small hotel. We were welcomed and given a home while the agencies worked to reunite families.

  I was assigned a bedroom on the first floor, that I shared with one other boy. It was basic but, at the same time, it felt luxurious to have such privacy; the last few years had been spent sleeping in crowded dormitories. The second floor was for the girls of around my age, and the top floor was split, with the oldest boys on one side of the building and the oldest girls on the other side. The younger children slept in another building nearby.

  My bedroom overlooked the river and from my window I could see the huge bridge, its wide arches stretching from one side of the riverbank to the other. It reminded me of the bridge in Metz, and I felt homesick for the first time in a while.

  Once again we were offered a choice of trades to learn. Of everything I had learnt so far, I had progressed best with woodwork, so I chose cabinet-making. Rudy Kohn wanted to be a butcher so he became an apprentice with the local butcher and his brother Marcus fancied himself as a baker so he was given an apprenticeship in town too. Rudy brought bones back from work which we cooked over a bonfire on the river bank and ate the marrow with bread brought back by Marcus. It was quite a feast, especially as food was still rationed. There were doctors to look after us and even a dentist, who most of us visited for the first time in our lives.

  All boys aged thirteen and over were called to the dinner hall one day. There were around fifty of us. One of the Scout leaders went around the room. ‘You, you, you and you,’ he said, tapping four boys at random on their heads. Those four went to the front of the room where an altar had been created from a table balanced on wooden crates and a Torah placed on top. While the rest of us watched, the four boys were helped to read from the Torah after which the Scout leader announced, ‘Okay, you are all bar mitzvah!’ The adults shouted, ‘Mazel tov!’ and went around the room shaking the hands of every one of us.

  I thought back to when I turned thirteen, when my family had still been complete. I was thinking about my parents and siblings more and more these days. I was sad my parents were not with me at my makeshift bar mitzvah, but now the war was over, I felt renewed hope we would all be together again one day soon.

  The next day I went for supper with my pals. As I had never received a letter, I didn’t bother to check the mail which arrived and was left on a table to be collected.

  ‘Hey, Sam!’ called Paul.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Look here! You’ve got a letter.’

  Pierre

  Paris

  February 1945

  The repatriation centre had found Samuel’s name on a list. I was overcome with joy when they told me the news. He was with the Jewish Scouts, in a centre near Toulouse. I cried with happiness when I realised I wasn’t alone and that the system for reuniting families was working. The last time I saw Samuel was when I put him on a bus for Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne eighteen months before.

  I wrote to him immediately and quickly received a letter back saying we would meet in Paris. I waited for him at the bus station. When he got off the bus and saw me waiting, he ran over to me and we hugged tightly. He was fifteen now, still small and skinny but he looked so much more grown up.

  ‘I’m so happy to see you,’ he said.

  ‘Me too. Let me look at you. See how you’ve changed – you’re almost a man.’

  ‘I’ve had quite a few adventures along the way. I sure don’t feel like a kid anymore.’

  ‘Come, let’s go eat and you can tell me all about it.’

  As we walked to the cafe together it was a huge relief knowing that at least one of my siblings was still alive.

  I had explained in my letter that there was no news so far of our parents or our brother and sisters. As we chatted, we discussed whether there was anything else we could be doing to look for them.

  ‘It is likely that Maman and Papa were sent to one of the camps in Germany or Poland,’ I told my brother. ‘There are plenty of rumours about those places but no facts yet, so we shouldn’t assume anything.’

  ‘What of Claude and the girls?’ asked Samuel. ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘We don’t know. There are many children still missing and their names have not appeared on any lists yet. I go every week to ask them to check again,’ I said.

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘Yes, we can go tomorrow and see if there’s any news. They found you so hopefully it won’t be long now before they find the others too.’

  Samuel

  Perreux

  February 1945

  It was good to spend time with Pierre in Paris. Just knowing that we had each other was comforting, but it was also really hard to realise we might be the only two survivors from our family. He took me to the repatriation centre. We had a long wait before we were seen and then another long wait while they checked the lists for any mention of Maman, Papa, Claude, Henriette or Georgette – but there was none. I was devastated. Apart from us, our entire family had disappeared. I felt sorry for Pierre who had been through this scenario dozens of times now. The hope, the anticipation, the wait… and then the disappointment and despair.

  My brother showed me where he was working with our cousin Georges. He was learning upholstery and I was learning cabinet-making. We thought that one day we could start a furniture business together. It felt good thinking about the future although I felt guilty for doing so when my siblings might not even have one.

  Pierre asked if I wanted to stay with him, but there was nothing for me in Paris. He promised to go every week for news of the others and we agreed to write to each other regularly. The Scout leaders had told me that I would have plenty of time for a long visit in the summer so, after our short reunion, I returned to Perreux.

  ****

  We were treated well at Perreux: fed, taught a trade and given plenty of freedom to enjoy ourselves. We were all waiting for news of loved ones but there were few reunions during those months. We heard about the first people returning from Germany and Poland although the names of our missing family members were still classified as ‘not returned from a concentration camp’. Some children returning from the camps came to Perreux. It was easy to identify them – they were emaciated and in bad health, most had shaved heads and some had numbers tattooed on their arms.

  ****

  Marcus, Rudy and I would swim in the river before dinner. For me it was a good way to wash off the wood dust and sweat after a long day in my cabinet-making class, while my friends washed off the smell of raw meat and flour from their days. The current was strong but we were accomplished swimmers and made it easily from one side of the river to the other. Sometimes we would float and allow the water to carry us downstream to the bridge where we would grab on to its arches and rest a while before swimming back upstream against the current. It gave us a good appetite for our evening meal, not that having an appetite was ever a problem. When we entered the dining room after our swim one evening, we noticed a crowd of the older children standing by the far wall. They were reading some papers stuck on the wall. The atmosphere in the room was unusually sombre.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Marcus.

  Someone said, ‘We’ve received a list of the survivors liberated from the concentration camps. Take a look and see if anyone from your family is on it. They are the ones who will be coming back.’

  We went over and waited pa
tiently while the children in front of us studied the list. I was in no hurry to find out the fate of my family. If their names were on there, it would still be days or perhaps weeks before we would be reunited, and if they were not on the list – well, that didn’t bear thinking about.

  Name – Date of Birth – Place of Birth

  Some names, especially the more traditional Polish spellings, had been corrected by hand which didn’t make reading them any easier. I started on the left and found the names beginning with ‘L’. I scanned the entire section, up and down each of the columns methodically… Landau. Lazar. Levy. Liberman. Lipmann… and then Mandel. Marcovitz… I realised there were no Laskowski in the list, and my spirit began to break. But did this mean they were dead or simply missing? I went through the list searching for Hofman, but again found nothing. For Marcus and Rudy Kohn it was the opposite – there were hundreds of ‘Kohns’, ‘Kohnns’ and ‘Cohns’ on the list and they had to check each one carefully to see if they were from their family. Even though they split the job between the two of them, they took a long time to check the list but in the end we all had the same result – not one single survivor from either of our families.

  ‘This can’t be right!’ I shouted, angrily. ‘Not one member of my family is on this list.’

  ‘It’s the same for most of us,’ said a boy with tears in his eyes.

  I resolved the only way to be sure I hadn’t missed a name was to check the whole thing, line by line. By the time I’d finished, my head throbbed. There was not one single Laskowski or Hofman or anything remotely similar out of the thousands of names on the list. I was desolate. I slumped down on a chair, put my head in my hands and wept silently for my lost family.

  ****

  They couldn’t have been kinder to us at Perreux, but no amount of kindness could help us to get over the loss of our families. At the beginning of summer we were told we had two and a half months to go and do whatever we wanted, and we were each given a small amount of money to spend. First, I went to Paris and stayed with Pierre for a few days, where I told him what I had learnt about our family. Pierre said he had read the same list in the repatriation centre where he was told that because our parents had been taken so long ago it was unlikely they had survived the concentration camps. But the children might still have survived as they were taken only weeks before the end of the war. They said we shouldn’t lose hope.

  After I left Pierre in Paris, I met up with seven pals from Perreux and we went off for an adventure. We promised ourselves that the summer was our time: no worries, no feeling sad, just living life to the fullest. None of us had ever seen the ocean and we decided to go and get our feet wet in the Mediterranean. We hitch-hiked over two hundred kilometres down to the coast. When we arrived we were speechless at the beauty in front of us. The war was over. We were alive. The sun was shining, and the shimmering water was calling us. We took off our shoes and started walking towards the sea, the golden sand warm between our toes. Suddenly one of the boys stopped dead.

  ‘Guys,’ he said, almost whispering. Then, ‘Guys. Stop!’

  He called several times, until we finally took notice of him. He lifted his arm slowly and pointed to a sign. ‘Achtung! Minen!’ We looked around. There were more of the same signs all around us. The entire beach was riddled with landmines.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Turn around and walk carefully back,’ he said. ‘Look out for anything sticking up in the sand and try to walk on the same spots as before.’

  ‘We need to retrace our footsteps,’ said another.

  ‘That’s what I just said, wise guy!’

  We made it back to safety, furious that the Germans had denied us the pleasure of going into the sea for the first time in our lives. We resolved to not let this ruin our trip and we caught a train back north, but we got on the wrong one and ended up further down the coast. We didn’t want to use up our meagre resources on train tickets – it had to last us the whole summer – so we walked up and down the carriages to avoid the ticket inspector. When he suspected foul play, we got off the train at the next station. We were in Perpignan. The weather had turned nasty and it was nearly evening, so we decided to get a hotel room.

  We were travelling light, but we all had our Scout uniforms. We went into an alleyway and changed into our uniforms so we all looked the same. We chipped in a few francs each and tossed a coin to decide who would go and get the room.

  ‘When you get the key, come out and let us know the room number and then we’ll all come in, one by one,’ we said.

  We were all similar in height and wearing the same clothes; the plan was to make the hotel staff believe there was only one of us. It worked! The room was tiny with one bed. We put the mattress on the floor and all eight of us had somewhere to sleep. It was tight, but at least we were sheltered from the rain. We left the following morning leaving the hotel staff none the wiser!

  We hitch-hiked all over. We stopped at farms and asked if we could pick fruit; in return we got a place to sleep and ate the fruit that fell on the ground. It was a great summer full of distractions from the aftermath of the war.

  By the start of the next school year we were ready to go back to Perreux and return to our apprenticeships. The day we arrived back, a letter from Pierre was waiting.

  Pierre

  Paris

  September 1945

  I was pleased when Samuel told me of his plans to travel around with his friends from Perreux. Why shouldn’t he enjoy himself instead of sitting around feeling sad? One thing this war had taught us was to live life to the fullest when you had the chance. I chose to stay in Paris and continue working, as I was making good progress in learning a trade. Now that we knew for certain our family was not coming back, I needed to start thinking about my future.

  I wasn’t sure Samuel had made his peace with the loss of our parents yet, but I knew I could not dwell on my feelings – I had to take care of him now. I was still having difficulty coming to terms with losing the children though – how could they have murdered my innocent siblings? Maybe they had gotten out in time and hadn’t been identified yet. I was determined to keep looking for them, and I continued asking the repatriation centre to check their lists.

  As more people returned from the camps or hiding places, the Hôtel Grande was a fascinating place to be. Families sobbed with joy as they were reunited in one of its many rooms. Survivors were treated like royalty; identities and optimism for the future were returned through new papers and passports. But for the survivors with families who did not return, hope was smashed to pieces; families destroyed for ever and lives broken beyond repair. Each time I returned, I wondered if I would join one of those groups or remain in the purgatory of uncertainty.

  One day in September, I waited patiently in line for my turn at the enquiry desk. I watched a man wait nervously on a chair in the lobby until he was called and taken upstairs. An hour later, when I was close to the front of the line, the same man came downstairs holding the hand of a young child. He was smiling nervously and talking constantly. The child was silent and looked confused. I wondered if it was a sign – would I one day walk out of here, not with one child holding my hand but with two little girls and a thirteen-year-old boy too? When would it be our turn?

  ‘How can I help you?’ asked the lady behind the desk. I had seen her several times before and despite having searched for my family on a number of occasions, I still needed to show her the list of names I always carried with me. The staff and volunteers dealt with thousands of people and I didn’t blame them for not remembering me.

  I handed over the piece of paper.

  The lady scanned through the lists on her desk, then said, ‘Please wait here,’ and went into a back office. It seemed as if I waited longer than usual and I began to feel hopeful. Had they found someone?

  ‘I’m sorry for the delay,’ she said, sitting down opposite me. ‘I think we may have some news for you.’

  My heart started
racing. After months and months of weekly visits and hours of waiting patiently in queues, there was finally some news. Please God let it be good news.

  ‘There is a young girl we think may be your sister.’

  ‘Just one? Are you sure there are not two – twins?’

  ‘It says there is only one and I did telephone just now to confirm it before I told you. We don’t want to give anyone false hope. Only one child was mentioned.’

  My heart sank. This must be a mistake.

  ‘I don’t think this young girl can be my sister. There’s no way my sisters would leave one another.’

  ‘Shall we check her name? She is staying at a convent and the nuns call her Isabel.’

  ‘I was right,’ I said. ‘Neither of my sisters are called Isabel. You’ve got the wrong person.’ I got up to leave.

  ‘Wait a minute. They call her Isabel for her own safety. She has been living with them for over a year and the sisters are so fond of her they would like her to continue with them, but we’ve insisted she be returned to her family if there are any left – too many people have lost their loved ones. Her real name is Georgette Laskowski.’ She was reading from a file she had brought back to the desk. ‘Born 9 April 1938 in Metz.’

  I was in shock. I didn’t know what to think or how to feel. I had just been told one of my sisters was alive. But what about Henriette? How was it possible they had been separated?

  ‘Pierre? This is good news.’

  ‘Yes, yes sorry. It is wonderful news that Georgette is well. Thank you. But please, please check again. There must be some mistake. Can you check again to see if Henriette Laskowski is also on the list. Born 9 April 1938 in Metz. They are twins. They were together in the Jewish orphanage in Louveciennes. And my brother Claude, he was there too. Please check again. I beg you.’

  ‘We already did,’ came the gentle reply. ‘Georgette was alone when she arrived at the end of July 1944. We specifically asked about her sister, but they don’t know anything about Henriette. I’m so sorry.’