The Americans were passing Héna’s sister’s house when they stopped again. A soldier jumped down from his tank. Proud to be near an American, we followed him as he walked over to Madame Laks, who was in her front garden. Pointing to the water pump, the soldier began to say something. She quickly understood that he was asking for water and, in her excitement, spoke several words of Yiddish. The soldier smiled. “My name is Epstein! I’m a Jew. And I speak Yiddish.” Madame Laks was overjoyed. “You’re welcome to the water,” she said. “Take all you want.”
My friends and I took turns filling the soldiers’ canteens, and the Americans thanked us with chewing gum. It was the first time I chewed gum. Then they climbed aboard their tanks, and André, Pierre, and I followed the convoy as far as the railroad station, where we left them. On the way back, we joined a group of villagers gathered around a bullet-riddled German car that lay on its side in the road. We learned that the car, carrying SS officers fleeing the advancing Allies, had taken a wrong turn and met the Americans head-on. Fascinated, I watched a dying German take his last breath.
My two friends came to see me off when I left Pontault-Combault in the spring of 1945. Pierre gave me his knucklebones as a going-away present and André parted with his slingshot. Madame Devolder dried her eyes with her handkerchief. “Jean,” she said, embracing me, “I’ll miss you!” As I walked away with Héna, a part of me felt sad.
LES BUISSONS
Héna placed me in Les Buissons, a temporary home for Jewish children who had been orphaned or separated from their families during the war. It was housed in a modest mansion on the outskirts of the city of Le Mans. I was not happy there. I disliked the regimented life, the communal living, and the strict discipline imposed by Serge, the autocratic director of the home.
Still, much of what he did for us was good. He taught us to appreciate classical music and great literature. We learned about Jewish culture, and I relearned Yiddish, which I had seldom heard during all those years in hiding. We were given piano lessons and sang Jewish songs—the same songs Mama had once sung to me. We went on frequent hikes, learned new games and folk dances, and put on plays, which we performed for visitors during the holidays.
At first the meals at the home consisted of cauliflower in the morning, again at lunch, and for supper, too. And sometimes red beets, to vary the menu. Thanks to money raised by Jews in the United States, our food improved later on. Each day before lunch, we had to swallow a spoonful of cod-liver oil to remedy a vitamin deficiency brought on by malnutrition during the war. To kill the odious taste, we’d put a pinch of salt on a piece of bread and keep it at the ready, then hold our noses as we quickly swallowed the cod-liver oil, and, just as fast, follow it with the bread. But the fishy aftertaste remained in our mouths.
Jewish American soldiers based in Le Mans often came to visit us. They brought us canned goods, as well as chocolate, candy, and chewing gum. They also drove us into town in their army trucks so we could go to the movies. After seeing Robin Hood, my friends and I made bows and arrows. I had two adolescent loves at the home, a secret crush on a girl named Charlotte, who had beautiful eyes—one brown, the other black—and a love for a snowy white puppy that had been given to the shelter by a neighboring farmer.
School was a half hour away by foot. Coming home took longer because the road was uphill. We walked in a group, and Frida, a counselor, usually accompanied us each way on her bicycle. She had a number tattooed on her arm. We all knew she had gotten it in a concentration camp. She never talked about it. I remember local children sometimes throwing stones at us as we made our way to or from school. We didn’t like it, but we had lived through so much worse. We could put up with this. But one day when I was playing with classmates in the schoolyard, two older boys called me a “dirty Jew!” The principal overheard them and warned them that they would be expelled if they made anti-Semitic slurs again. Suddenly we were being protected. The war was over.
One Sunday, families and guests came from Paris to celebrate the Jewish holiday Purim with us. In the afternoon, on the grassy lawn under tall oak trees, we sang for the visitors and performed a traditional play, dating back many years. It tells the story of the king’s minister, the evil Haman, scheming the destruction of the Jewish people of Persia, who escape through the intervention of God, the bravery of Queen Esther, and the wisdom of her uncle Mordecai. Charlotte played Queen Esther and I played the wise old Mordecai. Afterward the chef, Monsieur Pierre, and his wife, Madame Olga, brought out a large cake baked in the shape of the mansion, with a shiny sugar crown on top.
In our room upstairs that night, with the light out and the door shut, my friends Carol, Victor, Vladeck, Jean, Louis Berman, and I chatted. We laughed at the practical jokes we had played on the older girls, and at the same time wondered what had happened to the sugar crown that had adorned Monsieur Pierre’s cake that afternoon. It had mysteriously disappeared.
“Serge ate it,” Carol whispered in the dark.
The door of our room flew open, and in the doorway stood the director. I had never seen him look so angry. It was our bad luck that Serge, who walked the halls at night listening to make certain we were all asleep, pressed an ear against our door just as Carol made his statement. Carol explained that it was just a joke, but Serge didn’t see it that way. “Everybody downstairs in the dining hall!” He was raging mad. Going from room to room, he woke all the children and ordered them to the dining hall as well. The little ones, not fully awake, had to be carried in our arms.
Serge kept candy and chocolate, donated by the American soldiers, under lock and key in a large cupboard at one corner of the dining hall. Except for moonlight filtering through the windows, the room was dark when we walked in. We went to our tables and waited silently. Serge unlocked the cupboard—he always carried the key in his pocket—took out the sweets, and began distributing them to us. “So I ate the crown!” he fumed. “No one leaves the room until all the candy and chocolate are eaten.”
It was late, and no one had any real appetite for candy, but we dutifully began eating. After an hour, Serge allowed the youngest children to go back to bed. But Carol, Victor, Vladeck, Jean, Louis Berman, and I were made to stay.
“I hate him,” said Carol back in our room, and we all fell asleep.
As time passed, I learned of the Nazi death camps. Still, I clung to the hope of being reunited with Mama and Papa. But as the weeks, months, and years passed, and one by one my friends left the home to be reunited with family, often a single parent and Holocaust survivor, my hope faded. And I grew angry that not one of those lucky children was me.
Then in the spring of 1948 I learned that a Jewish couple in America wanted to bring me to the United States and adopt me. “Isaac,” said Héna, “this will be a very good thing for you!” I wasn’t so sure, but I had no choice.
LEAVING FOR AMERICA
Monsieur Pierre and his wife baked a cake for my going-away party. Before leaving for America, I went to visit 60, rue de la Fontaine au Roi. I walked past the apartment of the new concierge and made my way to the courtyard. It was smaller than I remembered. I looked up at our windows, the ones in the bedroom and living room that faced the courtyard. I climbed the stairs that Mama and I had fled down the morning the police came to arrest us. I hesitated for a moment at the front door of the old apartment, my heart pounding. Then I took the three flights of stairs to the Rosenblooms’. Marcel and his parents were there. Through sheer luck they had survived the Holocaust. I stayed awhile, and before I left, Madame Rosenbloom gave me a photograph of Mama and Papa, looking young and happy, smiling into the camera.
On November 1, 1948, I boarded a plane for the United States. I was fifteen years old and on my way to a new life. As I said goodbye to Héna, the image of Papa standing behind barbed wire at Pithiviers waving goodbye to Mama and me flashed in front of my eyes. I felt the wetness of Mama’s tears on my cheek. Of my entire family—four grandparents, many uncles, aunts, and cousins—only one cousin,
one uncle, and I survived.
The children and staff of Les Buissons, 1947
Les Buissons, 1948 (I am the third boy on the right)
AFTERWORD
The Nazis and their French collaborators kept meticulous records of their crimes during the war. It is recorded that Moszek Sztrymfman,* my father, left Pithiviers for Auschwitz with convoy number 4, on June 25, 1942, together with 998 other men between the ages of thirty-one and forty-two. And that fifty-one of them seem to have survived after the war. My father was not among them. Rywka Sztrymfman,* my mother, left Pithiviers for Auschwitz with convoy number 24, on August 26, 1942, together with 947 other deportees. According to the records, twenty-three survived. My mother was not one of them.
In 1952, I was officially adopted by Meyer and Bella Millman and took their name. At first it was difficult to adjust to a new country and accept complete strangers as parents. In time, with help from the Millmans, who were patient and loving, I did. They sent me to school and I finished my education. After college, I was drafted into the American army, became a citizen, and was sent to Europe. On leave, I visited Héna and her family, and renewed my ties with her granddaughter, Jeanine, whom I had met once before when she was twelve and I thirteen. This time we fell in love. After my discharge, she joined me in the United States and we were married. Héna was overjoyed.
After the war, Héna left Paris for Combault to be near her sister. Some years later, my wife and I returned to France with our two little boys to visit the family, and at the first opportunity, accompanied by Héna, we went to see Madame Devolder. She was keeping a young Jewish child, not hidden, as I was, but in need of Madame Devolder’s kindness and care. Ours was a happy reunion.
Today I am at peace with the past. Yet I cannot forget it, for the past is my parents.
My parents, Moïshé and Rivelé Sztrymfman
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to acknowledge the one hundred and sixty students and their teachers of the Dag Hammarskjold Middle School in East Brunswick, New Jersey, who wrote to thank me for visiting their school and speaking of my Holocaust experience. Their letters encouraged me to write Hidden Child.
I want to acknowledge the following people for their patience in supplying some answers to my questions during my research for Hidden Child: Joseph and Yvette Nisenman, Jean Sztulman, Jean Maslo, Victor Flandre, Emile Papiernik, Fernande and Lucien Kletzkine, Germaine and Léon Kletzkine, and Paulette Libeskind. I want to thank Michel Villard and Rémy Rebeyrotte, the mayor of Autun, France, for allowing me to visit the prison where my mother and I were held.
I also want to thank Katarzyna Nowak of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum for the research and discovery in its archives of my father’s death certificate, dated February 16, 1943, Auschwitz.
It was in Serge Klarsfeld’s Le Mémorial de la Déportation des Juifs de France (“Memorial to the Jews Deported from France”) that I found the dates and numbers of the convoys that transported my father and mother to Auschwitz, where both perished.
And my heartfelt thanks to the family friend who rescued our photo albums after my mother and I fled Paris and who gave them to me when I came out of hiding. The photos reproduced here are from that collection.
My sincere gratitude to my editor, Frances Foster, for her kind guidance throughout Hidden Child.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Isaac Millman is the author and illustrator of three other books about Moses ("[A] great contribution," praised School Library Journal). He lives in New York City. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Before the War
Germany Invades France
Pithiviers
Persecution of Jews
The Passage
The Arrest
The Hospital
Héna
Pontault-Combault
Madame Mercier
Madame Devolder
My Friends
Life was Harsh
The Liberation
Les Buissons
Leaving for America
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by Isaac Millman
All rights reserved
First edition, 2005
www.fsgkidsbooks.com
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eISBN 9781466896475
First eBook edition: August 2016
* I have referred to my parents by their familiar names, Moïshé and Rivelé, throughout this book.
Hidden Child Page 3