Louise was thirteen years old when her mother died from tuberculosis. Though they were non-observant Jews, her mother had a traditional burial. Louise was unfamiliar with the tradition of tossing a spadeful of dirt onto a casket. She wailed and refused until her father cradled her shaking hand and went through the motion with her. That moment was the first of only two times she ever saw her father cry.
In September 1939, two and a half months after her mother’s death, Germany invaded Poland. That winter, as soldiers from France and Germany faced off along their shared border, life went on as normal as far as Louise remembered. No one believed the Germans would invade France.
The Germans invaded Belgium and Holland in May 1940. When it became apparent France was next, millions of Parisians fled. They left by train, car, bicycle, horse. If no other option existed, they walked. Some people even pushed elderly relatives in baby carriages or wheelbarrows.
By June, the only Parisians who remained in the city were those like Louise and her father: people who did not have family outside the city, and who lacked the financial means to secure safe refuge. “What could we do?” She shrugged. “We prepared for life under German rule.”
On the day the Germans occupied Paris, Louise and her father walked to Hôtel de Ville, the grand Renaissance-style hall that housed Paris’s city administration. Louise was unsure how she and her father knew to go there; she speculated neighbors who owned a radio must have said something. Small clusters of people—“two here, three there”—gathered on the plaza. As they watched their beloved blue, white, and red flag silently lowered, Louise’s father squeezed her hand so tight it hurt. “We were numb. We didn’t believe what we were seeing.” More than seventy years had passed, but she could not hold back tears.
“You don’t have to tell me if it’s too painful,” I said. Louise took deep breaths and told me she wanted me to hear.
As the Germans raised their flag above Hôtel de Ville, the waving lines of the swastika reminded Louise of snakes slithering on a field of blood. She turned and looked up at her father. Tears were falling from his bright blue eyes. When they walked away, shocked into a stupor, Louise realized a German soldier was pointing his machine gun at them. Louise could not believe he was there, then clarified, “I could not believe he felt he needed to be there.”
As months crawled by, a surreal sense of normalcy returned to the city. German soldiers were polite, she said. “No one had trouble with them.” With a sadness I would soon understand, she said it was not the Germans they needed to worry about. “The French did their dirty work.”
One evening, as Louise stitched the Star of David onto her father’s clothes, she asked why she had the misfortune to be born to Jewish parents. The guilt over the hurt her question inflicted, she confessed, was something she had carried for seven decades. Louise did not think of herself as a Jew. She considered herself a Parisienne, no different than anyone else. Others, however, defined her by differences, not similarities. “It was humiliation piled on top of humiliation,” she said of the anti-Jewish laws. Radios and bicycles were confiscated. Jewish music was banned. Jews were prohibited from using cafés, markets, theaters, libraries, and public parks. When Louise had her identity-card photo taken, she explained, she was forced to turn to her side so her nose could be shown in profile. “Humiliation is a form of torture; people don’t realize that.”
Despite recurring stomach ulcers, Louise’s father never missed work. He could not risk losing his job. Louise did not understand how ill he was until he could not get out of bed. At the same time, it was their day to check in and receive their monthly ration coupons, so Louise went to the 4th Arrondissement La Mairie on her own.
Louise did not notice that two plain-clothed French policemen watched her pick up both sets of coupons.
She also did not notice they followed her back to her apartment.
The policemen pushed their way into the apartment behind her. Louise pressed her rail-thin body against the wall, as if she could make herself disappear into the ugly, apple-patterned wallpaper. She watched as the police pulled her father out of his bed. “To this day, I have no idea why they didn’t take me, too,” she whispered.
My mind raced back to our first conversation when Louise said, “So many men, so many French men, disappeared, you know. One day they were gone and they were never heard from again.” I finally understood why it brought Louise so much joy to learn about Marcel’s letters—and why she needed me to understand how precious his words were.
After the war, a man who had been locked inside the cattle car with Louise’s father came to pay his respects. Between his illness and the anguish of leaving Louise behind, her father “had not lasted long.” The French government provided a death certificate listing his death at Auschwitz, but based on the man’s testimony, she learned he died inside the cattle car. “It was a consolation to know what really happened,” she said. After the war she also learned the two policemen did not have orders to arrest her father that day. They did it for bonus money.
After her father was taken, Louise was alone. She was sixteen years old. It would be a year and nine months before Paris would be liberated; two and a half years before the war would end. She gave full credit for her survival to her friends, her friends’ parents, teachers, neighbors, and a priest, Father Devaux, who secretly gave Louise money so she could continue to pay her apartment’s rent. Father Devaux would ultimately earn a place on the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations for risking his life to save Jews.
On June 6, 1944, when the Allies landed on the shores of Normandy, everyone believed Paris would be liberated in no time, Louise said. But the next two and a half months turned out to be the scariest time. The Germans were angry and desperate. More and more people were arrested. Or disappeared.
On the day of their liberation, Louise and a classmate, Ginette, joined throngs of strangers on Paris’s streets. There was no reason—“no way,” Louise clarified—to contain their delirious joy. Flags of blue, white, and red billowed and waved. They brushed away tears. They hugged and kissed strangers.
Ginette’s father was Jewish. He never registered at the town hall like he was supposed to, so for the duration of the war he remained sequestered inside their apartment. On that afternoon, he stepped outside for the first time in years.
That evening, Louise and Ginette walked to Hôtel de Ville. Music and dancing filled the expansive plaza in front of the building. When Louise looked up, her heart swelled to see her beloved French flag back in its proper place atop the building. “People were drunk with joy; it was magic,” she said of the day. Louise’s eyes lit up as she described the American soldiers; it was as if she suddenly became her eighteen-year-old self again. “Every single one of them was handsome like a movie star,” she said dreamily. “We had never seen teeth so perfect!”
Throughout the afternoon, Louise and I alternated between fits of breath-stealing giggles and moments when tears pooled in our eyes. Our waitress remarked how delightful it was to see grandmother and granddaughter having so much fun together.
“Oh, we’re not related,” we said in perfect unison. The waitress’s jaw dropped when we told her it was the first time we had ever met.
Hours later, as we strolled out of the restaurant, Louise asked when I planned to send the next letter. I promised I would email the scan as soon as I returned home. I assured her she did not need to translate the letters so quickly—it had only been a week and she had already translated seven. But Louise seemed to be as obsessed with Marcel’s words as I was.
Letter Thirteen
Marienfelde, Germany
September 10 (1943)
Two thirty
My little darling,
As you see I’m writing in pencil, my pen is empty and my ink bottle perished in the fire.
I got some letters Monday, but nothing since then, but the morale is good, and today is a day to mark with a white stone “let’s hope tonight it will not be all dark” bec
ause the news is good, amazing even; nobody was expecting Italy would fall so rapidly. I imagine you at news time, you must look happy like in the beautiful old days. Here everything is jolly, but on one side only, because the others are rather sad. Well, it’s taking a turn for the best, and I hope that it will not stop here. Because every time something happens crazy lies are running and always from an official source. At the camp we now have sentinels because of the Italians.
Today was pay day. Everyone was happy because for the last three weeks all we got was down payments. Let’s hope that next week pay day will be back to normal because they already owe me 65 marks. At camp we see our new barracks grow from where we are; this time they’re made of brick, but in spite of that they most likely will not resist [illegible]. For the time being I’m in good health, I manage and I eat a lot of apples. Each one of our gentlemen just received a pound of honey; it might be the honey meant for the prisoners. With all that, time still goes slowly, even though I’ve been here eight months already. And we still have to wait to go on leave, and with what’s going on these days, we can’t hope to leave soon. My poor darling, we still need a lot of patience and courage, and just think that after all that we’ll be able to catch up during the beautiful days that we’ll have to stay together. Same old song, I’m anxious to hear from you; one letter reads so fast. I’m going to return to work, so I’m leaving you for today, my little treasure. Kiss my little dolls for me and Mom too. Say hello to everybody for me in Berchères, and also in Montreuil if you still go there. And for you, my little treasure, your big guy who loves you more than ever sends you his most tender kisses.
Marcel
Chapter Twenty-Eight
White Bear Lake, Minnesota
September 2012
Two months before Marcel wrote that letter, 200,000 Allied troops descended on Sicily. Within weeks, Patton’s Seventh Army secured the Sicilian capital, and Mussolini—Hitler’s Fascist ally—was arrested. By mid-August, three weeks before Marcel wrote that letter, the Germans were in full retreat. And on September 8, two days before Marcel wrote his letter, the Italians surrendered.
Marcel’s access to timely news surprised me. I had read that the only news many French workers in Germany had access to were propaganda newspapers, or second- and third-hand reports from Allied radio broadcasts. The misinformation—the isolation—had to have been excruciating. At one point, an especially cruel rumor swirled that Paris had been burned down and all relatives of men working in Germany had been shot.
When I sent the next scan to Louise, I told her to do her best. The card was small like a postcard, though it had neither stamps nor a mailing panel. The front was readable, but water stains on the back rendered complete words and phrases nothing more than streaks of cobalt blue. It was as if the card had been caught in the rain.
Letter Fourteen
Paris, France
Wednesday, Noon
Dear all,
Some people are lucky, really; since you left, the sun has been shining. Yes, of course, I know, it still isn’t very warm this morning; there’s some frost in Berchères; until recently it was zero. Claude made it fine yesterday, not like me, because with the strike I had to go on foot twice. Denise and Eliane were more lucky, they took a cab yesterday morning [illegible] a customer took them back. Some news: Jacques returned with [illegible] the owner of a [illegible] that we made use of by uncorking it; the bottle of rosé that you are keeping [illegible] Mom, if you think of it, save me some eggs for Monday. I gave six of them to Figueras, and he gave me some chocolates for my little ones, a surprise from Marcel. My little [illegible] if you think of training for soccer, be very careful not to catch cold. My darling, kiss the whole little tribe for me. Lots of kisses from Daddy.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
White Bear Lake, Minnesota
September 2012
It took a few moments to realize what was in the letter.
I read it again, feeling blindsided by its revelation. Bile flooded my mouth.
Had the family been lying this whole time? Had everything been a lie?
I berated myself mercilessly: You. Are. So. Fucking. Gullible.
“There’s no way these letters were confiscated by a German soldier,” I explained late that night after Aaron got home from work.
All evening, I sat on the couch, processing the evidence: Marcel sent this undated letter from Paris to Berchères-la-Maingot. Even if I had that backward and the letter had been sent from Berchères to Paris, Marcel had been inside France. And if letters written in France were together at the flea market with letters that had been sent from Germany, the letters could not have been taken by a German soldier as the family claimed. In the fourth letter, Marcel had written, “there might be some letters that you didn’t receive.” But even if some letters had been taken by Germans or were lost in transit, it seemed as though these must have been the letters that made it through.
Guilt, then shame, alternately skewered me as I thought about the people I had told—friends, family, clients—that Marcel’s family had never before seen his letters. That scenario now appeared impossible. But the thing that made my head and heart ache the most was the realization that if the letters had been in the family’s possession, the family had to have discarded them.
“How old were the girls when the letters were written?” Aaron asked. In January 1943, Suzanne had been nine and a half, Denise had been seven and a half, Lily had just turned four.
“So they might not remember seeing them,” Aaron said in a consoling tone.
“But they had to have seen them,” I said.
“Think of Nadine and Agnès, Natacha, and Tiffanie,” Aaron said. “They haven’t seen them before. Their surprise seemed genuine.” That was true; their astonishment seemed real. “What did Nadine tell you? The only things they know about Marcel’s time in Germany are what they learned from these letters. So maybe Denise and Lily read them sixty-eight years ago, so what? Do you think they were touched to read the letters again?”
“Yes,” I whispered, as I thought of the email from Tiffanie where she said they laughed and cried.
I yearned to find any other way the letters could have been together at a flea market, but other scenarios did not seem to exist. In the days that followed, I reluctantly came to terms with the fact that the letters had to have been with the family in Berchères-la-Maingot.
Three letters remained. I sent the next scan to Louise with conflicted feelings. I felt grounded in the truth, and pushed far, far off kilter.
Letter Fifteen
Marienfelde, Germany
October 21 (1943)
My little darling,
Last night I received your letter of October 15. It came fast. I wish I could tell you when I will leave, but we don’t know anything yet. Every day they tell us a different story. It is 2:20; at 3:00 we might know something. That’s the way it goes. We have to go to the Foreigners’ Office, and there we ask when we leave; no one gets the same answer. I believe that the reason is that they need more and more [illegible] in spite of what they say. In the end, the opposite happens; instead of going up, it goes down, because as each day goes by, it eats away a little more at our daily ration of courage. It will not bring them luck. All I can say to you, my little treasure, is that we have to make the best of it. Believe our little Lily when she tells you that Daddy will come home. As for me, I will not talk to you about it any longer. I prefer to tell you that you must not count on me. When I don’t think about it anymore, maybe that’s when things will be decided. Last night, when you were at the Gare de l’Est, you probably were not alone, because many among us had written to their wives to come and wait for them at the station. Last night we had quite an alarm from 8 to 10; it wasn’t for us, but it rang hard. Ah, I forgot, last night also I went to get my suit. You should see it; I who like the color brown above all, it is brown, and actually I don’t know what kind of brown, because I’ve only seen it in artificial light and it looks like
it’s goose shit. Besides that, the coat is not lined, so the inside pockets don’t exist and the buttons have gone on leave. The main thing is that it fits me; what hurts is the price. Well, at least I will be cleaner, and now that I’ve been here more than ten months, maybe I’ll be able to go to the movies. My recommendation to you is not to worry, take care of yourself as well as possible, and take good care of the children so that I can find all of you in good health when I come home. I hope that it will not be too much longer now, because each day makes it a little more painful. In the meantime, continue to write, because when there is no letter, the day is long. You say that I don’t mention the photos; I think you look nice, but you know, I don’t always think of everything; because the same thing runs constantly in my head, to leave, to leave, so there are times when I don’t know exactly what I’m doing. To leave for an exceptional reason, I’d have to get a certificate signed by the Kommandantur, testifying that you or one of the children is gravely ill. Can you picture it? Death does not count any more; there are several guys whose father died, and they’re still here. Nothing new in the newspaper; all the attacks are repelled everywhere. Kiss our little girls for me. Your big guy who thinks of you more than ever and who loves you above all else, kisses you very tenderly.
Marcel
Chapter Thirty
White Bear Lake, Minnesota
September 2012
I choked back a sob as I imagined Renée standing alone on the station platform. I pictured her wearing her best dress, with her hair done as it was in their wedding portrait. The cleaving heartbreak she must have felt, as the station emptied and Marcel was nowhere to be seen, was immeasurable.
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