The House of Izieu

by Jan Rehner

“I’ve arranged placements for all but eighteen children,” Sabine said.

  “I can take only six,” Léon said. “I can get them into Switzerland.”

  “Which six? How in god’s name do we decide?”

  Léon plunged his face into his hands and then looked up. “Let’s try to keep siblings together.”

  Sabine nodded. “Max and Herman,” she said, remembering a promise she’d made long ago to a frightened boy waiting in a hotel room with his little brother for a mother that never returned. “Maurice and Liliane, and Paula and Marcel. Some of the older siblings can stay at the Perticoz farm or the boarding school in Belley. How soon can you come?”

  “We still have to wait for the snow to melt, for the roads to become passable.”

  Sabine closed her eyes. For now, the roads were no more than grey pencil lines between mounds of snow, but those lines would soon widen. March, she knew, was unpredictable, either fair or fierce. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’m guessing. Early April?”

  “Easter,” Léon suggested. “I’ll come at Easter when the schools are on holiday and take the children with me when I leave.”

  Sabine looked away and bit her bottom lip. “I hate this,” she murmured. “I hate even thinking about breaking up the House of Izieu. How will I tell the children that once again they’ll be uprooted?”

  Léon reached for her hand and squeezed it hard. “You have no choice,” he said. That was all the comfort he could offer.

  When Sabine arrived home to the happy news that all the children were healthy again, she called the adults together and told them everything she’d done and everything she’d learned in Montpellier. “There’s nothing I want more than to stay together, but we mustn’t underestimate the danger. We have until Easter. Then everyone must go.”

  Her revelations were met with a long and unhappy silence. The isolation of the House of Izieu was so seductive. Couldn’t they stay? Perhaps the Germans would leave them alone. Wasn’t it just as perilous to try to leave? But no one spoke these thoughts aloud.

  “You still need places for a dozen children. Émile can live with me,” Léa offered.

  “I’ll contact my parents.” Suzanne said. “If they’re well enough to travel they can come at Easter, and Claude can leave with them.”

  “There’s someone I know who’ll take in Gérard,” Lucie promised. “I can take him there next week, but I’ll come back and help out until Easter.”

  Mina Friedler said nothing at all. She and her daughter would be together, but she had no idea where they might go.

  Finally Miron asked the most difficult question of all. “When do we tell the children?”

  Some were in favour of telling them the very next morning so they would have time to adjust, but the others argued that no amount of time could prepare them for leaving the House of Izieu, and they should have one last carefree month together. Miron suggested that if Sabine left the House a day or two before the children, she could greet them when they reached Montpellier and soothe their anxieties. In the end, the adults agreed on this latter course—one more carefree month.

  March was like a fresh breeze that swept away worry, or at least made it easier to disguise. The first flowers of the season began to poke out from the ground, and the sun shone almost every day. Spring fever quivered in the air and even the tips of the trees seemed to tremble, anticipating their first burst of green. As a precaution, a bell was hung in the barn and another at the Perticoz farm, and if anyone saw or heard anything suspicious, the bells would ring. The children were told to scatter if they heard those bells, and run into the woods or head for the best places they’d found after months of playing hide-and-seek. If the older children were wary of such instructions, the youngest welcomed the bells as part of a new game.

  Though she had much to do in preparation for leaving, Sabine spent as much time as she could with the children as they tumbled in play or chased kites in the gusty March winds, but she could not prevent herself from looking up now and again to study the landscape and the horizon. From village to village, from valley to mountain, the snow was steadily disappearing and the mud drying. Sometimes, she caught Miron or Léa in the midst of the same sort of surveying gaze, and she noticed springtime made the children noisier while the adults communicated in sighs and coded glances.

  Finally, when the forest paths were clear and the meadows green, Miron organized a hike into the foothills of the mountains for nine boys and four girls who didn’t mind getting dirty or sweaty. Little Sami refused to be left behind, and Miron didn’t have the heart to deny him, even though he knew he’d soon be carrying the boy on his shoulders. They sang as they marched along through the forest, stopping now and again to admire a chorus of birds just beginning to make their nests, or a brave squirrel standing erect and sniffing at the new softness in the air. The world seemed to be pulsing with life, sap bursting from the hidden veins of the trees. After a steady climb, they left the forest behind and reached an upper meadow, where they found clumps of cowslips and marguerites.

  The heat of midday was evaporating the morning dew, releasing a light mist that lay like a veil over the landscape. So high up, it seemed they were the only people for miles around, and as they climbed higher, the base of the foothill disappeared in a thick fog, and they imagined they were on an island surrounded by a white ocean.

  But they were not alone. From across the meadow, a young teenager was waving and running towards them. “Hello,” she hollered, finally stopping in front of Sami. She bent over and put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. A camera dangled from a strap around her neck. “Hello,” she began again. “You’re from the Settlement, aren’t you? I’m Marie-Louise Bouvier, Madame Perticoz’s niece. I visit their farm often.”

  There was a buzz of introductions before Sami’s high-pitched voice rose above the clamour. His small index finger was pointed directly at Marie-Louise’s neck. “Is that a camera? Will you take pictures of us?”

  There was a short cough from Miron, and Sami, reminded of manners, began again. “Please, mademoiselle.”

  “Yes, please,” several of the other children chimed in.

  “It’ll be my pleasure,” Marie-Louise replied to a round of applause.

  The children laughed and jostled each other with their shoulders, but eventually something like a line emerged, a formation of shorter girls and boys at the front, taller boys at the back. They smiled on cue, easy effortless smiles, and stared into the camera that would hold this day for them forever, while destiny shuffled the cards of their future.

  At the exact moment the children were grinning into the camera, Marie-Antoinette arrived at the doorstep of the House of Izieu, calling for Sabine, and looking nothing like her usual self, her hair wild from the spring winds and her green eyes wide with alarm. Quickly, she pulled Sabine into the barn.

  “They’ve sent Pierre away. Transferred him to some other office in France. I don’t know why. There was no warning. He’s just gone.”

  Sabine felt something inside herself crack like ice too thin to hold a weight. She did not move her hands or open her arms. She did not try to touch Marie-Antoinette or offer her comfort. She understood there was no possible consolation for such terrible news. Their protector was gone.

  For her own part, Marie-Antoinette thought it would have been a healthy sign if she were angry at Pierre-Marcel for not saying goodbye, but she couldn’t even manage that. Given the unshakable love she’d felt for him for so many years, all her heart and mind had room for was sorrow, a sense of personal abandonment, and a rising fear for the fate of her friends.

  “What will you do?” she whispered.

  “The only thing we can do. Empty the house. I only hope we haven’t left it too late.”

  “When?”

  “Easter. As soon as the holiday is over.”

  “I’ll come. I’ll take as m
any children as you need. Noelle will leave Belley with her children and join Pierre. I’ll keep the house for them. It’s big.”

  “Dear Marie-Antoinette. What of your own safety? What of your job?”

  “They didn’t send me away,” she sniffed. “I’m just a woman, just a secretary. I’m counting on them to underestimate me.”

  “All right. Come on Easter Sunday. That’s the day we’ll tell the children and the next day—”

  Sabine’s tongue tripped on the words. The next day would be the wrench of separation, the plunge back into strangeness and fear, the end of the House of Izieu, as brief as roses or a single line of poetry or the sweet notes of a birdsong, already fading before you can recognize them. She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  The two women embraced, without speaking another word.

  As Easter approached, Gabrielle Perrier made preparations to leave for a short visit to her family, and the children were released from the classroom chores. Amid the bedlam that invariably results when children begin a holiday from school, Marie approached Sabine. “It’s Philippe,” she began tentatively. “He’s not himself, not since that shooting in the mountains. They say men weep only for love.”

  “What can I do to help?” Sabine offered, appalled that she had not even noticed Philippe was enduring a private sorrow.

  “Well, I think, and I’m sorry to ask, but I think we should leave before the children do. He’s not a coward, mind, but saying goodbye to all those youngsters … it’s too much.”

  “I understand. Both of you have been so generous. I can’t tell you how grateful Miron and I are.”

  Marie waved away Sabine’s thanks. “It wasn’t anything, not for us leastways. You and your man have good hearts. If the house weren’t shutting down, you’d have had to drag us away. It’s a shame, a great shame, I say.”

  “Yes,” Sabine nodded. Shame was certainly one of many ways to name what was happening in the world.

  On April 1, 1944, Sabine packed her suitcase and sat down on the edge of her bed to lean against her husband’s shoulder. “I wish you didn’t have to go,” he murmured into her hair. “When is the car coming?”

  “Marie-Antoinette promised to be here by eight in the morning. I expect she’ll be here by nine. I’ll have time to have breakfast with the children. Now remember, Suzanne’s parents are arriving tomorrow, and Léon’s arriving on the sixth, and he’s picking up Max and Maurice from the boarding school in Belley on the way.”

  “Where are you going to stay? No, don’t tell me. That way, no one can force me to betray you. I’ll meet you at the train station in Montpellier in just a few days. Me and Théo, Rénate and Liane—your new and much smaller family.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever come back here?” Sabine wondered.

  “I’m sure of it,” Miron replied, drawing her close until there was no room for anything else and the imminence of her departure seemed far away.

  The next morning, the air was mild and the sky was the colour of pearls. Marie-Antoinette arrived intentionally late, with just enough time to drive Sabine to the train station. She knew her friend would be suffering. Best not to linger. For once, she did not talk in the car or try to lighten the mood. In a series of quick glances, she noted the white knuckles of Sabine’s clenched hands and her bowed neck. When finally Sabine looked up, Marie-Antoinette thought she had the expression of a soldier about to embark on a mission filled with uncertainties and breathtaking risks.

  The two women said goodbye, promising to keep in touch, and when Sabine was finally settled on the train, she sighed and closed her eyes. She could summon the House of Izieu from ordinary air the way an alchemist summoned gold from lead, but she could not rewind time or undo its fate.

  On Maundy Thursday, April 6, 1944, at around eight-thirty in the morning, the children were having breakfast. Miron was in the kitchen with Léa and Lucie, who had kept her promise by delivering Dr. Bendrihem’s son to safety and returning to the House of Izieu to help with chores. They heard nothing but the splashing of water as they did the dishes and the constant chatter of the children coming from the adjoining room.

  Léon had been upstairs visiting with his newly arrived parents, Éva and Moise, and his sister, Suzanne, and was just coming down when he saw three men in civilian clothes disappearing along the corridor that led to the breakfast room.

  “Run,” Suzanne urged. “It’s the Gestapo.”

  Within seconds, two convoy trucks sped into the yard, and fifteen soldiers rounded up the children and loaded them into the trucks like sacks of potatoes. Too late, Farmer Perticoz came running and was warned by a shout from Miron to stay back and hide.

  If the people in the town of Izieu had looked up, they would have seen a cloud of dust on the horizon, stirred up by a convoy of trucks, moving like a slow, small whirlwind. And if they had listened closely, they would have heard over the grinding of the truck’s gears, the unmistakable sound of children singing. But it was a holiday, and good people were busy with their own affairs, perhaps catching an extra hour of sleep, or preparing for the meal to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ.

  At a crossroad, one woman was brazen enough to stand in the road, refusing to budge, forcing the convoy to stop. She talked at length to a small dark man in a good dark suit, and one small boy—her nephew, she insisted, and she had the papers to prove it—was lifted down from the back of one truck. He was, she protested, not Jewish.

  Marie-Antoinette heard about the raid in a frantic phone call from Farmer Perticoz and abandoned her desk immediately, without asking for permission or offering an explanation. She found a German staff car with keys in the ignition and borrowed it. She drove recklessly on the mountain roads, heedless of branches scraping the sides of the car, or potholes that chewed up the tires. In her heart, despite all the stern talk she’d heard from Pierre and her own keen intelligence, she’d believed that nothing terrible could befall a sanctuary where such innocence flowered. She was in a state of shock.

  When she reached the top of the hill that overlooked the House of Izieu, she turned off the ignition and let the car coast. When gravity would take it no further, she got out on shaky legs and slowly walked to the front door.

  The unearthly silence of the place almost drove her to her knees.

  She called out and her voice, in her own ears, sounded like china crashing to the floor.

  She forced herself to enter the house, once filled to the brim with forty-four children. She stared at the empty space as if the soldiers had torn through the fabric of the air, leaving it hanging in rags behind them. She looked everywhere, under every bed in the dormitory, up the ladder into the attic, across the yard in the barn. Miron and Léa were gone. The children were gone, and the air in every room echoed their absence.

  Finally, Marie-Antoinette stuffed a cardboard box with crayon drawings, school notebooks, letters, and photographs, anything she could find to prove the children existed. She packed up dolls, and small carvings in the shape of animals, and birthday cards. When she carried her burden outside, she heard Tomi whimpering. The poor dog had worn himself out running from place to place in search of the children and consolation, finally collapsing in a dejected heap.

  Marie-Antoinette picked him up and said goodbye to the House of Izieu, leaving the door wide-open because everything precious was already gone, and because only the rush of the wind and the battering of the rain—certainly no human hand—would ever be able to scour it clean of the unspeakable evil that had crept up in the dawn and spilled its ugly shadow everywhere only hours before.

  The telegram from Marie-Antoinette reached Sabine when she was in the chapel with Abbé Prevost making the final arrangements for the orphanage to take in twelve boys from the House of Izieu.

  Family ill, contagious disease.

  The House had been raided, the children and adults arrested. The knowledge, coded in simpl
e words, descended with effortless terror like the blade of a guillotine.

  Sabine crushed the telegram in her hand and let it drop to the floor.

  Abbé Prevost was alarmed at the instant change in Sabine. She was breathing quickly and anguish was rising from her in waves, anguish he could smell, like a sour mix of bitter lemons and creosote. He reached for the telegram and shook his head.

  “The children are ill? How unfortunate.”

  “No Father.” She forced out the words. “The House has been cleared out.”

  The priest still did not understand. Sabine shuddered and tried again. “The Germans have arrested everyone who was there.”

  “Were they all together?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  “My God,” he uttered, crossing himself.

  Sabine was utterly still. She looked strangely emotionless, though her brain was spinning, as if it had been concussed by a crushing blow. It was the numbness that follows an injury before the pain begins to cut slowly and relentlessly through the dense analgesic fog.

  That numbness allowed her to function mechanically for the many hours she worked tirelessly to try to save the children and their supervisors. She rushed from place to place, from person to person. She appealed to the Red Cross in Montpellier, to old friends from OSE, to her old driver, Marius, and the subpréfet, Monsieur Fridrici. They could do nothing. She could do nothing.

  Finally, she appealed to the Vichy administration for the release of the children, at the very least. She presented her identification papers, in the name of Jeanne Verdavoire, and waited for a long time to be seen by some official who might have the power or the heart to show clemency. Eventually, she was admitted to what seemed to be a huge filing room with industrial lighting, manned by a single official whose name was never offered to her. He had a leonine head and a bony face.

  As the man turned away from her toward the open shelving to look for documents of the arrest, an arc of white light from a hanging light fixture swept across his face. For a moment, he looked as if he wasn’t in colour, but black and white like a photograph, something flat and two-dimensional with neither thickness nor substance. She wondered for a terrible moment if he was real at all or a spectre.