The House of Izieu

by Jan Rehner

  “I was coming to it, before you interrupted.”

  “Well then, what are you waiting for?”

  “Sabine, I’m thinking of filing papers with the Ain préfecture for the founding and management of a Memorial Museum for the Children of Izieu. We’d have to raise funds to buy the house, but after the trial, because of the trial, I think the government will help. What do you think? Will you be president of the Maison d’Izieu?”

  “You mean the House will always belong to the children?”

  “Yes. And I think people will come and learn about them and the guardians who loved and cared for them.”

  “Then I say yes, a thousand times, yes.”

  The trial of Klaus Barbie came to an end on the third of July after twenty-three sessions. Sabine and all of her friends attended to hear the closing arguments of the defence. The courtroom was crowded, the atmosphere as heavy as the stifling heat.

  The defence, in the person of Jacques Vergès, rose to begin his summation, his final plea to the jury. His voice was deep and sonorous, his stature impressive.

  What happened next has never been explained and never forgotten.

  Before Vergès had spoken even a dozen words, a violent storm erupted, with thunderclaps so booming he could not be heard and he was forced to sit down until the storm passed.

  He stood again, a bitter smile on his lips, and resumed his speech. At that instant, the bells of St. John’s Cathedral in Lyon started to ring as if nothing could hold them back, wave after wave of deafening sound. Vergès was forced to sit again, as if overpowered by some greater force.

  Those who believed were certain God had made an appearance in the courtroom. Others, for whom there could be no miracles, were grateful for the fortuitousness of coincidence.

  Vergès finally said what he’d been prepared to say and the jury filed out.

  Most of the crowd spilled out into the courtyard to wait. The air was still thick with humidity and anxiety. Sabine could feel it clogging her lungs. Her cheeks were hot. She watched people milling about as if knee-deep in mud, their limbs clumsy and heavy.

  Time passed. An hour felt like a month. Two hours was a year.

  Six hours later, at forty minutes past midnight, the court was called back into session. The crowd surged forward and held its breath.

  The verdict was announced: Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity. Klaus Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment.

  There followed an astounded silence, one so profound Sabine swore the world must have stopped spinning, everything and everyone frozen in place.

  She closed her eyes, the unbearable sorrow of a lifetime written across her face. Her testimony had finally been heard.

  Three friends met in a small café in a side street in Paris to say goodbye, each of them alone, but together. They talked and laughed and remembered, and the taste of the wine was like honey in Sabine’s throat.

  She looked from face to face. Perhaps Léon was seeing little Claude tossing him a ball, or his sister, Suzanne, twirling a strand of black hair around her finger. Maybe Léa was seeing the desert blooming in Israel, or the shadows of children moving across the sand. Sabine was seeing Miron, his head thrown back, watching the stars brighten over the flow of the river.

  She placed her hand in the middle of the table. Léa put her hand on top of it, and then Léon did the same. Each of them alone, but held together by the House of Izieu, a light that would shine forever through the thunder and darkness of the world.

  EPILOGUE

  REMEMBER US, THE CHILDREN OF IZIEU.

  We were loved. Some of us were too young to know fear. Some of us were relieved to reach fear’s end.

  Remember that we sang in the trucks and held hands on the train. We moved forward as one and dried each other’s tears and kissed each other’s cheeks.

  Now we are running free, running barefoot in the woods and among the wild flowers and long grasses of a summer of endless numbered days. Our souls have settled in the trees like birds at dusk. Our laughter is in the leaves.

  We are there in the corner of your eye, just over the rise of the hills, in the quick current of the river.

  Honour us. Be amazed for us. Remember us.

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  I wish the essential facts of this story were not true, but they are. By the time I visited the House of Izieu, its history had already been written with an ending that couldn’t be changed.

  Sabine and Miron Zlatin existed. The children of Izieu, whose names are listed at the beginning of this book, existed. I have given them words and personalities, and I have filled in their days since history cannot record everything.

  In fact, the only characters that come completely from my imagination are the driver, Marius, the red-haired Milice woman in Montpellier, the young girl who keeps goats outside of Chambéry, Jake Shaw, various German soldiers and officials, and the nameless man who throws himself into the face of an oncoming train.

  In my research, I relied on Sabine Zlatin’s memoir, Mémoires de la Dame d’Izieu and Serge Klarsfeld’s books, Remembering Georgy: Letters from the House of Izieu and The Children of Izieu: A Human Tragedy. Sabine’s exact words, spoken at Barbie’s trial, are taken from The Children of Izieu, 6 April 1944: A Crime Against Humanity, a booklet published by The Musée dauphinois. Suzanne Reifman’s letter, written to Sabine in Drancy before leaving for Auschwitz, is also taken from this source. The incident that occurs when Sabine is being interrogated in Montpellier and yet manages to escape custody is taken from Margaret Collins Weitz’s Sisters in the Resistance.

  Perhaps this book would never have been written had my husband and I not stumbled across the House of Izieu almost as if fate were leading us there. We were profoundly moved by what we found, and though the story is tragic, we remain grateful that so many lives and so much love can never be erased.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to my friends and family who offer me so much support and tolerate my long silences. Thank you especially to those faithful first readers, Arthur Haberman and Fran Cohen. I feel privileged to know and work with Luciana Ricciutelli, the heart and soul of Inanna Publications, who treats all of her authors with respect and generosity. Thank you to everyone at Inanna for your professionalism and friendliness.

  Finally, and always, thank you Arthur, for being beside me on the day we discovered the House of Izieu, when we saw the children eating lunch under the apple trees, and where we both left a piece of our souls.

  Jan Rehner is the author of four previous novels. Just Murder won the 2004 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel in Canada. On Pain of Death, a historical narrative set in World War II France, won a bronze medallion from the IPPY group of independent publishers in 2008. Missing Matisse, her third novel, was longlisted for the ReLit Awards in 2012. Jan retired as University Professor from the Writing Department at York University in 2015. She has visited France many times and continues to live in Toronto.