But as perhaps Jews know better than most, you can never entirely escape your past.
In the late 1990s, my parents became friends with a Jewish American woman who lived in Paris, named Flora Lewis, then in her seventies. Flora was an extremely impressive woman, a long-time foreign correspondent for the New York Times, and the first woman to be given her own column by that paper. But early triumphs are no protection against the cruelties of old age and when my parents met Flora she was facing eviction from her beloved flat in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, because her building had been bought and she could not afford to buy her apartment from the new owner. So my father offered to buy it and Flora would stay on as his tenant. This arrangement lasted until Flora’s death in 2002, at which point my family moved in.
It wasn’t until we walked in that we realised that the flat backs onto the École des Beaux-Arts, the school where my grandmother studied textile design before she went to America.
Shortly before we took possession of the apartment, I got my first job. I’d known since I was a teenager that I wanted to be a journalist, but while I was at university a strange and more specific idea took hold.
‘I think it would be fun to write about fashion,’ I said to my mother one morning when I was about twenty, as I read a style article in the Guardian.
‘Mmm really, sweetie?’ she replied uncertainly. But if my mother was surprised by my sudden interest in fashion then I was even more so. Up until then, the only appeal clothes had for me was how much I could hide my body within them, and my wardrobe largely consisted of long black skirts and shapeless long-sleeved tops, all bought from Camden and Kensington Markets. But as I slowly began to slough off the anorexia that had dominated my teenage years and blanketed my entire worldview, I realised there was some kernel in me, that I could neither explain nor even entirely understand, that was genuinely interested in fashion. Like Sala, like Alex, I too wanted to see beauty.
After university, I got a job on the Guardian’s fashion desk and helped to cover the shows in Paris, always staying in our family apartment. Every time I walked out of the apartment to go to a fashion show, I was walking in my grandmother’s footsteps, going to the same shows – Dior, Rochas, Lanvin – that she loved to read about in the magazines Henri and Alex sent to her in America from Paris.
Then one day, at the Dior show in the Tuileries, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
‘Aren’t you my cousin?’
It was Alexandre de Betak, now known as Alex, and he was working as a fashion show producer. He had seen my name on the list of invited press, which is how he recognised me. He gave me a hug, but I felt a little shy, self-conscious about all the big-name fashion editors watching us, wondering why the cool show producer was talking to this lowly fashion writer. He didn’t seem to notice, and he took down my phone number. I watched him run around the show, making sure all the editors were happy in their seats, the lighting was right, the flowers were perfect, the sound levels were correct, the models were ready to walk on. It was like stepping into the anecdotes my father used to tell about watching Alex Maguy getting his fashion shows ready. Today Alex de Betak is one of the biggest independent show producers in the world, with clients that include Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent, Nike and H&M. But probably his closest and most loyal client is Dior, just as Alex Maguy’s closest friend in the fashion world was Christian Dior. Neither Alex de Betak nor the Dior company knew of that connection until I started researching this book.
Not long after meeting Alex, I got an email at work: ‘I know we haven’t met but I think we’re cousins. Could we meet?’
It was from someone called Philippe Ornstein, the son of Armand, the former little boy hidden in the woods who had grown up to help found Daniel Hechter. Philippe was then working in London at the fashion company Mulberry and he had seen my name on a list of fashion writers, which prompted him to get in touch. As soon as we met it felt like he had always been a part of my life. For hours we sat in a random bar in Soho and there was no time for awkward pauses because we were too busy talking and laughing; it was like the best first date of my life, but it was even better because I already knew he would be in my life for ever, because he was family.
The third generation found one another through fashion, or the schmatte trade as our grandparents would have called it when they were working for next to nothing as furriers, leather tanners, textile designers and dressmakers in the Marais. Alex de Betak was introduced to fashion by Alex Maguy, just as Philippe was by his father and I was by my grandmother. We are living proof that the past holds on to you in ways that go beyond science, and although the Glass siblings had long since died by the time their grandchildren met, we instinctively carried on their traditions.
The more frequently I came to Paris for the shows, the closer I became to my French family and the more of them I met. As we came together, we shared what little we knew of the past and I could see all of us getting a keener interest in it, and a sharper awareness of our roots, especially as I started to know more of my Ornstein cousins, descendants of those who had escaped to Israel. Alex de Betak and I see one another especially often and we still say how much Sala would have loved to have come to the shows with us, just as she once did with Alex Maguy.
Sala had dreamed of moving back to Paris, of being with her family, having lunches with them in cafés, revelling in the glamour of the French fashion world, walking among the boutiques in Saint-Germain. She never got to do that – but I do. Because she gave up everything, I get to live her dream. I think of her every time I walk out of my parents’ flat and down the rue Bonaparte in Saint-Germain, past the gates of her old school, to the café to have my breakfast before going to a fashion show. And I think of all of them every time my train from London pulls into the Gare du Nord, how they arrived in Paris by train almost a hundred years ago, knowing almost no one and owning less. How far they went in their lives, how politics and fate and familial dynamics tore them apart, and how we came back together in the end.
Just outside Jerusalem there is a tree for Jacques. Alex and Henri planted it in his memory around the time their mother moved there. They planted it because they remembered how much he loved to hide in the woods as a boy, and how for him – and all of them – trees were a source of comfort, giving them a place to hide as children from the poverty and the pogroms. Closer to my home, and his, Jacques’s name is inscribed on the wall of names outside the Shoah Memorial in Paris: ‘Jacob Glass’, it reads, changing the name of the boy born Jakob Glahs, who became the man called Jacques Glass, one final time. He is listed there alongside the 76,000 other Jews, including 11,000 children who were deported from France. ‘Take the time to look at a beautiful painting. Don’t be afraid, just enter the painting, let it embrace you, like music. Life is worth the trouble of fighting death,’ are the last lines of Alex’s memoir, and I try always to take the time to look at Jacques’s wall. It is in the Marais, just a few minutes’ walk from where Jacques lived with Alex, and where Chaya lived with Sala, steps away from where Jacques boarded a minibus and was shipped off to Pithiviers. It’s a lovely, peaceful part of the city now, and I walk through it often. I stop in to see Jacques’s name, maybe make a small nod, and then I’ll walk out, following Henri, Jacques, Alex and Sala’s footsteps for a little while. Then I diverge, walking my own way as I cross the river, and go home.
FOOTNOTES
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1. The Glahs Family
fn1. President Trump repeatedly implied in October and November 2018 that Soros was funding the so-called ‘migrant caravan’, a group of thousands of desperate Central American migrants seeking asylum in America. Various other Republicans and far-right commentators also pushed that allegation, and many people believed it. One believer was US citizen Robert Bowers, who reposted a comment that said, ‘Jews are waging a propaganda war against Western civilisation and it is so effective we are heading towards certain extinction.’ On 27 October Bowers shot and killed eleven Jews in a synagogue.
This did not stop President Trump from continuing to endorse the entirely unfounded theory that Soros was funding the caravan. (John Wagner, ‘Trump says he “wouldn’t be surprised” if unfounded conspiracy theory about George Soros funding [migrant] caravan is true,’ Washington Post, 1 November 2018.)
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fn2. And this mentality is not limited to the right. The former leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has been repeatedly criticised for what many see as flirtations with anti-Semitism. One especially egregious example hit the news just as I was starting to write this book in 2018, when it emerged that in 2012 he appeared to express support on Facebook for a mural that depicted stereotypically Jewish-looking bankers playing Monopoly on the backs of slaves. (Corbyn insisted that he ‘did not look more closely at the image’. ‘Jeremy Corbyn regrets comments about “anti-Semitic” mural’, BBC, 23 March 2018.)
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fn3. Similarly, in her first Conservative conference speech after becoming Prime Minister soon after the referendum, Theresa May attacked ‘global elites’ and claimed, ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.’ Vince Cable, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, said at the time, ‘It could have been taken out of Mein Kampf. I think that’s where it came from, wasn’t it? “Rootless cosmopolitans”?’ ‘Vince Cable: Theresa May’s Tory conference speech “could have been taken out of Mein Kampf”’, New Statesman, 5 July 2017.
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11. The Siblings
fn1. She later cut herself off from the family, and to respect her privacy I will neither name her nor tell anything of her story.
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12. Alex
fn1. Washington DC and Hawaii shared one of the boxcars.
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fn2. The dress worn by the doll in the museum is burnished orange, but it was originally blue. The blue dress had to be replaced due to wear and tear.
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END NOTES
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Introduction
1. Richard Allen Greene, ‘A Shadow Over Europe’, CNN.com, November 2018.
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2. Elian Peltier, ‘Sharp Rise in Anti-Semitic Acts in France Stokes Old Fears’, New York Times, 12 February 2019.
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3. ‘Anti-Semitic Incidents Remained at Near Historic Levels in 2018; Attacks Against Jews More Than Doubled’, ADL press release, New York, 2019.
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4. Maggie Astor, ‘Holocaust is Fading From Memory, Survey Finds’, New York Times, 12 April 2018.
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5. Greene, ‘A Shadow Over Europe’.
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1. The Glahs Family
1. ‘Chrzanow: The Life and Destruction of a Jewish Shtetl’, Chrzanower Young Men’s Association, 1989 jewishgen.org/yizkor/chrazanow/chr100.html.
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2. Lukasz Dulowski, ‘The Jewish City of the Dead’, Przelom newspaper, 28 March 2001.
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3. Ibid.
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4. Dr Itzchak Schwarzbart, ‘Chrzanow: The Life and Destruction of a Jewish Shtetl’, trans. Jonathan Boyarin, JewishGen.org. 1989.
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5. Ibid.
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6. It’s very possible there were at least two more Ornstein cousins, but I couldn’t verify their births.
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7. Schwarzbart, ‘Chrzanow’.
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8. Reuben is the son of Jacob in the Old Testament and so is traditionally translated as ‘son of Jacob’.
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9. Reb Moyshe Bochner, ‘A Tear for my Father’, JewishGen.org.
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10. Schwarzbart, ‘Chrzanow’.
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11. Harrison Fluss and Landon Frim, ‘Aliens, Antisemitism and Academia’, Jacobin magazine, March 2017.
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12. On 5 October 2018 President Trump tweeted that the women protesting against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court were ‘paid for by Soros and others’.
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13. ‘[Soros] wants to transform Hungary into an immigrant country’, from ‘Hungary says EU’s “irresponsible” migrant policy poses threat to Jews’, Reuters, 16 April 2018.
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14. ‘Farage Criticised for Using Anti-Semitic Themes to Criticise Soros’, Peter Walker, The Guardian, 12 May 2019.
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15. Peter Walker, ‘Nigel Farage Under Fire Over “Anti-Semitic Tropes” on Far-Right US Talkshow’, Guardian, 6 May 2019.
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16. Agnieszka Cahn, ‘A Critical Analysis of Adam Doboszynski’s March on Myslenice in 1936’, 2011.
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17. Between 1921 and 1925, Jews made up 26.9 per cent of the German Polytechnic in Prague and 3.1 per cent of the Czech Technical University, both of which Jehuda attended.
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18. Paul Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe, Harvard University Press, 2018.
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19. Yizkor Book Project, Jewishgen.org.
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20. Schwarzbart, ‘Chrzanow’.
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21. Yizkor Book Project, Jewishgen.org.
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22. Ibid.
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23. Schwarzbart, ‘Chrzanow’.
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24. Five months after this bill was passed, after international outcry about this law, Duda downgraded it from a criminal offence to a civil one. So it’s still wrong to suggest Poland was complicit with the Nazis, but you probably won’t go to jail for saying so.
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25. Alex Duval Smith, ‘Polish Move to Strip Holocaust Expert of Award Sparks Protest’, Observer, 14 February 2016.
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26. Associated Press, ‘Holocaust Scholar Questioned on Claim that Poles Killed more Jews than Germans in the War’, Guardian, 14 April 2016.
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27. Edna Friedberg, ‘The Truth About Poland’s Role in the Holocaust’, Atlantic, 6 February 2018.
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28. Editorial, ‘The European Union Must Stand Up to Polish Nationalism’, New York Times, 28 February 2018.
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29. Tom Porter, ‘Polish Official Claims Jews Were Passive in the Face of Nazi Violence’, Newsweek, 10 February 2018.
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30. Christian Davies, ‘Poland’s Holocaust Law Triggers Tide of Abuse Against Auschwitz Museum’, Guardian, 7 May 2018.
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31. James Masters, ‘Polish Prosecutor: “Auschwitz” Football Chants Are Not Anti-Semitic’, cnn.com.
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2. The Glass Siblings
1. Nancy L. Green, The Pletzl of Paris: Jewish Immigrant Workers in the Belle Epoque, Holmes & Meier, New York and London, 1986.
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2. Of the rest, 112,000 went to Canada, 150,000 to Argentina, 210,000 to England and 2.65 million to the United States (Ioan Mackenzie James, Driven to Innovate: A Century of Jewish Mathematicians and Physicists, Peter Lang, 2009).
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3. Jacques Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution, Oxford University Press, 1989.
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4. David H. Weinberg, A Community on Trial: The Jews of Paris in the 1930s, University of Chicago Press, 1977.
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5. Vicki Caron, Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933–1942, Stanford University Press, 2002. The Aliens Act 1905 was written specifically to curtail eastern European Jewish immigrants allowed into
the United Kingdom. It was amended in 1914 and 1920, imposing even more stringent restrictions which were only partly lifted in the 1930s. Similarly, the 1924 Immigration Act was conceived for the same purpose in America.
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6. Weinberg, A Community on Trial.
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7. Green, Pletzl of Paris.
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8. M.K. Dzrewanowski, Poland in the Twentieth Century, Columbia University Press, 1977.
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9. The first country in the world to liberate Jews was, ironically enough, Poland, 500 years earlier.
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10. Green, Pletzl of Paris.
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11. Vicki Caron, The Path to Vichy: Anti-Semitism in France in the 1930s, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, 2005.
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12. Ibid.
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13. Quoted in Paula E. Hyman, The Jews of Modern France, University of California Press, 1998.
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14. Green, Pletzl of Paris.
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15. William Wiser, The Twilight Years: Paris in the 1930s, Carroll and Graf, 2000.
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3. Henri
House of Glass Page 31