Back to text
5. Anne Sebba, Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016.
Back to text
6. Michael Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, Stanford University Press, 1981.
Back to text
7. Serge Klarsfeld, Les Transferts de Juifs de la Region de Nice Vers le Camp de Drancy en Vue de Leur Deportation 31 Aout 1942–30 Juillet 1944. (Paris: Fils et Filles des Deportées Juifs de France, 1993.)
Back to text
8. Ibid.
Back to text
9. Ibid. Klarsfeld has first-hand knowledge of the brutality of the raids. When he was eight, his family home was raided in Nice, just a week after Alex was arrested. Serge, along with his sister and mother, managed to hide. His father, Arno, sacrificed himself to save them and was sent to Drancy.
Back to text
10. As far as I can tell from his memoir, Alex did not start designing for the theatre until after the war.
Back to text
11. Angela Taylor, ‘Emeric Partos, 70, Fur Designer Noted for Innovative Flair, Dead’, New York Times, 3 December 1975.
Back to text
12. Jean Edward Smith, The Liberation of Paris, Simon & Schuster, 2019.
Back to text
13. https://www.saint-cyr.org/medias/editor/files/1912-1914-97e-promotion-de-montmirail.pdf
Back to text
* * *
* * *
11. The Siblings
1. Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, Penguin, 2007.
Back to text
2. Van Der Grinten later changed its name to Oce and was sold to Canon.
Back to text
3. Jews make up less than 1.4 per cent of the American population, and yet in polls Americans continually overestimate this to 20 per cent, ‘because of our disproportionate visibility, influence and accomplishments’ (Alan Dershowitz, The Jewish Question for the 21st Century: Can We Survive Our Success?, Little, Brown, 1997).
Back to text
* * *
* * *
12. Alex
1. John O’Donnell and James Rutherford, Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump – His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1991.
Back to text
2. Paul Burstein, ‘Jewish Educational and Economic Success in the United States: A Search for Explanations’, Sociological Perspectives 50, no. 2, Summer 2007.
Back to text
3. Sachar, History of the Jews in the Modern World.
Back to text
4. In August 2017 a white supremacist group marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, the protesters chanting, ‘Jews will not replace us!’ (Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Brian M. Rosenthal, ‘Man Charged After White Nationalist Rally in Charlottesville Ends in Deadly Violence’, New York Times, August 12 2017.)
Back to text
5. In April 2019 it emerged that the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had, in 2011, written a foreword to J. A. Hobson’s 1902 book Imperialism: A Study, in which he specifically praised Hobson’s ‘correct and prescient’ theories about ‘the commercial interests that fuel the role of the popular press with tales of imperial might’. These theories of Hobson’s were that the financial system is controlled by ‘men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience … [and] are in a unique position to control the policy of nations’. Hobson adds that the direct influence of these financial houses ‘is supported by the control which they exercise over the body of public opinion through the press’. Just in case it’s not clear who this ‘single and peculiar race’ is, Hobson asks, in the same paragraph, ‘Does anyone seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European state, or a great State loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?’ Corbyn replied that any suggestion he was praising anti-Semitic theories was a ‘mischievous representation of my foreword’ made by ‘Labour’s political opponents’. (Justin Cohen, The Times of Israel, 3 May 2019.)
Back to text
6. ‘Le Jardin des Modes’, September 1939, via Sebba, Les Parisiennes.
Back to text
7. Ibid.
Back to text
8. Sebba, ‘How Haute Couture Rescued War-Torn Paris.’
Back to text
9. Sebba, Les Parisiennes.
Back to text
10. Ludivine Broch, ‘The Merci Train: Remembering the World Wars in 52,000 Objects’, 2017, https:blogs.kent.ac.uk.
Back to text
11. Metmuseum.org.
Back to text
12. Like Alex, Soutine was an eastern European refugee in Paris, having emigrated from what is now Belarus in his twenties. But he was less lucky than Alex: during the war he tried to go into hiding but had to emerge when he desperately needed surgery for an ulcer. The surgery failed to save him and he died in 1943, something Alex does not mention in his memoir, probably because so many people in his circle died during the war that it became almost a given for him.
Back to text
13. Lelong’s close involvement in the Petit Théâtre and Merci Train is further proof of how both of those initiatives deliberately ignored the scandals of the recent past and, to a certain degree, served to imbue political credibility on those, like Lelong and Rochas, who were regarded with suspicion.
Back to text
14. Kurt Waldheim, president of Austria 1986–1992. He repeatedly lied about his Nazi past, but during his campaign for the Austrian presidency it emerged that he had been involved with Nazi youth groups as a teenager, and then during the war had been affiliated with German military groups that deported thousands of Jews. Both despite and because of this, he was elected president. ‘Kurt Waldheim, Former UN Chief, is Dead at 88’, Jonathan Kandell, New York Times, June 15 2007.
Back to text
15. Neal Gabler, An Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, Anchor Books, 1989.
Back to text
16. Sachar (History of the Jews in the Modern World) also writes that this drive ‘stabilized’ by the late twentieth century, and the children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants now had the ‘leisure to seek new outlets in the liberal professions’. This is certainly reflected in my family: while both my father and uncle worked in banking and the law, I was lucky enough to have the financial security to pursue my dream of being a writer and journalist.
Back to text
17. Aarhaus Amtstidende, 14 April 1951.
Back to text
18. ‘Les Premières Journées’, Le Monde, 3 February 1955.
Back to text
19. John Richardson, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Back to text
20. Pierre Daix, Picasso: Life and Art, Thames & Hudson, 1994
Back to text
21. Janet Flanner, Letter from Paris, New Yorker, June 17, 1964.
Back to text
22. Richard Burton, The Richard Burton Diaries, Yale University Press, 2013.
Back to text
23. ‘La Semaine d’Edgar Schneider: C’est son Cézanne-ouvre-toi!’ Le Figaro, undated article.
Back to text
24. Lemonde.fr.
Back to text
25. Jonathan Fenby, The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France He Saved, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2010.
Back to text
26. Deaths, New York Times, July 20, 1964.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
14. Epilogue
1. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2018.
Back to text
2. Rachel Yehuda (leader), ‘Holocaust Exposure Induced Intergenerational Effects on FKBP5 Methylation’, Biological Psychiatry Journal, 1 September 2016.
Back to text
3. Ol
da Khazan, ‘Inherited Trauma Shapes Your Health’, Atlantic, October 2016.
Back to text
4. Ewan Birney, ‘Why I’m Sceptical about the Idea of Genetically Inherited Trauma’, Guardian, 11 September 2016.
Back to text
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I DEDICATED THIS BOOK to my father, Ron, because he is really its co-author. For two decades he has travelled with me around the world on research trips, acting as a tour guide in Long Island, a translator in France, a historian in Narvik and a travel companion in Poland. He put his faith in me when I showed little evidence of deserving it to tell the most intimate stories of his childhood, enduring years of nosey questions about some of the people he loved most in his life. I hope I have justified the trust he placed in me; he has always far exceeded any common definition of fatherly support.
I am also very grateful to my uncle Rich, who was extraordinarily generous with his memories and photos. A huge thank you, too, to his wife, my aunt Lynn, and their daughter, Gabrielle, for not just enduring my trips to Florida to pester Rich with more questions, but also for arranging interviews for me with Bill and Sala’s friends in Miami, providing me with new perspectives of my grandparents.
By writing about my family in the past I got to know my family in the present. This is especially true of Danièle, Alexandre and Natasha de Betak. Before, I hardly knew them at all; now I consider them among my closest relatives. They provided me with insights into the Glass family’s life in France, and especially Henri and Sonia’s lives. They have been unflagging supporters of this book, even at times when I felt decidedly flagged.
Anne-Laurence Goldberg is another relative I am lucky enough to have become close to through the writing of this book. She is an indefatigably cheerful travel companion – the best kind of travel companion – and her wonderful collection of letters and photos is a treasure trove of historical documents.
Armand Ornstein has been putting up with my questions about his past for so long it’s a testament to him that he still agrees to meet me for dinner. I am very grateful to him for his constant support, and for putting me in touch with his sister Shoshanna and her daughter Idit Bloch, both of whom helped me to make sense of a shadowy past.
On the American side, Ann Horowitz has known me since I was born and she shared with me her thoughts and memories about the Freiman family. She put me in touch with Herb Freiman, and our time together in Long Island didn’t just help me put that part of my family in context, but was a delightful experience I’ll never forget. My sadly belated thanks, too, to Herb’s sister, Eleanor, who spoke to me about the family shortly before she died. Charlie Reich, the grandson of Olga, great-nephew of Mila, was another lovely discovery I made through the writing of this book, and I am grateful to him for his kindness and insights.
Aside from my family, there is no one who has contributed more to this book than the brilliant academic, Daniel Lee. I met Daniel at a conference about the Resistance in London, and I don’t know what good deed I did in a previous life to deserve this stroke of luck, but there is no question that this book would not have been written without him. He travelled with me all around France, gave up his holidays to research my family in dusty archives, put their story into historical context for me and pretty much made all the best discoveries that have gone into this book. More than that, he became a true friend, even though I consistently failed to live by his dictum: ‘Historians don’t stop for lunch’.
Jona Cummings, aka the Jew Whisperer, who coaxes memoirs out of neurotic Jews, helped me enormously with my research and, at least as importantly, gave me the confidence that I actually had a book here when I tortured myself with self-doubt. My friend and colleague Jonathan Freedland introduced me to Jona, and for that, and much more, I thank Jonathan.
I was inspired to write this book after writing an essay about my grandmother for US Vogue, at the encouragement of my editor there, Eve MacSweeney. I thank her and Anna Wintour for editing and publishing it.
The people in this book had a great number of friends, and I am very grateful to those who spoke to me for this project, some of whom have since passed away: William and Marcia Rappaport, Sue Guiney, Betty Laster, Dorothy Berger, Stephanie Freed, Nicole Rivoire, Ilie Wachs, Catherine Amidon and Jeanne Gustave. Chien Chung Pei and Li Chung Pei were very generous with their time in helping me to establish Alex Maguy’s friendship with their father, I.M. Pei. My thanks to Emma Cobb for her help in contacting them.
I made use of many researchers and translators around the world and shamelessly pillaged the minds of academics far more brilliant than me. These include Simon Kitson, Matthew Cobb, Martin and Aga Kahn, Ludivine Broch, Agata Jujeczka, Camille Chevalier, Jane Winfield, Hugo Sharp and Beate Rozek. Thanks to Oriole Cullen for her insights into the life of Christian Dior, and for Laura Mitchell at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London for putting me in touch with her. I also owe a debt to Callie Adams at the Christian Dior press office in London. Isabelle Rouge-Ducos, Violette Andres and Emelie Bouvard at the Picasso Museum in Paris talked to me about Picasso’s life and kindly arranged for me to look through his correspondence with Alex Maguy. Robert Picandet at the Resistance Museum in Saint-Gervais-d’Auvergne (Puy-de-Dôme) opened up a window into a part of Alex’s life he had always kept shut to the rest of us. The Tenement Museum in New York helped me to understand the Lower East Side when Bill lived there, and the museum’s director of curatorial affairs, David Favoloro, patiently explained to me what the Freiman family’s day-to-day life was like. Alex Maws and Martin Winstone from the Holocaust Educational Trust talked to me about the evolving attitudes of different countries towards the Holocaust, and Alex especially has been a source of support and encouragement. Alisa Friedman, Noa Rosenberg, Yafa Goldfinger and Sophia Berry-Liftshitz at the Tel Aviv Museum, and Michal Marmary and Dr Adina Kamien-Kazhdan at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem kindly tracked down for me the paintings that Alex donated in his lifetime. Joshua Rothman at the New Yorker dug out an archival article about Alex for me, despite having more than enough to do in his full-time job. Richard Nelsson and Luc Torres at the Guardian were similarly patient with my bizarre requests (a review of a fashion show from seventy years ago in Denmark? No problem!). For archival research, I relied on the Mémorial de la Shoah, L’École des Beaux-Arts, Les Archives Nationales in Fontainebleau and Pierrefitte, les Archives de la Ville, La Fondation Pour la Mémoire de la Déportation, all in Paris, as well as Les Archives Départementales des Alpes-Maritimes in Nice, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the British Library in London. I am indebted to the archivists at CERCIL in Orléans, especially Nathalie Grenon, for providing me with details of Jacques’s time in Pithiviers.
The following people provided invaluable support, advice and friendship during the writing of this book: Helen Freeman, Nell Freeman-Romilly, the Macrae family, Carol Miller, Jonathan Freedland, George Morton-Jack, Jess Cartner-Morley, Alex Needham, Oliver Wainwright, Jon Henley, Marina Hyde, Roland Woodward, Lauren Collins, Ruthie Rogers, Hugh Hamrick, Adam Phillips and Arthur Ferdinand Freeman. My agent, Georgia Garrett at RCW, and my editors, Louise Haines and Sarah Thickett at 4th Estate in London and Emily Graff at Simon & Schuster in New York, never lost faith with this project, or with me. I am extremely lucky to have such wonderful women on my team.
My editors, past and present, at the Guardian have long learned to tolerate my wild-goose projects and pet obsessions. I am especially grateful to Katherine Viner, Melissa Denes, Kira Cochrane, Malik Meer, Ian Katz and Catherine Shoard for their enduring forbearance.
My partner Andy Bull was almost certainly the only sportswriter at the US Open in 2019 doing line edits on a chapter about Auschwitz. More than anyone, Andy made me believe this book was possible, and he provided not just emotional encouragement but practical support, too, not least looking after our children while I ran off again to spend my days with the dead. He edited every draft line by line and solved all my seemingly unsolvable structural problem
s. His love – and willingness to shoulder the domestic duties – made this book possible.
And finally, I thank my children: Felix and Max, who always know exactly when to come into my study and tell me it’s time to stop working, and Betty, who was my in utero companion during much of the writing of this book and, with perfect timing, arrived the week after I finally finished it. This is the story of your past. You will write the future.
By the same author:
Be Awesome
Life Moves Pretty Fast
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
House of Glass Page 33