You Jewish? the man will ask her son sternly, tefillin in his hands, offering her son instructions on how to properly wrap the little black boxes with their black straps around his forearms, and her son will watch and learn, or remember.
And among the proselytizing Chassid keen on his mission and the bands of ignorant tourists there will be other, more subtle, Jews dressed in their Shabbat finest. Lekhah dodi likrat kallah. Oh beloved bride of Sabbath. Jews will be filtering among the crowds through the Pletzl, the place where they belong, the place as much theirs as it ever was. Vivent les juifs. Leaning against a wall will be a young man in a hoodie, his kippah jaunty on his head, scrolling through his cell phone.
Sarah and her son will leave rue des Rosiers, taking the old route down rue des Barres, then down the little pedestrian road to Pont Louis Philippe and across to Ȋle Saint-Louis, where Sarah will buy them salted caramel ice cream cones from Berthillon, and then they’ll walk across the footbridge that connects Ȋle Saint-Louis to Ȋle de la Cité, drawn by music that seems both familiar and unfamiliar.
There will be a trio of young people dressed in porkpie hats and tailored vests who are playing a music that is a mix of reggae and roots and klezmer, and while they speak to their audience in good English and French, quietly to each other they speak some other language that is theirs. The woman in the group will break into a solo soprano, her voice sweet and unearthly, and that voice will take Sarah apart, take her out of herself and then back in, will remind her she has been given a life, she gave herself a life.
Then a tune will begin on one of the young men’s balalaika, a Yiddish song whose name Sarah can’t remember, but one that she knows is about exile and hunger and displacement and longing. A gift that will move through the light, alive.
author’s notes
The attack described in this novel is based on historical events which occurred on August 9, 1982 at Goldenberg’s Deli on rue des Rosiers in Paris. Six people were killed and many injured in the attack. My hope is that this book acts as a memorial to the six people who died in the attack: Mohamed Benemmon, André Hezkia Niego, Grace Cuter, Anne Van Zanien, Denise Guerche Rossignol and Georges Demeter.
In the photograph of Elie Wiesel mentioned on page 63, the Yad Vashem on-line archive has the following information: The naked man standing on the right is probably Chaim Dovid Halberstam who was born in Nowy Sacz, Poland. He was the business partner of Gershon Blonder Kleinman. He survived and after the war he settled in America. Bottom bunk level: There is contradictory identification of several of the individuals in this photo, including the man furthest left on the bottom bunk level. He may be Gershon Blonder Kleinman, born on 06/05/1928 or 05/06/1928 in Nowy Sacz, Poland, who was an inmate in Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, who settled in America after the war (identified by his son Hudson Manor Terrace). However the Holocaust Museum in Washington identifies him as Michael Nikolas Gruner. A third source identifies him as Joseph Reich and the man beside him as his brother Isaac Reich. The man fourth from the left has been identified as Max Hamburger. Second from the bottom bunk level: The man third from left has been identified as Losh Wertenberg, later known as Yehuda Doron. However, according to other sources (Yaakov Marton) this man is Jeno Marton. The man fourth from the left has been identified as Abraham Hipler or as Berek Rosencajg from Lodz. The man seventh on the left is indeed Elie Wiesel. Third from the bottom bunk level: The man third from the left has been identified as either Ignacz (Isaac) Berkovicz or as Abraham Baruch. The man fifth from the left is Naftali G. Furst. Top bunk level: Mel Mermelstein has been identified as the person at the far right. The man second from the left has been identified as Perry Shulman from Klimitov, Poland.
Max Jacob, whose identity is disputed in the scene on page 131 at the Closerie des Lilas restaurant, was in fact a French poet, painter, writer, and critic. A roommate and close friend of Picasso, he was part of the coterie of artists which included Apollinaire, Braque, Cocteau and Modigliani. Despite having converted to Catholicism in 1909, because of his Jewish origins he was arrested by the Gestapo in February, 1944. He died in the Drancy internment camp of pneumonia before he could be deported to Auschwitz, where most of his family had already been killed.
The unnamed curator of the Jeu de Paume during the Occupation, referred to on page 146 is Rose Antonia Maria Valland, a French art historian and member of the French Resistance.
While the photograph referred to on page 191, which Sarah finds of the family in the Vélodrome d’Hiver can be easily found online, I have been unable to find any more information about the individuals’ names and fate.
The poem Rose reads to Sarah in hospital is “The Dancing,” by Gerald Stern, from Paradise Poems, University of Pittsburgh Press. Copyright © 1982.
Acknowledgements
Once again I owe so much to the magnificent Warren Cariou for his edit of this book. He saved me from myself in instances large and small, and it is thanks to his wisdom, expertise and talent, that this novel is so much better than it would otherwise have been.
I am especially grateful to Haifa Staiti, Founder and Executive Director, Empathy for Peace, and Philanthropy Solutions Advisor for Grantbook, for her insightful input on the Laila sections of this book.
My thanks to Nancy Richler (z”l), Sam Znaimer, Sima Godfrey, Billie Livingston, Lee Anne Block, Jeanette Block, first readers. Special thanks to Leslie Walker Williams for her expert eye and invaluable advice on revising very early, and very tedious, drafts of this book. Thanks also to Sam Znaimer for his assistance with the section on calculus.
Thanks also to Dr. Catherine Chatterley, Founding Director, Canadian Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism (CISA), for her information on the first Holocaust Studies course at the University of Manitoba, which was taught by Lionel Steiman in 1987/88. (The course Sarah takes precedes the actual date.)
about the author
Rhea Tregebov’s first novel, The Knife Sharpener’s Bell, published by Coteau Books, won the J.I. Segal Award for fiction, was shortlisted for the Kobzar Award, and was listed in the Globe and Mail’s top 100 books. An award-winning poet and celebrated author of children’s picture books, Tregebov has also edited numerous anthologies.
Born in Saskatoon and raised in Winnipeg, she did postgraduate studies at Cornell and Boston Universities, worked for many years as a freelance writer and editor in Toronto, and from 2004 to 2017 was a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Now an Associate Professor Emerita at UBC, Tregebov continues to live and write in Vancouver.
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