When asked to talk about how I survived World War II, I am fortunate that in my family we talked freely about the war and what happened to us. My father took pride in describing our family’s war experiences. It was thanks to his courage, cunning, resourcefulness, and physical strength that we survived, my mother and me. My parents, grandparents, and my aunt were with or near me for many years after the war ended, so I had many opportunities to learn from them. Of course, I regretted later that I did not ask enough questions.
When I would offer to talk about my experiences as a survivor, there was generally very little interest to take me up on my offer. But I received two formal requests to talk about the war. The first one was from the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California. It was a fairly scripted interview, and I felt afterward that I did not do justice to my family, to the background, and their history. From the questions the interviewer asked, I could tell I had not sufficiently expanded on the personal emotional climate around me. I felt I had not quite lived up to the task.
The second request to speak came from a Jewish middle school class focused on learning the technology of communications and media with interviews and recording techniques, while at the same time learning about the Jewish experiences of surviving World War II. They were amazing in their technology skills, as well as in their curiosity and interest in their project. There were other survivors who were being interviewed and there again, the format was the same for all of us and the questions were scripted. At the end, as we were parting, we had warm and lovely conversations. The students were very grateful, and I was happy to have been asked, but again, I did not feel I had adequately conveyed the complexities of the period.
What I notice, as I listen to my “comrades in survival,” is that we all strive to avoid eliciting pity. I believe we feel it’s not the point of our telling.
I was just a baby when the war came to our area of France. I have told my story many times, with gratitude for my parents and excitement at the positive outcome for us. But I lived through that period without memory or feelings. It is a blank. It was a story in which I was present but was not aware. I become emotional only when I think of my father saying about me: “She was our passport.” To be accepted as refugees in Switzerland, the family had to have a child under the age of six. That’s why we were allowed to stay in Switzerland for the remainder of the war. It validated me. I always broke down at that point in his narration. But still no memories come up.
As an adult, I compensated for the void by creating a different narrative. I researched and compiled information in the Swiss archives about life in a refugee camp, learned about France during the war, the chronology, the racial laws, the occupation, the Fascist militias, the various instances when and where children were hidden. I talked about my father emigrating from Germany to Nice, France, because he could no longer work in Germany, and my aunt and grandparents following him to Nice. I talked about internment camps my father and grandfather, who had become enemy aliens, were in. I talked about racial laws in France, about Alois Brunner arriving in Nice, about going into hiding, and eventually crossing into Switzerland to a refugee camp. There were a lot of facts and historical information, the result of much research and reading—and so many stories that were a part of my family’s history.
I explored my genealogy, my family’s life in Germany before the war. I realized that what had happened to the Jews in my family’s little village had been forgotten or pushed aside, and I became an activist. Plaques were hung on the walls, names were recalled and commemorated, Stolpersteine were set, and they gave some life back to the lost community.
But what I could not convey were emotions and suffering. I was too young to have memories, so I compensated by offering analysis, evidence, and anecdotes.
It felt as though it was a school report about a history that was not about me.
But the need to describe what happened to me and my family during the war compelled me to describe the events, to mention every possible detail, to correlate local facts with national political events, to create a chronology, and to expand the limits of what was relevant to my story.
What I understood also was the importance of friends, acquaintances, connections, and to be a part of a network of people that would help you. My father in particular was very much liked and appreciated by our neighbors, our customers, our friends, and our relatives. He and the rest of the family became well integrated in the fabric of the neighborhood, the city, and the synagogue. All this played a part in our survival.
With time and my role at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I can examine again how my experience as a survivor of the Holocaust has shaped me as an adult. I also see now how my first-person account is very much part of the wider historical context.
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