After a while we started walking again. The path led us out of the forest into an open field. In the distance we saw people walking on a road. We rushed to join them.
Once on the road we followed the others. Nobody was speaking. Even children were quiet. It was like a funeral procession. There were no houses, no farms in view, just large fields. Along the road there were cars and buses that had been abandoned because they ran out of gas. In a meadow we saw some cows. Most of them black and white. Normandy cows are usually black and white, I had learned that in school. So when saw these cows we knew we were in Normandy. West of Paris. We were sure now we were safe because we were convinced that the Germans would not go beyond Paris. That's what Hitler wanted above all, when he started the war. To conquer Paris.
Some mothers when they saw the cows went to them with cups or cans to get milk for their children. The cows stood still. They looked happy to be able to participate in this great adventure. Maybe it was me imagining they were happy. I suppose these mothers knew how to milk cows because they had been raised on farms. The milk was being passed along the line for children. My sisters and I got to drink some of that milk. It was good and warm.
A little further down the road we heard the sound of a airplane. Everybody stopped and looked up at the sky, but when the plane came over us and started shooting at us with its machine guns, people started running in all directions, diving into ditches, hiding behind trees. Some of them were wounded, others fell dead.
It was along this road in Normandy that I saw dead people for the first time. Real dead people. Not false dead people like in the movies. I was eleven. Even if I didn't understand yet what it meant to be dead, it made me feel strange to look at these people lying on the ground bleeding. Maman kept telling me not to look.
During
L'Exode,
I saw planes shooting at columns of refugees. Later I found out that these planes were not German, but Italian. They were Mussolini's planes, because Italy too was at war against France.
We kept walking. Many people had to stop along the road to rest. Those who kept going were pushing aside those who were walking too slowly. When we would hear a plane approaching, Maman would quickly push us down into the ditch alongside the road. We would cover our heads with our hands, and Maman would cover us with her body, while Papa stood tall on the road shouting Yiddish obscenities at the planes. Papa, he was scared of nothing.
It's true that this Great Exodus has been swept under the rug of French history. It was a great humiliating debacle for the French. Soldiers and refugees in retreat on the roads of Normandy.
At one point we came upon a
borne kilomérique
that said Argentan 12 kilometers. Everybody started walking faster. Twelve kilometers, people were saying, that's not far. Papa said, I don't know if I can make it. Maman told him to sit down on the ground and rest a while. She told me to take Papa's suitcase, and for Sarah to take his backpack. After a while, we started walking again. But we stopped often so that Papa could rest. He had difficulty breathing. Lots of people were passing us. Finally we arrived in Argentan.
There were German soldiers everywhere who were directing people towards Place de la République. They were very pleasant with us. They didn't push us around, didn't hit us. Some of them even spoke French. Especially the officers.
The big square was full of people. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Some were standing, others were sitting on the ground or on their suitcases. A German officer in a black leather jacket was standing on a platform speaking French with a bullhorn. I was surprised that a German spoke French so well, without an accent. Even my father who knew six languages had an accent in French.
The officer on the platform was telling us not to be afraid. That the soldiers were going to take care of us. Give us food, and find us a place to sleep.
In fact, German soldiers were already circulating in the crowd of refugees distributing bread and water. They even gave milk to the mothers with babies. We got a loaf of bread and some fruit.
Everything was so well organized. The Germans knew in advance that all these people were arriving, and they had prepared to receive them not like enemies, but like friends.
The officer on the platform then said that families with several children will be lodged first. And he told these families to step forward. So, my parents, sisters and I moved to the front. Two soldiers motioned for us to follow them.
As we walked with these two soldiers in the streets of the city, the Argentan people were watching us from their windows. They must have been wondering, who are these idiots from Paris who are so afraid of the Germans. When the Germans arrived in Argentan, a few days earlier, they were nice and
pleasant with the inhabitants. They didn't demolish anything, didn't burn anything, didn't steal anything. They just took from the markets only the food they needed. And they immediately established order in the city, which was necessary since the people of Argentan became anxious and restless when they learned that German trucks were approaching. So the Germans had to put the people at ease. Especially because they panned to occupy Argentan for a long time. The only strict order which was enforced was that no one was allowed in the streets after six o'clock in the evening.
As we walked, we didn't look back at the people who were staring at us. We were ashamed to be refugees. We felt like foreigners.
Me, I was concentrating on the uniforms of the soldiers and on their rifles. I would have loved to have had tin soldiers just like them.
While we were walking with the two soldiers, Papa started talking to them in German. I don't know what he was saying, but after that the two soldiers were very nice to us. They installed us in a two-story house which was empty, except for some furniture. Then one of them went to get food for us. The one who stayed continued the conversation with my father. I was so impressed with my father. Then the soldiers left, and we settled in. For the first time I had my own room, and my sisters too. We learned later that this house had been a youth hostel, but when the war started it was closed and abandoned.
During our entire stay in Argentan, almost an entire year, these two German soldiers often visited with my father. They even brought other German soldiers along with them. They would bring their uniforms that needed fixing to my mother. A torn sleeve, a missing button to be sewn back on.
Maman became the
couturière
of these soldiers. She even washed and pressed their shirts. They were all so nice to us.
Meanwhile, once in a while, with a special pass from the
kommendantur,
Papa would take the train to Paris to buy things for the Germans. French perfume. Silk stockings. Jewelry. Chocolate. All kinds of things like that which were still available in France, but no longer in Germany since the beginning of the war. So we were comfortable in Argentan. We had a good life. A whole house for ourselves, extra money, extra food. The soldiers who became friendly with my father would always bring us food.
One of the Germans who came regularly to our house was a
Feldwebel.
A sergeant. His name was Willie Forst.
I've never forgotten that name, because my father told me that there was a famous German actor of that period who was also called Willie Forst. I don't know how my father knew that, bu tmy father knew many things.
A small group of Germans soldiers came regularly to our house in the evening to drink beer and have discussions with my father.
When they arrived, they would give me some money to go buy
des canettes de bière,
and the next day when I returned the empty bottles I would get one sou for each one.
In the evening when the Germans came to our house, my father would sit with them in one of the large rooms in the house. Sometimes he would let me stay in the room after I brought the beer. I would sit quietly on the floor in a corner of the room and listen to them talk even though I didn't understand what they were saying. After a while I would catch a few words which they often repeated. Like the word
krieg.
The words
schwer, Frau, Kinder, Arbeit.
And other words like that. I would ask Papa what these words meant, and also what they were discussing. He would tell me that they were talking about their families, about what they did before the war, things like that. But especially, my Father said, We discuss politics.
I already told in the list of scenes how before leaving all these Germans would raise their fist and sing the
International.
No need to repeat that many Communists were hiding in the German army.
We stayed a year in Argentan. This was the least unhappy period of my childhood. In the fall of 1940, I was admitted to the Lycée d'Argentan where many sons of refugees went. All of different ages. But we got along together. Except that the boys from Argentan didn't like us. When we were coming out of school they would start fights with
les parigots,
as they called us. We would throw stones at each other or chestnuts, and hit each other with our school satchels. Me too, I would get into these fights. In Argentan, I started gaining weight and getting stronger because we ate well, and I was becoming less shy.
I got my
Certificat d'étude
from the Argentan lycée with
mention très bien.
My mother and father were proud of me.
We should have stayed in Argentan. My father was doing well with the black market. My sisters and I liked the schools we were attending. In Argentan nobody cared where you came from since most of the people were refugees.
Yes, we should have stayed in Argentan, but a decree from the Vichy government announced that all the refugees had to return to their homes. So eventually we went back to Montrouge, even though Papa had arranged with the Germans for us to stay longer than other Parisians.
For me, it was as if a long vacation was ending. I hated to leave.
I wonder what would have happened if we'd stayed in Argentan. Most likely we would have been denounced as collaborators. Already the people in our neighborhood were saying bad things about us because German soldiers often came to our house.
They said it even more the day Willie Forst brought us a truck load of coal. It was the beginning of winter, and it was getting cold. The truck stopped in front of our house and unloaded the coal on the sidewalk.
After the truck left, Papa and me, and even Sarah and Jacqueline worked hard to bring the coal into the cellar of the house in buckets, while the neighbors were looking at us from their windows, and probably saying, those dirty collaborators.
I am sure that if we had stayed in Argentan, at the Liberation, people would have shaved our heads.
The irony is that my parents and sisters would have been shot in Argentan by a French firing squad as collaborators, and not as Jews in a German concentration camp.
And I would probably have been shot too. But since I am here, still alive, telling you all the things that happened during my childhood, no need to speculate.
Soon after we got back to Montrouge, my mother had to sew the yellow star on all our clothes.
Then my parents and sisters were deported to Auschwitz, and I was deported, in a manner of speaking, to the farm in Southern France where ...
Federman, maybe you should tell us what happened when you and your family were ordered to return to Montrouge. How it was living during the occupation.
Oh, it was such a sad period. Much of it has been blocked in my mind. But I'll try.
When we left the house in Argentan with our suitcases on the way to the train station, as we walked away I looked back at the house, and sadness came over me. I was twelve now, and full of apprehension about what was ahead for me.
On the train to Paris we all sat quietly. Barely talking to each other. It was as though we felt we were going towards a disaster.
The apartment in Montrouge seemed smaller than before. Everything was dusty. We all helped clean up, even my father.
The neighborhood was also different, drab and somber. There were no street lights at night.
German soldiers were everywhere. They were not as nice with people as the soldiers who greeted us in Argentan. When they went into a store or a café or anywhere and people were in their way they would push them aside. They would often stop people in the streets to check their identity cards. Trucks full of soldiers were rushing all over the city.
Once in a while, a group of soldiers would walk in step down our street, their rifles on their shoulders, their heavy boots clanking on the pavement, and sing military songs. People would watch them from behind their closed curtains.
There was a curfew. Nobody was allowed in the street in the evening. And when people turned on the lights in their apartments, they had to cover the windows with blankets. Very often there were alerts. The sirens would blare, and everybody would rush down to the cellars.
Though Paris had been declared an Open City and would not be bombed, British planes would bomb the factories in the
suburbs and the trains and military convoys approaching the city. So during the alerts the people would crowd into small cellars with flashlights or candles. My mother would keep us close to her, but my father often refused to go down to the cellar.
All the food was rationed. Once a week mother would go to the
mairie
to get our food stamps. Children were divided into three categories depending on their age, J1, J2, J3. My older sister Sarah was a J3. Jacqueline and I were J2s. That meant that mother was given a few more food stamps for the children. Many people who had money would buy extra food on the black market.
Leon and Marie, who returned to Montrouge before we did, bought a lot of food on the black market. Once in a while aunt Marie would come up to our place and give my mother some extra food, a few eggs, a piece of meat, some sugar, chocolate,
pour les enfants,
she would say. But even with that extra food I was hungry all the time.