La Rafle des Notables

(The Deportation of Prominent Jews)

by

Anne Sinclair

 (French. published by Bernard Grasset, Paris 2017)

Anne Sinclair, noted French writer and journalist, has written extensively about the Holocaust and how it affected her family. In this book she focuses on the arrest and deportation to a prisoner camp at Compiègne of her maternal grandfather, Leonce Schwartz. He and his wife, Marguerite (Margot), resided in a comfortable apartment in a pleasant part of Paris. He owned a workshop producing lace, and their life was conducted along the lines of respectable residents of Paris, with bridge games, visits to the theatre, and a social life with friends and family.

Anne Sinclair confesses to having failed in her childhood to ask her grandparents about their experiences during the war, when Germany occupied France and persecuted Jews. In this they were aided by the French authorities, first in the area of the country under the Vichy regime, and later throughout France. To her chagrin, she did not find any record written by her grandfather of what he went through, but rests her account of what happened to him from versions written by others who underwent the same experience as well as the historical research of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, renowned scholars of that dismal period.

First, she describes her visit to the actual site of the prison, Compiègne, which is now a military barracks, but found very little there regarding what her grandfather went through. She knew that the ‘rafle’ or roundup of reputable citizens of the Jewish faith, the ‘notables’ of the book’s title, took place on 12 December 1941, and that 743 Jewish men who were long-term residents of France and well-established within French society were arrested. They were taken from their homes at dawn that day and brought to the station to await the train taking them to the camp. Each arrest was effected by two French policemen accompanied by two Wehrmacht soldiers, and each man was allowed to take a small suitcase with a few basic articles. To their number were added another five hundred Jewish men who were arrested in the streets of Paris, with nothing but the clothes they happened to be wearing. This brought to one thousand the number of Jews arrested that day, in line with Hitler’s plan to ‘rid Europe of its Jews.’

In icy cold weather the men, most of them no longer young (Leonce was 63), were made to stand and wait for many hours without food or water until they were forced into the train taking them to Compiègne, which fortunately was not a cattle train and had seats. Anne Sinclair names the prisoners who managed eventually to write a record of what they endured, and it is on these that her account of what her grandfather must have endured is based. Like many well-established and assimilated Jews, Leonce and Marguerite had remained in their home despite growing anti-Semitic propaganda and laws introducing the forced registration and restricted movement of Jews.

Late at night the train reached Compiègne, a few miles from Paris, where the prisoners were beaten and force-marched to the camp which consisted of a few brick walls and bare earth on which the exhausted prisoners had no option but to lie. There were three separate camps there, one for French political prisoners, one for Russian prisoners of war, and one for Jews – which was where Leonce was. The conditions in the Jewissh camp were worse than those in the others, with no possibility of receiving letters or packages, terrible sanitary conditions, and starvation rations. Occasionally, the prisoners in the other camps would share some of their food with the Jewish prisoners, and eventually iron bedsteads with thin mattresses were provided for the Jewish prisoners. The glass in the windows was broken, letting in the cold winter air; the walls topped by barbed wire provided precious little shelter from the elements. As was the case in all concentation camps, prisoners had to stand for hours during roll-call and endure the beatings and insults of the guards. The filth and lack of hygiene in the camp led to outbreaks of disease and infestations of vermin, lice and fleas. Some of the detainees were medical doctors and did what they could to ease the pain and distress of the others, but without medicines or food there was little they could do. A handful of prisoners considered to be gravely ill were released or hospitalised.

With the passage of time the prisoners’ physical state deteriorated, they lost weight and their physical and mental condition brought many of them to the verge of insanity. Some of them were deported to the main French holding camp at Drancy and thence to Auschwitz, Many of those arrested with Leonce were distinguished intellectuals, members of leading French families, and men who had fought for France in WWI; the camp at Compiègne was termed by one of its inmates, Jean-Jacques Bernard, ‘the camp of slow death.’

For a long time Leonce’s wife Marguerite had no news of what had happened to her husband or where he had been taken, as she tried desperately to trace his whereabouts. She eventually found out where he was and joined others making their way to Compiègne. Anne Sinclair imagines her grandfather trying to maintain some kind of cleanliness and self-respect despite the dire conditions in which he was forced to live. Prisoners played bridge or gave lectures on subjects regarding which they were knowledgeable, and this helped to maintain some kind of morale. Many, especially doctors, tried to help and support one another to the best of their ability, even though the treatment they received at the hands of the Nazis sought to reduce them to the level of beasts.

Leonce was imprisoned at Compiègne for three months, and was freed by being sent to hospital because he was considered to be very ill – as was the case with several other inmates after the long months of starvation and abuse. The camp at Compiègne was later disbanded, and many prisoners were sent to Drancy and Auschwitz in accordance with the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe, as agreed at the meeting of senior Nazis at Wannsee in  March 1942.

Wearing the uniform of a nurse, Marguerite found Leonce in the hospital and managed to commandeer an ambulance and take him to Paris. Anne Sinclair is not in possession of the exact facts of his escape, but surmises that this is what happened, and that subsequently Leonce and Marguerite managed to remain hidden in France till the end of the war. Leonce died at his home in Paris on 16 May 1945, eight days after the armistice, having lived to be reunited with his son, Anne Sinclair’s father, who had been on missions in the Near East on behalf of the Free French forces during the war.

Reading this book takes the reader on a harrowing journey to a time and place which it seems impossible to believe occurred. One would like to think that such inhumane treatment of one human being by another could not have existed in what was one of the most civilised countries of the world, but it did, and we must be grateful to Anne Sinclair for putting the raw facts before us so graphically. We must never forget.

The Time Has Come

Now that the review, revision, even reversion, of basic principles in the judiciary has come to the fore of Israel’s political life it would seem to be appropriate to extend the approach to other spheres which till now have held sway and been considered sacrosanct.

The time has come to tackle another set of precepts that has irked policy-makers, and politicians in particular, in recent times. I’m talking about the Ten Commandments, those basic principles which form the bedrock of civilized human society but whose initial attraction seems to have worn off. After all, it’s all well and good in this day and age to obey the commandment to have no other gods or not to make idols. It’s easy enough to understand that those were necessary and valid precepts back then in those far-off times when ancient societies did indeed hold all kinds of strange beliefs about the deities they worshipped, whether in the physical form of effigies or in some inanimate form that varied from time to time.

And who can fail to appreciate the value of having a day of rest, the precept that preceded all labour laws everywhere and which has been adopted – and even extended – all over the world? Who can resist the attraction presented by the long, lazy, two-day weekend of most western societies? Even in Israel, which supposedly adheres to the concept of keeping one day of rest, has allowed the idea of a two-day weekend, or at least a one-and-a-half-day weekend, to impinge on its strict adherence to a single day of rest by giving workers Friday off. After all, having a day of complete rest requires a lot of preparation, so orthodox Jewish women have to pack two days of cooking, baking and housework into one day, while their husbands go off to fish, swim or relax in their local ‘parliament’ with the other husbands. Not to mention the ultra-orthodox in Israel, who don’t work on any day of the week, so that for them to focus on a single day of rest is rather problematic.

Honouring one’s father and mother is something of a tall order in this day and age when parents belong to a generation that is unable to keep up with the heady pace of technical developments. If honouring them means downloading new apps into their mobile phones while muttering something about their inability to understand progress, then that will have to suffice. I’m not sure that all our politicians are even as up-to-date as that, but thankfully they all have secretaries and/or personal assistants to do the donkey work involved in writing emails, Facebook posts and Twitter messages.

But now we come to the tricky part. Not stealing and not bearing false witness, i.e., lying. How can any self-respecting politician hope to get ahead while adhering to those outdated commandments? I suppose their thinking goes along lines of ‘being economical with the truth isn’t exactly lying. Everyone does it. It’s become the norm.’ So, essentially, one can delude oneself, and seek to delude others, by claiming that that particular commandment has outlived its usefulness.

And so we find ourselves facing a situation in which the people who decide our laws and now even control our judiciary – overturning the whole concept of checks and balances – are able to disregard the basic principles of decency with impunity.

One can only hope that the change in our government that is so sorely needed will come sooner rather than later, whether as divine retribution, disintegration from within, or punishment by the electorate.

The Venetian Game

A thriller about contemporary Venice. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by being given the chance to read about thrills and thuggery in La Serenissima? So I took the bait and bought a copy of the book by Philip Gwynne Jones. It starts innocently enough, with Nathan Sutherland, honorary British consul in Venice doing his best to fulfil his mission of helping British tourists whose passports and/or money have been stolen and youngsters who have committed minor criminal offences. He also engages in translating lawn-mower manuals (Italian to English), which rather endeared him to me. In the process of dealing with the various routine tasks he has to fend off the attentions of his rather aggressive cat, Gramsci, and is asked by a perfect stranger to keep a mysterious package in the safe for a few days.

Sutherland refuses the request, but is summoned the next day to the Academmia Gallery, where he was informed that he had left a package and was obliged to collect it. This turned out to be the very package he had avoided accepting the previous day, but now had no choice in the matter. When he opened it he found it to contain a small book with illustrations depicting the life of he Virgin. Consultation with an art historian friend leads to the conclusion that the illustrations are by Giovanni Bellini. All kinds of twists and turns ensue as Sutherland together with his friend, a beautiful half-Italian art restorer, and various other characters who live in Venice and know it well enough to engage in heart-stopping races through the city, whether by boat or on foot, crossing any number of bridges and canals, making my head spin in the process.

As a typical Englishman, Sutherland devotes an inordinate amount of time and energy to drinking, and we learn about his favoured spots for engaging in that activity, though whether they actually exist or not I haven’t yet had the chance to ascertain. I have learned, however, that Prosecco is considered too weak to be actually considered an alcoholic drink, that a ‘proper’ drink is something called a Negroni, which is oone third gin, one third vermouth, and one third Campari, and is adorned with orange peel. In addition, various bottles of wine (mainly red) are consumed on various occasions with various companions (of which there are many).

The request to translate a legal document brings him to the home of a mysterious wealthy client, whose house is filled with priceless art works and claims that the Bellini booklet is his, and then invites him to accompany him to the opera. Thus, Sutherland is able to enter the famous La Fenice opera house and attend a performance of ‘Madame Butterfly,’ but this brings him no nearer solving the mystery of who is the rightful owner of the Bellini book, to which another individual, the person who asked him to keep it for a few days, also lays claim. Sutherland takes his laptop along and translates the document, but when the text describes him sorting out the papers my mind began boggling. Where was the printer? Was there a printer? An unsolved (and unlikely) mystery.

If you’re not confused by now, you should be. I certainly am, and was while reading the book. All sorts of characters appear, some more or less unsavoury, others simply sinister, often with no good reason, and leaving the reader reeling at the unlikelihood of it all. Although a sketchy map of Venice is provided, I was left confused by all the journeys taken by Sutherland and others in and around the city.

Of course, by the end of the book some characters have been killed off, and an attempt has been made on Sutherland’s life, but all’s well that ends well, the Bellini booklet becomes the property of the Italian bank that owns a huge art collection, Sutherland is paid well for his exertions, and is invited to a meal at the exclusive Le Bistrot de Venise. Plenty of good wine will inevitably be consumed there, I’m sure.

The Best Time of Our Lives

The topic for discussion at the meeting last week was ‘Which time of your life would you like to go back to?’ During the pandemic the group of people who meet everey two weeks to engage in German conversation held Zoom meetings instead of physical ones, and this still persists. Most of the participants are men and women in their seventies or eightees who have retired from employed work, and so it seems safer to remain at home for these meetings.

I was one of the first to reply, and I declared that here and now is the best time of my life. In my teenage years I suffered from social isolation, heartache and physical discomfort. Once I moved to Israel my situation changed, but those years of having to cope with three young children, trying to work as a freelance translator and also enduring bouts of illness that obliged me to undergo surgery and kept me in hospital for weeks at a time were not easy. Add to that the financial constraints that affect most young families, and I sometimes wonder, looking back, how I managed to remain sane at the time. At least, I hope I did.

But now my children (and even my grandchildren) are grown, and my husband and I are free to attend concerts or films without having to feel guilty or take a babysitter, our financial situation has improved, and my health situation is under control. The world around me has its problems, but for the moment they are not on my immediate doorstep. My home is warm and dry, we have plenty to eat, can see friends and family from time to time, and our children and grandchildren come for Friday-night dinner every two weeks. So now is definitely the best time of my life.

As the discussion continued other people expressed similar views. One of them stressed that being free from the constraints of work he has time to read, watch films and TV, and of course I agree with that. Another participant talked about pursuing his hobbies of painting and writing, in which he is able to engage even more actively now than before. That is the case for me too, as I’ve managed to write eight books since retiring from work. Some people talked about their travels or their voluntary work, and others about being involved in researching and writing their family history. Almost everybody agreed that, physical limitations apart, this is the best time of their life.

That triggered a general discussion about the importance of writing about our life for the benefit of our offspring, of keeping a record of who the previous generations had been, what they had done and how they had lived. Many of those involved had documents, correspondence and diaries of previous generations, and acknowledged that  they were probably the last individuals in their family with knowledge of the German language and hence able to access those records. Suddenly, we were all confronted with the heavy responsibility that lay on our shoulders of making the lives of our parents and grandparents accessible to our children and grandchildren, and all the future generations. I hope to be able to do something about it at some point in the future.

And nobody wanted to go back in time.