The House of Izieu

by Jan Rehner

  The surprised children jumped in the air and clapped as he emerged. “Do it again,” they shouted. “Do it again.”

  Sabine had laughed and returned to her chores until she felt a tug on her skirt and looked down into the worried face of five-year-old Sami Adelsheimer.

  “What’s wrong, Sami?” she asked.

  “There’s mermaids with green hair in the river.”

  “Mermaids? Well, that I’d like to see.” Sabine took his hand and he led her to the river, or as close to the river as he wanted to be.

  “There,” he pointed to the spot. “See? That’s green hair.”

  “Those are just weeds, silly.”

  “They don’t look like weeds. We helped Monsieur Miron pull weeds in the garden. They didn’t look like that.”

  “These are river weeds.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “It looks like hair,” Sami repeated, not convinced.

  “I’ll pull one out for you,” Sabine offered. “The weeds have long fronds that wave in the currents.”

  She slipped out of her shoes and waded into the water and tugged at one of the plants until she had pulled it free. “See? Just a plant, not hair.”

  “Is it slimy?”

  “Just a bit.” Sabine held it out for him and Sami quickly backed up.

  “Aren’t you coming into the water?” she asked. “There’s nothing to be afraid of as long as Léon is here to watch you.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Sami said and then ran off as fast as his legs could carry him.

  Sabine would have been content to spend every hour with the children, but she would often leave without saying where she was going or when she’d be back. Two or three days might go by, with no news from her, and then suddenly she’d reappear with a new set of identity papers for some of the children, or a suitcase full of flour bags, or another child.

  Her trips were often to Belley. Pierre-Marcel was more than a protector of the House of Izieu. He had become a true friend, a man immune to corruption and vanity, with a weakness for defending the needy with artful and clever subterfuges. And Sabine was certainly needy. She needed ration cards and more food than she could buy legally; she needed clothing, and identity cards without the Juif stamp for the children, and she needed to find a teacher and a doctor. Above all, she needed people she could trust and she found all of that in Pierre-Marcel and in his loyal assistant, Marie-Antoinette, from whom he seemed to be inseparable, despite his abiding love for his wife, who was expecting their second child.

  From the relative safety of the subpréfecture office, that pair kept a close eye on the restlessness of the bored Italian soldiers and the nosiness of the Milice, and kept track of any grumblings, suspicions, or slurs from the townspeople of Belley and all the tiny hamlets nearby.

  “How is Léa?” Marie-Antoinette asked.

  “Knee-high in children,” Sabine smiled, “and loving every minute of it. Yesterday, she had them make paper boats and race them across the water in the fountain. Huffing and puffing was allowed to speed the boats along, so it was a wet and wild affair.”

  “And Philippe and his mother?”

  “Performing marvels with whatever vegetables or fruits we manage to harvest and whatever fish or canned goods we have. The children are beginning to fill out and their cheeks are turning pink.”

  “You might try selling some of your vegetables in the weekly market in Izieu,” Pierre-Marcel suggested.

  Sabine raised an eyebrow, “Is that wise?”

  Pierre-Marcel nodded. “Take a few of the younger children along. Let the villagers see that there’s nothing to be afraid of. If you are too separate from the village, people will become curious and tongues will start to wag. Also, when the summer ends, you might think about placing some of the twelve or thirteen-year-old boys in the boarding school in Belley where they can get proper education. In the meantime, I’m still searching for a teacher from among the closest villages who might be willing to make the daily trip to Izieu.”

  Marie-Antoinette saw the concern on Sabine’s face. “Don’t worry. Any boys who come to the school in Belley will be my special friends. They’ll be treated well. Oh, and please tell the Benguigui brothers that their little sister, Yvette, is growing like a weed. She’s the darling of the family that’s taken her in.”

  “Any luck yet with finding a doctor?” Sabine asked. “Léon Reifman has a sister who’s a doctor, but she has a child and aging parents. I think she’d gladly come to stay, but it’s a question of room. And I still get letters from desperate parents asking for placements for their children.”

  “You can’t save them all, Sabine,” Pierre-Marcel cautioned. “And speaking of letters, be careful that the ones the children write mention only Christian holidays because we can’t be certain that their mail won’t be intercepted by the Milice. There’s one man I know you can trust, a Doctor Albert Bendrihem in Glandieu, near Izieu, but be careful. Only go there for very serious problems, ones that you can’t manage on your own with your nursing training. He’s a kind man, but he’s suspected by the scoundrels in the area to be a ‘Jewish’ doctor. Whether that means he himself is Jewish, or that he is willing to treat Jews, I don’t know. I only wish it didn’t matter, but in the meantime, he has whatever protection my office can offer.”

  In the silence that followed this speech, Marie-Antoinette looked at the solemn faces of her two friends and wished she could find some miraculous remedy for their troubles. Their faces reminded her that for all the protection offered by the House of Izieu, its very existence was still precarious. Since she had first begun working with Pierre, and then again when she had met Sabine, she had wondered what motivated some people to be full of goodness and mercy, for no personal gain and at considerable personal risk, while so many others bent their heads and knees to fanaticism and the cruelty it spawned. We know so much, she thought, about what motivates people to be evil, and so little about what motivates them to be good. She looked down at her empty hands and knew she had no cure to soothe her dear friends’ spirits, but she smiled and offered what she could.

  “By the way, Sabine, I’ve been collecting children’s books from some of the citizens of Belley. I’ve got The Magic Egg, Eskimo Grasshoppers, The Forest, The Musicians of Bréme, and April’s Fish. I’m still looking for stories of cowboys, but you can take home what I have.”

  When Sabine returned from her necessary journeys, she was always relieved to see Miron with his sunburned cheeks, affectionate smile, unshakable inner strength, and certainty that they could solve any problem together. When she told him that Pierre-Marcel had suggested that trips to the market might be used to barter vegetables and smiles for meat and goodwill, he set about at once to fashion a mode of transportation for the children. It took the form of a large cart, a long contraption with four high wheels, pulled along by a single horse borrowed from Farmer Perticoz. The bottom was made of three wide boards. The sides were ladders fixed at angles to the bottom. Miron sat on a board fixed across the ladders and filled the cart with straw, carrots, tomatoes, cabbages, beans, and half a dozen or more excited children.

  The trips to the market became a weekly excursion. In addition to the vegetables there were wild strawberries and rhubarb to sell in May, cherries and courgettes in June, pears and raspberries in July, and blackberries and blueberries in August. The younger children took turns accompanying Miron, who, as Sabine said, was the only one brave or foolish enough to drive the cart, but he never had to worry about the children’s behaviour because they all loved the trips and knew that if they weren’t unfailingly polite and helpful they would lose their chance to go to the market when their next turn came.

  First to pass by the cart was always Marie-Antoinette who rode her bicycle all the way from Belley to Izieu. The Spiegel sisters, Martha and Senta, adored her and ran into her arms. Some
times she had hard candies hidden in her pockets for the children to find, and sometimes she helped one or two of the Benguigui brothers, especially five-year-old Jean Claude, slip away to visit their little sister, Yvette, living with a village family.

  Before many weeks had passed, almost all the villagers looked forward to the arrival of the cart from the Settlement for Refugee Children from the Hérault. The poor little orphans, as they were privately referred to, won the villagers’ hearts. One day, the butcher would discover he had an extra bit of meat to trade for strawberries, and a bone for the cocker spaniel named Tomi. The barber had a cousin nearby who grew artichokes. They weren’t his wife’s favourite, but perhaps the children would enjoy them. The baker had six loaves that hadn’t risen to his liking and it would be a shame to see them go to waste.

  One week, one beautiful girl, only eighteen, leaned her bicycle against a tree and watched from a distance. She had a letter clutched in her hand, and she had a wish. She counted eight children between the ages of five and ten. How could she possibly know anything of their loss? These children were not the same as her little brothers. Their world was not the same as hers at all. She caught the gaze of the tall, sunburned man with the wary eyes who always accompanied them, and looked away quickly.

  Miron was fully aware of her presence. Indeed, it would have been difficult not to notice her lithe figure and her dark Italianate curls cut into a shapely bob. The last two weeks in a row she had watched the children and leaned her bike against that tree, yet she had never approached the stall nor spoken to anyone. He looked again and thought he saw a wrinkle of doubt on her pale oval face. Was she waiting for someone, he wondered? Was she waiting for him?

  At that moment their eyes met again, and the young woman took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  Miron crossed the ground between them quickly. “Can I help you?”

  “Monsieur Zlatin?” she asked.

  As soon as he nodded, she began to speak rapidly, giving him, she hoped, no time to turn down her request. “Hello. I’m Marcelle Favet. I’ve a letter here from Monsieur Wiltzer. I’m a teacher, that is, I want to be a teacher. I want to help, maybe for the summer, until a more experienced teacher can be found.”

  Her rehearsed speech had left her cheeks red, and she thrust the letter at him as if it were a small, dangerous animal.

  To her dismay, Miron didn’t open the letter, but slipped it into his shirt pocket instead. “Do you know Monsieur Wiltzer?” he asked.

  “I do. I know his wife very well. She’s my godmother.”

  “And you want to teach at the Settlement?”

  “I’d like to try. I live near Izieu. I could come every day.”

  “Have you seen the house? It won’t be an easy journey on your bicycle—mostly uphill and on dirt roads.”

  Marcelle shook her head, but insisted she was strong.

  “I’ve seen you watching the children,” Miron continued in a gentler voice. “It won’t work if you’re frightened of them.”

  “Frightened? Oh, no, Monsieur. How can little children be frightening?”

  “It won’t work if you feel sorry for them, either.”

  Marcelle blushed and looked down at the ground. She felt she’d been caught out, that this man had quickly measured the distance between their two worlds and judged it to be too far. She saw that he’d drawn a line he thought she couldn’t cross. But there must be a way over, a way through. She believed that people could move beyond the limits of their known world. Why else was there music, poetry, imagination, or prayer?

  She raised her head then and looked him in the eye and her voice was lovely, clear and strong. “Give me a chance. Everyone deserves a chance to learn, to try. Perhaps lines are not real, only drawn from the inside out.”

  Miron stood perfectly still. She had surprised him, touched him.

  He reached for her bicycle, took a few long strides, and swung it up onto the cart. “Come on, then,” he called back over his shoulder.

  Marcelle paid no attention to the route, surrounded as she was by the children. Some of them were shy and only looked up at her through their eyelashes, but some of them asked questions right away. What was her favourite colour? And did she like games? Could she whistle? Did she like having short hair?

  She looked away from them at a point in the road where a person could look down and see the house and the shape of the landscape and get a sense of what it felt like to be there. The house fitted so perfectly into the contours of the countryside that it appeared to have grown there naturally, like a tree.

  She reached for the nearest little hand and held it in her own. She was no longer uncertain or hesitant. That moment was past.

  NINA ARONOWICZ, TWELVE YEARS OLD

  MY DEAR AUNTIE,

  I am very happy to be here. There are beautiful mountains, and from high up you can see the Rhône flow by and it’s so pretty. Yesterday we went for a swim in the river pool with Mademoiselle Marcelle. She’s our summer teacher, but she plays games with us, too. One time, when we’d finished our sums, she let us make paper planes and fly them outside to see whose would go the furthest. We wrote messages on the flaps, like Be Brave or Wish on the Moon or Shout Out Your Name or Eat a Carrot. Once all the planes had landed, we each had to pick one at random and try to guess who’d written the message. Sometimes that was easy because the boys are messier printers than us girls, and Théo just wrote down Paulette because he’s sweet on her. I wrote Be Brave because that’s what you always tell me in your letters.

  Did I mention that Mademoiselle Marcelle is very beautiful? Her hair is black and her eyes are violet and sometimes she wears pants instead of dresses. One day she asked us what we want to be when we grow up. Esther is the smartest and she wants to be a scientist like Madame Curie, and Suzanne wants to be a dancer, and Mina said she wants to be a nurse. I said I want to be Mademoiselle Marcelle and everybody laughed.

  I’m fine here and eating very well, three meals a day, and sometimes snacks. Whenever anyone gets a parcel with sweets or biscuits, we all share.

  I hope to see you again very soon. While I’m waiting, I’m hugging you as hard as I can.

  Your loving niece, Nina

  LATE JUNE 1943

  ON MARKET DAYS, Sabine used one of the long dining tables to spread out the account books and search for money between the lines. Any relatives of the children still at large sent money when they could, and there was a monthly allowance from the OSE. These funds barely covered expenses. So Sabine was more than grateful for donations from friends she’d left behind in Montpellier, especially Berthe Mering who she’d met when they both worked for the Red Cross.

  She was writing a thank you note to Berthe when she heard the sound, a whispery, broken sound that she recognized immediately as a child crying. Knowing Léa or Paulette or Marcelle would be close by, Sabine opened the window a crack and bent her head to the open space.

  Mina was trying to console her little sister, Claudine, who was cupping a pile of feathers in both hands. “Don’t cry, Claudine. It’s just a dead bird.” This pronouncement made the tears fall faster and Claudine made a little sobbing sound.

  “Look. I’ll tell you what. Give the bird to me and we’ll bury it. You go down to the river and get the prettiest stone you can find. We’ll have a ceremony.”

  “What’s a ceremony?”

  “You know. We’ll wrap the bird up and put it in the ground. Then you place the stone on top and we’ll say a prayer. I’ll make up a poem, if you like.”

  “All right. What’ll we wrap it in?”

  “I’m not sure. How about your sock?”

  Claudine yanked off her shoes and one sock and held it up to her sister who took it and slipped the bird inside. “See?” Mina said. “Now the bird has its own little blanket.”

  “Is this a Jewish bird?”

  “Of course
.”

  “Then we must put handfuls of dirt on the body before the stone can go on.”

  “Oh, you must remember when we buried Bubbe. Yes, we’ll do that first.”

  Sabine watched Mina dig a little hole under a tree with a rock. Pretty soon Marcelle crouched down beside her. “What are you doing, Mina?” she asked.

  “We’re having a burial for this bird. Claudine found it and started to cry.”

  “May I watch?”

  “Okay. Here’s Claudine now. That’s a pretty stone. Isn’t it lovely, Marcelle?”

  “Very.”

  The two little girls bent their heads over the bird in its grave and then sprinkled handfuls of dirt on top. Mina smoothed over the surface and Claudine placed the stone.

  “Now the poem,” Claudine demanded.

  Mina stood up and spread her arms, full of the solemnity of the occasion.

  “Here you lay, unhappy bird. Here in the ground and not the sky. Worms will get you. Your bones will dry. And so we say Goodbye, Goodbye.”

  “Oh dear!” Marcelle exclaimed, as Claudine burst into tears again and Sabine tried not to laugh out loud from behind the window.

  “Let’s try that again, shall we? Now, let me see. How’s this? Rest in Peace, O lovely bird. Your wings are still, but soon you’ll fly, high above in Heaven’s sky. Goodbye, Goodbye.”

  “Oh, that’s much better. Don’t you think so, Claudine?”

  The little girl nodded and stared down at her bare foot. “I’m missing a sock now.”

  “C’mon,” Mina said, leading her back to the house. “You can have one of mine.”

  Sabine turned back to the accounts. She didn’t have any money, but she felt richer than she’d ever been.

  To celebrate summer and the longest days of the year, when the golden light of the setting sun often traced a tattoo of shadows across the terrace, the children planned a very special event. A fête, with skits and songs and dancing.

  Sabine had supposed some sort of play was inevitable as soon as the first rainy day had come and the children had begged her to open the marvellous chest that Marie-Antoinette had brought them as a house-warming gift. When the key finally turned the lock and the lid was flung open, there were exclamations all around for the chest was filled with costumes. There were striped pants and spangled vests, forest green cloaks and scarlet capes, turbans and feathered hats and tiaras, and long ruffled skirts in shades of wine-red and topaz. There was even one pair of gauzy wings made from starched lace, an inky-blue feather boa, a witchy-looking wig, and, at the very bottom of the chest, a slender flute of polished wood with silver keys.