The House of Izieu

by Jan Rehner

  “Cattails and white water lilies with pink centres encircle the lake and its glassy circle reflects the sky, as if it were the very mirror of heaven. Young girls have been known to dive into the lake in search of the convent, novitiates in search of God. They never return.

  “But once, a young girl from Belley disappeared into the lake and she did return several days later, only she had no memory of where she had been, or of what she had seen, or even of her name. For a long time afterwards, people insisted they saw her in a dress as white as ice walking through the fields at night to dip her fingers into the lake water and, if you were very quiet and didn’t move at all, but stayed low to the ground by the lake rushes, her dress might brush against you as she passed and you’d be blessed from that day forward.”

  Marie closed the book and looked up from her reading.

  “What happens next?” Nina asked. Her blonde hair was so fine that wisps of it always escaped her braids and floated about her head.

  “That’s the end of the story,” Marie said.

  “Well, that’s very unsatisfactory,” Nina insisted. “We ought to know at least if the girl ever remembered anything.”

  “No. That’s the nature of legend,” Esther argued. “We’re meant to wonder. There are mysteries in the world that can’t be explained.”

  “Well, there’s no mystery here. That’s just a superstitious story,” Nina complained, “meant for people without a brain in their heads.”

  “Satisfied?” Marie asked, as she handed the book back to Miron.

  MARIE DEHAN, COOK

  OH, THE STORIES I might have told those children. Some of them thought my son was a pirate. The truth is my son is too handsome for his own good. Women used to hang about our bistro in Paris like stray cats, but instead of shooing them away like he should have, he’d take them dancing and break their hearts.

  Oh, the Parisian ladies adored him all right, but it wasn’t in his power to grant even the smallest of their wishes, because Philippe can only love men.

  When one poor, obsessed woman learned his secret, she hit him with a bottle of champagne she’d planned to use to seduce him, which is how he lost his eye, and which seemed as good a reason to leave Paris as any, especially with the Nazis growing too fond of his food and more and more suspicious of his fatal attractions.

  Sometimes running away means you’re headed in exactly the right direction. So we ran to the Jura where I spent my girlhood. There’s nothing like it—the fresh scent of the countryside blowing into your lungs, and a fresh start. Fields of wild narcissi in the spring, and huge forests of beech, oak, chestnut, and every kind of evergreen. There are men here who can spot a violin tree hidden among hundreds of others. The famous Stradivarius violins come from spruce trees that grow slowly, in a straight vertical up to the sky.

  We hadn’t been here hardly a month before we ran into Philippe’s old friend, Perticoz. He told us about the Settlement and before we knew it we were running into the arms of these children.

  They sure can make a racket with their wild games of kickball and tag. The mix of accents when they all begin to talk at the table can make your head spin. German, Austrian, French, Polish, Belgian, Algerian, and Romanian. It’s like eating with a huge flock of different kinds of birds, blackbirds and starlings and gulls and swifts, all singing at once, the verbal chorus of Europe.

  But they can be quiet, too, the darlings, as quiet as mice, as silent as cats on padded paws. They do well at their lessons, because schoolwork, in comparison with living, is so much easier. They’re not intact in the way other children are. There is a surface, and then a gap between it and their inner lives, shattered like broken cups.

  In them, I recognize my son, who lives with that same gap, and who finds among them, uncomplicated love.

  CLAUDE LEVAN-REIFMAN, TEN YEARS OLD

  I NEVER LIKED THE DARK.

  I remember my father, a good Catholic, used to ask the archangel, Gabriel, to protect us from storms and woe. That was one of his favourite words, woe, and he would say it like he was talking to a horse to make me laugh. One night, after a heavy rain, there was a golden light in the sky.

  “See? That’s Gabriel,” my father said. “He’s made of light.”

  He went inside then, but I stayed and watched the light fade and knew the angel had turned away from us.

  My father was arrested the next morning, in the hours before the light returned.

  My mother and I vanished and our lives were full of woe—my father’s word but he wasn’t there to make the truth of it lighter. I look for the sun in my mother’s face, but it is full of clouds, and for a long time she only wore clothes the colour of night.

  Then after many months, my uncle wrote to us and arranged for us to come here, to the House of Izieu. I call it the House of Light—sunlight, moonlight, the shimmer of the stars, the sparkle of the river.

  That first day, my mother and I stood by the window at sunset and watched the sky turn soft red and orange, melting into gold.

  “Look,” my mother said, smiling and pointing at the flood of colour. “The wings of Gabriel have come back to us.”

  I never really believed in Gabriel, but something has come back to us. For the first time I realize a memory can make you happy, instead of sad.

  LILIANE GERENSTEIN, ELEVEN YEARS OLD

  I ADMIT I TOOK A LOT of the blessings of my old life for granted. I went to a fancy school. I had lovely clothes. Gifts fell at my feet—a silver hairbrush from my father, dolls with porcelain faces and velvet dresses from my aunties. On one birthday, my mother knit a blanket for me that was so white and soft she said when I fell asleep I would dream of baby lambs in spring meadows.

  All of that is gone now and I should have paid more attention.

  I learned to be grateful for things at the House of Izieu. It’s like a summer that stretches on forever, only with lessons. It’s a gift that appears out of thin air when you least expect it, like a star you’ve been staring at, but only gradually see in the centre of your sky.

  We have group birthdays at Izieu and when my month came, Philippe baked us a huge apple cake. Before I might have complained I was getting pretty sick of apples—applesauce in the mornings, apples for snacks, even apple slices in the soup once—but I loved that cake because I knew Philippe had stayed up until midnight to bake it for us. And I got cards from all my friends they’d made themselves and decorated with bits of old ribbons or leaves or feathers, and I think they are every bit as nice as silver and velvet.

  I often wonder aloud to Léa what twist in my life path brought me here. Was it pure luck or God? I told her that when I was little, I used to look for God, for signs. Since God is Light, I thought he might be easier to see on rainy days when everything is reflected in water and I would hunt for a flash, or a shine, or something shimmering somewhere. Léa always listens and this is what she taught me: you’ve got to be on the look out for luck, just as much as for God. You’ve got to be ready to grab onto luck before it gets away. So, at the House of Izieu, I hold on fast.

  NOVEMBER 1943

  THAT WINTER, THE MOON WAS WHITE.

  A cold wind pushed against the windows and through the trees, shaking the branches. The sunlight, when it appeared from behind clouds, was thin and brittle.

  The barn was freezing. Sabine and Miron clung to each other under a huge pile of blankets while their breath curled like smoke into the frigid air. “Should we move the cow into the bedroom to help keep us warm?” Miron suggested.

  “Better for us to move the bedroom into the house,” Sabine replied.

  “It was a joke. Where exactly would we sleep in the house? On the stairs? On a mattress in the classroom?”

  “All right. I see your point. We don’t need the cow. Just think of something warm.”

  Several silent minutes passed.

  “Miron? Are you
thinking about palm trees and sandy beaches?”

  “No. I’m thinking about snow. Lots and lots of snow, making the mountain roads impassable and the House of Izieu unreachable.”

  But the next day, and the day after that, everyone at the House of Izieu was talking about snow under clear and heartless blue skies. Those children who had grown up with snow became self-appointed experts, while the youngsters who’d never experienced it clamoured for information.

  “What is it feeling like?” asked Barouk.

  “Soft when it’s falling and hard when it’s packed,” Otto declared.

  “Packed? Why pack snow?”

  “Not in a suitcase, silly. The best kind of snow will hold a shape. You can pack it just by scooping up handfuls and pressing your hands together. That’s how you make snowballs. Or we can make snowmen.”

  “Snowball fights!” Fritz shouted. “We can have teams. Boys against girls.”

  “No, you can’t,” Sabine warned. “You boys outnumber the girls.”

  “Do snowballs hurt?” Élie worried.

  “Nah,” Fritz promised. “They break apart when they hit you and you’ll have a thick coat on and won’t feel a thing.”

  “There are other ways to play in the snow, Élie,” Sabine promised. “You can make snow angels. I’ll teach you how.”

  “But if you stick your tongue out and touch it to anything metal, you’ll freeze right there and have to wait until spring to get your tongue back,” Majer said gleefully.

  “Majer,” Sabine glared, while Élie quickly covered her mouth, “promise me you won’t try that.”

  “When I was a boy in Russia,” Miron said, “it was the custom among some people to roll newborns in the snow to harden them against the ferocity of winter.” This announcement was met with an uneasy silence.

  “Thank you for that, Miron.” Sabine said finally. “Since we have no newborns that’s not a custom we need to worry about.”

  “Is snow very, very cold?” Jean-Claude wondered.

  “Well, yes, all at once. But a single flake will melt in an instant and no two flakes are exactly alike and each flake is beautiful,” Miron said, trying to make up for his old mouldering tale about Russian babies.

  “My father once gave me a snow globe,” Sabine remembered.

  “What’s that?” Richard asked.

  “Imagine a globe made of clear glass. Inside the globe, there was a miniature house surrounded by fir trees, the tallest one topped with a tiny gold star. If you shook the globe, snow would whirl around the forest and then fall gently to the ground.”

  For a moment, Sabine wished that miniature house could be the House of Izieu, tucked safely inside a glass globe.

  “Why didn’t the snow melt?” Richard asked, interrupting Sabine’s thought.

  “Oh, it was just pretend snow. White sand or tiny bits of paper.”

  “Well I wish the real stuff would come soon.” Richard pronounced.

  “Me too,” several children sighed at once.

  The frost came first, tracing lacy patterns on panes of glass. The light at the mouth of the barn was crystalline, as if miniature particles of frost were suspended in it, sharpening the edges of the door and brightening the air. When Miron and Sabine rose and walked across the lawn toward the house, the grass was stiff and crunched beneath their feet. The turned over earth of the garden lay exposed to the cold, and became as solid as cement.

  The next night brought ice, glazing the branches of the trees, and transforming them into glistening sculptures. In the morning, Pierre poured kettles of hot water onto the handle of the stone fountain’s pump to loosen the icy grip of the deep freeze, while the children watched the steam rise in cloudy ribbons and snapped icicles from the balustrade of the terrace.

  The day before the storm came, the sky was purple and smelled of wind, though the air was perfectly still.

  “It’s coming,” the children whispered to each other.

  At first, the snowflakes were slow and lazy, white moths floating down to land on upturned cheeks and outstretched tongues. The children exclaimed and wondered, their faces flushed and their eyes bright, cold and happiness conspiring to make them look so beautiful.

  Then the wind stirred the flakes into a white, whirling mass, until the sky was thick and churning. The children ran inside and stood at the windows, watching the world rapidly disappear.

  A long season of enchantment began. Nothing was as it had been before. The snow seemed to alter the contours of the land, creating new valleys and ridges, turning the tallest of pines into stately white pillars. The light had a bluish tint, casting mauve shadows. The cliff faces softened, the roads vanished, and the pinnacles of the mountains glittered so brightly Miron had to shade his eyes to look at them. He reached for Sabine’s hand and squeezed it tightly. He could almost feel her body loosen as the tension in her muscles relaxed. The House of Izieu was buffeted, impervious. Snow had become its armour.

  Farmer Perticoz raided the storage in his barn for sleds, and the children, bundled up in an assortment of mismatching boots, coats, mittens, and scarves of every colour, ploughed through the snow to the top of the hill that overlooked the house.

  Arnold, on his stomach with little Sami on his back, steered the first sled from the highest point, down the steepest slope, at alarming speed. Sami, screeching and laughing, finally fell off, tumbling down the last two feet. He was up in a flash, already scrambling back to the top of the hill as fast as his short legs could pump. As the sliding, whizzing, and shrieking filled the morning, the older boys showed the younger children how to steer by leaning or dragging their boots in the snow. Soon the slope of the hill was as slick as a glass slide.

  As the days passed, snow angels decorated the meadows, and snowmen patrolled the terrace. Trails of footprints on pristine snow looped in aimless circles of play, or disappeared into newly carved tunnels, or drifted down to the green river, its edges brittle with ice.

  There were thrilling sleigh rides with Farmer Perticoz and dozens of snowball fights, star-flooded nights and ice-blue skies. November was hot soup and toast, coats steaming near the wood stove, and dreamless sleeps under warm blankets.

  In December, trails of wood smoke from the chimney guided the postman on his skis to Sabine’s front door, where he placed a parcel and a letter from Pierre-Marcel, written on official stationery, in her hands.

  Dear Madame Zlatin,

  I hope all is well at the Settlement.

  As Christmas approaches, I am pleased to inform you that the good citizens of Belley, Izieu, and several neighbouring villages have donated a sum of money and goods (here enclosed) to help the refugee children celebrate the festive season.

  Obersturmführer Werner was most impressed by this generosity.

  Thank you for your invitation to attend your Christmas Eve dinner. While Obersturmführer Werner sends his sincere regrets, I will be most pleased to attend.

  Sabine read the words not written as intently as the words that were, and carried the letter to Léa.

  “Clearly, your friend is warning you. The Germans have learned of the Settlement and believe the children are Christian, no doubt with Pierre-Marcel’s encouragement. We must have a public Christmas. I think we should also assume our mail is being read.”

  “Exactly what I thought. But what will the children think?”

  Léa’s face brightened as she thought of a solution. “We’ll tell them that Christmas will be like the summer pageant, a kind of play. And we can still celebrate Hanukkah privately, with a special meal, and later, stories at bedtime. What’s in the package?”

  “Flat tins of sardines, a kilo of sugar, some butter, seven packs of colour pencils, eight knit sweaters in various sizes, and a one hundred franc note.”

  “Good. I’d say we’re off to a promising start.”

  And so began
the celebration of a very public Christmas at the House of Izieu. When Miron drove a sleigh full of children to the market, they wished everyone they knew, and plenty they didn’t, Joyeux Noël, for each child had learned the phrase in French to perfection. They thought it was outrageous fun to chop down a fir tree, drag it into the house, and decorate it with paper stars and strings of dried apple while its boughs dripped melting snow onto the classroom floor. The office of the subpréfet of Belley received forty-four Christmas cards, all with the obligatory drawings in children’s crayon of Christmas trees, angels, jingle bells, holly, stars, wreaths, mangers, shepherds, Three Wise Men, or Père Noël.

  Sabine wrote letters to everyone she knew in Montpellier, and soon packages began to arrive and were quickly hidden in the barn. Philippe, dressed for an expedition to the north pole, skied into town for supplies, or perhaps not to any town but to some secret cache or contact, because Sabine never saw a single receipt despite all the boxes and bags he brought home and carefully hid in the larder or behind innocent jars of homemade applesauce.

  “Where did all this come from?” Sabine finally asked.

  Philippe’s only reply was a wink.

  “What do people eat at Christmas?” she wondered, “and will there be enough for guests?”

  “Leave all that to me,” Philippe assured her.

  So invitations were sent to all the friends of the House of Izieu.

  As the day of the party drew closer, Sabine dreaded the departure of Mademoiselle Perrier whose return to her own home for the holidays meant that lessons would be suspended at a time when the children were already fizzing with excitement. She suddenly felt like that old woman living in a shoe with so many children at loose ends she didn’t know what to do. But, as it turned out, the children were no trouble at all, disappearing into the classroom behind closed doors, busy with their own seasonal conspiracies.

  Plans and schemes were everywhere. Miron spent all his spare time in the barn and came to bed covered in sawdust. Pieces of thread were tangled in Léa’s hair and she had the pink eyes of a white mouse from sewing so late into the evenings. Meanwhile, Mina and Suzanne neglected their daily chores to indulge in a sudden passion for knitting.