Shattered Crystals - Mia Amalia Kanner (that summer book TXT) 📗

“French police burst into the barracks.”

The men who were in charge of Gurs were French collaborationists who cooperated with the Nazis to detain men, women and children solely because they were Jews. But they kept their word to the prisoners of Gurs who volunteered to work in French factories, and they gave me my freedom in June, 1943.

With a document of identification from the commandant of Gurs, I left the camp one month after Sal began working in a chemical plant in Toulouse. I had a pass to travel to Limoges, and I made the journey by train. Disruptions on the railroad were much greater than they had been when Ruth and Eva left for the first part of their journey to America in 1941.

The Maquis, the name adopted by the French Resistance workers, had succeeded in inflicting damage to the rail system, mainly by sabotaging the tracks. As a result, the journey required changing trains more than once and took several days. But I did not mind. I relished my freedom to travel, to climb on and off trains at will. My train arrived safely in Limoges, and I took a bus to the free camp of La Maise.

Compared to Gurs, La Maise was a small camp. The barracks to which I was assigned were sparse, but I expected nothing else and was satisfied. Neither sleeping on a cot nor sharing quarters with other women was a hardship. I had become accustomed to sleeping on cots long ago, and the women at La Maise were pleasant and kept the premises clean and neat. I readily did my share, taking my turn sweeping our barracks and washing the floor. There was no storage space in the barracks, but I hardly needed it, as I had so few possessions.

To me, the word “camp” for La Maise was really a misnomer, because I could come and go at will during the day. I could send and receive mail there, and I started a regular correspondence with Sal. Our letters were censored at both ends, but having my letters read was something else I did not object to at that time. We had no secrets to write to each other. I kept all complaints about the current state of affairs in France out of my letters as Sal did in his to me. They were simple letters between a husband and wife forced apart by circumstances. What counted was I knew his whereabouts, he knew mine, and we were able to correspond.

Sal was paid a small salary for his work at the factory, and he sent a few francs with each letter. The money from Sal gave me further freedom and mobility. During the journey north from Gurs, I had planned three important trips to Limoges, all to find my friends and to reestablish links formed before my arrest.

My first trip out of the camp of La Maise was to visit Gita. I was anxious to know how my friend had been managing since she had been to Nexon to see Simon. I wanted her to see, firsthand, that I had survived the camps and was outside once more.

I found Gita still in her home on the edge of the city. As soon as she saw me, she dragged me into the house and threw her arms around me, hugging and embracing me.

But when I told her Sal was working in Toulouse, she started to weep. She did not need to tell me that her husband had been murdered at Nexon. His fate had been sealed the moment he was arrested and charged. Nothing could save a black market profiteer who ended up in the special compound at Nexon. We had both known this when we saw each other at the camp last winter.

“This is no way to greet you,” Gita said. She pulled a handkerchief from her skirt pocket and dried her eyes. “Seeing you here is the most marvelous surprise. You must tell me everything that happened. But first, you must see someone new.”

She took me to the nursery and showed me the infant. “It is a boy,” she said. “Anni has a brother, and I have a son.”

We sat at the dining room table and drank ersatz. The days of real coffee at Gita’s house were over. “Life is the same, just more difficult,” she said. “Food and fuel shortages are more severe and police repression has become worse. So even with your pass, promise me you will be careful.”

She also gave me the good news that Rabbi Deutsch was still free and in Limoges.

A few days later, I made a second trip to the city that I considered my home base. Though I possessed documents that made my presence legal in Limoges, I was on the lookout for gendarmes as Sal and I had done when we were fugitives here. It was not easy to rid myself of the old fear. But my spirits rose and my steps quickened when I saw the shteibel.

Rabbi Deutsch welcomed me cordially. He agreed with our decision to leave Gurs, reiterating Dr. Neder’s words: Outside is always better. Then he told me that Toulouse had a beautiful old Sephardic shul. “There is no logic to those who govern in this country. But so far they do not interfere with the Toulouse Rabbi, and they permit him to hold services.”

I was a legal person, free to call on the rabbi, and I was happy to take a meal with him and his students. There were not as many at the table as there had been the year before, but they still learned and davened together. Three years had passed since the French surrendered to the Nazis, and still they continued their Orthodox Jewish life under a regime that was not only anti-Semitic but also a dedicated hunter of Jews. I had never understood how the rabbi and his small group of students avoided arrest. God must have been keeping a special watch over them. The rabbi was known to all the Jews in the city and the surrounding areas, and his mere presence must have given people courage.

The rabbi was also an unofficial but accurate source of information about the whereabouts and welfare of Limoges Jews. He told me the OSE still maintained an office in the city and gave me its address.

A few days later, I made a third excursion to Limoges. When I arrived at the OSE office, I was fortunate to find Madame Weill, the woman who had been so intrigued by my tobinambour recipe while I was at La Chevrette and Le Couret. The OSE was aware that I had been released from Gurs and was now at La Maise, so Madame Weill was not surprised to see me. She told me that Frau Meder had returned to Switzerland, following the mass evacuation of the camp. I sent the nurse a letter the next day to let her know I was well and to thank her again for her intervention that had saved my life.

Letters were being delivered to Switzerland since it was a neutral nation. But it was not possible for me to write to Ruth and Eva in America. I had had no contact with my two oldest girls for close to three years. I asked about my youngest, but Madame Weill could not tell me where Lea was. “You must not want too much,” she said. “Be satisfied that you know she is alive and cared for.”

I wanted something else from Madame Weill. I needed to go back to work for the OSE and thought she could help me. I went regularly to Limoges to see if anything was available for me. Two weeks after my first visit, Madame Weill offered me a place in the kitchen of the OSE orphanage in Brout Vernet, a village near Vichy.

Although Vichy was a long way from my friends, over one hundred miles east of Limoges, I took the job because I knew I needed to keep occupied. I had another reason for wanting work. I believed I was safer working than being idle. I believed my support from the OSE would be strengthened if I was employed by the organization. Most important, I foresaw the possibility that the free camp could become secured. I did not want to be there if that occurred, to be incarcerated again. I preferred to have no connection whatsoever with any camp.

I reported to the commandant at La Maise and showed him my OSE documents which certified that I had a job. Thus, I obtained my release. I thanked my barracks mates and took the train to Vichy.

Cooking at a kitchen in a children’s home no longer presented a problem to me. Cooking again for large numbers of people, I remembered the certainty with which Herman’s mother had said I would not be able to do it. The French cook with whom I worked at the home welcomed an extra pair of hands in the kitchen and treated me cordially.

We were in the kitchen twelve hours a day, starting before seven o’clock in the morning, and I was glad to go to the small room assigned to me, in the evening. There, I rested and wrote letters and dreamed of being reunited with my family.

Madame Weill came to the home