After the Roundup: Escape and Survival in Hitler's France
176
After the Roundup: Escape and Survival in Hitler's France
176eBook
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Overview
On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up eleven-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated: all the adults and most of the children were transported on to Auschwitz and certain death, but 1,000 children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children left behind that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt. After eluding the guards and crawling under razor-sharp barbed wire, Joseph found freedom. But how would he survive the rest of the war in Nazi-occupied France and build a life for himself? His problems had just begun.
Until he was 80, Joseph Weismann kept his story to himself, giving only the slightest hints of it to his wife and three children. Simone Veil, lawyer, politician, President of the European Parliament, and member of the Constitutional Council of France—herself a survivor of Auschwitz—urged him to tell his story. In the original French version of this book and in Roselyne Bosch’s 2010 film La Rafle, Joseph shares his compelling and terrifying story of the Roundup of the Vél’ d’Hiv and his escape. Now, for the first time in English, Joseph tells the rest of his dramatic story in After the Roundup.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253027047 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2021 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 704 KB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Joseph Weismann is a survivor of the 1942 Vél' d'Hiv Roundup in Paris. His story inspired the French film, La Rafle. Now 85 years old, he lives in Le Mans.
Richard Kutner is an independent literary translator. His translations include Fear of Paradise by Vincent Engel and Cast Away on the Letter A by Fred, for which he was awarded a Hemingway Translation Grant.
Read an Excerpt
After the Roundup
By Joseph Weismann, Richard Kutner
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2011 Michel LafonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-02691-0
CHAPTER 1
Fall 1940
Time to go. I slip on my jacket, plant a kiss on Mama's cheek — just a quick peck — and zoom down the stairs full speed ahead. I've made it about two flights when I hear a shout of exasperation behind me: "Joseph! Every morning. The door!"
But I forget Papa's reproach right away. I cross the dark, narrow courtyard, fly across the tile floor of the front building, and push open the heavy wooden door. I'm outside at last, a smile on my face. My hair, light as a feather, flies in the wind, and I hop like a bird from one corner to the next. An early morning shower has left the paving stones shiny and slippery. The shopkeepers are raising their heavy metal gates, even if they have nothing to sell, and an old man in filthy blue work clothes is pushing his cart to the top of the hill. Montmartre is my garden. All the way to the left, Rue Lepic snakes its way uphill. I'll arrive at my destination right after the bend in the road. On my way to school, I meet up with my friend Guéchou.
"Hey! I need to talk business with you ... something I thought of to earn a little money!"
He stares at me with wide-open eyes but not much enthusiasm. He doesn't even seem skeptical, no less worried — I've barely aroused his curiosity.
"What kind of business? And what do you need money for, anyway?
"To buy candy, of course. Have you eaten a lot of candy lately? It's been ages since I tasted a berlingotl"
"That's for sure, but in these times. ... And how do you think you're going to go about this?"
We arrive at school. I schedule a meeting at playtime to put the finishing touches on my plan.
My schoolbag has been feeling heavier and heavier. Now, in the fall of 1940, it doesn't contain any more books or notebooks than it did last year. It's my back that's having trouble bearing the load. I'm nine and a half and as fragile as a sparrow. For more than a year now I haven't had enough to eat every day. The past few weeks have been even worse, with the rationing tickets. I'm in the J2 category, kids ages six to twelve. In theory, we have the right to seven ounces of bread a day, a little sugar (or rather saccharine), one or two potatoes, and a half a steak per week. I say in theory because even with your ticket in your hand, it isn't easy to exchange it for food. The shopkeepers keep their provisions for themselves or sell them on the black market. My family doesn't have enough money to buy things that way. And I think that even if we did, we wouldn't. It's a matter of principle. My family respects the rules, whatever they may be. We obey the laws of the country that has welcomed us — I'd even say that we submit to them completely. We want to walk with our heads held high and not be ashamed of anything. We don't fool around — except for me.
"So listen, Guéchou. We're going to earn some money. I'm not asking you to steal, don't worry. We're going to earn it by starting a small business. What do you say?"
He makes a face, thrusting his hands in his pockets. "I say that we don't have much to sell."
"There must be something to sell in your house. Something pretty that people would like but that your parents don't really want to keep, no?"
"I can't think of anything."
"Wait a minute, Guéchou! I've got an idea! You must have some postcards...."
"Postcards? Uh ... yeah, I have some, but there's stuff written on the back."
"Of course there's stuff written on the back, but who cares? What counts is the picture. Do you have some nice ones? Landscapes, mountains, rivers, churches?"
"Uh, yeah, sure, but they're all in the drawer of the kitchen hutch. I don't really think I can have them."
"Don't ask!"
"Don't ask? And what if I get caught?"
"OK, ask. Will you be able to convince your mother to give them to you?"
"It depends. To do what?"
He doesn't see what I'm getting at, this pal of mine. Suddenly I wonder why I chose him of all people to go into business with me. The little voice in my head stops me right away: Don't wonder why, Joseph. He's your best friend, that's all.
"Listen, Guéchou," I explain, "you know, lots of people collect postcards. They remind them of somewhere they went on vacation before the war. Some people tape them to their bedroom walls. They think they're traveling when they fall asleep at night...."
Finally, my friend's face lights up.
"And some people want their buddies to think that they have rich friends who wrote to them!"
"Right, Guéchou. You finally understood. For one reason or another, everyone likes postcards. So tonight you go home, you gather what you have, I do the same, and Thursday we go into business!"
We choose the central island in the Boulevard Clichy, between the Blanche and Anvers subway stations. The Place Clichy is too close to my house, and Sacré-Coeur is even worse. Here, at least, we won't be spotted. Because, of course, we know we're doing something illegal, especially Guéchou. He leans against a tree as if he wants to disappear inside its trunk.
"No, Joe, I can't. You start. I swear, I can't do it."
"Guéchou, you're just chicken."
I take a deep breath and address the passersby. "Excuse me, sir, wouldn't you like a postcard? Look at this one — it's Givors. Givors is beautiful! Madam, a nice postcard? No? Have a nice day, madam. Sir, have you ever been to Givors?"
The black-and-white photo shows a factory next to a river. The employees, in their white smocks, are on a break. I wait a while and realize that this particular postcard is not going to stimulate a lot of interest. Maybe I'll be more successful with the hot springs at Évian.
"Sir, how about a postcard to decorate your living room? It's Évian, a beautiful town, Évian."
The gentleman smiles at me politely as a big hand, which I imagine as huge as it is powerful, lands on my shoulder.
"Hey, kid. What are you doing?"
It's a policeman. A policeman accompanied by another policeman. All together, two policemen. I size up the situation. Two policemen: That makes two men, as many as Guéchou and me. Except that we look like two baby birds that just fell out of their nest ... while they seem more like two adult raptors. Each is wearing a long, dark cape over his uniform. You could hide ten kids my size inside. While the big one with the mustache is grabbing me by the collar, I imagine that he's going to slip me quickly into the thick fabric and that I'm going to disappear forever. Guéchou, who's standing off to the side, doesn't even seem to have the presence of mind to run off as if we don't know each other. On the contrary, he moves closer to me.
I mumble, "Um ... Mr. Policeman, sir ... it's just postcards of Givors. Nice, no? No. How about Evian?"
"Young man, do you have a permit?"
"A what?"
"OK, off to the precinct. Your parents will come get you there."
The look on my father's face when he sees me. ... He's just sorted out my fate with the police officers while Guéchou and I were waiting in an office, biting our nails. He doesn't say a word. I keep my mouth shut, too. I immediately lost my gift of gab on the way to the precinct with Guéchou. From then on, I didn't say a single word.
I follow Papa silently — completely out of character for me — and his silence communicates his shame to me more effectively than words ever could. There's not much to explain and nothing to say to justify my actions. I, Joseph Weismann, have been apprehended by the authorities for committing a crime on a public thoroughfare. And I know full well that in my family, we don't fool around.
I know it, but I don't yet know why.
* * *
The last time I had candy, it was because of a business deal as well. Outside my building, two yards from the Italian flower seller who sets up her stand when the weather is nice, I found a rubber band. And I sold it, or almost. My potential client gave me fifty centimes, but he let me keep the rubber band. I went to buy some roudoudous, rolled-up licorice with a piece of candy in the center. The candy changes color as you suck on it. I would have shared them with my sisters, but the little voice in my head warned me: Joseph, if you bring these things home, your parents are going to ask you how you got them. They'll think you stole money from them, or worse, that you were begging. It will open a huge can of worms I listened to my conscience, for better or worse. But I felt so pathetic eating these candies in secret, hidden away in the park, that they tasted bitter to me.
I live at 54 Rue des Abbesses, Paris, eighteenth arrondissement. It's a simple, working-class neighborhood, where people from all different countries live. I rub shoulders with them every day, in the street, at school, outside my building, or in the park where I play with my friends. For a while now, there's been a sign up at the entrance to the park: "NO JEWS ALLOWED." I go there, anyway. Does anyone even know I'm Jewish?
Around here people don't stay cooped up in their houses, reclining on long couches, protected by heavy velvet curtains. ... Our modest apartments don't lend themselves to that sort of thing. The inhabitants of Montmartre are so different from one another that in the end they form a whole, a multicolored mass of hardworking men and women. Behind them trail a bunch of skinny, happy kids like me. What difference does it make if you're black, yellow, or white? And who cares about your religion, if you have one? I, in any case, never think about it, and neither do Guéchou, Bedeze, Raymond, Charret, or any of my other friends.
Every day I kiss my mother before I leave to meet up with them at school. My sisters, Charlotte and Rachel, have already gone off in the other direction, toward the Rue Houdon. They never run the risk of arriving breathless at the gate of the school and having their ears pinched by the principal. I kiss my mother because she's what I love most in the world. I kiss her just for the pleasure of feeling her cheek next to mine, without another thought, and I head out on my adventures.
Whoever thought up school didn't have me in mind. I don't like to stay sitting for long. The poetry the teacher recites does nothing for me — it has no music. I have fun with words when I'm talking and also pretty much when I'm writing. I have a quick repartee and write with imagination. I'm OK in math. I can already see that it's useful. When Papa cuts woolen fabric, with his measuring tape around his neck and his chalk in his pocket, I understand that he must have made complicated calculations. He's recorded his client's measurements, and he's drawn them onto the material, taking care to waste as little as possible.
"Joseph, take the shmatte and put it in the bag." A shmatte is a scrap of leftover fabric in Yiddish. In wartime, it can be useful.
My father reinforces the collars of our clothes with the shmattes. He puts patches on our elbows and knees and lengthens my shorts, which are still too short. He warns me: "Joseph, you can have whatever job you want, but don't become a tailor. It's too hard. It's always the off-season."
When he says the last two words, he pronounces them "uffzayzun," and I haven't yet made the connection between time and business being good or bad. For years I've been wondering exactly what he's talking about. I can only guess that it doesn't augur anything good. "Zayzun" almost rhymes with "poison."
Papa doesn't have a shop with a fancy entrance and his name written in elegant letters above the door. He's just an apprentice tailor. That seems unfair to me — my father is a magician. He can take a suit so worn out that you can almost see through it and make a brand-new one. He reverses the fabric, transforms the lining, reinforces the seams. A real expert. He works in our apartment, on the fifth floor of our building, in the bigger of our two rooms. In our house you enter directly into what serves as a workshop, living room, kitchen, and bedroom for my sisters and me. No one is allowed to walk barefoot: there are pins on the floor, caught in the cracks between the boards. Once a week, magnet in hand, we get on our knees to pick them up. Every evening, we push aside the long cutting table so we can open our folding beds. Papa puts away the two irons that he always leaves on the fire and gathers up the damp cloths, the tissue paper patterns, the chalk, and the scissors, which are so big that I can't even open them. Coal is burning in the heating stove, and something simmering on the portable gas burner helps to keep our palace warm.
One day, in the Anvers park, I was talking with some guys from the fancy neighborhoods who had come to rub elbows with the common folk in Pigalle. We each drew a floor plan of our apartment in the sandy soil. One of them went on and on.
"This is the entry foyer, the dining room, and the living room just next to it that leads to the smoking room; here's the boudoir, Mama's bathroom, Papa's, a bedroom, another bedroom, and the hallway, which curves and leads to one, two, three other bedrooms...."
I made them all laugh when it was my turn.
"Here's the living room-bedroom-kitchen-workshop, and there's my parents' bedroom, and that's all!"
"Don't you have a bathroom?"
"Nope, no bathroom."
I don't know if it was to console me, but the little rich boy gave me a piece of gingerbread. It was the first time I ever tasted any. Delicious!
"What about the toilet?" the most practical one in the group asked me.
"On the landing."
Sometimes I curse myself for having forgotten to pee before nightfall. The toilets are down half a flight of stairs. We share them with two old maids, who live in an apartment that I imagine is even smaller than ours, and with an old, slightly hunchbacked bachelor. He's always dressed in a gray smock, his head permanently topped with a beret, and he lives with his mother in the apartment on the left. I'm not afraid of many things — maybe even of nothing — except him. It's because of his hunchback and whatever he's hiding under his beret. I imagine a pus-filled deformity, some kind of moving, malefic growth. If I meet him in the stairway, I appeal to the little voice in my head, my adviser and most faithful friend: Be brave, Joseph! You're small; you can slip between his legs if he tries to snatch you.
One day I went down to the toilet just after him. I was already so far down the stairs when he closed the door that I didn't dare turn back. Once inside, I saw hundreds of little brown dots in the toilet, smaller than lentils. I was blown away. Well, well, Joseph. So that's what a hunchback's shit looks like! I realized years later that he had simply emptied the sawdust he used for cat litter....
Papa doesn't have much to do with the neighbors. He greets them politely when he sees them and gives me a little slap on the head if I take too long to do the same. He doesn't want to make waves or — most of all — disturb anyone. Soon he'll have been in France for twenty years. He learned the language and can read and write it. He got married, had three children, and made lots of friends here. His first name is written "Schmoul" but pronounced "Schmeel," and his friends have nicknamed him Mimile, like any real Frenchman. Nevertheless, he still acts like a guest. He feels that he owes a kind of debt that he wants to pay back at all costs. Last year, as soon as war was declared, he enlisted in the army. He was almost forty and had a family — no one forced him to sign up. I didn't understand.
"Why do you want to go fight in the war, Papa?"
"I want to help my country."
"So you're going to be a soldier?"
"Not really. I can't become a French soldier because I'm not really French. The law here states that I'm still Polish because I was born in Lublin."
"Where's Lublin?"
"Now it's in Poland, but before 1918 it was in Russia."
"How can a city change countries? Paris is in France. It can't move."
"Paris won't move, but Germany wants to extend its borders to cover a big piece of Europe, including France. It's to avoid that that I want to fight."
* * *
So the French army — the real one, the one that hoists the tricolor flag — didn't want him. He was put in the second foreign regiment. He spent the beginning of the winter of 1939 to 1940 in the north of France before being sent with his regiment to the Free Zone in the south. He told us little about his experiences, just the following: "They fired at us with machine guns in Angouleme and Poitiers, but there were no casualties."
I told myself that if the Germans didn't learn to aim better, we would come out of the war OK. Then my father ended up in the Dordogne, in Bergerac. They needed a work force to replace the guys who had left for the front. Papa, with his delicate, magical fingers, working on a farm. It turned out that a tailor could be of use in the countryside: For a few weeks he gave new life to the men's old suits and rejuvenated the women's dresses.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from After the Roundup by Joseph Weismann, Richard Kutner. Copyright © 2011 Michel Lafon. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Translator's Foreword
1. Fall 1940
2. The Star
3. July 16, 1942
4. Beaune-la-Rolande
5. Escape
6. Parisian Wanderings
7. Three "Misérables"
8. The Americans
9. The Castle of Méhoncourt
10. Becoming French
11. Return to the Past
Epilogue: Bearing Witness
What People are Saying About This
"As few others manage, Joseph Weismann's memoir captures the tension between the great communal torment and the unique personal repercussions of those who endured the Holocaust. This is a boy's story, except that the boy is in hell, and faces it, and survives it. Weismann's narrative is an achievement to be grateful for."
Extraordinary . . . and timely. Joseph Weismann's compelling account of his escape from an internment camp after the notorious Winter Velodrome roundup of Parisian Jews in July 1942 is both a vivid recreation of childhood (he was 11 years old when he spent a tenacious six hours crawling through a barbed wire fence to make his getaway) and a powerful insight into what it is like to be on the receiving end of the demonization of a race or religion.
Extraordinary . . . and timely. Joseph Weismann's compelling account of his escape from an internment camp after the notorious Winter Velodrome roundup of Parisian Jews in July 1942 is both a vivid recreation of childhood (he was 11 years old when he spent a tenacious six hours crawling through a barbed wire fence to make his getaway) and a powerful insight into what it is like to be on the receiving end of the demonization of a race or religion.
As few others manage, Joseph Weismann's memoir captures the tension between the great communal torment and the unique personal repercussions of those who endured the Holocaust. This is a boy's story, except that the boy is in hell, and faces it, and survives it. Weismann's narrative is an achievement to be grateful for.
As few others manage, Joseph Weismann's memoir captures the tension between the great communal torment and the unique personal repercussions of those who endured the Holocaust. This is a boy's story, except that the boy is in hell, and faces it, and survives it. Weismann's narrative is an achievement to be grateful for.
