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| Participants of Marche de la Memoire, September 2014 |
Reading about the Holocaust is like staring at the sun – you
can only look at a tiny piece or you will damage yourself.
The numbers are too big. The actions are too terrible. The
overview is terrifying. I try not to
look too much.
This September I couldn’t avoid seeing a little. Along with two other members of my synagogue,
I walked the annual Marche de la Memoire from St Martin de Vesubie in France, up
a steep and rocky mountain path in the Alps, and down the other side towards Valdieri in
Italy.
It is a challenging hike, but not too tough to notice the carpet
of pink flowers on the rocky ascent.
I have no idea what they are called – they were just small, pretty,
Alpine flowers and I imagine they bloom there every year at the same time in the late summer.
At the top of the mountain, we gathered with hundreds of
French and Italian people, remembering atrocities done there once, and atrocities
still done around the world.
On the stones behind us, there were photos of some of the Jewish
children of the area who had been captured, and killed at Auschwitz.
Apparently in previous years, someone had said Kaddish, but not this year. This year, an Italian girl read a poem she had
written and another played Hatikvah on her violin. A historian, eyewitnesses and a survivor
spoke. They read out the names of some of the murdered children.
They played Hatikvah again.
A few people hummed along. I felt
like I was the only one singing.
A few of us put a stone onto a pile of stones on the peak. It is our way to remember by leaving a stone on the gravestone.
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| Behind the speakers, photos of some of the murdered children were wedged into the rocks. |
Remembering the Jews
of St Martin de Vesubie
In September 1943, nearly 4 million European Jews had
already been murdered. Some were working
as slaves. The rest of the Jews of Europe were hiding or running. Nowhere was
safe for very long.
One tiny area became a haven for a few months. South East France, under Italian military
control, refused to surrender Jews to the German SS or to the French Vichy
administration.
1,200
Jewish refugees made it to the safe Italian zone and were moved to St
Martin de Vesubie. With support from Jewish charities like the Joint,
they spent that summer living as free
Jews. They established
schools and synagogues. They sat in cafes and organised dances.
To get there, all of them had made hundreds of critical decisions
-who to trust, when to go, when to hide, who to pay. On the 8th of September 1943, there
was another critical decision to be made.
Italy had surrendered to the Allies. The Italian occupying
forces in France, who had protected the Jews for ten months, began to retreat
home over the mountains.
1000 of the Jews from St Martin de Vesubie decided to go
with them. For three days they hiked over the Alps hoping to meet Allied troops
on the other side. It was a hard climb,
carrying small children and bundles of belongings. Some dumped their
belongings as they went. Some turned back.
But the Allies weren’t yet there to save them and they were rounded up by the Germans.
One third of the Jews that made the trek were arrested, deported to Auschwitz and killed. Two thirds went into hiding in Italy.
All of the Jews that stayed behind in St Martin de Vesubie were deported to Auschwitz
and killed.
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| Cairn at the top of the Col |
Remembering a journey
Serge Klarsfeld's
French children of the Holocaust outlines
what is known about the children taken on the 75 massive train convoys that went
from France to the death camps.
It lists
the names and ages of the children, as well as where they were taken from.
(If you want to break your heart, look at the photos of the some
of the children)
Here is the description for convoy 64 which left Drancy on December 7, 1943:
Convoy 64 deported 156 children - 79
boys and 77 girls. As with those deported on convoy 62, most had been arrested
in the countryside. Almost half were brought from a gathering point in the Côte
d'Azur: they had fled St.-Martin-de-Vésubie, on the French side of the border
with Italy, into Italy, only to be caught by Germans newly occupying the
Italian towns.
The entire list of the children on convoy 64 is given.
I can see two
names from the long list.
Joseph and Suzanne Katz aged eight and five. Their last
address is given as St Martin de Vesubie.
There are no photos of them.
In my imagination, they are walking up the mountain together. They can see the pink flowers carpeting their rocky ascent. They are not tired or hungry. They are full of hope.
Remembering in hope
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| Hatikvah, or Hope, is the national anthem of Israel |
As long as Jewish spirit
Yearns deep in the heart,
With the eye turning east,
Looking towards Zion
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem
Remembering one child
.JPG) |
| Germaine Steinlauf has no headstone on this earth, but for one hour a year, she has a mountain. |
Germaine was born in Nice, in the South of France. When she was 12, she was deported to
Auschwitz by train which left Drancy on February 10, 1944. There were 1,500 people on that convoy, of whom
295 were children.
She was one of the 16 Jewish girls taken from her school in
Nice.
She was one of the 11,400 Jewish children who were deported from
France to death camps in Europe by train.
The train cars were tightly packed. There was no food, water
or toilets.
On arrival at Auschwitz, she was selected for death and gassed
immediately. Her body was burned.
Her train, convoy 68, was one of 75 train convoys from
France to the death camps.
Auschwitz was one of the death camps.
The death camps were one of the methods used to kill Jewish
people.
France was one of the thirteen countries where Jewish people
lost their right to live.
Germaine was one of the one million Jewish children murdered.
She was one of the six million Jewish people who were
murdered.
Most of the bodies of the six million were burned or thrown into mass graves.
Most have no headstones on earth. Most left no photographs of their lives. Entire families were murdered with no one left to remember them.
It is too much to fathom.
Remembering where we are
There are many ways to remember. And none of us can remember the whole story.
It is too big and too terrible.
All we can do is look at a tiny bit and pass it on. Like placing a
small stone on a cairn on a stony mountain, to remind people that come
along later that there were people that were once here , and that their memory is still part of our story.
Their lives counted and their anguish was seen.
They are not forgotten, and we are not lost.
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| The incredible flowers on the path up to Col de Cerise |
