Leur pays sur la carte
J'ai bien connu Harry and Gabriela. Once you arrive, it's not over to quit Paris or you'll see the premiere of the family in another née. You can sleep in the same evening, in a modest apartment at the door of Bagnolet, in the popular and délaissé district. It is available to the gens importants. Cela ne se voyait pas. Il fallait les croire sur parole, et je les croyais. Le papier peint défraîchi en disait long sur leur déclassement. Mais moi, enfant, je ne le percevais pas vraiment. I will compare the tapis ouvragés, the napperons brodés and the assiettes peintes qui décoraient ces tristes murs du XXe arrondissement. La voilà, pour moi, la Roumanie: a multitude of d'assiettes accrochées au mur.
Je savais qu'ils étaient juifs, mes grands-parents. I also save that there is also a certain importance, which is not a portaient même plus the name Juif. On m'a souvent posé the question de leur sort pendant la war. Je m'en tenais à ce qu'ils racontaient volontiers. Ils ne semblaient pas avoir vécu la Guerre elle-même. Disons plutôt qu'ils available vécu during The war and what the battle is about. The horreous franchise is in an ailleur situation, in this forced exile in 1961, when the terrorizer from Bucarest à Paris traveled, before my mother was still available. Ça, ça ne s'éloignait pas. À chaque fois qu'elle essayait de trouver des mots, ma mère s'effondrait. Moi, je reculais. The story also tells you how to remember the time and save the souvenirs from Harry and Gabriela! This is a tire that is a foul of the anecdotes. An épopée du XXe siècle, a family prize in the revivals of the history. Et pas n'importe laquelle: a family plain d'éclat, jusqu'à la disgrâce, féroce, voulue par le Parti communiste.
Le fait d'être juif n'avait pas l'air d'avoir pesé sur leur destin. La rupture, la tragedy de leur vie tenait à autre chose, à leur départ. Mes grands-parents faisaient‑ils exception ? Les juifs de Bucarest avaient-ils souffert ? Are these brands available during the war? Il me semblait que non. The Roumanie avait formé a sorte de zone blanche au heart du conflict. Je ne saurais expliquer pourquoi, mais c'est ainsi que je me la représentais. Après tout, rien de notable ne semblait s'y être déroulé. Pas de fronts or de batailles mentionednés dans mes Manuels scolaires, pas de camps d'extermination tristement célèbres, pas d'étoile jaune, pas de train pour la Pologne. A territory assezz tranquille, étrangement oublié par les rouleaux compresseurs qui broyèrent le continent, between 1939 and 1945. Bref, un pays où les Juifs se fichaient tranquillement d'être Juifs.
It's great with a trou au milieu de l'Europe. Une nation informe que je savais à peine situer, une tache aux contours mouvants dans le grand bazar des républiques de l'Est: le theater d'un génocide dont mes grands-parents n'ont jamais parlé. Et j'ai grandi avec une mère si meurtrie par l'arrachement à la Roumanie que les sanglots empêchaient tout récit. These pleurs consist of a line of demarcation between the present and the vantage point. A herse, à l'instar de celle qui divisa l'Europe en deux blocs ennemis, the Est dont elle fut et l'Ouest dont je suis. Everything is brouillé in this immigrant heritage, profoundly désorienté in the space and in the temps. Ainsi ai-je vécu avec ces deux inconnus que sont l'ailleurs et le passé. For a long time, it was incapable of retenir in a chronology, at the end of the époques and tracer of a frontier. Les cartes and les dates, mon grand brouillon interior.
Ce qui s'est passé est pourtant très clair et parfaitement localisé. Encore fallait‑il pouvoir se returnner. Encore fallait‑il pouvoir y retourner.
En Roumanie, ceux qui ne voulaient pas être juifs furent forces de l'être et, si ce qu'ils subirent demeure si méconnu, c'est qu'on les a poussés à oublier avec quelle haine ils ont été pourchassés. This grand effacement a même constitutes the base of the new world also with its grandparents ont tout donné: the régime communiste.
Ça ne m'a jamais interessée d'être juive. Ça n'a jamais interessé ma grand-mère, non plus. Elle était la femme la plus orgueilleuse que j'ai connue – pas du genre à se laisser assigner une identité. Then, your name and name will be with you from my grand father on the list. A list of Jews. A list that reveals the characteristics of massive human beings in the heart of Europe, since the end of the war. Leur nom sur la list m'oblige à remettre leur pays sur la carte. To refair the voyage to the environment, to all of the other parts of the Mur chercher, this is a subi sans admis, so that, in the family and in the world, it is a caché.
Sonia Devillers, The exported (Flammarion, 2022).
Your country on a map
I knew Harry and Gabriela well. After their arrival, they never left Paris, where I was born, the first in the family. I spent Saturday nights with them in a modest apartment near the Porte de Bagnolet, a popular yet neglected neighborhood. They had been important people. You wouldn't have guessed it. You had to take their word for it, and I did. The faded wallpaper spoke volumes about their decline. But as a child, I didn't really notice. I was more interested in counting the ornate carpets, embroidered doilies, and painted plates that adorned those drab walls in the 20th arrondissement. That was Romania for me: a multitude of plates hanging on the wall.
I knew they were Jewish, my grandparents. I also knew it didn't matter to them and that they didn't even have Jewish names anymore. I was often asked about their fate during the war. I stuck to what they readily told me. They seemed the not having experienced war firsthand. Let's say they had. during They had lived through the war, and it seemed far away. The real horror lay elsewhere, namely in the forced exile of 1961, the horrific journey from Bucharest to Paris that my mother had experienced as a fourteen-year-old. That couldn't be pushed aside. Every time she tried to find the words, my mother broke down. I recoiled. It was so much nicer to go back in time and process the faded memories of Harry and Gabriela! I made many wonderful anecdotes out of it. An epic of the 20th century, a family caught in the turning points of history. And not just any family: a family full of splendor, right up to the cruel disgrace orchestrated by the Communist Party.
The fact that they were Jewish didn't seem to weigh heavily on their fate. The rupture, the tragedy of their lives, lay in something else: their departure. Were my grandparents an exception? Had the Jews in Bucharest suffered? Were they scarred by the war? It seemed to me as if they hadn't. Romania had formed a kind of white zone amidst the conflict. I can't explain why, but that's how I imagined it. After all, nothing noteworthy seemed to have happened there. No fronts or battles mentioned in my schoolbooks, no infamous extermination camps, no yellow star, no train to Poland. A rather quiet territory, strangely forgotten by the steamrollers that crushed the continent between 1939 and 1945. In short, a country where the Jews didn't care that they were Jewish.
I grew up with a hole in the middle of Europe. A formless nation I could barely place, a patch with fluid contours in the grand bazaar of Eastern republics: the scene of a genocide my grandparents had never spoken of. And I grew up with a mother so scarred by the separation from Romania that her sobs made any story impossible. Her weeping even formed a dividing line between the present and the past. A portcullis, like the one that split Europe into two hostile blocs, the East, from which she came, and the West, from which I come. Everything was blurred in this immigrant legacy, profoundly disoriented in space and time. So I lived with these two unknowns, the elsewhere and the past. For a long time, I was unable to retain any chronology, to categorize eras, or to draw any boundaries. Maps and dates, my great inner charade.
What had happened, however, was very clear and perfectly located. Nevertheless, one had to be able to turn around. One had to be able to go back.
In Romania, those who didn't want to be Jewish were forced to be, and what they suffered is so little known because they were made to forget the hatred with which they were persecuted. This great suppression even formed the basis for the new world to which my grandparents gave everything: the communist regime.
I was never interested in being Jewish. Neither was my grandmother. She was the proudest woman I've ever known—not the type to let anyone define her identity. Except that her name and my grandfather's were on a list. A list of Jews. A list that exposes the massive human trafficking in the heart of Europe, fifteen years after the war. Her name on the list forces me to put her country back on the map. To repeat the journey in reverse, to go to the other side of the wall and search for what was suffered but never acknowledged, what was hidden from my family and the entire world. 1
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- “My mother’s family left communist Romania in 1961. You could call them ‘immigrants’ or ‘refugees.’ But that would ignore the truth about their departure from a country from which supposedly no one could escape. My mother, my aunt, my grandparents, and my great-grandmother were ‘exported.’ Like commodities, they were valued, monetized, and sold abroad.”
How could it be that people were treated this way in the heart of Europe? The archives of the Romanian secret service reveal the unspeakable: the situation of those whom the communist regime did not name and who were no longer mentioned in my family – the Jews.
I, born in France, wanted to return to the other side of the Iron Curtain. I wanted to understand who we were, to reconstruct the memories of a respected dynasty, the cruel downfall of influential party members, the role of an obscure smuggler, and the burnings of a forced exile. To fill the gaps left by my grandparents and an entire country in the face of its past.” (Translation of the publisher's announcement)>>>
