Vénissieux Camp
August 26, 1942
No one expected the camp doctor to quit that afternoon. Up to then he had tended to the Indo-Chinese workers, but when he saw the avalanche of sick Jews that arrived, he hung up his coat and walked away. Élisabeth Hirsch took the reins. There were cases of dehydration, panic attacks, suicide attempts, low blood pressure, high blood pressure, badly bruised children, and a woman going into labor early. Élisabeth had served in difficult conditions at the camp at Gurs, but at least there they had been prepared for the massive arrival of refugees. At Vénissieux, the authorities of Lyon had improvised a detention center in a space unfit for that many people. All the authorities wanted was to get rid of the region’s foreign Jews as quickly as possible.
Élisabeth approached an older man who had nodded off. “What is your name, sir?” she asked, gently shaking his shoulder.
Jacob looked up and wiped the drool from his mouth. His throat was dry, his head ached, his whole body hurt, and he was shivering with chills.
“Jacob, but I’m bad off. Don’t waste your time with me; I don’t have much left. All these others need you more than I do. I’m just an old man whose time has come. The first fifty years of my life were happy. Then things got twisted up, and the last five years have been constant grief. María’s gone. I’m just waiting to die so I can rest. Most people don’t understand this, especially not young folks, but when you get to a certain age, you see how your whole world starts slipping away little by little. First it’s your parents. They go, along with the aunts and uncles you spent your childhood with, and then your friends, and then your soulmate. There’s nothing left of the world I grew up in, of my little village outside of Vienna, of that Jewish community that was like one big family.”
“Oh, sir, but there’s still hope,” Élisabeth answered.
“Not for someone like me, but maybe for those children.” Jacob nodded to the youngest patients. “Though I don’t envy them. The world I grew up in was kinder than this one. We fought in the Great War and faced crises and plagues, but human beings still had souls. I’ve seen so much, madame. I wish I could drive it all out of my mind and heart. These people don’t know the hell they’re about to be taken to. The Nazis are devils with no souls.”
Élisabeth dabbed at the sweat on the man’s fevered brow.
“Let me give you something to bring your fever down.”
“Don’t waste your meager supplies on this old man. All I want is to go to sleep and never wake up. Every night I lie down hoping this will be the night. And I wake up desperate. Life refuses to leave me. But there’s nothing left for me here.”
Élisabeth thought of her own grandfather. At twenty-one, she had seen more in her time than most and was still not jaded by tragedy. She had been in France for twelve years but had grown up in Romania. Her brother taught her the basics of medicine. Armed with those skills, she worked in the Gurs internment camp starting in 1940. She had poured herself into the work of freeing hundreds of children and getting them to safety and was in Paris helping Jewish children during the raids in July. Now she was seeing what she could do to help in Lyon. But the years of difficult work were beginning to take their toll. Sometimes Élisabeth wondered how much more she could take.
Jacob looked at her with eyes that were tired of living. Élisabeth handed him water and a pill to help him sleep and eased him up to swallow it.
“Thank you,” the old man said, reclining again and closing his eyes.
Walking away, Élisabeth could not keep herself from crying.
“Are you all right?” her colleague Madeleine Dreyfus asked. She was a psychologist.
“No, no, I’m not.” Élisabeth could not say why the story of that man in particular touched her more than the children lying on cots all around him or the terror in the face of the mother who was about to give birth.
“Take a break,” Madeleine said. “Most everyone in here will be asleep soon; they’re worn out.”
“You do understand that a lot of these people won’t wake up tomorrow?” Élisabeth asked.
Madeleine gave a sad sigh. “That might be for the best.”
Élisabeth headed for the room at the back of the infirmary, a small office with a bed. She allowed herself to lie down, and sleep came quickly.
* * *
Élisabeth started awake a few hours later. She could not remember where she was and did not know what time it was. Everything was quiet. She studied the light coming through the opaque window. In her groggy haze, she did not notice the man sitting in the room’s only chair and working under a dim lamp on the desk.
He cleared his throat, and Élisabeth jumped again.
“I’m sorry to have frightened you. I’m Dr. Weill, Joseph Weill.”
“Oh, Dr. Weill, we met one time at Gurs.”
“Indeed we did. You’re Élisabeth, correct?”
She nodded.
“Gilbert Lesage asked me to come by. Apparently the camp medic resigned? I can’t say that I blame him. It’s complete chaos around here. I left my family at home and came as quickly as I could. Madeleine has briefed me on most of the cases here at the infirmary.”
Élisabeth sat up and held out her hand to shake the doctor’s. “We’ve got a very difficult couple of days ahead of us.”
“My father, who was a rabbi in Strasbourg, once told me that the great rabbi Simcha Bunim always carried two pieces of paper with him, one in each pocket. On one was written, ‘The world was created for me.’ And on the other, ‘I am but dirt and ashes.’ When he felt weak and powerless, he would take the first piece of paper out and read it. When he was tempted to forget that he was a mere mortal, he read the second.”
Élisabeth smiled. She understood perfectly what the doctor was trying to say: they were there to fulfill their duty and do all that they could. The rest was not up to them.