Vénissieux Camp
August 28, 1942
As more children arrived at the mess hall, the heat and the crowdedness reached intolerable levels. Maribel Semprún and the social workers tried to keep the children calm while another group of workers tried to convince the remaining parents to sign over their children. Then Georges Garel entered with two girls clinging to an older boy. They were sisters who refused to be separated from their brother. The girls were both sixteen, but being short and slender, it was easy to pass them off as younger.
“Don’t let them take our brother!” the girls begged while Georges tried to untangle the mass of arms and hair.
Maribel came up to offer a gentle presence. “Girls, it’s a miracle that you two are able to come with us. But your brother is too old and looks it, and we can’t claim that he’s younger. The gendarmes could get mad and question us and then put the rest of the children here in jeopardy as well. Does that make sense?”
The girls nodded but still begged through their tears. “He’s all that’s left of our family. We’ve lost everyone else. Please, save our brother. He’s only seventeen.”
At that the young man spoke up. “It’s all right. I’ll always be in your memories. Mom and Dad would want any of us who could to be saved, and right now that’s you two. You two are the best sisters any boy could have. Help each other. Don’t forget, we’re always Jews, no matter what they do to us.”
He backed away, maintaining their gaze until he shut the door. The girls tried to run after him, but Maribel embraced them and wept with them.
“I’m here for you. Who knows, your brother might come back some day. Don’t lose hope.”
Maribel’s words still circled the heads of everyone listening when two boys brought in Eva Fixler’s daughters. The Hungarian consul had not been able to get the family out of Vénissieux, and their separation would be permanent.
* * *
Amid the chaos, a policeman entered the barracks and found Glasberg.
“Keep the mothers from screaming, please. If they keep this up, we’ll put them all on the buses right now.”
The priest looked at the man in surprise. “Wouldn’t you scream if your children were taken from you?”
The gendarme frowned. He had not put himself in those people’s shoes until right then. For him, this was just a job; these were not human beings going through the worst moment of their lives. Glasberg waited. The policeman imagined his own two young ones. He eventually nodded.
“I would scream too. But please, try to keep them calm. If the camp director hears of what’s going on, all the work you people have put in will have been in vain.”
“Thank you,” the priest answered.
The blind eye turned by a handful of gendarmes was a crucial ally for the children’s escape that night.
* * *
Midnight was coming. The workers knew that they could do nothing more after that. Lili tried to obtain more signatures, but the last groups of mothers was fiercely hesitant to turn their children over to strangers without having absolute certainty that the children would be better off with them than with their own parents.
Lili found Maribel and started crying.
“What is it in particular, Lili? I mean, besides the whole situation?” Maribel asked.
“I just saw a mother give her son a necklace and tell him to wear it always so he would always remember her. Oh God, this is terrible. I haven’t been trained for something like this.”
Maribel hugged her friend. It was a night of very intense emotions, and it was far from over. They had to keep going. There were more children to save.
Lili went out to the barracks again with Maribel. The storm was still raging, and the air stank of wet dirt. They were soaked within seconds, but the women paid no heed to the pounding drops. There were signatures to get, and the clock was ticking. Just as they entered a barrack, the camp lost electricity. The thick cover of darkness was broken only by flashes of lightning. The roaring thunder made the glass windows rattle.
Lili and Maribel went farther inside the pitch-black barrack. The phantasmal faces of the mothers studied them from the dim light of a candle someone lit. Most women were clinging to their children, fearful that the social workers would take them by force.
“We’re almost out of time, so we’re begging you all to listen to us. What I’m going to tell you is very difficult. If you take your children with you, you’re taking them to certain death. If you sign the release papers, you’ll save their lives.”
Lili’s desperate plea had the desired effect. Several women came up to them.
One mother held her son’s hand out to Lili and said, “Please, save him. May he at least survive. I’ve heard what happens in those camps in Germany and Poland.”
The child looked at his mother with a serious, aged expression, but he did not cry. Lili handed the woman the release form, and she filled it out quickly and signed.
Another mother refused to let her son go. Georges Garel went up to her, knelt, and gently urged, “Please, give him a chance to live.”
The woman opened her arms and allowed her son to walk away. But she wept and writhed in uncontrollable grief as he left the barrack with a worker.
Anna, an older girl, put her hand in front of her younger brother’s eyes so he would not see the suffering. She herself filled out the paperwork, since her mother was too indecisive, and pointed for exactly where her mother should sign. Maribel felt sick watching the daughter’s caring efficiency.
The mother looked to Father Glasberg and said in Yiddish, “They’re what I love most in this world.”
“We’ll take care of them,” he replied, lifting the lightweight suitcases of the children.
Jules and Anna waved goodbye to their mother, who fought back her tears. Anna was seventeen, but she looked much younger. It was a bitter day for Jules especially. It was his birthday.
Lili approached another mother who had decided to sign. Her daughter, Mela, was closing her small traveling case. Before her mother hugged her for the last time, she knelt and put her own earrings on Mela’s ears.
“Don’t forget me. I’ll always be with you, like these earrings.”
The child had a confused look on her face but dutifully nodded.
When the last of the children who had been entrusted to Glasberg’s workers left the barrack, the cries of desperation and pain from the mothers soared to heaven. The sound grew to a roar louder than the thunder. Several women fainted as they watched their children walk away into the night—their little ones, the ones for whom they had given everything. Outside, the storm continued. The dark August night was the stark opposite of the bright morning that the next day would bring. For the moment, the moon hid behind the skies, weeping for all the broken families and abandoned children.