Lyon
March 6, 1999
Valérie had an appointment with Jean Lévy, who had gone into hiding as a child during the Holocaust and managed to survive. It was not her first encounter with a survivor, but Jean was the president of a coalition of Jewish organizations in the Rhône region of France. He had spent years researching to keep the memory of his people from falling into oblivion. Valérie had spent the past few years of her life seeking out the hidden Vénissieux children, those nameless faces that the war had separated from their families.
“Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me, Mr. Lévy.”
“It’s my pleasure and duty. We Jews cannot forget. I’ve met so many people who prefer to remain ignorant, but there’s nothing worse than that. Now that anti-Semitism is on the rise again and the extreme Right is acting freely in public, we have to teach our youth what happened. There’s no end to my work. It’s overwhelming because, no matter how much we do, it’s hardly a drop in the ocean.”
“But drop by drop we’ll fill up that ocean,” Valérie said.
The man smiled. He was beyond the age for idealism and had never been particularly gullible. Yet age had helped him see the broader context of things and appreciate the contents of the human heart.
“For many years I didn’t speak openly about what I’d been through. The Nazis robbed us of even the normalization of who and what we were as survivors. Of course I’m much more than just a Jew: I’m a Frenchman; I’m from Lyon; I’m a father, husband, professional, and all of that. But the essence of my core will always be Jewish.”
Valérie felt a stab of pain in her heart. She had no idea what it was like to have her identity stolen and to feel like an eternal stranger in her own land.
“But you did always know that you were a Jew?”
“Yes, of course, but with my community destroyed, what did it mean to be Jewish? Our people have survived all these centuries because we’ve established strong communities wherever fate or providence have taken us. The Nazis destroyed the daily rhythms of going to synagogue; they stopped us from gathering with our Jewish brothers and sisters, from eating together, and from learning from our elders. More than half of France’s Jews were murdered. Many others left for Israel, and the population now is just a fraction of what it used to be. You know rue Juiverie in Old Lyon? That street in the original city shows that Jews were in Lyon as early as the Roman period. Louis the Pious bestowed his goodwill on my people and allowed them to practice their faith in peace, but persecution ramped up in the thirteenth century. My people managed to get back into the region a few decades later, until 1394. That’s when they were expelled almost indefinitely.
“For hundreds of years there were no Jews in this city, at least not officially. Our freedom was reinstated thanks to the French Revolution, and we could come out of the shadows. Napoleon defended us for the most part, and we lived in relative peace until the Nazis came. Jews were held in high esteem during the nineteenth century: most of my people were in business, and the government paid the salary of the community’s rabbi. The Grande Synagogue de Lyon was built along Quai Tilsitt during the Second Empire. After the Great War, many Jews from Morocco arrived looking for a better future for their families.”
Valérie nodded, familiar with the history but grateful for the personal touches Jean added.
“It’s a long, sad, and beautiful history. During World War II, Lyon was the headquarters of the Jewish Resistance in France. But you know what happened with the raids of Klaus Barbie, that German butcher. Until liberation in September 1944, it was the darkest period of history for all the Jews in the region and throughout France.”
Valérie was recording their conversation. She wanted to know all she could about life for Jews in their country.
“Our community has grown a lot in the past few years. The Jewish population in Lyon is one of the biggest in France. At the same time, Jews have left for Israel or the United States, especially after the bombing at the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994. Then right here in Lyon in ’95 there was the car bomb outside the Jewish school . . .” Jean shook his head.
Valérie had followed the news about those attacks against the Jewish community. It seemed impossible that things like that were still happening on the cusp of the twenty-first century.
“There’s no better time for people to start remembering what happened in the past,” she said.
“It’s always the right time to remember the past. Thank you for trying to find those children. I at least was able to keep my identity, but they lost theirs forever.”