Barcelona
May 9, 1944
Élisabeth Hirsch left her post as director of the OSE once the children from Vénissieux made it to safety. The idea had been for Madeleine Dreyfus to take over, but shortly thereafter the psychologist had had to flee to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Élisabeth had been helping Jewish children in exile since the 1930s, but she knew that continuing to operate in France would very likely lead to her capture and death.
Élisabeth reached Catalonia and crossed into Spain without difficulties. On the other side of the border, members of the Jewish Resistance met her. Thanks to the aid of a group of Spanish diplomats, they were helping shuttle Jews from various countries east of Spain to Palestine and the United States.
Élisabeth’s first few days in Barcelona were marvelous. For the first time in many years she felt safe, without having to look behind her every five minutes. She rented a small apartment on the famous street Las Ramblas. She spent part of her time helping the Jewish Resistance network and the other part visiting the sites of the city and enjoying the Spanish spring.
It was hard for her to believe that, despite the dictatorship and the lack of basic material necessities, the Spaniards continued enjoying life. People spent so much time out in the streets, walking, having a drink on the countless and ubiquitous terraces, and chatting exuberantly.
On one of her excursions around town, she saw an old and unpleasant acquaintance. It was one of the Nazis she had come across during her time in Paris. That could only mean one thing: Germany was losing the war.
Élisabeth tended to avoid the news. She was tired of battles. Reports of the fighting appeared in a scant few paragraphs of the heavily censored Francoist newspapers, but she knew that even those terse lines covered up hundreds of thousands of human dramas.
The network for smuggling European Jews out tended to begin in Barcelona or Valencia, then stretch to Madrid on its way to Lisbon or by boat to the Americas from Cádiz and other parts of Europe.
Élisabeth had saved hundreds of children in and from different concentration and detention camps in France. She had also led many expeditions of supposed Boy Scouts to get them into Switzerland. Yet the children of Vénissieux held a special place in her heart, and it was to them that her memories returned over and over again. Never before had she been part of such a tightly knit team, and never before had she been part of an operation that rescued over one hundred children in just one night—one dramatic night followed by several heart-stopping days.
As the months passed and life went on, she wondered what had become of the children. Were they happy? Had misfortune found them after all? Would their pasts forever hold them back, or would they move on with new and different identities? No child was prepared to leave their parents under such dramatic circumstances. Yet Élisabeth had learned that human beings have more resilience than what seems possible at first glance.
After a year in Spain, Élisabeth missed France, the country that had welcomed her. Born in Romania, she had arrived in France as a child. Her brilliant brother Sigismond had helped found the Éclaireurs Israèlites de France, the Jewish scouting movement. But both Sigismond and his beloved wife had been sent to Auschwitz. Élisabeth presumed they had met the fate of nearly everyone else sent there and that she would never see them again.
She knew that their young son and her nephew, Jean-Raphaël, was still alive and even at his age was active in the Resistance. The damned war had taken almost everything sweet from Élisabeth’s life, but it had also allowed her to see just how far she was willing to go to bring about change.
Élisabeth went out onto her terrace. In the distance, almost at the horizon, a speck of ocean cheered her. The immense blue always made her feel so small and unimportant, aware that Earth was just a tiny planet amid a vast universe—so she could not fathom the meaning of human life and, more poignantly, the evil that humans seemed set on doing to one another.
Élisabeth reread the letter lying on her desk. It was from Maribel Semprún, now safely in Switzerland after escaping first the war in her own country of Spain and then the war in France.
Élisabeth sat in the chair she had dragged out to the terrace and listened to the murmur of foot traffic and the horns of passing cars. At that moment she finally identified what it was that she loved so much about Spain: discovering that blessed normalcy could one day be part of her life and her country’s life again. Then she could once again be Élisabeth Hirsch, just an average woman hoping to be happy in life.