I will not forget Christmas 1944. Two days’ break from our work at the time as weavers. The first time in a year of deportations … Two days without working, far from that damned factory, where from morning to night I threaded bobbins!
I had no gift for that job, and I did nothing to apply myself to it. I did display plenty of false enthusiasm, dazzling with innocence; for once my guards were taken in by it. I did not get hit one time in three months, which was quite a record.
A great surprise awaited us on the evening of Christmas Day. The factory presented us with a banquet: a little block of margarine, two slices of dried sausage, and, to make our joy complete, two tablespoons of granulated sugar. What a lot of stars in a wooden spoon.
We savored this feast slowly to make it last longer. It was good. It was a party for our palates, and a warm sense of well-being took hold in us. It took so little to encourage our taste for living, our survival instinct.
We became poetic and talked about our favorite menus. We recited poems. The momentary sweetness of the present put us back in touch with our past. “Do you remember that friend? That place? The man who sold roasted sunflower seeds at the corner of the road where the school is? That book I loved?” For a few minutes we became human beings again, with a story that went beyond these moments that we had snatched from both the past and our uncertain future.
My friend saw me as someone; we had memories in common and thoughts to share. Not everything was dead in us. There was a past, even if rather brief. These were privileged moments, so fragile and so measured. We grabbed them and locked them away in our hearts like an extraordinary gift.