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[impor…] tantly, we have been able to add to the
historical record of the Holocaust in France.
I conceived of French
Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial (Le Mémorial des Enfants Juifs
Déportés de France) as an instrument of memory. The Shoah,
this systematic hunting down of Jews, from the newborn to the aged, took place
in France – my country – in each department and in each city and
village where there were Jews. The trip that ended in Auschwitz began on the
streets where people live today. To know the neighborhoods, the specific
streets and houses where these children lived, familiar places for many French
people, would create a powerful grip on memory. This is why I was determined to
find the children's addresses at the moment of their arrests. A review of
depart mental and prefectural records in regions throughout France, and some
information released only after legal or court action, provided crucial data on
where many of these children lived.
I believe that when individuals,
whether they are teachers, students, writers, journalists, or simply good
people, learn what happened in their own neighborhoods or cities, the knowledge
will grip their consciences. Perhaps a class will choose a way to remember a
deported child who attended their school: a commemorative plaque might be put
up, or the life of a Jewish child might be recreated by teachers to help
students comprehend the horror created by the anti-Semitism of the Third Reich
and its Vichy accomplices. Unquestionably, what gives this work its intensity
are the children's photographs and what they evoke; but without their last
addresses, this book would have much less force.
Family
Names
Many of the last names of the Jews
deported from France had difficult and varied spellings. It has been
calculated, for example, that the name usually spelled "Schwartz" can be
spelled 156 different ways. It would have been wrong to assign standardized
spelling arbitrarily, even using recognized models. Many immigrants to France
between the two world wars saw their names misspelled at the moment they were
first recorded on French identity documents. Yet the misspelled name became
their family name and their children's as well.
A major effort has been
made to restore the spelling closest to the one the family used at the time of
deportation. In general, when a name with questionable spelling on a
deportation list was found spelled differently on the lists from the 1940
census of Jews, we used the census spelling. The deportation lists were made up
under pressure, and greater care was taken to assure the accuracy of the
census. However, the census records themselves were limited. First, we had
access to the census for the German-occupied part of France, but not for the
Seine Department, which covers Paris. And second, the census records are
difficult to use because the departmental records are not fully alphabetical;
rather, they are alphabetized only for each commune of one or several villages.
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First
Names
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Many children from families of Polish,
Russian, and other Eastern European origin had two first names: a French name
used in school, and a Yiddish name used on identity papers and in the family.
Because of space constraints we could not include both. As a general rule,
though there
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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