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Amanda Seeley
March 31, 2014
Professor Ilona Klein
Shoah Paper
Les Enfants Juifs: Shoah Experiences of Jewish Children in France
Your Paris, I thought, was American.
I wanted to humour you.
When you stepped, in a shatter of exclamations,
Out of the Hotel des Deux Continents
Through frame after frame,
Street after street, of Impressionist paintings,
Under the chestnut shades of Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein.
I kept my Paris from you. My Paris
Was only just not German. The capital
Of the Occupation and old nightmare.
I read each bullet scar in the Quai stonework
With an eerie familiar feeling . . .
I heard the contrabasso counterpoint
In my dog-nosed pondering analysis
Of caf chairs where the SS mannequins
Had performed their tableaux vivants
So recently the coffee was still bitter
As acorns, and the waiters eyes
Clogged with dregs of betrayal, reprisal, hatred.
I was not much ravished by the view of the roofs.
My Paris was a post-war utility survivor,
The stink of fear still hanging in the wardrobes,
Collaborateurs barely out of their twenties,
Every other face closed by the Camps
Or the Maquis. I was a ghostwatcher.

- From Ted Hughes Your Paris

In the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there is a black and white
photograph of a post-war boys home for Jewish child survivors of Buchenwald, one of many
infamous Nazi concentration camps. The photograph, which I came across in my research for this
paper, stopped me in my figurative tracks, for it was eerily familiarI had spent my summer two
years previous in the same French commune where the photo was taken, a relatively small, quiet
suburb ten miles to the west of Paris. In the photo, boys played in the snow-glazed backyard of a
quaint brick Victorian much like the one where I had lived; the homes gingerbread architecture and
the playful demeanor of the photos subjects belied the horrendous circumstances that had brought
them together for such a photograph. My Paris, the American Paris I had so happily roamed, had
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been much more like Sylvia Plaths city than Ted Hughes; it had been frame after frame,/Street
after street,/ of Impressionist paintings,/Under the chestnut shades of Hemingway,/Fitzgerald, Henry
Miller, Gertrude Stein. But clearly depicted on the screen in front of me, despite the nearly
unchanged physical setting, were young people living under completely different circumstances. For
the young men in the museums photograph, and for thousands, of Jewish children like them during
World War II and the Shoah, France was an utterly different place than it was for meit was a living
hell. For many French Jewish children, that living hell became the first stop on a journey towards
death in concentration camps throughout Europe, and for others, it was a final destination. Trauma
for French Jewish children during the Shoah was simultaneously widespreadno group of the
population escapedand uniquely, painfully personal. All Jews in France in the 1930s and 40s,
including children, experienced ever-mounting persecution and its lasting effects. Those children
who survived (and many who didnt) experienced the traumas of being sent away from their homes,
often to foreign countries, the trauma of being separated from their families, and the trauma of losing
essential nurturers at a young age. Countless children, including hidden children, experienced
religious trauma of all varieties and forms, the trauma of fractured and manufactured identities, and
sexual and physical abuse. Far too many French Jewish children ultimately fell into the hands of the
Nazis, and met untimely deaths in gas chambers and concentration camps. This paper seeks to tell
these childrens stories, examine their experiences, and ultimately explain why relating and analyzing
these exceptional experiences is, and will always be, vitally important. Sources for this paper were
selected for scholarly rigor, for their ability to clearly distill fact, and for their ability to convey the
importance and emotional potency of widespread trends during the Shoah through accurate
depictions of a variety of individual experiences. Above all else, this paper seeks to examine
individual experiences of Jewish children in France during the Shoah by looking at the oral and
textual accounts that both murdered child victims and child survivors (who are victims all the same)
have left us. While acknowledging the unique nature of each Shoah experience, by examining these
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individual accounts through the lenses of historical and social criticism, we can seek to gain a
broader understanding of widespread historical trends and individual traumas during the Shoah, and
to better understand the consequences of these trends and traumas then, now, and in the future.
French Jewish children, along with the rest of European Jewry, were subject to increasing
restrictions and deprivations as the 1940s progressed. These restrictions became a tragic part of
everyday Jewish life, but nonetheless created immense anxiety and even trauma for those who were
subject to them, including children. Isabelle Jesion, a Jewish girl living in Paris in the early 40s, was
no exception to the increasing persecution, and examining her diary entries can aid readers in
understanding what coping with these building anxieties was like. Though many of Jesions entries
contained typical adolescent concerns, some carried more weight, and can be read as Isabelles
attempts to grapple with the increasingly stressful and dangerous climate around her. As Jurgen
Matthaus writes in Jewish Responses to Persecution: 1941-1942, her entry from January 9, 1942 . . .
assumes a more serious tone. In the entry, Jesion transcribes a nightmare that melds a variety of
anxieties that the German occupation of France created in her life, arrests, questioning by the police,
. . . concentration camps, and the fear of being abandoned by her parents (Matthaus 414).
Tragically, portions Isabels nightmare would be realized just seven months later with her parents
deportation to Drancy on July 16, 1942, and their ultimate murder in Auschwitz. In the dream, a
gendarme (a collaborating French policeman) is questioning Isabelle about potentially turning in her
teacher, Mme. Dupas, for some infraction. As Matthaus quotes and translates Jesion, I am always
torn in the dream between two duties. A terrible dilemma. My affection or justice. But the latter gets
the upper hand for a moment, and I point her out. Then she falls into my arms, and I bitterly regret
having done my duty, and then someone tells me that its a play. I am very happy to hear
it(Matthaus 415). Later, Jesion writes of another dream, Once I dreamed that I was in a
concentration camp. My parents were not with me or no longer existed (I dont remember). I slept [in
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the dream] and then woke up, when I see, of all people, Mme. Dupas and another lady. She wants to
adopt me. I accept joyously (Matthaus 416).
It is clear from Isabels account that the mental trauma inflicted on Jewish children during the
Shoah, in France and elsewhere, often began long before physical persecution or abuse did. The fact
that Isabels dreams were pervaded by images of warsoldiers, police, and people she loved being
turned inbelies the occasionally perpetuated false notion that children were not as affected by the
war as adults were. For children, just as for adults, nightmares were to become reality, and just
because adults wished that their children would not suffer did not mean that it would be so. It is
significant, as Matthaus notes, though doesnt elaborate on, that in Isabelles dream, the most
menacing figures were not foreign Nazi soldiers, but rather local French gendarmes, policemen who
collaborated with the Nazi occupiers. The prevalence of these collaborators in Isabels dream
suggests another layer of trauma, hitherto unexplored in this paper, that French children experienced;
that of ones country and ones countrymen (and women) suddenly turning against loyal citizens who
loved that same country merely because they were Jewish, and the fear of even turning in ones own
family because it was the right thing to do, as evidenced by Isabels dream of turning in her own
parents suggests. The inclusion in Isabels dream of the presence of gendarmes, her fellow
countrymen, and the anxiety created by that dream, suggests how difficult the rejection by ones own
country was. This outright rejection from society produced trauma in addition to the trauma that
came from family separations, hiding, and deportations, and contributed to a fracturing of identity
that many children of the Shoah like Isabelle experienced. Isabelles diarys juxtaposition of typical
adolescent concerns (boys, clothes, girlhood dramas) with the traumatic scenes of her sleeping and
waking nightmares suggests that a fracturing, that of Isabelles childhood identity being pried away
from her and split into pieces, was a prominent part of Isabelles inner life during her years of
persecution. Even the inclusion of a favorite schoolteacher, an often fondly remembered part of
childhood, juxtaposed against the backdrop of parents disappearing, adoption, concentration camps,
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and questioning by collaborating police, shows the terrible predicament in which French children of
the Shoah were placed. Their childhoods were not filled with the normal semblances of childhood,
but were instead marked by numerous traumas. Even the fact that Isabelle dreamed of being adopted
by her teacher, rather than living with her Jewish parents, suggests the trauma of the age for children
as their normal family structures were weakened both physically and psychologically, as parents
were unable to perform their protective role for their children, and these children, sadly, looked
elsewhere for the security and the protection that they seemed to instinctively need. As Jacques Adler
writes of French Jewish families, We will never know how many parents trusted their children to
smugglers, to have them transported to Switzerland, and later learned they were arrested by border
guards. Nor will we know how many children left with Christian families remained unclaimed after
the war because their families did not survive the camps in Eastern Europe (Adler 49). Soberingly,
Alder also acknowledges that some families felt compelled to turn themselves in to predatory
authorities because they could not find anyone to answer their pleas for help and finally had no
alternative other than starving to death on the streets (Adler 49). Though every Shoah experience
was different, there are accounts of children wishing they were not Jewish, or parents wishing their
children were not Jewish, or had been born in a Christian family, so that they would be safer.
Isabelle and other French Jews like her were forced to separate a hitherto holistic identity into
mutually exclusive partsJewishness first and foremost, and then everything else. Isabelle
acknowledges this inner separation in her dream, saying, as quoted above, I am always torn between
two duties. My affection or justice. A terrible dilemma. Thus, Isabelle and children like her
throughout France and Europe were not only forced to grow up quickly, but had their childhood
identities gradually broken down and labeled before the Nazis stripped these identities away
entirelyIsabelle was not just French, she was not just a Jew; she was surely made up of millions
of individual thoughts and experiences, just as each human being is. The Nazis, however, chipped
away and sought to destroy all these markers of identity, until all that was left of Isabelle and
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children like her was Jew. They created false dichotomies, choiceless choices, for French Jewish
children like Isabelle, instilling a false sense of wrong and right according to societal norms, and then
ostracizing these same children from that same society. What could a girl who defined herself as a
French Jew do if France no longer wanted her? In addition to the stress placed upon these children
by world events and external cares, there would have been great internal stress as these children
sought to find or create a new identity out of the pieces of their former, shattered identities, or accept
the destructive identities that others, both German foreigners and collaborateurs, had placed upon
them. This thievery of the identities of children and adolescents would culminate in the deportation
of thousands to concentration camps, where all were sent without any regard for name, status,
education, gender, or any of the normal vestiges of identity in a healthy society; indeed, according
to Jacques Adler, The first convoy for Auschwitz to include children under the age of twelve left
Drancy on 14 August 1942; from a total of 991, more than 100 were under the age of sixteen (Adler
124). Adler writes that the four following convoys included some 500 children each (Adler
124).The ultimate theft of identity, which began through smaller stresses and confusions like those
seen in Isabelles dream, culminated for such children in the camps like Auschwitz (where Isabelles
parents were murdered) as those adolescents who may have looked old enough to work were stripped
of their name, that last vestige of humanity, and given a tattooed number in its stead. Legions of
younger or weaker children and adolescents, French and otherwise, were sent to the gas chambers in
what was for the Nazis a nameless mass, as the German theft of millions of individual internal
mental and spiritual lives culminated in their ultimate destruction by death.
However, the fact that the diaries and accounts of children like Isabelle persist shows that the
Nazis were not entirely successful in obliterating their identities. Though German Nazis were able to
kill and silence millions, there are echoes of childrens voices like Isabelles, found in their own
writings, the accounts of survivors, and images, both photographic and filmed. Thick tomes like
Serge Klarsfelds Le Mmorial des Enfants Juifs Dports de France contain the photos, addresses,
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and convoy numbers of over 11,000 murdered Jewish children with names like Robert Glasmans,
Marie Elingolds and the seven Epelbaum childrens, Jacqueline, Suzanne, Jacques, Rene, Andre,
Henri, and Arlette, all of whom were deported on Convoy 24 in August 1942 (Mmorial 550-
551).Though the dead cannot speak for themselves, and it is important that we not put words in their
mouths, it is equally important that we share and tell their stories, in order to prevent the Nazis
ultimate victory of ultimately silencing all of their victims and leaving no one to tell what happened.
As we tell the stories of children like Isabelle, and relate the fracturing of identities and traumas that
these children went through, we prevent the Nazis from another victory, nearly 70 years after the
war.
Though thousands of French Jews like Isabelles family and the Epelbaums were murdered,
it is estimated that between 8,000 and 10,000 Jewish children were saved by Jewish childrens
organizations in France during the war (Priollaud 311). Of these, many were saved by the
organization known as the Ouvre de Secours aux Enfants, or the OSE; the organizations website
claims they rescued at least 5,000 children (OSE), making the group one of the seminal forces that
would have affected the lives of French Jewish children during the Shoah. Founded in the USSR in
1912 as the Organization for the Health Protection of Jews, the organization relocated to Berlin in
1923, and then to France in 1933, fleeing Nazi persecution (Ouvre de Secours aux Enfants). The
OSE, which still exists today, ran orphanages and childrens homes throughout France for Jewish
children before and during World War IImany of these children were refugees fleeing their home
countries, and many were sent to the OSE by deported parents seeking to protect their children
(Ouvre de Secours aux Enfants).
The OSE also lent much help to French Jewish children after the war ended. When 1,000
children were liberated from the concentration camp at Buchenwald, American army chaplains
contacted the OSE, which arranged for 427 of the children to be placed in France, 280 in
Switzerland, and 250 in England (USHMM). The children who were placed on the OSE transport
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from Buchenwald to France did not have clothing of their own, and the only attire that OSE
organizers could find for them were Hitler Youth uniforms. According to the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, This created a problem, for when the train crossed into France, it was greeted
by an angry populace who assumed the train was carrying Nazi youth. After this first negative
reception, the words KZ Buchenwald Orphans were painted on the side of the childrens train to
avoid further confusion (USHMM). The OSE worked to set up homes, many of them in chateaux,
for war orphans throughout France, placing religious and non-religious children in different homes to
ensure that each were cared for, as best as possible, according to their religious preferences
(USHMM). After the war, the OSE worked to find surviving relatives for all of the children placed in
their care, succeeding in about half of the cases, which is a remarkable statistic, considering the
utter decimation of European Jewry at the time (USHMM). By 1948, all the Buchenwald orphans
who came to France under the OSEs care had left the care of the organization and begun to fend for
themselves (USHMM).
The experience the French Buchenwald orphans had of being dressed in the very uniforms of
those who had killed their families, and of being mistakenly rejected by the population of their host
refugee country, can help demonstrate just how hard it must have been for Jewish children to adjust
to normal life after the war. Clearly, traumatic experiences for Jewish children did not end when the
war ended, even for those in the care of an organization as benevolent as the OSE; there would have
been a steep learning curve for both the children, and for French and European society at large, as all
groups relearned how to incorporate Jewish children back into normal contemporary life. In many
ways, it was impossible for children in the OSE to return to normal life, as pre-war normal no
longer existed.
Even for children who were rescued by the OSE or individuals, during the Shoah, French
Jewish children experienced the immense trauma of being torn away from their families. Even
children who enjoyed the relative safety of being hidden, rather than being deported, experienced the
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intense difficulty of being separated from their parents and having to form new bonds with their
caregivers, or perhaps worse, being left on their own. Irena Steinfeldt of Yad Vashem relates the
story of Shlomo Shenkar in Between families: Jews and Their Rescuers During the Holocaust.
Shenkar, like many other young French Jews, had the traumatic experience of being separated from
his mother and siblings. Everyone else in his immediate family later perished; six year old Shlomo
was the only one who evaded the roundup. Steinfeldt quotes Shenkars memoir as he recounts the
chaotic morning in January 1943 when the Germans came to arrest all six people in his family.
Shenkar writes depicts a dreadful scene, and his writing still sounds bewildered at his mothers
goodness to him so many years agohis mother led him to the bathroom as police came to the door
to arrest his family, claiming that he needed to use the toilet. He recounts her placing him on the
toilet seat by the window, and lifting his chin so he had to look into her eyes. Shenkar recounts that
her eyes did not hold their usual good-natured expression; they were wild. Shloimele, my
Shloimele, she told him, Run because if you dont you will die, adding, You remember
the dead bodies on the way from Belgium. Then she mumbled a prayer as her hand ripped
the yellow Star of David patch from my clothing (Steinfeldt 1). Cleary the impact of this
moment of traumatic separation was strong enough that Shenkar could recall it decades later. After
wandering the street as a lone six-year old, Shenkar eventually found his way to refuge with a former
schoolteacher, who arranged his safekeeping for the rest of the war. Countless Jewish children
experienced separations similar to Shlomo Shenkars, though some efforts to save children were not
as successful as Shenkars mothers effort. The psychological implications of a six-year old being
separated from his or her family at such a tender age, and knowing they would likely never been seen
again, are staggering.
Some children were separated from their birth parents so early in their lives that they did not
even realize the implications of being born Jewish, or what their religion truly was, until the end of
the war. One young French Jewish man, Saul Friedlander, was placed by his parents in a Catholic
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school where he took on a new name, and was baptized a Christian (Berman). Friedlander became a
devout Catholic and eventually considered becoming a priest. Friedlander recalled his experience of
being separated from his mother, and remembers her quickly packing suitcases for his family. He
remembers his mother writing frantically to a Catholic woman, Madame M. de L, pleading for her to
care for him with complete confidence in her goodness and understanding. We have succeeded,
for the moment at least, in saving our boybut I dont want to leave him where he is, for today one
can no longer have any confidence in a Jewish institution, she wrote (Quoted in Berman). This
young Jewish mothers plea to a member of a group traditionally antithetical to Judaism,
Catholicism, reflects the dire straits that the Jewish community was placed in during World War II
and the Shoah. Moreover, her utter lack of confidence in Jewish institutions shows the horrendous
efficacy of Hitlers smear campaign and persecution of Jews of all walks of life in 1940s Europe. The
traumatic imprint of Friedlander leaving his parents is apparent as he recounts the story decades later.
At the end of the war, such children had the additional difficulty of leaving their adopted lives of
relative safety for a hazardous label, Jew, which they had had never known and was still
dangerous, even in the postwar period. Often, Jewish children had been brought up as Catholics
during the war, and were reluctant to be separated from their adopted Christian families and faith for
Jewish parents that they had never met. Such children experienced the double trauma of original
separation from their biological parents, and later re-traumatization when they were returned to those
same parents, and were forced to forsake those who had cared for them, even if for the joyous
purpose of being reunited with their true families.
Though the rescuers of many hidden children like Saul Friedlander in France and elsewhere
were truly the righteous among the nations, the stories of thousands of other hidden children have a
darker side. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, at least one study suggests
that 20% of hidden children were occasionally or consistently mistreated by their protectors
(USHMM). Many of these abused hidden children were sexually abused or raped. However, for
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decades, most such sexually abused children have been reluctant to tell their stories, both for fear of
bringing shame on their families and because of social and cultural taboos in speaking about rape.
Until recently, some child survivors and Shoah scholars have even denied the prevalence of rape and
sexual abuse perpetuated on women and girls, including hidden children, during the Shoah. Shoah
scholar Lawrence Langer, author of Preempting the Holocaust, does not deny that rape of women
and girls occurred, but is hesitant to proclaim the extent of the abuse. Langer argues in his book that
sexuality and gendered roles did not play a large difference in outcomes for Shoah survivors. As he
writes in Preempting the Holocaust, Listening to the voices of women who survived those domains
reminds us of the severely diminished role that gendered behavior played during those cruel years
(43). A CNN article from 2011, Silence lifted: The untold stories of rape during the Holocaust,
quotes Langer as saying that in 25 years of interviewing Shoah survivors, none have ever spoken
about rape. According to the article, Langer does not believe that his being male would have
prevented women from telling him stories of sexual abuse or rape during the Shoah. Langer admits
he hasnt asked the question directly, but believes survivors will share such stories of their own
volition. Mr. Langer states he has heard stories of women strangling their own babies, and Mr.
Langer believes that talking about rape would not be any different or more difficult. According to
Langer, he always asks victims he interviews to tell him about the worst thing that happened to them
in the Shoah, and no one has ever responded that they were raped. Langer does acknowledge the
existence of sexual violence during the Shoah in Preempting the Holocaust. However, his unsound,
male-centric attitude towards victims of sexual abuse, and lack of desire to consider the unique
crimes exacted on females from a gendered perspective, can be seen as continued denial of the reality
of the many forms of sexual assault that were perpetuated on thousands of women and girls,
including hidden Jewish children, during the Shoah. Though Langer is an esteemed scholar, the
foundations of his belief in non-differentiated gender experiences for the majority of Shoah victims
seem misplaced, and have contributed to a media and cultural climate, as evidenced by their presence
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in a mainstream media article by CNN, that may make it difficult for abused women or girls to come
forth. Langers presumption that because he has not heard much about sexual abuse in his interviews,
ergo such abuse did not occur, seems highly presumptive and woefully optimistic. Such a viewpoint
is a perpetuation of misplaced societal norms that prevent healthy discussion about sexual assault
during the Shoah and the prevention of sexual trauma in contemporary society, and may potentially
hinder survivors, including assaulted hidden children, from sharing their stories.
In Rochelle Saidel and Sonja Hedgepeths Sexual Violence Against Women During the
Holocaust, the authors take a different approach, and seek to tell the stories of sexually violated
women and girls, including violated Jewish girls in hiding. The authors write of psychologist and
Shoah child survivor Paul Valents interview with a former French Jewish hidden child, whom
Valent calls Anne, per her request. According to Saidel and Hedgepeth, Anne was hidden in
various homes in France between the ages of four and eight (Hedgepeth 226). Anne was raped in
multiple households, but she didnt even know what to call what had happened to her (Hedgepeth
226). As the authors quote Annes interview with Dr. Valent,
In addition to the usual couple and an old woman, there was a younger man in this family.
He was big, and was always friendly and laughing. I liked the fact that he took notice of me,
while the others hated me. . . Then at nights he took my singlet [undershirt] off and brushed
himself against me. And he took my pants off. I did not think there was harm in that . . . But,
I dont know, he had no clothes on, and I had never been near anyone naked. I did not like
the feel. . . I do not know how he did not squash me to death. I came to hate the whole thing,
him. . . And he . . . wanted me to play with him, his penis, and every part of him . . . I
remember saying something to the lady about him squashing me. She yelled and screamed at
me. She called me a liar, and said she would punish me by putting me in the oven. She took
me to the oven, opened it, lifted me, and I thought I was going into the roaring fire. . .
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Sometimes I wished that she had put me in there. . . because now it meant that this man
would continue as before. And he did (Quoted in Hegdepeth and Saidel 226 and 227).
Anne was later passed on to another family who hid her, where again she was raped by another man.
Anne recounts her experience with this abuser, stating that he was a large man, and she can still
remember the instances of continual rape all these years later, indicating a mind certainly scarred by
the abuse. Anne recalls his determination to perpetuate the act of rape, and that fact that she
certainly wanted to die afterwards. Tragically, Anne was too young to know that what he was
doing was wrong, and was not able to respond as such. According to Hedgepeth and Saidel, Anne
was between four and five years old when these incidences of abuse occurred. As Hedgepeth and
Saidel write, Anne told Valent she was raped over and over again. In one household, a man even
used to urinate in her mouth (Hedgepeth 227). The fact that Anne was raped so continuously and in
so many different households suggests that rape of hidden children was likely more common that has
previously been accounted for, and highlights the dangerous circumstances that all Jewish children
were subjected to during the Shoah, whether or not they escaped the camps, or were safe hidden
with a family.
Many hidden children did escape the terrors of abuse and sexual assault, but nevertheless met
death at the hands of the Nazis. One of the most well-known (and ill-fated) stories of the Shoah in
France is that of the childrens home at Izieu, a commune (roughly the equivalent of a township) in
southeastern France. There, courageous individual citizens had worked with the OSE (Oeuvre des
Secours aux Enfants) to place 44 Jewish children for safekeeping during the war (Kahn 177-178).
The proprietor of the home, Madame Sabine Zlatin, was a Franco-Polish Jew herself. In 1941, as
conditions worsened for European Jewry, Zlatin was fired from her job at a military hospital in
Montpellier, France. After losing her job at the hospital, Zlatin somehow obtained employment, an
utterly amazing feat for a Jewish woman at that time, as a social worker, visiting refugee camps for
Jewish and political refugees coming from other countries (Kahn 177). Zlatin was allowed to visit
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the refugee camps three times a week, and had been given permission to take five children with her
on her first visit. She did so, and often returned to the camps; as she testified at the trial of Klaus
Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, she frequently smuggled small children out of the refugee camps
under her cape (Kahn 178). With the aid of the OSE and of a group of courageous Catholic priests,
Zlatin was able to obtain the property for a childrens home at Izieu, about 350 kilometers from
Montpellier, and arrange for the temporary safekeeping of 44 children she had removed from the
refugee camps or who had been brought to her. Though no victims or rescuers should ever be deified,
this courageous joint act between the priests and Madame Zlatin is evidence that the Nazis were not
successful in silencing or poisoning the minds of everyone. Madame Zlatins bravery alone
demonstrates the power that one individual can have to deny consent, and the power that individuals
have to take action even when it appears inconvenient or impossible. Zlatins rescued children
resided there safely until April 6, 1944, when they were likely turned in by a neighboring peasant,
Lucien Bourdon (Kahn 98, 179). Bourdons alleged actions, compared to Zlatins, demonstrate the
greed and utter inhumanity that Nazi doctrine and wartime fertilized in the minds of thousands. The
children and seven of their caretakers were all rounded up by the Gestapo, under the direction of
Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, and placed on a train to Drancy and then to Auschwitz. Zlatin
was elsewhere at the time of the raid, and thence survivedof the forty-four children and seven
caretakers deported, there was only one survivor, twenty seven year-old Lea Feldblum (Kahn 180).
The Izieu raid took place at breakfast time, with witnesses recalling the Nazis storming into the home
amidst much confusion; several people attempted to jump out of windows to evade the Nazis (Kahn
183). One witness, Leon Reifman, who worked as a nurse at the home and managed to avoid
deportation, recalled at Barbies 1987 trial the screaming and crying of the children, the pleading of
the adults, the shouting of the Germans (Kahn 180). He recalled hearing the children courageously
sing Vous naurez pas LAlsace et la Lorraine, perhaps to quell their fear, as they were taken away
in open-backed trucks (Kahn 180).
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The tragic raid on the childrens home at Izieu, in many ways, did not differ greatly from the
millions of roundups and deportations that took place under Nazi dominion during World War II.
However, the courage that is evidenced by even small acts of defiance in the face of almost certain
death is remarkable, and can be read as a tribute to the human dignity that so many Jewish captives
sought to preserve in the face of remarkable dehumanization and hardship. This desire to defy and to
preserve the human spirit was clearly evident not just in Jewish adults, but in children, too, as
evidenced by Mr. Reifmans testimony of the childrens singing during their deportation. The song,
written in the late 1800s, at the time of the Franco Prussian war, has lyrics that make this defiance
even more potent and poignant, as demonstrated by the brief excerpt below (see endnote for
translation):

Vous n'aurez pas l'Alsace et la Lorraine
Et, malgr vous, nous resterons franais
Vous avez pu germaniser la plaine
Mais notre cur, vous ne l'aurez jamais. . .
France bientt ! car la sainte esprance
Emplit nos curs en te disant : adieu.
En attendant l'heure de la dlivrance,
Pour l'avenir... Nous allons prier Dieu.
Nos monuments o flottent leur bannire
Semble porter le deuil de ton drapeau.
France entends-tu la dernire prire
De tes enfants couchs dans leurs tombeaux?
1

The last lines, which can be translated as France, do you hear the last prayer/Of your children lying
in their graves? can be read as a demonstration of remarkable clairvoyance and courage for children
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who likely knew as well as any adults ever did that they were headed for certain death. Though some
may read such singing as cheerful acceptance of death, this estimation is wrong. Rather than
suggesting the children cheerfully falling into the hands of their Nazi captors, the lyrics to this song
suggest the childrens outright insurgence, at least intellectually, against Nazi captors and ideology.
In the light of countless tragedies like the one that took place at Izieu, how does one begin
moving forward when pondering the loss of so massive and so innocent a group as Frances Jewish
children of the Shoah? The weight of their stories is heavy, and hard to heft. But heft it, and read it,
and write about it, and remember it we must, for if we refuse to remember, as Elie Wiesel has said,
we betray the dead again and bring upon ourselves a divine curse that dooms us to repeat the past
(Nobel Prize Speech). Children, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, need bold advocates to speak
for them. 70 years after the Shoah, it would be a service to the Nazis and to all ideologies of hate,
past and contemporary, if one did not attempt to tell the stories of these children, which so eloquently
show the dreadful consequences of passivity. The story of the French Jewish children of the Shoah is
so important because it shows what not to dostand idly by and accept the devastating consequences
of apathyand in a fraction of the cases, it shows how bold individuals taking a stand can make a
difference, if not in the lives of many, at least in the lives of a few. Telling the stories of the French
Jewish children of the Shoah is especially important now; as the years march on, many of the
survivors of the Shoah are gone. Many of those still living were children at the time the Nazis
atrocities were perpetuated, but a large portion of their stories have still not been recorded, because
we are part of a culture that often subjugates the experiences of children and the vulnerable as less
important than the experiences of more socially powerful or eloquent groups. Remembering the
deaths of children is particularly painful, and the pain that comes from a loss of such a guiltless group
may have prevented adult survivors from discussing this loss. Many child survivors may have been
reluctant to speak about their own experiences if they sensed the pain, discomfort, and perhaps
minimization of their childish experiences that relation of these experiences brought on in adults
Seeley 17

around them. The stories of children have not been explored in as much depth as adult stories,
because of adult misconceptions of childrens experiences, because of the massive percentage of
children who were killed and were not able to speak for themselves or leave direct descendants to
speak for them, and because of current cultural prohibitions and discomfort discussing children in
relation to forced sexuality, abuse of all kinds, and widespread death and destruction of innocence.
But one must help create an academic and societal culture where it is acceptable to talk about life and
humanitys worst experiences, for if it were never discussed, we could never learn from them. A
culture of repression is destructive for those who feel unable to share their stories because of societal
conventions, and is destructive of our hope to be able to aid and understand those children who will,
tragically but nearly certainly, experience the devastating effects of war and genocide in the future. If
future Frances and Germanysor the current Sri Lankas, Eritreas, Syrias, Ethiopias, Cambodias,
Rwandas, and Libyas of the world are to be prevented, the world must not be afraid to examine
previous genocides, like the Shoah, from all perspectives, but especially the perspectives of the most
vulnerable, those who were too vulnerable to speak for themselves, and who died before they could
leave a posterity to remember them. Though we can never speak for the dead, as we do our best to
remember and honor each and every soul who perished, we can do our best to honor them, and to
strive for some good to come from the circumstances of their dreadful deaths, that there was nothing
good about.
Telling the stories of childrens experiences has the potential to broaden and deepen Shoah
studies around the world. As we overcome the aforementioned barriers to the study of children
during the Shoah, and learn to speak up about childrens experiences, we gain a new ability to teach
todays children about their counterparts 70 years ago. It is so vitally important that the rising
generation understand and honor Shoah victims, and telling the stories of young people then will
allow young people now to connect and remember on a whole new level; their own level. Our
greatest hope for future scholarship and understanding of the Shoah comes in the rising generation,
Seeley 18

and if we hope to educate our own children and pass on a legacy of remembrance, we must not be
afraid to tell them of experiences that happened to those not so different than they are. The stories of
the French Jewish children of the Shoah problematically demonstrate a culture remarkably immune
to stopping suffering if it is inconvenient to do so. For us to have any chance to resolve that same
tendency in our own society, we must not be afraid to examine and learn from the experiences of the
vulnerable in societies where the powerful did not speak out in their defense.





1
You will not have Alsace and Lorraine
And, in spite of you, we will remain French
You can Germanise the plain
But you will never have our hearts!
We will see you soon, France! As holy hope
Fills our hearts when telling you farewell.
Were waiting for the hour of deliverance,
For the future ... We will pray to God.
Our monuments where your banner floats
Seem to mourn your flag.
France, do you hear the last prayer
Of your children lying in their graves?