November 01, 2017
by Jacqueline Mendels Birn
In 1940, or thereabouts, my mother had to go to a hospital in Paris, close to where we lived. We were told, my sister and I, that she had an appendectomy. We later learned that, in fact, she had suffered a miscarriage. Thinking of it now, if she had had that baby, we would never have been able to escape, to cross the demarcation line illegally and hide as we did. The baby might have obliged us to stay in Paris. We would have been rounded up in August 1942—that was when the Gestapo came to get us, but we had escaped on July 31, 1942. The miscarriage was sad but also a blessing in disguise. My mother didn’t talk about it until many years later.
So, we escaped—took the train illegally and crossed the demarcation line into the so-called “Free France.” We were arrested, however, and my parents were interrogated. In what would be one of many miracles, the man in charge of Dordogne, from which we escaped, gave us permission to go, less than 100 kilometers from the headquarters where my parents were interrogated. We were told to go and hide in the countryside. My father found a small village, where we would not interfere with the farmers’ lives and work.
Two months after we moved to the second floor of a primitive house with no water, no electricity, and no toilet, all of France was occupied. There were German troops everywhere. Some time after that, my mother told my sister and me not to worry; if the Germans came to get us, she would give us a little pill, and we would die right away and never suffer.
My mother became pregnant again in the spring of 1943. My parents took my sister and me on their knees and explained to us that there would not be birthday presents for us because they had no money, but they said that there would be a surprise that would stay with us forever. My sister guessed that it would be a baby.
My mother had a very difficult pregnancy. I have small letters that I wrote to her on scraps of paper, saying that I hoped she would feel better the next day. To this day, I don’t know if my mother tried to have an abortion. She did not have a doctor. There was hardly any food for us and, of course, no vitamins or anything for a pregnant woman. My mother was 37 years old; my father was 38. My parents must have been desperate. Then came August 1943, and my mother was ready to give birth, but the baby was breech. My mother had to be transported to a hospital. The closest place was in another district, where she could not go with her false papers. The neighbor downstairs and my father transported her. Despite bleeding and suffering, she made it to the hospital, where the doctor treated German soldiers, people from the underground, and a Jewish woman about to give birth.
My brother was born, and my mother survived. My father found some Nestlé concentrated milk at a small general store when they came back to our hiding place, and my brother started to gain weight. My parents named him Franklin because Franklin Roosevelt was their only hope of survival. They also had him circumcised despite the danger for a boy, physically marking him as Jewish.
We survived and went back home in November 1944, after Paris was liberated. Little by little, my father found out that everyone in our family (we were Dutch) had been murdered, and his mother never found out that she had a grandson.
After everything we survived, my brother committed suicide at the age of 44. He had been a brilliant economic historian. He was bipolar and tried three times to put an end to his life. I think of him every day. He was married and had two daughters. My brother would be the grandfather of a five-year-old boy today.
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