Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
World War II – Remembering French Holocaust Victims – Anne Berest (English)
126 Plays1 year ago
Ep 024 – Fiction. In 2003, a postcard arrived at Anne's home with 4 names written on it, all of them family members who died at Auschwitz. In a fascinating English-language interview, acclaimed French author Anne Berest discusses her new World War II autobiographical novel, "The Postcard."
Support local bookstores & buy Anne’s book here:
https://bookshop.org/a/92235/9781609458386
Subscribe to the War Books podcast here:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@warbookspodcast
Apple: https://apple.co/3FP4ULb
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3kP9scZ
Follow the show here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/warbookspodcast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/warbookspodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/warbookspodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Opera Garnier's WWII Significance
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay, so this is a reproduction. So you can see it's the Opera Garnier House. And for us French people, the Opera Garnier House is very symbolistic because during the war, the Opera House was really the place of the Nazis.
00:00:29
Speaker
In the other side of the postcard, you can see the first names. The handwriting was very strange for us. We didn't recognize who wrote it. And as you can see, the stamp was upside down and a lot of strange details
00:01:05
Speaker
Hi,
Interview with Anne Berest on The Postcard
00:01:06
Speaker
everyone. This is A.J. Woodham's host of the War Books podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today, I am really excited to have on the show Anne Barrist for her new novel, The Postcard. Anne is the best-selling co-author of How to Be Parisian, Wherever You Are, and the author of a novel based on the life of French writer Francois Sagan.
00:01:32
Speaker
With her sister, Claire, she is also the author of Gabrielle, a critically acclaimed biography of her great-grandmother. She's been profiled in publications like Vogue, Inherits, and she has received numerous literary awards. Her latest novel, The Postcard, which we're talking about today, was a finalist for the Goncourt Prize. Anne, how are you doing today? Very well. I'm in Paris, in France. I know you were just on an American tour, right? So you were in DC, New York.
00:02:02
Speaker
Miami, San Francisco, Boston. It was an amazing book tour. Oh, perfect. Well, I'm so glad to have you on the show here today. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, no, really, it's my pleasure. It's like the greatest thing as I get to talk to really interesting authors about their books. And again, I really loved your book.
00:02:28
Speaker
I loved a lot of things about it. I loved how it alternated between past and present. I thought you did an excellent job there. Well, I guess in your words first, what would you say your book is about? Okay. So first of all, I want you and the listener to know that this novel is based on true facts.
00:02:55
Speaker
and on events that happened to me and to my family. That's why I like to call the book a true novel, because also it's written in a novelistic style. I didn't imagine anything. So to make a long story short, the book starts in 2003.
00:03:26
Speaker
when my mother, Lillia, receives a postcard in her letterbox, a postcard mentioning only four first names, Ephraim, Emma, Noemi, and Ejak. No signature, no message, nothing, just four first names,
00:03:53
Speaker
that
Inspiration Behind The Postcard's Story
00:03:54
Speaker
my mother recognized immediately because they are the first names of her grandparents, uncle and aunt, who she never met because they were murdered in a concentration camp during the Holocaust because they were Jews. So in other words, these people died during the war
00:04:24
Speaker
And 60 years later, someone sent a postcard with their first names, but this person wanted to remain anonymous. So the first question was, who? And the second was, why? And so that's how the book came to me.
00:04:51
Speaker
If you agree, I can show you the postcard. Give me two seconds. You have it? I would love to see it. I have the reproduction of the postcard. Yeah. The real one is at my mother's home, but I will show it to you. Okay. I would love to see it. Okay. So this is a reproduction. So you can see it's a Opragania house and
00:05:20
Speaker
For us, French people, the Opera Canyon House is very symbolistic because during the war, during the occupation of Paris, it was a place where every night all the Nazis went to listen to music because they couldn't
00:05:48
Speaker
go to movies, to watch movies, or to theaters because of the language. So the opera house was really the place of the Nazis. And in
Mysterious Details of the Postcard
00:06:02
Speaker
the other side of the postcard, you can see the first names. The handwriting was very strange for us.
00:06:14
Speaker
we didn't recognize who wrote it. And as you can see, the stamp was upside down and a lot of strange details on the postcard. And so we had no idea of, we didn't have the slightest clue
00:06:44
Speaker
So who might have sent it? So we were very uncomfortable with that object. And that's why we put it away in a drawer and we forgot about it. It wasn't until 15 years later that I decided to investigate
00:07:14
Speaker
with the help
Solving the Postcard Mystery
00:07:15
Speaker
of my mother and with the help of a private detective and of a graphologist. And it's after four years that we finally solved the puzzle. So my books, if you want, tell the story of the journey and the discovery of the mystery.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm so glad that you showed that postcard. You do, I mean, you do figure it out. The reader will figure out who wrote the postcard in the book, but for me to see it right now, I was getting a little emotional with you holding it up because I felt like I've spent so much time in your book along this journey with you. So thank you for that.
00:08:11
Speaker
Well, let's talk then about kind of the historical part of your book.
Educational Dialogue Between Generations
00:08:20
Speaker
So you structure it as a conversation between you and your mother and you're narrating the events that happened to your family, which started in 1919 in Russia, the Rabinovitch family up to 1942 when they're killed in Auschwitz, actually.
00:08:42
Speaker
I guess first, why did you choose to structure the historical part of the book as a story being told between mother and daughter? I was intending my book to younger people. I wrote it for the youth. I wanted it to be a book of transmission. It was a book for the new generation. So that's why I put myself in the shoes of someone
00:09:12
Speaker
who knows almost nothing about the war. Because I am the person in the book, I am the person who asks the questions on behalf of the reader. Because I wanted to be sure that if a teenager, if a young adult reads a book, he will understand everything.
00:09:40
Speaker
It was very important for me. It was my duty of transmission because I think that if a teenager enjoys a novel with an historical landscape, one day that teenager or that young adult will open an history book to learn more. And for me, the novel is a gateway
00:10:09
Speaker
to history. It was my case. It's because I read novels that I loved with characters that I loved which were historicals that I wanted to learn more about history. And so that's the first answer. The second answer is that, you know,
00:10:40
Speaker
the
Jewish Tradition of Questioning
00:10:41
Speaker
Jewish thought is a thought of questioning. In the Jewish thought, it's more important to know how to ask a question properly than to know how to answer it. And so my character in the book, so as you said, it's a character who is always
00:11:10
Speaker
asking question to her mother. And my character is like one of the character of the Passover Haggadah. The Haggadah is a book that we read on the evening of Passover. And in this book, you have a child and this child is the ignorant one.
00:11:41
Speaker
Okay? And he's the one who doesn't know. And it's very important because the one who ask questions allows others who perhaps didn't dare to ask the question to listen to the answer. And for those who know,
00:12:09
Speaker
Maybe, as a question asked, we'll bring unexpected answers. That's why the book is a dialogue between my mother, who knows everything in the book, and me, who knows nothing in the book. I am the ignorant one, very important one.
00:12:35
Speaker
Well, I really, I love that two things actually about what you just said that I thought that was such a good way to structure the book because then I learned too, you know, I'm learning through your eyes all these new things that I didn't know and.
00:12:52
Speaker
You're right, that is a very effective way to convey to the reader so that they can learn a bit of history. The other thing, the first part of what you were talking about with reading historical novels as a teenager or whatever, that resonates so much with me because that's how I really got into history.
00:13:13
Speaker
There's an English author, Ken Follett, who wrote a book called Pillars of the Earth. And it's about cathedrals in medieval England. And when I was a teenager, I loved that book. And it got me so fascinated into that time period.
00:13:33
Speaker
So you're so right that novels are such an excellent lens into the past and for young people to get excited about the past. Well, let's dive into the history then of your book. So the Rabinovitch is, if you can just start with them in 1919, so Ephraim and Emma are
00:14:01
Speaker
kind of the matriarch and patriarch, your great grandparents. What kind of people are they? What personalities are they? What are their personalities like? What are their children like? What's going on in 1919 for them? So Ephraim was from Russia, Emma was from Poland, from Lodz. I will show you. I have a photography that's all the family in Lodz.
00:14:31
Speaker
And here you can see that's Miriam. That's my grandmother, the little girl with the white dress. And that's all the family. Here you see Ephraim. Here you see his wife, Emma. And that's cousins.
00:14:55
Speaker
and uncles from the Rabinovich family and Wolf family, the two families together. And this photography was taken in 1924. And after the war, Miriam, my grandmother, she is the sole survivor of all the people of the photography.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah, it was of a five person family that Rabinovitch is only Miriam survives the Holocaust. All these persons were murdered. Wow. So everyone in that photograph except for Miriam died in the Holocaust. That's incredible. So Ephraim was a very serious man. So an engineer.
00:15:48
Speaker
And he believed in progress. He believed in science. So they had three children. And Ephraim, he had complete trust in France. For him, France was a country of enlightenment, the country of French revolution.
00:16:17
Speaker
So we must not forget that after the French Revolution, France was the only country in Europe that granted Jews to have the same status as other citizens. And so France was considered as a paradise in all of Europe,
00:16:48
Speaker
for the Jews. And there was a Yiddish proverb saying, happy as a Jew in France. So that's why Ephraim and his family couldn't imagine a single second that the French government, the French state would betray him.
00:17:17
Speaker
He had a trust in France. He wanted to become a French citizen. Yeah, and that ends up being a very important thing to him. And the book is to get French citizenship. Yes. And I think, too, he wants to do everything correctly when he's in France. He wants to obey every law. He wants to be the model French citizen. He was the first
00:17:45
Speaker
to go to the police to be on the register. It was the first one. I saw the people, the archive. Yes, he wanted to be a model.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah. And I remember reading, so he was, when the Nazis invade France, he wanted to register first because that was, to him, that's what the French authorities would want him to do. Why do you think it was so important to Ephraim that he got French citizenship? As I said,
Rabinovitch Family's Betrayal Experience
00:18:26
Speaker
he thought that France was a paradise for Jews.
00:18:31
Speaker
And he thought that France was the safest place in Europe for Jews. Well, what was life like for Jews living in France after, you know, so this is maybe the late, I forget which year they arrived in France exactly. They spent a little time getting there from Russia around Europe, but I think it's the early 1930s.
00:18:59
Speaker
at the end of the 20s. So what was life like for Ephraim and Emma when they first arrived in France? What hardships did they experience as Jews? So they were foreigners, of course. So it's always hard to be a foreigner in a country.
00:19:25
Speaker
But they were highly educated. They speak multiple languages, including French, even though they have an accent. And so in France, Ephraim continues his work as an engineer. Emma teaches piano lessons. They have three children.
00:19:55
Speaker
And so they want to be fully assimilated. They want their children to attend the best French schools. They want their daughters to be at the top of their class. They want to be assimilated.
00:20:16
Speaker
What happens to Jews living in France when the Nazis invade? So this is 1940. And specifically, how does life change for Ephraim and Emma and Noemi and Miriam and Jacques? They will gradually fall under the yoke of antisemitic laws and their family will be deported.
00:20:46
Speaker
But for me, I needed to understand that I needed to understand why they hadn't left, why they hadn't avoid danger, why they had gone to register with the police. It was an obsession for me.
00:21:11
Speaker
I wanted to understand exactly, day by day, how things had unfolded. Because they were intelligent, they were cultured people. So I wanted to understand why they didn't see the science.
00:21:37
Speaker
It was my obsession and it was why I wrote the book. Well, the second part of your book takes place in modern times, so fast forwarding a bit. And also, just to make it clear for everybody here, so when your family is deported, so everybody except for Miriam, I believe dies in Auschwitz, is that correct?
00:22:04
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, so after that happens, your book, it fast forwards to modern times and it starts, part two of your book starts with a conversation between mother and daughter, just like part one where it was between you and your mother. Now part two is a conversation between you and your daughter
00:22:29
Speaker
So why did you choose to do that?
Trauma Transmission Across Generations
00:22:33
Speaker
And what do you think your book says about trauma in motherhood? I don't know. It's difficult for me to answer that question because it's up to the reader to tell me instead. But all I can say is that I wanted to write a book about transmission
00:22:56
Speaker
and about the idea of invisible transmission. The invisible transmission is one of the main themes of my book. I delve into the concept of how our ancestors survive within us, even when we have no knowledge about them, not even their first names.
00:23:25
Speaker
And I have read articles on cellular memory. I find fascinating that all cells in our body, in our blood, have a memory and a memory of emotions. Spanning over scientific, they say that
00:23:56
Speaker
the memory of emotions span over three previous generations. And so it was fascinating for me and it's a scientific way to explain that our ancestors still live in us and it's a way to acknowledge that we still communicate and connect with our ghosts.
00:24:27
Speaker
That's the invisible transmission. For example, because when you are working on your family tree, you will discover a lot of strange coincidences. You will discover that, I don't know,
00:24:55
Speaker
You live in a city where your great grandfather lived also and you didn't know. You will discover that, I don't know, you are an engineer and your great uncle was also an engineer and you didn't know. It's strange coincidences.
00:25:26
Speaker
And while writing my book, I discovered a lot, a lot, a lot of these invisible transmissions. And for me, it was like a gift. It was as if I were speaking with my ancestors. That's so interesting that you say that. And I'm thinking about parts in your book where that happened
00:25:55
Speaker
The first thing that comes to mind is with you and your daughter, when she experiences antisemitism at school, you're very reluctant to bring that up to her. You hesitate to talk. Yeah. Do you think the cellular memory, do you think that is tied to it?
00:26:23
Speaker
Yes, I'm sure, because at that moment, when my mother called me and she said to me, you have to go at school, you have to ask the headmaster, the teacher what happened at school. It's awful, you have to fix that problem and I can't.
00:26:44
Speaker
I can't say anything. I can't even ask my daughter, just tell me what happened at school. Why do you say that people don't like Jews at school? What happened? And I was so shocked. And I understood after that it was because of a trauma.
00:27:13
Speaker
trauma of several generations. So the trauma is in myself. And that's why I was in that shock.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah, well, one of the things that your book, so your own Jewish identity is explored throughout the book. And you
Embracing Jewish Identity
00:27:41
Speaker
didn't grow up as a practicing Jew, if you wanna put it like that. You did not grow up in a religious family. But of course, religion is very much tied to this story.
00:27:56
Speaker
There's a scene I'm thinking about in your book, actually, where you're with Georges, I think, it's his name and his family. And they're religious. They're religious Jews. And they're kind of questioning you about your Jewish identity. And then one, a woman says, it sounds like you're only Jewish when it suits you.
00:28:21
Speaker
Talk a little bit about your Jewish identity and how that changed in your search for who wrote the postcard. It changed a lot because before writing this book, I never used to say that I was Jewish. Never. No, I have no problem saying it anymore and I know
00:28:51
Speaker
what this word holds for me, what meaning it has. So it makes a big difference. But you know, when you're writing a book, the book has to change you. If you are the same person before and after writing the book, it means that you had not worked enough.
00:29:20
Speaker
Wow, I love that. I'm writing a novel myself right now, so I hope to have that same experience in writing my own book. I wonder then, so now that you've written this book then, how do you see Judaism differently? Yes, because now it's a part of me and it's really a culture.
00:29:50
Speaker
more than for me, I made a culture more than a religion and I enjoyed to learn more and day after day more about it.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah. Well, a question, I guess, about just kind of thinking about your family and Jews in France in the 1940s and kind of how your great grandfather Ephraim, how he really wanted to be a citizen and he was an immigrant to France. And obviously, he was not protected by French society.
00:30:38
Speaker
I wonder, kind of thinking about modern day, when it comes to foreigners and immigrants, in what ways do you think society right now, in what ways do you think society is repeating some of the same mistakes that led up to World War II? In French, we have an expression, comparésun ne parésun. It means that one must be very careful when
00:31:08
Speaker
comparing situations, especially in history. However, what is certain is that mistakes are made. I don't know if mistakes are repeated, but mistakes are made today. And the problem is that when you have crisis,
00:31:38
Speaker
economic crisis, financial crisis. It always raised racism. And human beings struggle to rid themselves of the fear of the other and of the foreigner. And that's very sad.
00:32:03
Speaker
So I don't know if I answered your question, but it's difficult to answer to it. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's very tough because like you just said, it's so hard to compare because yes, there's, you know, World War II is just so hard to compare to any other conflict that has ever happened.
00:32:25
Speaker
But I was struck in your book with the citizenship aspect in wanting to be a part of a society that protects you and is there for you. And of course, I'm not French, so I don't really have a firm grasp of modern day French politics.
00:32:47
Speaker
But I did get a sense in your book that there were similarities between then and now with how immigrants are treated. Yes, but you know the book is built with two Passover nights, one Passover night in
00:33:13
Speaker
in 1919, and the other Passover night 100 years later. And it was important for me to have these two dinners, these two evenings, to show that I don't compare, but to show that
00:33:40
Speaker
The questions are always the same. Do we have to live? And it's important because the Passover night, Pesach, is the night when Jews are remembering the moment when Moses left from Egypt.
00:34:08
Speaker
So that's why the two dinners are important. Yeah. Well, on those kinds of lines, what lessons are you hoping that people take away from your book? I simply hope that people have had a literary experience because at first I'm a writer.
00:34:35
Speaker
And I want to write literature. So that's my first hope before the question of her lesson. And I also hope that they will have also learned things about war.
00:34:59
Speaker
just as I learned, because I'm not an historian, so I learned a lot for writing my book while writing this book. But at the end, for me, the most important thing is that we have to not forget what the Holocaust was, because
00:35:25
Speaker
You know, now in France, in the United States, the witnesses are getting older and older. And one day we will live, all children will live in a world without the witnesses. And
The Importance of Holocaust Education
00:35:46
Speaker
that's very dangerous, a world without witnesses. That's why we,
00:35:54
Speaker
the third generation, we have a mission, we have a duty, and we have to continue the account of the Holocaust. And we have to work for the witnesses. Wonderful. Well, Anne, this has been such a terrific interview.
00:36:23
Speaker
And thank you so much for your time today. What are you working on next? You know, I always work about my family. The book I wrote before the postcard was a book about my grandmother, Gabrielle. And the book will come out in the USA.
00:36:53
Speaker
I don't know when, but maybe in one year or two years. And no, I'm working, I'm writing a book about my parents and about my father and their life in France in the 70s. Wow. All right. Well, I hope that that makes it over here to America because I would like to read that.
00:37:19
Speaker
You will find Miriam because she's also in the story. You will find Gabrielle because she was very old. And so book after book, all the characters are moving. Yeah. I mean, that's so interesting when I was
00:37:47
Speaker
your blurb when I first introduced you. Claire, your sister, is in the blurb. And I was like, oh, she's in the book. So that's so neat that you get to write about your family, which is a fascinating family. So you have
Anne's Preference for Handwritten Letters
00:38:05
Speaker
lots to write about. Well, Anne, if people want to follow you, are you on social media? How can people get in touch with you?
00:38:14
Speaker
No social media. I'm not on social media. Good for you. Good for you. I'm not on Twitter. I'm not an Instagram. I'm a very old lady from another century. So if you want to contact me, you have to write me letters. Oh, that's great. I received hundreds of letters. Do you really? Yes. And I answer to all.
00:38:44
Speaker
Wow, that is... Each week, I spend one morning to answer to all the letters I receive. People write me to the address of my French editor. It's Édition Grassé, 61 St. Perce in Paris, in the 6th arrondissement.
00:39:15
Speaker
And I receive all the letters and I answer with my hand. Oh, that's incredible. You have the perfect writer's life. That's no social media, handwritten letters. Well, Anne, thanks again so much for joining me here today.
00:39:34
Speaker
The Postcard by Anne Barris. Go buy a copy. Go check it out from your library. What an incredible, emotional, impactful story. And Anne, thanks so much. Thank you.