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Sarah Lew Miller

Remembrance

I was moving around in my big old house, taking care of domestic duties. Suddenly it felt so quiet around me, much too quiet. Thoughtfully, I turned toward the picture window in my dining room and looked outside. The sky was clear, the sun was shining. The leaves on the trees in front of me were of many colors, especially red and yellow, but not green. Steadily, those leaves kept on falling down making a multi-colored carpet on the ground. Not for long I thought. Soon they will become all wrinkled and dry.

The scene was beautiful and sad at the same time. I told myself it is like life. A few weeks ago those same leaves were lusciously green, blooming on their branches. Look at them now on the ground! I turned to my right instinctively, wanting to share my thoughts with my husband, but my companion of many years is no more. My two children, thank God, are married with children of their own, away in their own houses. In a reminiscent mood, in need to share my feelings, I sat at my computer, my new friend, to share on paper those wonders of nature that shaped my life from babyhood into maturity, from a sweet baby face to one that is wrinkled.

I was born November 30, 1926 in a Jewish ‘Shtetl”, in a small town called Dereczyn, Poland. I am the middle child of a family of eight. My father was a well-educated man from a prestigious Yeshiva. When my mother became of age, my grandfather, a well to do business man in his village, went to a Yeshiva and choose my father as his son-in-law. My mother, though a romantic at heart, did not have much to say in this matter. She accepted her fate, and besides, the groom was a handsome young man. In 1918, my grandfather installed my father in a leather goods business. But my father, all his life a student, was no business man. He was too soft and trustful with the peasants of the surrounding villages and no match for the ruthless dealers from the big city of Warsaw. The story goes that on his first business trip to the capital city, he came back with neither money nor merchandise.

Meanwhile, every year and a half like clockwork, a new child arrived. My father was unable to make a living for his family of seven children. By then, my grandfather had passed away and, in our poor village, there was no need for another rabbi or teacher. So in desperation, with the approval of my mother and the advice of the famous Rabbi Chafetz Haim, dean of the Yeshiva of Radin, my father left his family behind to seek work in Europe. The year was 1932.

My father wandered through a few countries until he found work as a Shohet, a ritual chicken slaughterer, at a Jewish food store in a working class neighborhood in Paris, France. There he struggled for five years in a job he did not like, but stayed in order to earn a living and to save enough money for his family to join him. The first time my father had to kill a chicken, he fainted, falling on the chicken’s blood. And so, in 1936, by end of December, my mother with seven children, left our Shtetl for Paris, France. Each child was in charge of a package, a pillow, or a bucket full of homemade jelly. I was ten years old then. It was my first trip away from home, my first trip on a train, and my first exposure to electric light. I remember my excitement on the train, watching from the window at night, seeing all those houses being illuminated. Those flickering lights seemed to me to be fallen stars settling on the ground. At a town, next to the border of France and Germany, we were stopped by the German authorities. They claimed that we were missing an important paper therefore could not cross the border. They ordered us to return to Poland.

My brave mother said “I am not going back to Poland. I would rather throw myself under the railroad train with all of my children.” Then a miracle happened. Facing us was a nun. She talked to my mother in a gentle manner, and then all the family followed her to her monastery for shelter. By then Hitler was already in power in Germany, and the few Jews left lived in fear and isolation. The nun told my mother that she knew a Jewish family that might be able to help us. She took my mother to an apartment, where it took a lot of persuasion to make someone open the door. The nun explained our situation to this Jewish man and asked him to help us by calling or writing to the immigration department in Warsaw, Poland, for the missing paper. Ten days later, while we were being sheltered in this house of nuns, the legal paper arrived. On January 3, 1937, we were reunited with our father in Paris. In my life of many miracles, this was the first one. We were saved by nuns in Nazi Germany who fed us delicious buttered dark, thin-sliced bread.

This was a big adjustment for me, but it would come in time. I did not like our apartment of two small dark rooms, a kitchenette large enough for only one person, a tall walled-in backyard with little sun coming through, and a father I hardly knew. I missed the open sky of my village and my girlfriends who spoke my language.. We were poor, but we were safe. With my younger sister Claire and two older brothers, I took the Metro every day to attend a private French school sponsored by the famous Hirsch family, where the Jewish holidays were observed and kosher meals were served.

In 1940 after the start of World War II, Germany occupied France. Our safe world was turned upside down. Our Jewish school was ordered closed, its director shot with many other Jewish intellectuals. No more school education for me, no more being a child. Survival was the target. We were exposed daily to humiliations, with the yellow star and all of the restrictions applied to the Jewish people under the Nazi occupation. The store owner where my father worked was caught in a raid and shot to death as part of reprisals when a German was killed by a French resistant. Soon after, I saw his young widow dressed in black, managing the store with her two little girls playing on the floor. I was just 12 years old and human cruelty did not make sense to me. I remember clearly observing this young widow and asking myself, why does she look so sad? It is not possible that her husband was killed for no reason. He surely was being held someplace in prison until the war is over.

When faced with deportation, my father prayed for a miracle while my mother fought to save her family. Separating us in small groups, she sent us to the country side for safe keeping. My youngest sister and I wound up in the village of Le Guedeniau where we lived in filthy conditions with an old woman who fed us poorly. My parents managed to stay in Paris, hiding in a small apartment under false identity. My mother, who hardly spoke French, risked her life regularly by going out and waiting in line for food. I knew their address and was able to correspond with them. At one time, my unhappy little sister Madeleyn, with the approval of my parents, left the village for Paris all alone by train to find their hiding place. I put a live chicken in her bag so my parents could prepare a kosher meal of which they had been deprived for a long time. This was frightening and dangerous for an eleven-year-old. She made it, and soon after, my younger sister Claire came to fetch her and take her to her hiding place with a French family in the country where our baby brother, Max, born in Paris, was also staying. All three siblings remained there safely until the end of the war.

I was a teenager and did not want to be a burden to my parents who were paying the old lady for my up keep. I went to the only coffee shop in Guedeniau and asked for a job as a maid in exchange for food and shelter. The owners, a young couple, knew I was Jewish. They said yes. The price was right. But for shelter, each evening after work, I had to cross the village to get to a decrepit building that had no heat, water or electricity. In the darkness of my room, I could hear the rats moving around. I survived this unpleasant experience for one full year. My mother, knowing how unhappy I was, wrote to me that I should return to Paris. Though it was impossible to stay with them, she had a plan. When I arrived at their hiding place, a handsome young man came to rescue me. He was sent by a Jewish underground fighting group called “La Sixieme”, the Six. He gave me a false identity paper, a new family background corresponding to my forged papers, and told me to remember it well in case we were questioned by the French Police or the German Gestapo. Under dangerous conditions, he took me by railroad to the town of Clermont-Ferrand in Central France. There I stayed in an apartment with other Jewish youngsters, living like a family, under the protection of the Jewish underground. Thanks to my false papers, I went to work in a hardware store. German soldiers often came in as customers. Under the watchful eye of my boss, I was obliged to serve them.

Time passed. The war was still raging in Europe. Our “Safe house” was under constant scrutiny by nosy neighbors who were suspicious of so many young people coming and going from our apartment. Our leaders decided that we had to leave in a hurry. Some of us went to a convent. Our dedicated young leaders risked their lives once again and smuggled the rest of our group, including me, safely to Switzerland. We were very lucky indeed to have made it, because the journey was so dangerous. We could bring no luggage, only whatever we could put on ourselves. I remember wearing two dresses. At the border between Switzerland and France, we were had to climb over barbed wire in a hurry, the bigger kids helping the smaller ones. Our guides disappeared; no time to say thanks or good-by. From afar, we could hear barking dogs, getting closer and closer. It was a frightening experience. Once on the other side, safe at last, we sat on the ground in a meadow. Our clothes torn, our hands bloody from the wires, we were somewhat in shock, waiting. Suddenly, two little neatly dressed blue-eyed girls with long pig tails appeared. They silently stared at us with eyes full of wonder, the way children look at strange animals in a zoo. Without uttering a word, they turned around and run toward a distant house. Soon after, we found ourselves facing the Swiss authority. I recall a long trip on a bus toward our refugee camp, admiring the beauty of the mountains surrounding us and the peacefulness of the villages we passed. Some of the heroes who saved my life and the lives of so many other Jewish children were caught and killed. I will be forever grateful to them.

My two older sisters, Helene and Paulette, were married during the occupation. My brother, Bernard, stayed on a farm while my brother, Jacques, on another farm, joined “Le Maquis”, the French underground. He fought with them as a French liberator.

Another year passed. The war ended. In May 1945, with the help of the French Embassy, I took a train to Paris and was repatriated with my family. I returned to our old apartment, empty of all its contents. My family was intact except for my sister Helene, whose husband had been deported and murdered. We were faced with the horrors of the Holocaust when we learned that in the village of my youth, Dereczyn, the entire Jewish population had been assembled in one day, walked to the neighboring woods and massacred. I realized then that my family’s survival was truly a miracle.

Here, I was, 18 years old, back with my parents and family, trying to decide what to do next. I would have loved to go to school and further my education, but I knew that I had to go to work because we were poor. As a refugee in Switzerland, I had worked and studied to be a pediatric nurse in a camp for new mothers. I showed my parents the complimentary certificate I received from the Swiss doctors with the advice to continue my studies. My mother said, “No, you are not going to be a maid in a hospital. You are going to get married soon and be a maid to your own children”. Poor mother had to wait 11 years for the pleasure of seeing me settling down and married.

We were getting used to peace and hope for a better life. My mother was busy refurbishing our flat with whatever bargains she could get. One day she came home with a violin that she purchased for me in a pawn shop. My childhood dream had been to play the violin like the Gypsies who regularly crossed through our little town in Poland. My mother had known about my wishes, but she had been unable do anything for me. We were too poor. In Poland, all her time and energy were spent feeding her seven hungry children. In France, the purchase of a violin plus lessons for me was still not feasible. My mother, wanting to fulfill my love of music, managed to find a young woman, the daughter of a friendly neighbor, who gave me free piano lessons. It did not last. Soon after the Nazi occupation came. The people in this apartment were deported and never came back. Its furnishings and the beautiful piano were looted, most probably shipped to Germany. In 1945, I began to take violin lessons. The teacher warned me that I would never be a virtuoso, but I could learn how to play if I worked hard at it. And so I did. But one day, while helping with the household chores, I developed an allergic reaction to the harsh soap I was using. Blisters appeared all over my palms. They were not painful, just not pretty to look at. I went to my lesson anyway, trying to hide them from my teacher. Consequently, I was not holding the violin correctly. The teacher ordered me to correct my hand placement, but I did not obey. So, impatiently, he approached me, touched my hand to turn it to the right position, and saw my blisters. He said “What is that!” I looked at him shyly and saw his disgusted frown. I do not remember my answer, but only that I painfully left his place in a hurry and never returned.

Thanks to an acquaintance of my father, I went to work for a charming and witty, but crooked lawyer. My office work consisted of entering accounting figures into legers for his business clients. Once a month, I was sent across Paris by Metro, which I loved, because I could read for 45 minutes. At the address indicated, I rang the bell and gave the maid an envelope with cash as payment for a certified accountant whom I never met. Wanting to better myself professionally, I began taking private lessons after work in secretarial skills from a retired teacher. A year later, while looking at an employment ad in a Jewish/French newspaper, I responded to a request for a secretary at a clothing manufacturer centered in Paris. I was interviewed by two partners and hired on the spot. I was doing well and happy at my new job. Then one day I got a letter from OSE, a French Jewish welfare organization, signed by Mr. Pugatz, a psychiatrist whom I met briefly in Switzerland. There, while in a transit camp, he came to visit all the Jewish kids to lecture us about our proud heritage. I recall dancing a Hora and singing Hebrew songs. His letter said that the Jewish Welfare Organization, OSE, greatly needed young people like me to help as counselors for the many Jewish orphans of the Holocaust temporarily brought into Paris from different countries, mainly Europe. Our task was to make a home for them until the time they would be free to travel to Israel.

After the war, my parents got in touch with our relatives in the U.S.A. One aunt, my father’s sister, invited our family to come. Because of the American quota system for Polish immigrants, my parents could not take along all of their unmarried children. With the encouragement of the rest of the family, my parents, together with my youngest sister and baby brother, left for the U.S.A. in April 1948. My sister Claire and I, sponsored by another relative, were waiting for our visas. My two older brothers stayed on in our apartment. Soon after, my brother Jacques, with a group of young French Jewish volunteers, left for Israel to fight in its War of Independence.

So here I was, employed with a good job, with the prospect of immigrating soon to the golden country of America, and in my hands a letter from the Jewish Welfare Organization telling me that I was needed. Did I listen to reason? No. I resigned from my company, left home to join a group of young people for a crash course in child psychology, traditional Judaism, and Zionism under the leadership of Mr. Pugats and other teachers. Upon graduation, I went to work near Paris in a home full of children of different ages. Although They spoke the language of their country of origin, we managed to communicate. French was taught during day classes. The home was really a beautiful estate, from the time of Napoleon called “Malmaison”.

Six months later, a group of children, their counselors and I left for Marseille where we stayed in a transit camp while waiting to go to Israel. We lived in a beautiful mansion facing the ocean on the outskirts of the town. In December 1948 we left for Israel by boat. On our arrival in Haifa, the children were transferred with loving care by leaders of Aliyat Hanoar to their new and safe homes. I was left in a transit camp close to Haifa, on my own as an adult with no money and little life experience. What a culture shock it was for me! I saw religious bearded men riding farm trucks and modern pioneers speaking Hebrew. How strange looking were those new refugees! Some spoke Yiddish, but mostly the languages of the countries they came from.

I left my camp to look for my brother Jacques who was in the new Israeli Army. It was a shocking surprise for him since he did not expect me. I also found cousins and family, old timers and real pioneers, who were very nice and helpful. But nevertheless, I was on my own and alone. I could have gone back to France, and at times I wanted to, but I did not. I still have in my old file a letter I wrote but never mailed to my bosses in Paris asking for my old secretarial job. Meanwhile, our visas came and my sister Claire left for America without me. Since I was not in France, I lost my place on the U.S. quota. After the Israeli War of Independence, my brother returned to France with some of his friends. I stayed in Israel, struggling to fit in. I went through painful and difficult experiences in Israel. I cried sometimes, but at the end of seven years, I felt like it was home, loving and understanding this new little country called Israel.

My working experiences in Israel were varied: I lived in a kibbutz for a year; another Kibbutz 4 months to learn Hebrew; 2 years in the Israeli Army. I then wanted to live in Tel-Aviv, in a hotel for woman, but Jaffa and Petah Tikvah were my living quarters for a while. I went from job to job for short periods, working as a maid a few times, in a factory to make soups and so on. Finally, in Tel-Aviv a good position came along as a clerk in an insurance company. Here, the knowledge of English was needed, but I did not speak it…With the help of some co-workers, I survived two weeks, and with my first pay-check I ran to the French Berlitz School of languages to enroll for English classes. While I was talking to the secretary in French, an aristocratic looking, mature man walked out from his office, introduced himself as “Mr. Cohen, Director General of Berlitz Schools in the Middle East.” We talked for a little while, then, he said that his secretary was leaving and that he wanted to hire me for the position. I was in shock and very pleased that he asked “little me” for such a task. A school of all places! I said no at first, because I was afraid. He insisted, telling me not to worry. Once again, I did not listen to reason, but to my heart. And so I made the change. Working for this French scholar, a member of the “Academie Francaise”, were the best years of my life in Israel. I loved my job. I was well paid. I felt like a “mench” at last. A full happy year passed. Then a registered letter came from the U.S. embassy telling me that my visa to leave Israel for America was ready. It was time for me to join my family. My parents were worried about me, living all alone and not being married with children! And I missed them too. On the day of my departure to the United States via France, I drove in a taxi with two friends, from Tel-Aviv to the port of Haifa. I did not stop crying, but this time those tears were of sadness for leaving this country I learned to love.

In December, 1955 I began my journey. Leaving Israel by boat for France was a wonderful experience because as soon as the boat left the port of Haifa, being surrounded by calm water, the blue sky above and the gentle rhythm of the moving boat, relaxed me completely. For a few days, I did not think from where I came or to where I was going. I just enjoyed the ride. In Marseille, I continued by train to Paris. The plan was to stay with my sister Paulette, visit the family, and continue my journey by the ship Elizabeth 2 to the U.S.A. This well-planned schedule changed with a letter informing me that my ship was in need of repairs and not able to sail on time. Meanwhile, in France it was winter. I felt cold all the time, in the street, in the theatre, wherever I went I was freezing. I was waiting impatiently to continue my trip. Then the boat company informed me that my ship would not be seaworthy for months, and that they made a deal with Air France. I could use my paid ticket to fly to the United States at no extra cost. In 1955, commercial flying was still a novelty. I was terrified to fly, but I agreed nevertheless. The day of departure, at the Orly airport, I said good-by to my family in France, my married sisters, my older brothers and off I went. The plane was half full. One hour in the air, we heard an announcement from the pilot that there was a mechanical problem with the plane and that we were returning to Orly for repairs. They put us up in a hotel. The next day, I and a handful of people went back on the same plane. Most of the other passengers refused to go. The small group on the aircraft got drunk and played cards. I, all alone, unable to sleep, kept busy counting the minutes in that bumpy plane, waiting to put my feet on solid ground. The time came 12 hours later. What a relief! At Idlewild Airport, I walked off the plane under a sunny sky and snow on the ground. I ran toward my sister Claire, her husband Paul, and their baby.

A day later, I continued my trip by train to Pittsburgh, where my parents and my youngest sister Madeleyn lived, as well as the family who sponsored their trip to America. My youngest brother Max was a student in a yeshiva at the time. I stayed less then six months with my parents. They tried their best to make me feel at home, but I felt restless. Seven years on my own left his mark. I was 29 years old. I did not fit into the mold of being a child anymore. Meantime, my American cousin Phyllis found me a job in her company as a filing clerk. The boredom of this kind of work, in a windowless office with not a piece of sky to look up, was suffocating me slowly. I decided that New York City was the place for me. I wrote to my sister Claire, who lived with her family in Queens, N.Y., asking her permission to come and stay with them for a while. She said yes. So, here I was in their small apartment, sleeping on a couch, my valise under it. Immediately I began looking for a job. I remember looking the bulky Sunday New York Times and getting dizzy just trying to understand the ads with my poor knowledge of English. I soon gave up. In despair, I chose to visit the office of the Israeli boat company Zim, hoping for employment in their office or on their traveling boats. I thought that coming from Israel, and my knowledge of Hebrew as well as French might be helpful. In a quiet office, I met a serious, skinny young man, who did not need anybody, but that a friend nearby always needed extra help in his office. That is how I found work as a payroll clerk with a steamship company in downtown New York City, next to the water, in an office surrounded by windows, where twice a day we were served pastry and drinks served by a beautiful young black woman. She was the only black person I ever saw in this building. The people in my office were friendly. I felt good and excited about my new surroundings.

Months later, on a Sunday afternoon, in NYC, Anne, a girl friend of mine from Israel and her fiancé took me along with them to a dance club. They danced happily and I sat alone and felt out of place. On the way out, waiting for Anne’s fiancé to fetch our coats she said to me, “There is a nice-looking man with a pipe looking at us.” I turned around to see for myself. Facing us across the hall stood a man of medium stature. He was well dressed, with a handsome, intelligent face, and smoking a pipe. Our eyes met. Immediately, shyly, I turned back, but too late to undo this fateful turning point in my life. Within minutes, he was next to us, introducing himself to me and then to my friends as Joseph Miller.

He was a Polish Jew who came to this country a year of before I did. He lived in Rego Park, Queens. He proposed to take me home in his car. I hesitated for a moment thinking could I trust this stranger? The alternative was to ride alone on the subway at midnight. I said, “Yes you can take me home and I said “Yes” when he asked me to marry him months later. We were wed October 1957. The Jewish ceremony was led by my father, the Rabbi. We moved to an apartment in Queens where my daughter Rebecca was born and four years later my son Gabriel.

My husband first worked as a technician for a photo and printing studio in New York City. He then became the owner of a photographic studio in Queens, which he loved, but the overhead expenses, did not allow for a decent living. Thereafter, we moved as a family from Queens to Mamaroneck, a working class neighborhood where we owned a food store with living quarters upstairs. But the long working hours, little satisfaction, and no time for family or friends began to depress us both. Realizing that, my husband, a man of action, sold the place. Not knowing where to go next, my he proposed California “No, it is too far away from my elderly parents,” I told him. “Would you like to go to Brooklyn, where your parents and family live?” He said. My answer again was “No, it is like going backward in our life.” Soon after, we drove to Stamford, CT just to take a look, and we stayed. We did not know a soul in this town, and we did not have work. My little boy was not yet three years old and my girl was age seven. The only person we knew was the Jewish real estate lady, who sold us a little ranch house, clean and well kept. Her name was Florence Friedman and she became our first friend. Thanks to her we met others.

My husband found work with a family-owned food store chain. He began as a delicatessen man and graduated as a buyer for this company, where he stayed until his retirement. As soon as our little girl was settled in school, I began looking for a job. But first I had to find day care for my son. It was a difficult task. I didn’t like anything I saw. My heart was aching, knowing that I would have to entrust my son with strangers. Then lucky me, I met a business woman in town who told me that her son went to the best day care center in town, run by the city. She was right. It was specifically build for the care of small children. They accepted my little boy, and soon after I was offered a job as their bookkeeper. I went contented to work with my little boy beside me.

Four years later, with my son in Public School, the time came when I needed a more challenging job in my life. I quit suddenly and signed up for night classes at Rippowam High School on accounting. In the New York Times, there was an ad for a bookkeeper in a country club. I said to my husband, “Joe, look at this, it looks interesting” My husband read it carefully and said to me, “Sarutzka, I can see from their telephone number that it comes from Darien. They are not going to hire you. They do not employ Jewish people, nor do they have Jewish members.” I said “Quel dommage” what a pity! A few minutes later, I continued, “You know, I never saw a country club.” His answer was “So, this is a good occasion to see one.” I made a phone call and got an interview with the owner of the club, Mr. Auchincloss. He asked me many questions, except the one I volunteered to answer on my own. I told him that I was Jewish and proud of it. I enjoyed the shocking surprise on his face. I also told him that once a day, after school hours, I always call home from work to talk to my children for a little while and to be sure that they are doing well. After several interviews, he told me that he was hiring me as their full charge accountant/bookkeeper, against the advice of his pal from Yale, the accountant who felt I was not qualified professionally to do the job. But he, the boss, trusted me because I told him the truth. He also liked my handshake and believed that I could do it.

He was right. I did it! For five years I worked in this private segregated club, their first Jew. It was a challenging and learning experience. But as time went on, I felt lonely with no friend to talk to. I began to think about going on for another position. Those thoughts came to an end abruptly. Fate took care of it. For the first time in my life I was fired, not by a face-to-face confrontation, but by a notice I received by mail. The letter arrived while I was on vacation, telling me that my services were no longer needed. It was signed by the manager of the club. The firing was a total surprise, but the reason for it made sense. The manager who signed the dismissal letter resented me from day one. Here I was, a woman, in place of the male accountant the owner dismissed while he was on vacation. I was hired by the owner of the club, I was granted the privilege not to work on Saturdays. I came instead on Mondays, while the club was closed. The manager kept quiet for a while, letting me do my job. I did hear a few anti-Semitic remarks from him at times when I took off for the Jewish Holidays. Years later, while Mr. Auchincloss was away from the club a lot, due to his wife’s illness, the manager came after me with a vengeance. He wanted me to work on Saturday like everybody else. I refused. He ordered me to report at the office when I came in the morning and sign out when I left. I do not remember how I answered him, but I did not do it. Therefore, the day I was rushing in the office, getting ready to go for my two- week vacation, he came to my office with new complaints. This time, I was too tired to be smart. My brain told me not to respond, but my voice came out in anger. I told him that he was not going to boss me around like he did all those Puerto Rican workers. He left my office in a hurry. He must have gone to the big boss to complain about me. Management understood that I was not a good soldier, bad for the morale of the rest of the staff. This is why I was fired.

I found work at the brand-new Italian Center for a year. I soon found work with the American Red Cross. This time I was given a title “Financial Administration” It was a friendly place, with interesting work and new challenges. I stayed there until my retirement in 1991, at age 65.

While I was working, my children were growing. The clock goes forward and so do we. My husband suffered a stroke, and after a few years of hardship for the whole family, he passed away in September, 1994.

So, here I am, alone in my big old house, full of precious memories.

EPILOGUE

Today November 30, 2000, is my birthday. I am 74 years old. In a just a few pages I laid out my life story. But all those years, what guided me? What drove me to follow a path that shaped my life and made me the person I am?

I know that the early uprooting from my place of birth made me a shy person, made me feel that I was not like everybody else. I did not fit exactly with most of the classmates in my school. I was poorly dressed and a foreigner with a strange accent. Their disdain and unfriendliness made a mark on me for a long time. I recall a painful experience years later in Switzerland, at the refugee camp. When the war was over, the manager walked in at dinner time to announce that she had a letter from the French Embassy and asked for a volunteer to read it loud for the French-speaking audience. The girl next to me yelled out, pointing at me, “She does.” Yes, I could have, by then I spoke and read French very well. Yes, I wanted to, very much. Yes, I wanted to be the center of attention, even for a few minutes. But, I said no, I cannot. Blushing and in pain, very mad at myself for saying no, when what I really wanted was to stand up and say yes, with confidence.

The Holocaust years absolutely marked my life. The constant worrying, the overprotection of my young children, the nervousness inside me, insecurity feelings and more, are all side effects from my experiences during the Nazi occupation. But most of all, not having a formal education gave me an inferiority complex which in turn drove me to do the best I could at work and the need to prove myself worthy. Again, to my mind comes a painful moment that I will never forget. The year was 1969. I was looking for a new job, a process I detested because I had to lay out on paper, my education, which consisted only of a “Certificat D’Etudes Primaire” from Paris, France. I went for an interview in Old Greenwich, CT. There after filling out an application and waiting for quite some time, I was ushered to the boss of this company, who looked me over and then began to ask me questions in a very bossy and cold manner. I was paralyzed, and my mind did not respond smartly enough to his questions. I did not know the educational differences between the term “Lycee” and “College” in France. He dismissed me abruptly, telling me that I implied that I went to “Lycee” but he knew from my answers that I did not. I left in a hurry. In the parking lot next to my car, I began to cry, hysterically, loudly, for a long, long time.

My father was a well spoken man, knowledgeable in world politics, very well educated in the Torah, a religious man. He did not talk to me or my sisters very much, but I know that he spent his life making a living for his family at a job that did not give him any satisfaction, accepting his fate without complaint. It was my wonderful Jewish mother who profoundly inspired me and taught me by her example to do the right thing and to have heart. With all her hardships, she never lost her joy for life. She adored the Jewish theatre, loved to read. She shared with us girls the romantic stories printed in the Jewish “Feuilleton” serial newspaper column.

I will never forget a scene of many years ago, in our apartment in Paris. We were poor, but my mother managed to give a meal every Wednesday to a young Yeshiva boy. He was a skinny young man, sad-looking, who never looked at or talked to us. But after the meal, he always said thank you to my mother. Once I asked my mother who he was. Her answer was that he came from Poland to avoid being drafted in the Polish Army. Each day of the week, he got a meal in a different Jewish home, otherwise he would starve. I also recall the blue tin “pushke” on a shelf in our apartment reminding us of our duty to put in change. When full it was delivered to the Jewish National Fund for the purpose of buying land in “Eretz Israel”, Palestine.

And there is one more story of my mother’s kindness that must be told. One night during the occupation, the French Police, collaborating with the Nazi occupier, came to our apartment to pick up our father or all the family for deportation. They found my mother, the rest of us were hiding at French Jewish neighbors, who at that time felt secure. My mother was taken to Drancy, a transit camp close to Paris, from where thousands and thousands of families, young mothers and their babies, were deported daily to the death camps in Poland. At this time my two older sisters were married. Helene, the oldest one, lived in a provincial town called Nevers. Paulette and her husband lived in Paris. They both were professional furriers, a trade very useful to the Germans therefore they got papers protecting them from deportation. My brother-in-law, Maurice and my sister went into action trying to save our mother from deportation. My sister Paulette risked her life daily, going to the camp with the necessary papers. One day she was told, yes, wait, she is coming out. And there she was at the door, but not for long. The guards searched her and found letters she was smuggling out for the other woman left behind. My mother knew it was against the rules of the camp and dangerous, but she did not have the heart to say no to those begging and crying women. She was immediately returned to the camp. My brave and beautiful sister did not give up. She continued coming for weeks, until the day she saw our mother coming out free.

Now at maturity, do I remember the Holocaust years? I must say yes. I will never forget. Is it in my life constantly? No. Is it still painful to have lost my youthful dream of becoming a violinist? At times, when I am watching or listening to the music of a virtuoso. What I do now is appreciate life, my family, my freedom. It

only takes a beautiful sunny day to make me happy. What awaits me tomorrow? I do not know. I admit I do wonder sometimes.

December 2000

father, Abrahan Lew and my mother, Scheina Gorinowski, were married.