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| The Postcard Anne Berest Europa Editions May 16, 2023 |
"One morning they found the tide had gone out very far, so far that the ocean was no longer in view. They had never seen anything like it in their lives, and for a moment they didn't speak. 'It's like the sea is afraid, too,' Noémie said at last."
Book Summary:
A Postcard shows up one day at the home of Anne's mother Léila's home 61 years after the people on the list:
Ephraïm
Emma
Noémie
Jacques
died at Auschwitz. This mysterious postcard leaves the family wondering who sent it, why they sent it, and what exactly the postcard means. This starts Anne and her mother, Lélia seeking the sender of the postcard.
Lélia's mother, Anne's grandmother, Myriam, was the sole survivor of her family, The Rabinovitches. She married Vicente Picabia because he was French and a Gentile she was for a time able to hide that she was Jewish. He and his family were part of the Resistance. Myriam hardly talked to her children about her childhood family and their religion. She didn't talk about her first husband, Vincente, and his family either.
I mean honestly, how would you feel if you were the only one left knowing what happened to your family? The Postcard made me wonder how I would cope with the emotional turmoil and what I would do with those emotions if I was Myriam. After reading this book, I see the world differently.
Lélia over the years researches and tries to piece together her mother's history, to help her understand what her mother went through right before Myriam became a mother. The postcard is just another missing, unanswered piece of that puzzle.
Myriam's family lived fully what little of their lives they had, and yet her little sister, Noémie, and brother, Jacques deserved to be able to live their full life, one where whatever they had dreamed could be achieved. This book moves from the past—the beginning of Ephraïm and Emma's marriage in Moscow, Russia to moving when his father, Nachman tells them they must leave to protect themselves from the October Revolution, to their life with their three children in Paris and Les Forges, then through Occupation, the Internment and Concentration Camps, Resistance,, then to the present day of Anne, her Mother Lélia, Anne's daughter, Clara, and the postcard mystery.
"Grandma, are you Jewish?
Yes, I'm Jewish.
And Grandpa too?
No, he isn't Jewish.
Oh, Is Maman Jewish?
Yes.
So I am, too?
Yes, you are, too.
Okay, that is what I thought.
Why are you making that face, sweetheart?
I really don't like what you just said.
But why?
They don't like Jews very much at school."
~ Clara, 2019
My thoughts
When do we stop hating people for their differences? When do we accept our diversity and celebrate other's traditions and cultures?
The Germans took first the strong fit "foreign Jewish" men to "go work" in Germany and then moved on to the healthy young Jewish people next, this included Noémie and Jacques. Can you imagine the terror their parents felt knowing their 16-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter were arrested only because they were Jewish? 4 days later and after three different prison transfers they were sent to an Internment Camp in Loiret. I can't fathom what more Ephraïm and Emma could do besides keep asking the Mayor where their children were. Lélia's later historical puzzle pieces flesh out what happens next for the children and then their parents.
The Postcard, like my own family history, is poignant, deep, and needs to be told over and over again. My paternal grandmother died thinking that her brother died at Auschwitz-Birkenau after he was taken as a resistor of the Nazis Party trying to help those who needed to be hidden. Two of my uncles and aunts went to the camp and were able to sweet talk their way into the records vault where their kind docent let them look at the register and they found out that my granduncle had not died at the camp but was liberated. The tragic thing about this is no one knew and no one saw him again. The Postcard talks about those kinds of tragedies too.
'"Have they let all the inmates out of the asylum?"
"No, It's just some old men coming back from Germany."
But they aren't old. Most of them are between the ages of sixteen and thirty.
"Is it only men they're bringing back?"
There are women on the bus, too. But their ravaged bodies and bald heads make it impossible to recognize them as such. Some of them will never again be able to bear children.'
~ pedestrians on the streets outside the Hotel Lutetia
I honestly don't think I've had a deep and body-wracking breakdown after reading a book before, where I couldn't compose myself for hours. The only emotion I could gather was a deep sadness for these poor souls who actually made it through repatriation and then couldn't go longer than that. Their poor bodies, their poor broken hearts. I recommend a box of tissues while reading this book. It starts out like the people in this story, complacent and naive, and moves on to the horrors that are unfathomable to even think about.
Naivety is a theme near the middle of The Postcard. Ephraïm applies for French citizenship. All Jewish People are asked to register with the local prefecture so Ephraïm, Emma, and Jacques register first and are assigned numbers 1, 2, and 3. Ephraim has no clue he is easing into the ruin of his family's lives. He feels if he does what is required he will finally be given French citizenship. This going in blindly is naive.
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| Leonore Sprie Field My Grandmother |
It saddens me we can’t have the conversation that needs to be had without being flattened down and shut out. Shutting down conversations is what leads to not seeing anyone that doesn’t agree with you; who is different than you or doesn't believe the same way you do, religion or otherwise. We need to have those conversations and I feel that The Postcard is a great conduit to those types of conversations.
The message of The Postcard radiates the pure goodness coming from those who try to help the Picabias and those like them, whether it is feeding them, hiding them, or leading them to safety in another country via car, or underground to the other side of a border crossing. However, It also shows the horrific attitudes of those who thought that the Jewish People deserved the treatment they got because they were thought of as uppity, monopolizing certain jobs, cultures, etc... these are lessons to be learned, absorbed, and made sure we don't continue today and into the future.
The courage and strength it took to even exist for the Jewish People, the resistors, and those others who were seen as different and sent to the camps are something to be in awe of and exemplified when it comes to us using our courage to stand up for what we believe is wrong when we see other people being ridiculed, bullied or beaten. We can not be complacent, we can not keep letting the anti-semitism continue even as this story talks about during even Anne's life and a few decades later into her daughter's life. We can never forget what happened or we shall repeat the past.
Ms. Berest literally took my breath away on pages 188,189,193 &199 of The Postcard which are the most sobering pages I have ever read in my 53 years of life. I’ve read so many books on the Holocaust, and the treatment of the Jewish People in Concentration Camps, however, The Postcard is the most comprehensive story of a race's eradication in modern times. This book should be read by EVERYONE.
I am grateful to Tina Kover for translating The Postcard into English so I could read it. It would've been terrible if I hadn't. I am also grateful to Europa Editions for the opportunity to read this book before it was released.
You can buy this book here on Bookshop, or at your local independent bookstore. Seriously, don't buy it at a big box chain or Amazon. Help keep those Mom and Pop shops open.
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