You had chosen France, she isn’t the melting pot you’d hoped for. Everything is getting tense again. We’re called “French Jews”; there are also French Muslims, and here we are, face-to-face—I who had hoped never to take sides, or at least, to simply be on the side of freedom. I’ve listened to threats that sounded like echoes from the past, I’ve heard people shouting “Death to the Jews” and “Jews, fuck off, you don’t own France,” and I’ve wanted to throw myself out the window. Day by day, I’m losing my convictions, the nuances, some of my memories; I end up questioning my past commitments; I see policemen outside of synagogues but I do not want to be someone who needs protection.
I lived because you wanted me to live. But I’ve lived the way I learned to back there, taking one day at a time. And there were some beautiful days, in spite of everything. Writing to you has helped me. When I talk to you, I don’t feel consoled. But I release what is clasped tightly in my heart. I would like to run away from the history of the world, from this century, go back to my own time, the time of Shloïme and his darling little girl. That way I can return to my childhood, to the adolescence that was stolen from me, and that’s normal at my age.
Two years ago, I asked Henri’s wife, Marie: “Now that we are approaching the end of our lives, do you think it was a good thing for us to have come back from the camps?” “No, I don’t,” she replied, “we shouldn’t have come back. But what do you think?” I couldn’t say whether she was right or wrong; all I said was: “I’m starting to think like you.” But I hope that if someone asks me that question just before I’m about to die, I’ll be able to say, “Yes, it was worth it.”
* La petite prairie aux bouleaux (The Birch-Tree Meadow), 2003 (Trans.)
† The final movie, made in 1986, in a trilogy by Axel Corti (Trans.)
About the Author
Marceline Loridan-Ivens was born in 1928. She has worked as an actress, a screenwriter, and a director. She directed The Birch-Tree Meadow in 2003, starring Anouk Aimée, as well as several documentaries with Joris Ivens. Now 87 years old, she lives in Paris.
Copyright
First published in the USA in 2016 by
Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
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New York, NY 10011
First Published in the UK in 2016 by
Faber & Faber Limited
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This ebook edition first published in 2016
Copyright © Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 2015
Translation copyright © 2016 by Sandra Smith
Cover design by Faber
Cover photographs © Robert Doisneau/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images and © Imagno/Topfoto. Author photograph: JFPAGA © Grasset
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ISBN 978–0–571–32803–1