Dora Bruder Read Online Free PDF

exactly did the
Bruders understand by the term “Jew”? For himself, he never gave
it a thought. He was used to being put into this or that
category by the authorities and accepted it without question.
Unskilled laborer. Ex-Austrian. French legionnaire. Non-suspect.
Ex-serviceman 100% disabled. Foreign statute laborer. Jew.
And the same went for his wife, Cécile. Ex-Austrian.
Non-suspect. Furrier’s seamstress. Jewess. As yet, the only person
who had escaped all classification, including the number
49091, was Dora.
    Who knows, she might have escaped to the end. She had
only to remain within the boarding school’s dark walls and
merge into their shadows; and, by scrupulously observing its
daily and nightly routine, avoid drawing attention to
herself. Dormitory. Chapel. Refectory. Playground. Classroom.
Chapel. Dormitory.
    Â 
    It chanced—but was it really chance—that, at the
Saint-Coeur-de-Marie boarding school, she was back within sight of her
birthplace on the opposite side of the street. 15 Rue Santerre.
The Rothschild Hospital maternity ward. Rue Santerre was a
continuation of the Rue de la Gare-de-Reuilly and thus ran
alongside the school wall.
    A quiet, tree-shaded neighborhood. When, twenty-five
years ago, in June 1971, I spent an entire day walking around
there, I found it unchanged. Occasionally, a summer shower
obliged me to take shelter in an archway. That afternoon,
without knowing why, I had the impression of walking in
another’s footsteps.
    After the summer of ’42, the area around the
Saint-Coeur-de-Marie became particularly dangerous. For two years there
had been a succession of roundups, at the Rothschild
Hospital, at its orphanage of the same name, Rue Lamblardie, and
at the hospice, 76 Rue de Picpus, where the Gaspard Meyer
who had signed Dora’s birth certificate lived and worked. The
Rothschild Hospital was a trap for the sick from Drancy camp,
sent there only to be returned to the camp whenever it suited
the Germans, who were keeping watch on 15 Rue Santerre
with the help of a private police agency, the Agence Faralicq.
A great many children and adolescents of Dora’s age were
arrested, taken from their hiding place in the Rothschild
Orphanage, Rue Lamblardie, the first street on the right after the
Rue de la Gare-de-Reuilly. And, on the Rue de la
Gare-de-Reuilly itself, at number 48 bis , exactly opposite the boarding
school wall, nine boys and girls of Dora’s age or, in some cases,
younger, were arrested with their families. Indeed, the garden
and courtyard of the Saint-Coeur-de-Marie boarding school
were the sole enclave in this entire block of houses to remain
inviolate. But only on condition that you never went out, that
you stayed forgotten within the shadow of those dark walls,
themselves engulfed by the darkness of the curfew.
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    I’m writing these pages in November 1996. It seldom stops
raining. Tomorrow we shall be in December, and fifty-five
years will have passed since Dora ran away. It gets dark early,
and it’s just as well: night obliterates the grayness and
monotony of these rainy days when you wonder if it really is
daytime, or if we are going through some intermediary stage, a
sort of gloomy eclipse lasting till dusk. Then the street lamps
and shop windows and cafés light up, the evening air
freshens, contours sharpen, there are traffic jams at the crossroads
and hurrying crowds in the streets. And in the midst of all
these lights, all this hubbub, I can hardly believe that this is
the city where Dora lived with her parents, where my father
lived when he was twenty years younger than I am now. I feel
as though I am alone in making the link between Paris then
and Paris now, alone in remembering all these details. There
are moments when the link is strained and in danger of
snapping, and other evenings when the city of yesterday appears
to me in fleeting gleams behind that of today.
    I’ve been rereading the fifth and