Hitler Made Me a Jew Read Online Free PDF

almost entirely filled by a round table covered with a red-and-white checkered oil cloth.
    I had not seen my father for a year, and I was happy to be living with him, by himself, in Marseille, a hustling port city whose warm weather and blue sky enchanted me. We waited for my mother to organize her escape from occupied France and join us. It was getting harder and harder to leave the occupied zone, and we worried about how she was going to manage.
    The best memories I have of my father were the months we spent alone in his small apartment. When we lived in the Cité in Chatenay he was hardly ever at home. He traveled constantly selling anything he could from knives to tombstones. When he came home from these business trips we had short-lived festive reunions. He once brought me ham or saucisson sec : subversive treats forbidden by Dr. Carton, but my father thought it couldn’t be all that bad just one time. For a few days he would be in a good mood, and we had fun. Then he became sullen and quickly exasperated. He kept his own counsel and never talked about what bothered him; and he often made my mother and me tremble at his threatening silence. It was a relief to see him go off on the road again.
    In Marseille, I was surprised to find him far less disgruntled. It took me a while to get used to living in a small household away from the people of the Cité. But I loved my father’s cooking. He made bouillabaisse and french fried potatoes and the kind of food that could be cooked only in small quantities. We ate many dishes we never had in Chatenay. He was obsessively clean and neat, and he took great care of his kitchen utensils. He made it look easy as he flung his arms in the air and poured broth from pot to pot or threw in the air thin crepes. I admired his technique and the obvious pleasure he took in his own cooking.
    Across the street lived a retired sea captain with a talking parrot who jabbered all day long. It said, “Bonjour petite fille” and also screamed obscenities. This parrot made me love Marseille all the more. I also loved the special accent of Marseille which made everything seem comical. In Marseille everything was sunshine. When people shouted insults to one another, I thought it sounded like endearments. I wanted to belong to the city, and I immediately started to speak with the southern accent. Soon people believed I was born there.
    One day as I was standing in the back of the bus someone pinched my buttocks. I shouted “EH! Monsieur, you are pinching MY buttocks!” Everybody laughed. The man had to get off the bus in a hurry, and the other passengers praised me for being outspoken and brave. I knew this was my city.
    My mother arrived with her old rusty bicycle after she crossed the demarcation line. It had not been easy. Bicycles were rare and precious items and my mother used hers thoroughly. I remember her on her bicycle or just holding on to it ready to go anywhere wherever she heard food, any food, was being sold on the black market. She had a special sense for discovering places where she could buy foods we had not seen for years. She told us hair-raising stories about her escape from the occupied zone. As she was going down a steep hill, she pressed on her brakes and suddenly she realized she had no brakes and she had to scream, “No brakes! No brakes!” And, fortunately it made the people on the road give way for her and her bike. She left Paris with a friend who had relatives along the way. They decided to go biking slowly and always appear as if they were ordinary local folks. Her friend was French so he would answer the questions of the French gendarmes . They made sure to go to some stores in the villages or cities and make some conversation with the storekeepers collecting names and tidbits of local gossip. It was a harrowing time. They were stopped at every intersection and grilled by the police: “Where do you live?” They would have to know all