The Journal of H?l?ne Berr Hardcover - 2008

Friday, 10 July

At the library I had nothing to do. I almost finished Eyeless in Gaza. Remarkable.

Nicole S. came to collect me.

Mlle Detraux for lunch.

A new order’s been issued today, about the métro. In fact, this morning, at École Militaire, I was about to get into the front carriage when I suddenly realized that the harsh words of the inspector were addressed to me: “You there, in the other carriage.” I ran like a hare not to miss the train, and when I got into the last-but-one carriage, tears were pouring from my eyes, tears of rage, and of protest against this brutality.

In addition, Jews are no longer entitled to cross the Champs-Elysées. Theatres and restaurants are off limits. The news has been couched in normal and hypocritical terms, as if it was an established fact that Jews are persecuted in France, as if it was a given, accepted as a necessity and a right.

When I thought about it, I boiled with such rage that I had to come into this bedroom to calm myself down.

Went to the Charpentier gallery with Nicole and Bernard, who took us back to his place for tea.


Saturday, 11 July

Music practice. Afterwards, the Pineaus and Françoise Masse as well as Legrand were here. Played the “Trout” Quintet. I wasn’t the hostess I wanted to be. Around 6.30 . . . the corset-maker and Mlle Monsaingeon called. When I returned to the lounge, it was too late. Everyone was leaving. The Simons came after dinner.


Sunday, 12 July

Aubergenville with Mme Lévy.


Monday, 13 July

Jean Morawiecki at the library. He walked back here with me without waiting for his exam results. . . .


Wednesday, 15 July, 11.00 p.m.

Something is brewing, something that will be a tragedy, maybe the tragedy.

M. Simon came round this evening at 10.00 to warn us that he’d been told about a round-up for the day after tomorrow, twenty thousand people. I’ve learned to associate the man with disasters.

Day began by reading the new order at the shoe shop, also ended the same way.

A wave of terror has been gripping everybody else as well these past few days. It appears that the S.S. have taken command in France and that terror must follow.

Without saying so, everybody disapproves of our staying. But when we broach the subject ourselves, disapproval is expressed in no uncertain terms: yesterday, it was Mme Lyon-Caen; today, Margot, Robert, M. Simon.


Saturday, 18 July

I am resuming this diary today. On Thursday I thought life might have ground to a halt. But it has gone on. It has resumed. Yesterday evening, after my day at the library, it had returned to such normality that I could hardly believe what had happened the previous day. Since yesterday it has turned again. When I got home just now, Maman announced that there was a great deal of hope for Papa. On the one hand, there’s Papa’s return. On the other, this departure for the Free Zone. Each of these things brings its own trial. The departure gave me a feeling almost of despair, I can’t work out why. I came home geared up for the struggle, united with the good against the bad; I had been to see Mme Biéder, that poor mother of eight whose husband has been deported; she lives in Faubourg Saint-Denis. Denise and I stayed with her for a quarter of an hour; as we left, I felt almost glad to have plunged myself into real suffering. I definitely felt that I was guilty, that there was something I hadn’t been seeing, and that this was reality. This woman’s sister who has four children has been taken away. On the evening of the round-up she had gone into hiding, but fate had her come back down to see the concierge just when the policeman was coming to get her. Mme Biéder is like a hunted animal. She’s not afraid for herself. But she’s afraid they’ll take her children away. Some of the children they took had to be dragged along the floor. In Montmartre there were so many arrests that the streets were jammed. Faubourg Saint-Denis has nearly been emptied. Mothers have been separated from their children.

I’m noting the facts, in haste, so as not to forget them, because we must not forget.

In Mlle Monsaingeon’s neighbourhood, a whole family, the father, the mother and five children, gassed themselves to escape the round-up.

One woman threw herself out of a window.

Apparently several policeman have been shot for warning people so they could escape. They were threatened with the concentration camp if they failed to obey. Who is going to feed the internees at Drancy now their wives have been arrested? The kids will never find their parents again. What are the longer-term consequences of what happened at dawn the day before yesterday?

Margot’s cousin, who left last week, and we knew she hadn’t succeeded in her attempt, was caught at the demarcation line and thrown into jail after they’d interrogated her eleven-year-old son for hours to get him to confess that she was Jewish; she has diabetes, and four days later she was dead. It’s over. The prison matron had her moved to a hospital when she went into a coma, but it was too late.

On the métro I met Mme Baur, looking as gorgeous as ever. But she was worn out. She did not recognize me straight away. She seemed amazed that we were still there. I always want to be proud when responding to that. She told me we would have lots to do at the U.G.I.F. She didn’t hide the fact that it would soon be the turn of women who were French citizens. When she mentioned Odile, it seemed like something very far away.

But if we have to leave, to leave and abandon struggle and heroism in exchange for dullness and despondency — no, I’ll do something. The common people are admirable. Apparently quite a lot of factory girls lived with Jews. They are all coming forward to request permission to marry to save their men from deportation.

“Reading The Journal of Hélène Berr, a diary of denial, heartbreak, and resistance that her family’s cook passed on to surviving relatives after Hélène’s death at Bergen-Belsen, is like watching a sunset: an inevitable, achingly vivid journey into the dark.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine

“[A] brilliant, passionate and brave young woman. . . . Her vibrant voice — full of anguish, compassion, indignation and defiance — springs from these pages — as extraordinary a document of occupied France as Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The publishing sensation of 2008 . . . We seem to understand for the first time the horror and absurdity Jews had to face every day in occupied Paris.”
— Liberation (Paris)

“A work of exceptional literary and historical qualities.”
— Sud Ouest

“Deserves to be a publishing sensation.”
— Ottawa Citizen

David Bellos is the first ever winner of the Man Booker International Translator's prize for his translations of the distinguished Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare. He is currently the professor of French and Comparative Literature at Princeton University.