In 1938 we went to live in Normandy with my Uncle Léon, my mother’s younger brother. He was a complex personality, a self-made man who’d come up the hard way and who, though he could appear extremely irritable, finicky, sometimes even tyrannical, was infinitely kind and devoted to us. He was the one who’d paid for our move to France, who’d found work for my father in Paris and even our accommodation. He had no children of his own and since, in his mind, a house without bursts of laughter and uproarious merriment was synonymous with sadness, he’d had a huge house built, cut into two identical halves in the hope that one day we would come to live there. The events of 1938, the annexation of Austria by Germany and the reports of the tracking down of the Jews, indicated the imminence of war and sped up our reunion. Clearly the capital was becoming too dangerous for a family such as ours, both foreign and Jewish.
And it’s true that during the first years of the war we were protected in Vire. The people there made us welcome, partly because of my uncle’s reputation as an honest stall-holder. Out there everyone knew and respected him. He’d become French because he’d volunteered during the 1914-18 war, in which he’d lost one of his lungs.
At that time, I had the only diploma I ever obtained in my whole life, the certificate attesting that I had completed elementary school. As I was still under fourteen, they sent me to school until I was old enough to leave. The fact that I came from Paris gave me a special status in Vire. At school the boys admired me. And, I may add, the girls, with whom I took the path to the school across the countryside, singing rounds.
There was one, Dora Augier, who was very timid and always stayed close to me. I liked her a lot, but I was careful to avoid running into her father, an old man who looked like a pirate captain because of his wooden leg.
There was another boy who, like me, already had his certificate. This was Bragantti, a lively, impish little Italian with whom I immediately hit it off. Since we’d already finished the curriculum the principal, M. Madeline, who didn’t want to let us spend the whole year getting bored, suggested setting up a school cooperative and using the money for the two of us to create a school newspaper. We bought a cheap old printing press and salvaged worn block letters and out-of-fashion fonts from printers as well as from the regional daily paper, which was not unhappy to get rid of them while at the same time doing something for the school. It was both educational and fun, and lucrative as well. We sold the newspaper in order to top up the fund and to buy new, more efficient equipment.
Bragantti and I spent the school year discovering the principles of typography, the means of printing drawings in the desired quantity, and engraving. At the early age of thirteen I was already fascinated by printing.
My elder brother Paul was old enough to go out to work and my parents had decided that, to thank my uncle for his generosity, Paul would help him at the markets. Léon sold hosiery in the squares of the towns in the area. The problem was that they both had quick tempers, and Léon was not used to someone standing up to him. There was one argument after another, and the whole house suffered from their quarrels. In order to calm things down, my mother decided one day that, since I already had my certificate and was more docile, I would leave school and replace Paul. A nightmare for me, who has always been allergic to commerce and now had to abandon the enjoyable school print room, and that’s not to mention that my uncle had the annoying habit of rebuking his assistants with a kick in the butt. In time, I would’ve certainly been able to become reconciled to selling, but the public humiliation on the other hand, no, definitely not.
After a few weeks out in the cold being ill-treated by Léon, I ran off to get myself taken on at the factory on the corner—even lying about my age, since I wasn’t fourteen yet. The Société générale électrique made airplane instrument panels for the French army. I would have accepted anything rather than the markets. And it turned out that I liked the factory pretty well. It was a new world for me where I met people who were to be important for my life. As I was young, I was taken on as an apprentice, and I was put in the wiring section, with the women. Aha, I can see you’re smiling. You’re going to be disappointed—they were all much older than me; I had no chance at all. On the other hand, they confided in me, and I took that very seriously. I learned a lot. There was one who was sweet, she must have been about twenty. Cécile. She was roguish and funny.
And she smoked. She’d say, “You’re not a man yet, so I can tell you things. If you were older it’d be improper…” Or then, “Come and give me a kiss, Adolphe. Here, on my lips, you’re not very cuddly, are you…” and she’d burst out laughing. I think it amused her to debauch me a little.
There were also a few men who became my friends. Jacques, a country guy, and Jean Bayer, a redhead from the north, very politically aware, who impressed me a lot because he’d been in prison for hitting his alcoholic father over the head with a hammer when he was beating his wife. He sang Tino Rossi songs and, above all, the songs of the Commune,2 revolutionary songs. He was a rebel. He had the charisma I dreamed of while I was still at the stage where I was trying to develop a confident demeanor. At the factory I learned to see myself as a grown-up. Now don’t laugh. The whole of my adolescence lies in those few months I spent there. I discovered politics. And there I was free and independent for the first time. That’s why it’s important.
Then, one day, they arrived. It was June 1940. I’d bought a bicycle for the eight kilometers to the factory. Paul—who, like me, refused to submit to Léon’s fits of rage—had come to join me there, but in a different section. I was concentrating on trying to beat my bicycle speed record when I saw them coming toward me on the Vire road. The tanks.
Brand new, as if they’d just rolled off the production line. And the soldiers all in gleaming boots and impeccable uniforms. Then I understood what my father meant when, seeing the French draftees in their uniforms that didn’t match, some without helmets, he said, “This time it’s certain. We’ve had it, we’re not going to win the war with an army like that.”
I was alone on the road, face to face with them. I immediately turned around and pedaled off as fast as I could. I hadn’t realized they were so close. For me the threat was still far off, even though at the outbreak of the war I’d seen hundreds of refugees, transporting all their possessions along the roads as they fled before the German army. They came from Belgium and the north of France. We’d even put some up and they’d told us about their interminable march, interspersed with bombardments. Then they’d left, heading for another unknown destination. But we hadn’t moved. Once Léon had loaded the truck, ready to pack up and leave, but eventually he’d changed his mind, thinking there’d always be time to go later on. Everyone refused to believe the war would drag on like this.
Once the Germans arrived, the factory closed down then reopened some time later to work for German aviation, with a ban on employing Jews. As for Jews, there were only two of us. Paul and I were thrown out. As we were being taken to the door, I heard a voice from behind the work benches: “London calling, London calling. Radio Paris is lying…”
I immediately recognized the voice of my friend Jean Bayer, who, in his own way, was showing his solidarity with us. Some women applauded us, some workers whistled in protest, but the foremen quickly stopped the racket. The war had arrived in Vire.
Rather than going back to working the markets, I quickly replied to an advertisement for an apprentice dyer. M. Boussemard was a chemical engineer, a former NCO in the French army who’d been demobilized for health reasons. He took me on to replace his assistant, who was a prisoner of war. At first he felt I was so young that my work was limited to lighting the boiler, but I very quickly extended my duties. There were shortages of everything and, since it was difficult to find reasonably priced clothes, what we most often had to dye were military uniforms and greatcoats from the ’14-’18 War, which we had to change from khaki to brown or navy blue to turn them into civilian clothes. Hard, tiring work, especially in winter. Each item had to be rinsed out in the river when the weather was icy. My own clothes would freeze on me and my hands were numb with cold, but I was being paid and, above all, it was there that I made my first