For the first time in twenty-three years, the committee did not meet. The very old students of the Rue Tlemcen School - name of their association -, between Père Lachaise and Ménilmontant, in the XXth arrondissement of Paris, did not hold its monthly meeting, Wednesday April 1 at 10 a.m., in its local neighborhood. Of course, over the years, the empty chairs stood out more than the number of those present, ages 83 to 97.
This group of children, almost all Jewish, hidden during the war or deported, survivors of raids, was created in 1997 to pay homage to the kids of Ménilmuche and Belleville who disappeared in the Shoah. The commemorative plaques affixed in schools in eastern Paris started with them. Children who turned octogenarians who still recounted their crossing of the war in front of schoolchildren, middle school or high school students in the capital and elsewhere, the first fortnight of March. Until confinement.
Jacques: "I have the right to speak to my wife every ten days for five minutes ..."
Confinement, the one that lives it the hardest, is Jacques Klajnberg, 92 years old, one of the founders of the committee with his wife, Annette. They met in kindergarten. "I was 5, she 3. I have always been older than her," he manages to smile. But today, Annette, weakened by a stroke, is a resident of the retirement and geriatric home of the Rothschild Foundation (Paris XII), where there have been 16 deaths and 81 cases of Covid-19 declared on March 24. Jacques, who lives 100 m from the nursing home, was in the street, with his mask, that day, trying desperately to hear from Annette. Unable to enter. And talk to him.
His wife can express herself with difficulty, but cannot hold a phone. The nursing staff, overwhelmed by hundreds of residents in precarious health and who must disinfect each telephone used, proposed a telephone meeting with Annette to Jacques ... in ten days. "I live very badly. She has been in this house for five years. Five times 365 days… Imagine: there was not a single day when I did not scent her, comb her hair, take her to lunch at the restaurant downstairs, then take a stroll with us right next to where she spent the day - midday with me. Every day ! Will it hold? I imagine her suffering and it tortures me. "
The voice rises, powerful and helpless at the same time. “I pedaled in all the passes of the Alps. I still ride an hour in my apartment. It is not my confinement that weighs on me, it is for her, says the man who spent part of the war hidden by a railroad worker in a garden shed. I have the right to speak to my wife every ten days for five minutes, it's incredible… ”
Esther: "I feel like I'm in a grave"
Everyone on the "committee" thinks of Jacques. Esther Senot, also 92, survivor of Auschwitz, told us about him. However, Esther fumbles and gets bored, recluse in her retirement home in Les Invalides, where she is served her meals in her room from which she can hardly leave. She who, despite her age, loves to play air girls. “My last intervention was on March 18, at a college in Sceaux. I had train tickets for Nantes, Mulhouse, Montpellier. I like to testify, exchange, move. But here, I'm not going to tell you about my life, because my head is empty, ”plague the old lady.
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She flips through her agenda now reduced to nothing, getting lost in the dates: "See what it feels like to do nothing, we no longer know what day it is. I feel like I'm in a grave. I have never had such a feeling of confinement. We will not die from the virus, but we will die of boredom, ”says the one who resisted the camps, then, her life as a woman accomplished, at the loss of her husband and one of her sons. But chatting, she ends up laughing. And put it into perspective. “In the camps, some preferred to commit suicide. There, we are not going to do it for an epidemic ... People exaggerate to complain when they have a piece of garden anyway. The anger has gone down.
Rachel: "There's like an unintended impact"
Rachel Jedinak, 86, understands. The president of the small association, author of “We were only children”, walks in circles in her studio on the 8th floor of an HLM in the 12th arrondissement. "My daughter forbids me to go out. The elevator is full of bacteria. I got delivered, I have something to keep… ”
The one who escaped the Vél d'Hiv roundup because her mother, having seen an emergency exit at the Bellevilloise, assembly center before leaving for the velodrome in July 1942, had ordered her to flee without her, going so far to slap her to force her to leave and save her life, gnaws at her brakes: "I have told this scene in schools so much. All my appointments have been canceled. We, we have known terrible situations, we assume. I lived without parents. I lost my husband very early. I do not lament. Many ask me if confinement reminds me of war. No. The virus is invisible, and we are all in the same boat. And during the war, we had neither laptop nor computer. I am connected to the world. "
However, Rachel confides that she has "more nightmares than before", linked to the war these past nights. "There is an unintended impact. It goes away when I wake up. I am a good little woman who plays strong, ”she smiles. Tuesday, she was to send us photos. Unreachable. Wednesday, she reminds us. "I had angina. I was not well yesterday. I live day by day. Want a picture of my father too? "
Léna: “I consider myself a survivor. I think life is great. ”
Francine Segretin, 83, one of the youngest members of the committee, still perched on the hills of her native Belleville, also feels, sometimes caught up in her past: “My daughter announced to me the curfew in his commune of Seine-et-Marne. It reminded me of a completely forgotten memory. A man who was outside after the curfew downstairs. He had been arrested and shot, ”she says before going down to walk her dog. Léna Donerstein, 88, is her neighbor.
From childhood, a block away. Léna laughs on the phone, she who spent the war "hidden on a farm in Brittany" by the Righteous. "I'm doing my little half hour walk in my apartment, and I was sent something on the Internet, I don't know how to say, a video, to work out in the gym, I try, chance she hilarious. I take care, I take this opportunity to put away stuff. I consider myself a survivor. I think life is great. "
Jacques agrees, despite everything: “At the beginning, in the association, we had people like Henri Krasucki, the former boss of the CGT, who told us that we were writing a chapter in the history of the district. We had 200 members. We are only twenty. I miss meetings, where we share testimonies in schools. I find them wonderful, my buddies on the committee. Her voice is solar at once. If only he could call Annette.