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each departure, a spectacle he evidently
relished.
I cannot forget the voice of one little four- year-old boy,
repeating over and over in a grave monotone voice, a voice too low for his
small body, "Maman, I'm going to be afraid, Maman, I'm going to be afraid."
Alice Courouble, a non-Jew who was interned in Drancy at the
time for wearing the yellow star in protest against it, described the fate of
these children in her memoir, Friend of the Jews, which appeared in
1945:
Elisabeth and I left in the middle of the
night, weighed down by receptacles of precious water. The buses were already
running their motors in the courtyard. The gendarmes' searchlights swept the
black stones.
The staircase was pitiful to see. On each floor, a pail
overflowing with urine and diarrhea dripped onto the stairs. Almost all of them
were suffering from dysentery, and many of them had gone to the bathroom on the
barracks' floor. A fetid smell took you by the throat.
Other volunteers
were already dressing the children. Elisabeth pushed open the door to the first
floor dorm. The room was filled with straw, like a stable. It was sinister in
the weak electric light, which was blue or white, depending on the bulb.
On every floor the same sight. On the third floor, we went in. The room
was crowded with filthy mats. The children, all with shaved heads, were
clustered near the door. Vision of the Orient. Oval faces elongated by fever
and fatigue. Suddenly, an arm appears, thrust from the jumbled pile of
children, and a finger points toward the insignia ["Friend of the Jews"] on my
jacket. A young man who looks about 18 shouts, "Ah, thank you, thank you!" and
throws his arms around my neck. He wraps me in his arms and kisses me on both
cheeks. A wave of excitement sweeps the children, who push toward us.
All the children have to drink from are empty cans. Those who own
beakers or tumblers are few and far between. A few hold out sardine cans, which
we fill again and again. One of them balances a stack of such tins on a flat
wooden box, as if it were a tray; all together, they barely add up to a single
ration. How is one to forget that? They lend each other empty cans. A
sweetness, a harmony exist among them. I serve them, but I feel at moments, a
desire to run away.
The littlest ones, the two- and three year-olds,
are sprawled on the floor like kittens and their little legs, spread open,
reveal the dirty bottoms of their underpants, black from sitting on the ground.
We gave them showers when they arrived, but we would have had to wash their
shirts and underwear too. Since they all have diarrhea, all their clothes are
soiled. They sleep entwined, manly little three-year-olds protecting those even
younger than themselves.
It was time to take their baggage downstairs.
It was still night. In my trips back and forth between the courtyard and the
dorm, I constantly ran into Elisabeth; we saw each other without looking at
each other.
On my way up to the upstairs dorm, a child's voice,
weeping, rises from the first floor, "It hurts!" And the walls echo the sound
of a terrible colic.
Each bus holds 50 children and bears the number of
a freight car. They board in a roar of engines and, in the circling glare of
the searchlights, which blind us, the children haul packages bigger than
themselves. Two little brothers have tied all their belongings into a round
bundle made from a sheet which they have dragged from camp to camp between
them. It is devastating to see this
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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