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Sarah LICHTSTEIN was born on March 16, 1928,
in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Both she and her mother survived deportation on
convoy 75 of May 30, 1944. They had already
been arrested during the Vel d'Hiv roundup and managed to escape from the
Vélodrome on July 16, 1942. Sarah told the story of her escape when she
returned from deportation: Although only fourteen years old at the time, I
can still see every detail of that day marked by grief which I am one of the
few to have survived. It is Tuesday, July 15th. In school, my Jewish friends
said there were rumors of a massive roundup of Jews the next day, but I didn't
really believe them. That evening, in our house, my mother was saying the same
thing. She, who is much older and who has already lived through pogroms in
Poland and Russia, is less optimistic than I, although she doesn't think they
would dare to do such a thing in Paris. She takes the little money we have
saved and tells me to be ready, if they knock, to jump out the kitchen window
and escape through the back courtyard. We live on the ground floor of a
building on the rue des Pyrénées. I go to bed, and like the child
I still am, I fall asleep. My mother sits up the whole night, but around five
o'clock she dozes off and at six o'clock she hears them knocking at the door.
Startled awake, she forgets where she is and lets them in. Its a police
inspector. When he sees me, he says I am not on the list, and he writes my name
in underneath the others. He orders us to prepare our valises and to follow
him. When my mother begs him to let us go, or at least not to take me, a child,
he threatens to call the Special Police. Out on the street, he asks a policeman
to help him take us to a garage on the rue des Pyrénées. Other
police lead in groups of Jews, whole families carrying bundles of linen and
even mattresses: pale, silent men and women and children pulled from sleep,
weeping. Merchants run to their storefronts, and passersby stop to look at us,
stunned and afraid. It is unfortunately the French police who are arrresting
the Jews. In the garage, new arrivals continue to press in. My mother asks to
be let out to buy some bread, but they refuse. Later, we ask to go to the
toilet, and a policeman accompanies us, along with two other women. While we're
talking with him, one of the other women disappears.
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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