At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf by Tara Ison

Author:Tara Ison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: IG Publishing

She buys Je suis partout, L’Action Francaise and Les Nouveaux Temps at the tabac for Claude, newspapers with the cheeriest headlines, the largest pictures of a smiling Marshal Petain, statistics on robust agriculture production and troop deployments and photos of German troops buying flowers on the street, or the German Red Cross ladling soup to victims of the Allied bombings up north. She peers down the street—no sign of Berthe, maybe she and the milliner are still discussing price, or going through the next pile of piecework. She glances through the papers. Boring politics and current events, Claude will be happy to catch up on everything. Something on the CGQJ in Vichy, Luc talked about that, but Xavier Vallat has been fired now, something about his not getting along with the Germans, his resistance to their interference in French policies. Monsieur Bonnard, she remembers, he’s with the CGQJ, isn’t he? She reads more carefully. The CGQJ, that’s the General Commission on Jewish Affairs. Oh, that’s right. That’s what it stands for. Yes …

She hurriedly looks elsewhere on the page, a small article catches her eye, about a camp, all this talk of camps these days, this one just outside Paris, a place called Drancy. Thousands of men being held there, most of them foreign Jews or prisoners, political undesirables, hostages taken in reprisal for all those criminals engaged in sabotage activity. More Jews will be gathered up and sent to Drancy, soon, the dedicated police of the CGQJ hard at work, all those foreign Jews, from other camps throughout France, even from the Unoccupied Zone, too, from Le Vernet and Les Milles, and Gurs (I’ll write to you, from Gurs), and then they’ll be sent onward, the resettlement has begun. They’re being sent away from France to work in those camps, in foreign factories or farms in Eastern Europe, the first trainloads heading east through Alsace-Lorraine then continuing on under German guard to a place in Poland called Auschwitz.

She rolls the strange word in her mouth a moment, the soft, coiled-up letters. They’re going to more camps, then, the foreign Jews, not back to their homes, their own villages and farms. Well, when they’re done with the work in all those factories and camps, that’s when they’ll be sent home, of course. Auschwitz, maybe that’s near where Monsieur Clermont is from, what was the name of that village? The newspaper is trembly in her hands, words dancing, she tries to grip harder, shake it straight. It means they’ll be home soon, then, resettled and relocated, they’ll be fine and happy and safe, be together. Be back where they belong. Free of all care. Nothing to worry about, no.

She quickly turns the page again. News of Paris. The University, an awards ceremony in Paris for distinguished, patriotic academics, a small grainy photo. A family, a man holding a plaque with one hand, shaking the hand of a swastika’d German official with the other, his wife and young daughter standing next to him with posed smiles.

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