A Personal Look at the Finaly Children Affair
-- a Tragic Holocaust Byproduct with a Fortunate
Ending
by Michael
Rosner, DVM
Metar, Israel
Email: ilamic@actcom.co.il
March 2005
What's
All About?
This
paper deals with the fate of two Jewish orphan kids of
the Holocaust. One might say, well, unfortunately there
were so many Holocaust orphans… true, but this one
is a rather unique case in the somber history of
relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Jews.
This is because it was the first time the Church was
forced to deliver baptized Jewish children to their
relatives. In the early 1950's the sso-called
L'Affaire Finaly was the main issue in the French
public life and, according to some modern French history
authorities, the intensity of this outrageous scandal was
second only to the so-called Dreyfus Affair (we Jews have
always had a knack to enrich the media).
A
Personal Opening Note
I am the son of
Judith (née Finaly) and Moshe Rosner, both now
deceased. My mother was a nurse and my father was a
bookkeeper and a farmer in Gedera, a small town in
Israel. I was able directly to eyewitness how my parents
succeeded to face and overcome a formidable adversary, if
not an enemy, the almighty Catholic Church that did
everything in its power to deny us the natural right to
obtain custody over my two orphaned Holocaust cousins.
Sparing no effort and personal sacrifice, my parents have
managed to successfully challenge the Church, with no
institutional support whatsoever. For the first, and
perhaps only time in history, the Curch reluctantly
relinquished to us, as their next of kin, in 1953, my kid
cousins that were illegally and deceitfully baptized
against the last wish of their massacred
parents.
Throughout the
paper, I will refer to my cousins as either kids or
children. The "kids" however are now respectively 63 and
64 years old….
I can still
remember asking my parents at the family dinner's table,
more than 50 years ago, (I was 15 or 16 years old at the
time), whether they really believed that they could
successfully defeat such a powerful institution. Their
unhesitant answer came right away:
"It was
the last wish of your murdered uncle and aunt to make
your cousins join their relatives. Even if such a will
does not exist, we will do all what we can to achieve
this family goal…"
Nobody had assisted
them in that endeavor at the time. The Government of the
then fledgling State of Israel shunned away of getting
involved into a fight with the mighty Vatican. They had
far more pressing problems at hand considering the
presence of five well-equipped Arab armies surrounding
the Israel's borders that were plotting Israel's
annihilation.
Beside my personal
knowledge that are based on my parents' and cousins'
stories, the main part of the presentation given in here
is derived from Moshe (Moise) Keller's book: L'Affair
Finaly, published in French by Librarie Fischbacher,
Paris, 1960. The book is no longer available. The
majority of the copies, in all likelihood, have been
purchased and made inaccessible by Church's agents as
they had all the reasons to do so. Unfortunately, and in
addition, there is neither a Hebrew nor an English
edition. The book is an exciting read with a highly
intricate "plot," with various twists of ups and downs
worthy of a Hollywood thriller. The only difference here
is that nothing was fictitious. The book also contains a
vast amount of documented facts, mainly regarding the
Church's efforts to keep, at all cost, our next of kin
away from us.
As we shall see
from the presentation below, the late Moshe Keller was
not only the major authority on the subject, but he was
also the key person responsible for the ultimate
successful results. Motivated by his bitterness following
the fate of his family members during the war and the
betrayal by the Vichy regime, Keller literally devoted
more than five years of his life in fighting those who
have chosen to ignore the Nazi crimes against the Jewish
people -- this time disguised under the insidious name of
"Christian charity." Through his long, painful, and
immensely intense public and legal struggle, Keller
risked in the end his own livelihood as his a
well-established chemical engineering business in
Grenoble was eventually forced to be closed. May thus
these lines presented herein be my humble tribute and, a
token of gratitude for his incredible sacrifices and
achievements.
Background
of the Affair
My two cousins, the
Holocaust survivors, Robert and Gerald Finaly were born
to Jewish parents on April 14, 1941 and July 3, 1942,
respectively, in La Tronche, a small town nearby
Grenoble, in South-Eastern France (then under the
pro-Nazi Vichy regime). They became known worldwide
during the early 1950's as the Finaly Children and their
story, called The Finaly Affair, was then a main story in
the French public life. Why was this such an important
story, not only for the French government and for the
ordinary Frenchmen "on the street", but also and foremost
for all conscious Jews, religious or secular?
For the citizens of
the French Republic, the clear crisis of the Finaly
Affair and its eventual positive outcome symbolized
perhaps the supremacy of secular law over canon law. For
Jews worldwide however, the story epitomized an
unprecedented case, in which the Catholic Church was
forced to relinquish two illicitly baptized Jewish war
orphans to their next of kin. There were thousands of
similar illegal baptisms during WWII, and many others
during history, most notable being that of the Edgaro
Mortara case. (Mortara was a Jewish child, whose baptism
was initiated 1858 in Bologna, Italy, by a Christian maid
with the complicity of a priest, against the wishes of
the parents and contradicting also the laws of the Church
herself. Yet once the act became known, papal soldiers
kidnapped the kid in order to assure his Catholic
education. International petitions and worldwide
high-level diplomatic lobbying wouldn't help, the child
never saw home again, and became eventually an Augustine
monk.)
WHY this evil
conduct of the Church against its own declared laws
persisted in keeping, by all means, every baptized Jewish
kid within its sphere of influence?-- is an important
question that need to be address into the
open.
The
Conduct of the Church
The Church does not
preach enforced baptism, but according to its own dogma,
once an act of baptism has been performed, even
illicitly, it inevitably becomes an irreversible fait
accompli, hence the necessity to take all required
measures in order to assure the kid's continuing
ecclesiastic education, against State's law, if
necessary.
This explains both
the 1858 kidnapping of Edgaro Mortara and the insistent
refusal of the Catholic highest authorities during the
mid-twentieth century to render the Finaly (and thousands
of other Jewish ) children to their natural family,
ignoring, in this case, several verdicts rendered by
various French courts. This behavior of the Church was
indeed consistent with its long standing priority placed
in its missionary activity. An important such activity
can be seen in a number of missions of specific Roman
Catholic orders such the proselytizing of Jews by the
Notre Dame de Sion which ironically ensued from the
Jewish Zion! As we shall see in here, the kidnapping,
smuggling from France to another country and
sequestration of the Finaly children in order to "save
the kids' souls" and keep them apart from their legal
custodians and their caring family, is at the center
stage of this entire paper.
How
Did It All Start?
Fritz (Feriedrich)
Finaly, MD, an Austrian Jew with Zionist views was still
able to graduate 1939, well after the annexation of
Austria by the Nazis took place, from the Viennese School
of Medicine. The fact that a red swastika and a bald
inscription was smeared all over his diploma, declaring
the bearer of the document is not permitted to practice
medicine within the boundaries of the German Reich, was
definitely not the only reason why the young couple --
Doctor Finaly and his wife Annie, née Schwarz --
decided to flee to France as at stake was, as we all
know, not only their livelihood, but also their very
lives.
They settled down
in La Tronche, South-Eastern France, in the vicinity of
Grenoble. Life wasn't easy of course in France either
since Dr. Finaly's foreign diploma was not recognized by
the French authorities… But for the time being,
their lives were not immediately in danger, and the
doctor even managed to make a living, thanks to the good
will of certain fellow physicians. Conditions
deteriorated soon after the breakout of war; both were
jailed, being German citizens… They were released
however after awhile and able to go on living and make a
living. In that part of the country the persecutions
carried out by the collaborating Vichy Government have
not been organized as in other regions ruled by them, and
the situation was definitely better than in the
territories governed directly by the Nazis. Their
children, Robert and Gerald, were born in April 1941 and
July 1942 respectively. Both kids were circumcised, as
their parents, fully aware of the hazards, expressed
their last wish of wanting their kids to be raised in the
Jewish faith and tradition. This was an important fact
that would later also served to refute the claims raised
by the Church claiming that the parents had wanted their
kids to become Christians!
In February 1944,
when the Gestapo took finally over the entire France, the
situation changed rather abruptly. Both parents were
arrested and deported to Auschwitz, never to be heard of
them again. However,
early arrangements had been made by the parents, in an
attempt to assure their children's survival. The
children, three and two years of age at the time, were
confided in good time to the care of a good Christian
neighbor, bless her soul, and after passing several
Catholic boarding institutions, bless them too, they
finally landed in a municipal, i.e. secular
crèche, of which the director, a demoiselle fifty
six years of age at the time, was a devout, or rather
fanatic Catholic, as the reader is soon bound to
discover. The Finalys had requested the said neighbor,
that once the war was over, (as everybody at the time
already knew that the final collapse of the Hitler regime
was a matter of time), to contact Dr. Finaly's sister,
living since 1938 in New Zealand, explicitly expressing
their wish to make the kids join, as soon as possible,
the family of a surviving aunt.
Here is the place
to stop for paying due gratitude to Mlle Antoinette Brun,
the director of the crèche, later, however, the
bitter enemy of the Finaly family, for risking her life
and saving the children. As the reader will later see,
she made them illicitly baptized in 1948, thus assuring
the support of the Church in her categorical refusal to
let go of the kids, against the expressed last wish of
their parents.
First
Measures Taken to Retrieve the Children and the Church's
Reaction
In February 1945,
as soon as France reestablished its pre- war
international postal connections -- the war wasn't even
over yet -- the aunt living in New Zealand, Margarete
Fischel, mailed a letter to the mayor of La Tronche, the
residence town of Fritz and Annie Finaly, inquiring about
her brother and his family. He answered her on the very
day of receipt, informing her about the fate of her
brother and sister in law. He was happy to be able to let
her know that the couple's kids, Robert and Gerald, had
survived the war and were living now in the municipal
crèche of which the director was Mlle Brun noted
above.
Soon enough
Margarete Fischel addressed Mlle Brun by mail, thanking
her for rescuing the kids, and requesting her to assist
in the children's departure to New Zealand. Aided by the
New Zealand House in London, she had already made all
necessary arrangements for the journey, including the
hiring of a qualified accompanying nurse. She also
offered Mlle Brun a full reimbursement for any expenses
she might have had. Simultaneously, the Fischels got an
immigration license, and made all necessary preparations
at their house to enable appropriate accommodation of the
expected nephews. That was the only time the aunt was
granted with Mlle Brun's answer, insisting that the
children were too young to be sent on such a long
voyage... Mlle Brun has never responded to numerous
additional letters.
As we will see,
both the evading answer and the lack of response were the
first echelon in Mlle Brun's deceiving scheme to gain
time. She perfectly well understood that once they have
reached a certain age and they were sufficiently
brainwashed, the children would never agree to leave and
be among the killers of God (as this is what they were
told about their relatives). And indeed, she almost
succeeded with that scheme.
The initial steps
to retrieve the children started February 1945, when they
were three and four years old. They stepped down off an
El Al plane in Lydda (Ben-Gurion) Air port, Israel, July
1953, aged 11 and 12. Another three, four years of
stalemate, and we would be on the verge of gaining a
Catholic clergyman in our family, because this was the
vocation Robert's God fearing tutors had chosen for
him…
Were did this
stubborn, categorical refusal came from? Did it have
anything to do with a motherly love Mlle Brun might have
developed? Certainly not. She hardly saw Robert and
Gerald more than twice a year (in the Christmas and
Easter vacations) as the kids, in the first year, have
been kept in a successive series of Catholic boarding
institutions. Even then, during the first year, in the
crèche, it was a maid who took care of the kids,
and Mlle Brun had hardly any direct contact with them. So
why this recalcitrant, seemingly unnecessary approach,
concerning two little Jewish kids she didn't particularly
care about? The answer to this question is very simple:
because of unmitigated, morbid hatred to everything
Jewish, stemming not just from the conventional nonsense
about deicide (the killing of Jesus Christ) and the
Jewish outrageous, continuous refusal to see the light of
Christ. In her case, as she would carelessly admit in a
hateful letter sent many years later to her ex
"protégés", it originated from her
resentment toward her stepbrothers -- her mother's first
husband had been Jewish…
What measures did
Mlle Brun take after she became aware of the family's
desire to obtain custody over the kids in order to keep
their efforts at bay? Stalling for time? Certainly, but
not just that, she found a much more powerful means, and
made an accomplice priest baptize my cousins, becoming
thus -- in the Church's view -- Catholics for good.
To cut a long story
short, Margarete Fischel, soon realizing that something
must be fishy, didn't give up, but rather doubled her
efforts, and spent the next three years writing scores of
letters (the copies of some of them may be seen in the
referenced Keller's book) to all possible personalities
and institutions, painstakingly keeping copies and
receipts for registered mail, a fact which would later
help to refute another malicious allegation raised many
years later by Mlle Brun and her supporters --that in the
early 1950's, as they would claim in court, the "family
had never shown interest" in them. Well, the presentation
of the voluminous correspondence file proved the proof
for their deceitfulness claims for the whole world to
see…
Further
Steps Taken by the Family
In 1948, after
three years of exhausting efforts, all of which seemingly
to no avail, yet later, as mentioned, would prove
fruitful in the legal litigations, my and the children's
aunt, Margarete Fischel, gave finally up, and asked my
parents to take over, Israel being nearer to France. And
indeed, geography and personal connections did help; a
cousin of my father, Menachem Rosner from Reshafim, a
kibbutz in Israel, related the problem to an acquaintance
of his, a chemical engineer called Moise (Moshe) Keller,
living in Grenoble. Following my father's request, Keller
went in July 1948 to pay a visit to the formidable Mlle
Brun. He didn't know then what he was bargaining
for…
Before he was led
to Mlle Brun's office, he was told by a maid that the
kids weren't (naturally) there, but in some boarding
school (one of many institutions they would be kept in
later on). After the first words of polite introduction,
once she heard that he came on behalf of my mother
wishing to express her gratitude, all hell broke loose.
Without letting him utter a single word, she started
yelling at him:
"You
coward ungrateful Jews, once under the slightest
danger you ran away like frightened mice, leaving your
kids to the care of others, and now you have the nerve
to ask them back? You don't know me yet [indeed he
didn't], never ever are you going to see these
kids..."
There was no point
for Keller to remain there, so he left the place having
to hear her screaming behind his retreating back:
"You will
be pleased to know that I let them be baptized,
I made them little Catholics".
If it weren't so
tragic, one could have fun reading Keller's description
about her conduct, looks, speech, clothes, smeared makeup
and screams. And yet, this disturbing woman held the key
to the fate of the now already six and seven years old
children…
It became now clear
that the only chance to ever get hold of the kids would
be by way of a court decision, which would take several
years, if ever, to obtain, and impose a heavy financial
toll ...
Finaly
Versus Brun
The legal and
public struggle lasted more than five years and to read
about it in Keller's book is quite thrilling, although it
contains almost 600 pages. So even an extremely shortened
version describing the tricks and prevarications the
Catholic party applied in order to avoid fulfilling of
the various verdicts deciding in our favor, the various
measures taken for gaining influence over the public
opinion etc., would reach far beyond the scope of this
paper. So let me make do with the most essential aspects
and highlights of the Affair.
The
Legal Phase and Related Events
The legal campaign
of the Rosner-Finaly family versus Mlle Antonine Brun
(actually the Church) was very complicated, partly
because of the many types of courts having overlapping
juristriction. In addition, some Catholic magistrates and
judges in the lower courts, didn't really rule according
to the clear principle of separation of State and Church,
granting the accused party and her accomplices several
strange privileges.
In more than one
case there were verdicts given in our favor, which
(although appealable) ordered the immediate release of
the children. However, the courts did not provide a
mechanism for enforcing the orders and thus, Mlle Brun
and her supporters had no problem in ignoring them. In
one instance, following such a Court order, Mlle Brun
went happily home and on the following day the kids were
hidden in some place under assumed names.
After Mlle Brun's
supporters once more concealed the children in order to
evade the verdict sustained by a higher court, it became
incidentally known, that the kids had been hidden in a
Catholic college in Bayonne, in the Basque region,
hundreds of kilometers away from Grenoble. As soon as
Keller became aware of the new development, he took the
next train to Bayonne. Unfortunately, he arrived there
next morning, one train too late... The Mother Superior
of Notre Dame de Sion of Grenoble, naturally well
informed, arrived there already on the previous evening,
to directly assure the next step of law
violation…
The District
Attorney in Grenoble, based on the court's decision,
promptly contacted his Bayonne colleague and strongly
advising him to take immediate custody over the kids.
However, noting did materialized out of that contact. The
following morning, when Keller arrived, not surprising,
the kids were gone once more, later be smuggled into
Spain.
Subsequent Police
investigation found out that several senior nuns of the
Notre dame de Sion order and Basque priests had actively
arranged and executed the kidnapping and smuggling of the
kids. The perpetrators went happily to jail, readily
admitting their crimes, only to be released a few days
later, the kids still missing… It was quite obvious
that they were acting upon orders from the highest ranks.
Everybody familiar with the ways of the ecclesiastic
hierarchy knows very well of the discipline reigning
there: defining it as military-like environment would be
a gross understatement. Mlle Brun was also sent to prison
for contempt, released, however, long before the family's
custody over the kids became an established
fact.
The then 12 years
old Robert kept a diary, in which he also described the
passage on foot to Spain, via the Pyrenees. It took place
in mid February 1953 during a snow storm, with knee-deep
snow covering the terrain. Both kids wore half shoes and
summer clothes… About this time, worried by the
multiple attacks in the outraged press, His Eminence, the
Archbishop of Lyon published an "Appeal to the Public"
urging those "who might have knowledge" to inform the
authorities about the whereabouts of the kids -- as if he
didn't know, all culprits were his agents... He did not
omit to declare, that the "Church, being a mother too"
cares about the well-being and the souls of the children.
This phrase "The Church is a mother too" ("Léglise
est une mere aussi)" was very often used by those
vindicating the Church's conduct. How very assuring! Here
we have just another example of the incredible amount of
hypocrisy in the name of "Christian charity." May God
have mercy on it...
It became
subsequently clear that the policy of those behind Mlle
Brun was to absolutely ignore the verdicts, claiming
ignorance concerning the kids' whereabouts. Only the
final verdict, they decided, should be obeyed. Why the
sudden respect towards the legal authorities? Because of
the landslide change in public opinion: people gradually
began to understand the Church's foul play, and became
increasingly anti-Catholic and anti-clerical. Without the
element of public opinion, the Church would have never
rendered the children to my parents' custody, final
verdict in our favor or not. Gaining popularity for our
cause, highly misunderstood at first, was an additional
achievement of Keller.
During one of the
sessions of that last but important legal procedure,
Advocate Maurice Garçon, a devout Catholic, member
of the Académie française, eminent lawyer
at the time and pleading on our behalf, turned towards
Mlle Brun and her lawyers, dramatically raising his right
arm, and said to them:
"I am in
deep pain for the sake of the religion which is mine
too, because so soon after the Nazi horrors you gave
it such an intolerant image. You rendered it odious
and I am immensely angry with you."
Because of his
enormous prestige and knack for dramatic effects, the
following day this outcry hit the front pages all over
the country. Yet this was not really part of the legal
aspect, it rather belonged to the PR campaign, which will
be dealt with in the following chapter.
The final verdict
of the Cour de Cassation, the French Supreme Court -- in
our favor -- was given June 23, 1953. Two days later the
kids were "miraculously" found and, escorted by
motorcycled police with scores of reporters in their
wake, were promptly driven all the way from the Spanish
border to an agreed place near Paris, an estate on the
Seine River belonging to a Jewish banker.
The
Struggle for Public Opinion
Winning the legal
case was definitely an absolute precondition to gain
custody over the children, yet a legal victory alone
would have never sufficed to compel the Church to give up
its prized asset. We have already seen that the mighty
Church had means and ways to ignore the law.
During the early
phases of his public activity (beside the legal campaign
he was conducting), Keller had satisfied himself by
establishing "Committees for the Finaly Children" in all
France's major cities, of which, at first, most members
had been Jews and the main goal was to raise funds for
the enormous legal expenses. Soon enough, however, Keller
and his friends gradually understood that winning the
public on their side was another essential precondition
to really obtain custody.
Easier said than
done. At its earlier stages, our cause was not favorably
accepted, both by Jews and Gentiles. The last thing many
Jews were looking for was a revived wave of
anti-Semitism. After all, they were still under the
trauma of the war and the immense scale of the French
collaboration with Nazi Germany. In the general
population hostility against Jews was even more present.
Major newspapers, not necessarily Catholic, described
Mlle Brun as an angel, a brave person and a loving
mother, whom the Jews were ostracizing, instead of
express their gratitude to her and renounce all claims.
Vicious rumors were circulating in the press, according
to which, the family had ignored the kids' fate for
years, and that we had been motivated only by financial
interest. (Beside some jewelry the Finaly parents
bequeathed nothing, and even if they did, shouldn't the
alleged "wealth" belong to the children?) Major public
figures, notably the 1952 Nobel Prize Laureate writer
Francois Mauriac (he eventually changed his mind) had
also treated Mlle Brun as a hero and a caring mother, and
deemed our demands unacceptable.
The next task of
the Committees for the Finaly Children became thus the
winning of public opinion. Counting on traditional French
anti-clericalism and gaining numerous sympathetic
gentiles for our cause, this was gradually and
diplomatically achieved (care was taken not to offend the
Faith and its believers) by way of numerous public
meetings all over the country, mobilizing sympathetic
journalists and politicians, and writing numerous letters
to the press.
In summary, the
following points, still unknown to the general public at
the time, were stressed throughout the long
ordeal:
- France is a
constitutional republic, in which State and Church are
separated and the civil, secular law is supreme; hence
every loyal citizen should oppose those who, by
ignoring courts' verdicts defy this essential
principle. This concept was favorably accepted by most
French, including devout Catholics.
- Jews in General
and The Rosner-Finaly family in particular, are
immensely grateful to Catholic institutions and all
those, Catholic, Protestant, atheist, or agnostic, who
had risked their lives to save persecuted Jews. This
definitely includes Mlle Brun. Her courageous deed
however, doesn't give her the right to impose her
beliefs on orphans against the explicit wish of their
murdered parents, let alone deprive them of their
right to enjoy familial love and care.
- Mlle Brun's
assertions for having developed motherly feelings
towards the kids are another link in her chain of lies
as there was enough evidence proving that she hardly
ever saw them. The public image that her supporters
had managed to create depicting her as an angel and
saint was at best a cynical attempt in distorting the
truth and at worst a malicious fabrication. Given the
fact that she has never had any motherly connections
with the kids, how could her categorical refusal be
explained other than motivated by bad will? How in
God's name, this can be portrayed as a Christian
charity?
- The allegations
according to which the Finaly family had until
recently (1952) never bothered about the children's
fate are another concocted fabrication. There are
ample evidence to refute this insidious claim staring
with the established fact that one of their aunts had
consistently tried to obtain custody over them as
early as of February 1945.
- The allegations
according to which the Finaly family is only after the
kids' money are totally unfouded --their murdered
parents bequeathed them practically nothing.
- Kidnapping,
smuggling, and sequestration of minors constitute a
major crime. Why do the law-enforcement authorities
not act accordingly?
- An illicit
baptism, performed against the proven last wish of the
parents, with the kids circumcised and with the Nazi
hazards that is being associated represents a proof
beyond any other proof with respect to the intent of
the parents.
- With all the
respect to Catholic canon law, the Finaly family could
never abdicate its absolute natural right to receive
custody over the kids of their murdered brother; this
position being sustained by the French constitution
and courts of law.
- Notwithstanding
it's justified bitterness because of the eight years
long deprivation caused to the children by the
unjustified refusal of Mlle Brun to let them join
their next of kin, once having the kids returned, the
Finaly family, having only the kids' interest in mind,
would withdraw all its claims against the accused
party and her supporters.
The campaign proved
eventually successful; during the years 1952/1953 a shift
in the public opinion has occurred, even among some
Catholic clergymen; the Catholic establishment became
highly unpopular, very often nuns and priests could not
show their faces in the streets without being screamed
at: "Where are the Finaly kids?"
A remarkable
development of events took place: the successful, though
tiresome, exhausting, expensive, legal fight would have
achieved nothing, hadn't we managed to get French public
opinion on our side. The immense press coverage
substantially helped to favorably influence the public.
On the other hand, without the Supreme Court's favorable
final ruling, all the sympathy the French people felt
regarding our case would have proved worthless.
In
Lieu of Conclusion --Another Personal
Note
Yes we won, but at
what price? I don't only mean the campaign and its
related severe problems, but also the traumas my cousins
had later to endure. They acclimatized quite well at our
home. But it took some efforts for them to get rid of the
nonsense they had been indoctrinated with over the years
about t their Jewish family and its people.
In order to respect
and preserve the Finaly name, my parents decided against
adopting my cousins Robert and Gerald Finaly. They have
enjoyed a happy childhood and adolescence in the home of
my late parents and followed their desired course in
life. Robert is a senior physician in the Soroka Teaching
Hospital in Beer Sheva, and Gerald is a pensioner of the
Bezeq Telephone Company, living in Haifa. Both are
married and have children and grandchildren, none of them
Catholic…
The transfer from a
strict Catholic environment into a liberal Jewish family
wasn't easy either. If Mlle Brun weren't that evil, my
cousins could have enjoyed normal upbringing as of their
third and fourth year of age, instead of the 11'th and
12'th, and she, the pathological anti-Semite, could have
become eligible for a Righteous Among The Nations
Award…
I have never been
able to put at rest some persistent questions, among them
these ones:
- What makes some
people so obsessed with hatred?
- What would have
happened if my parents and aunt weren't that
persistent, if Moshe Keller hadn't been willing to
gamble with his family's livelihood?
- What If it
weren't France, but another country, in which the
Roman Catholic Church enjoys even a stronger
influence?
Yes, my sister
Miriam and myself were able in the end to regain our two
cousins who for us became as our own brothers, but at
what cost... And what about those less fortunate
thousands of kids deprived of familial care, and growing
up to hate their own people?
