Lettres De Drancy Textes réunis et présentés par Antoine Sabbagh Introduction de Denis Peschanski

Lettres De Drancy Textes réunis et présentés par Antoine

Sabbagh Introduction de Denis Peschanski is a strong book. I have chosen this book because it's important not to forget.

As written by Odette Daltroff-Baticle: « Je ne puis oublier la voix de ce petit garçon de quatre ans qui répétait sans arrêt, sur le même ton, avec une voix grave, une voix de basse incroyable dans ce petit corps : “Maman, je vais avoir peur, Maman, je vais avoir peur.” » In english:

"I can't avoid of reporting the voice of this toddler of 4 years, who repeated without to pulling back, with the same tone, with a heavy voice, a voice of an incroyable low voice in that little, small, body, I am so scared, lady, I am so scared."

What represented Drancy, a transit camp for a destination of no-return?

It meant a secure death. Whoever was conveyed there maybe didn't know that, but wouldn't never returned home.

Drancy for the social memory was the biggest  symbol of what it meant the Final Solution in France; the collaboration between the French State and the occupants.

Not only but Franco, in Spain meant another terrible wind and the so-called unwanted people became communists, jewish, nomads, for a total of 600.000 people internated in more than 200 camps in a period that goes from 1939 to 1946.

It was a weird situation that one, because when people were internated and they asked the reason at a french, the reply: "Because of Germans." And viceversa.

No one was realistically innocent no, because french knew very well what they were doing, writes the author, and all of it was made in a logic of exclusion; of course. Inclusion was a word for too many years not just unwanted, but a dream and the scars left by the Holocaust won't never heal.

The french society was in crisis. It was simple to create all the rest.

The chaos experienced meant that policy failed of regenerating the french society from the inside. But something else happend, something more dangerous: elements of purity were included in the fundamental value of french society: work, family, "patrie", compassion, order.

So, all the rest of the population not recognized in this scheme of values was banned: people considered not pures were jewish, communists, foreigners.

The policy of internation in camps for Jewish people started in 1940 and as you will read, with a radicalization in 1941.

Also in France adults for the final solution were brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 80.000 Jewish were deported in 1942-1944 and just 2500 survived at the camps.

Many illness, as also wrote someone internated, they were obsessed by  lack of food and consequent illness caused by it.

These letters, written by desperate, starved,  innocent people to their loved ones are not at the  Centre de documentation

juive contemporaine (CDJC). These letters have a common theme: the fear for what it was going on and the absolute shock for being in a place like that without reason.

When people wrote letters? In the most diversified moments of the day. At night, in a wagon, while they were travelling in a camp, in a moment of peace of mind in that hell.

130 letters chosen for giving to the reader an idea of what it was going on in the mind of these poor prisoners.

Some of these letters give us back an intimate portrait of the people involved in the written page; their most private moments. It's like to enter in an unknown universe, as if the reader would spy from from the key of a door, a terrible universe, an endless nightmare important to remember. There are people who will describe to their dear ones what they ate; their mental state. Some of them will ask for explanations in the most diversified ways and asking for help to important people.

Sad, romantic, humoristic, one of them, the letter of Jean Léon to his wife made me smile when he added at the end La Vie est Belle because he received some chocolate and different food.

Enjoy this book, treasure it, it is plenty of informations and share it with your friends, with your children.

I thank Editions Tallandier for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori