La Carte Postale by Anne Berest

 La Carte Postale

by Anne Berest intrigued me immediately when Grasset sent me the e-mails with the new rentree litteraires and the possibility of reading them before their publication.

I was right: this book, one of the strongest and most important ones in France, finalist of an important prize like the Goncourt but also of many many other ones, will touch your heart closely, because written with great compassion, humanity, attention  respect.  

This story starts thanks to a postcard received by the mother of Anne, in 2003. It was with the rest of mails and it was a shocking surprise because there wasn't the name of the sender, just four names: Ephraim, Emma, Noemi and Jacques, the relatives dead in the camp of Auschwitz during the last world war. It appeared clear that, if family, friends didn't send it, maybe some old neighbors of the family of Ephrain dit it, but...Why? The mother of Anne had planned to present a dossier to a commission regarding her disappeared relatives  that months. Maybe someone didn't want? Why? 

It's an investigative book as well, this one, pretty detailed, spanning through letters, memories, postcards, pictures, of what remained of Ephraim, Emma, Noemi and Jacques. It is a complete reconstruction of a family dilaniated by racial laws and deportation but traces, magistrally well, also what happened later to Myriam, one of the daughters of Ephraim and Emma who, thanks to Ephraim saved the existence; there is also a section that will let us see who is living now in the houses  where Ephraim built his existence: these two women in fact, Anne and mother, at a certain point searched for memories, informations, objects, photographs of the family and.. written notes!

Let's start from the beginning: the first part of the book tells the story of the Rabinovitch family. They had Russian origins, but then they left Russia in 1919 for another country. The father of Ephraim asked to the children where they wanted to afford because few places were safe according to him in Europe. Ephraim choosed Riga, disgusted by the idea of spending his existence in a deserted land like Israel was.

His business was great, but at a certain point he decided to leave and this time was constricted of asking to his father some help, ending in Israel. If his father was a passionate of that land, Ephraim didn't feel any kind of enthusiasm.

He understood that, after all, the agricultural works of his parents didn't give to them a lot of money. Although the place was appreciated by his children, maybe because also the devoted attentions of their grand-parents, they decided to move to France, Ephraim's biggest dream.

Ephraim, to my point of view had a special and beautiful character: he was an optimistic, I would add, dreaming man: he couldn't understand completely the badness of the world, and spent the rest of his time, always in Paris and french countrysides thinking that, anyway, he was protected by french people and french government:  a devoted and beloved cousin told him that the air wasn't good at all, and that it was better to leave France for America. Ephraim sounded disgusted by the idea and told to Emma that he didn't want to re-start everything from the beginning. Not in the USA. During the following years they didn't receive anymore news of their jewish relatives in the eastern european countries...A worrying sign of what was going on in Europe.

Ephraim had invented a machine for the accelleration of the bakery process of the bread: the news was also reported internationally in the Daily Mail and of course french people and bakeries sounded more than interested in this new machine in grade of letting them save time.

Ephraim tried to ask for the french naturalization changing his name and last name but it didn't happen. He didn't want that the children (all very good students) had to grow up with a jewish culture: they didn't go to the sinagogue. Sure: he understood when the nazis invaded France that there would have been problems, but nothing could have let him believe that his children would have been killed: they assured him that they had to leave for working in Germany and the news sent by Noemi in her letters were reassuring. Yes, he had had a good intuition: considering that the name of Myriam wasn't in that list, because in the while Myriam married Vicente and lived in Paris (she returned that days) maybe there wasn't the necessity of adding this daughter to the list: he asked her of hiding herself. Ephraim was a special soul who, to me eliminated the badness and cruelty of this world automatically from his soul, like Jacques did, in particular if you read the extremely moving final thoughts that Anne and her mother imagined he could have thought when arrived in Auschwitz and they brought him to the shower....

I don't want to spoil what happened in the camp at Noemi and Jacques: they also met along their way Irene Nemirovsky author of Suite Francais, deported as well and Noemi was largely mentioned in a book written by another prisoner, Hautval, a doctor who cured people in a french camp; Noemi was her favorite nurse and that lady tried all her best for saving Noemi and Jacques.

It was moving the chapter, just few words, dedicated to Jacques and his ends...

Myriam in the while, returned to Paris, but she had to escape again. Vicente and her will start an existence at la Jean Giono; as told by the beloved french writer, what is there more beauty than living in a countryside? An idea embraced by people of left, creatives, Jewish, and all that people who wanted to spend a good existence at contact with nature. 

There will be problems: a menage a trois, Vicente used drugs and he won't end well  leaving Myriam with a child of 3 years and the other man with which she was also in love, Yves. With the time Myriam lost his mind, because of Alzheimer and unfortunately she completely forgot, it happens, the use of the language acquired later, french; she spoke only russian at the end of his days. 

Anne focuses the attention in the anti-semitism sentiments that sometimes appears in the most diversified places: for example her daughter once said her that a kid told her at school that he didn't like Jewish.

And Anne could not sleep that night...When once she was to school, the teacher of french asked to them of composing their Genealogic Tree. When she understood that Anne had a lot of relatives disappeared in the camp of Auschwitz, can you believe it? She treated the girl differently and she wasn't anymore her most beloved student.

 

Said it: Anne didn't grow up with a Jewish culture. His parents embraced the ideals of the '68s, freedom of expression in every sense! wonderful years that ones! so the values that they transmitted her were that ones: also Anne's partners hadn't to be absolutely all jewish. She didn't mind and in general her parents didn't mind. But, it will be the last one, Jewish for case as weites Anne, who invited her to dinner for the celebration of a beloved Jewish dinner and appeared clear that maybe she was trascuring too much her being Jewish. 

Beautiful and intense. Highly recommended to everyone.

I thank Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori