Attractions, Distractions, World-Changing Actions

'Spoiler' Alert: The end of this post contains the reason I'm alive.

I jumped out of my house and into the streets. In my bag, a map; in my head, an intention to meet Paris. I ignored the former, but the latter guided me quite far.

I didn't want to go another day without seeing the Seine, and about 12 minutes into my walk, I found her. Three minutes later, I was standing in front of Notre Dame. Let me rephrase that: I live a 15 minute walk from Notre Dame! I marveled at the outside for a few minutes until adrenaline urged me to continue on. Someone had told me about Shakespeare & Co., a legendary English bookstore across the river, so I used it as an excuse to explore the area. I love the independence and freedom of having minimal work (for now), and of being a foreigner in a new city that demands exploration.

I LOVE walking the streets of Paris. And I LOVE that I don't have to take a camera anywhere because I can just revisit that Where! I love hearing French all around me (though I despise feeling excluded because of my weak speech). I love the cobble stone roads and that historical landmarks overwhelm this city, and I love that everyone is so damn stylish. I love that storekeepers and street-goers are mostly kind and patient with my embarrassing French, and I love that men (and women) greet each other with two kisses.
I find it weird - but in a loving way - that seats outside cafés face the street so that people just watch you as you walk buy, and that it's the norm for people on the subway to stare unabashedly at fellow riders.
I HATE that so many people smoke. I hate that there are so many homeless people (though I find it weird that some wear moderately nice jeans - pardon the crassness, but how French...). Simultaneously, I'm stricken by the abundance of people who appear middle to upper class, and wonder where the poor(er) live. I hate that the apparent lack of poverty makes me wonder where the poor reside; that I intuitively feel that there must be people suffering somewhere to allow for the formers' lifestyle. I intend to research this, and I'll report back with my findings.

Though I never found Shakes. & Co., I got to know the area surrounding (and within a 4 hour walk of) my home. On my way back, I got distracted by signs for further local sites. Before heading over to Musée Carnavalet, a museum of Parisian history a few blocks from home, I saw a sign for "Mémorial du SHOAH." I followed it until I found the museum, outside of which stands a wall containing a list of French "justes," or righteous gentiles. A few deep breaths later, and after scanning through a long list of names, I found "Jeanne Rousselle," the woman who saved my grandmother, one brother and one sister, during World War Two. Madame Rouselle was the head of a sanatorium for children with respiratory diseases. My grandmother and her sister posed as nurses and their brother as a patient. Another of their brothers was studying to be a rabbi at the École Rabbinique de France (Rabbinical School of France) and thus got to know the man who later married my grandmother. He escaped to Southern France but was then imprisoned. My grandmother and siblings used to save some of their food rations to send to him in prison, only to find out later that he'd died and they'd sent all the food for nothing.

 

 

Once, when the Nazi or French collaborators came to find hidden Jews at the sanatorium, they wanted to check if the boys were circumcised. When they reached my great uncle, one of the nuns said she wouldn't go near him because he was extremely contagious, but told them they could if they wanted to. The officers got scared, bypassed him, and thus he survived. When Madame Rouselle saw that my grandmother and siblings stuck to their faith and maintained Jewish practices - kashrut, Shabbat, etc. - she said to them, "You taught me to be a better Catholic." [This reminds me why I should take the time to understand the list of kosher food here, despite the overwhelming complications.]

Decades later, when my great uncle nominated Madame Rouselle to be one of the righteous gentiles listed at Yad Vashem, they researched her and found out she'd hidden and saved 57 Jewish children. For everyone's safety, Madame Rouselle had never told the Jewish kids about the other Jews living there with them.

My grandmother and grandfather (a"h) came to the United States and had six children, over 20 grandchildren, and as of late a handful of great-grandchildren. My grandfather served as a Rabbi first in France and then in Sudbury, Canada; Wassau, Wisconsin; Beacon, New York; Austin, Texas; and Silver Spring, Maryland, where he became President of the Washington Board of Rabbis. Even today, his shul in Silver Spring invites my grandparents' above-mentioned progeny to an annual Scholar-in-Residence Shabbat in my grandfather's honor.

Seeing Madame Rouselle's name on that wall was viscerally, emotionally, and mentally moving, and I remain amazed that I'm currently breathing, writing, and praying just seven minutes from the monument.

I am taken aback that the even nowadays, the Jewish Community Center here is called the "Centre communautaire de paris" and lacks the word "Juif" in its name because as a local Jew told me, "as it is France they cannot call themselves Jewish!!" But more on that another time. For now, I am contentedly exhausted from the day, and thankful for those who made it (and all the others) possible. As was written outside the museum,

"Devant le Martyr Juif Inconnu incline ton respect ta piété pour tous les martyrs, chemine en pensée avec eux le long de leur voie douloureuse, elle te conduira au plus haut sommet de justice et de vérité.

זכור את אשר עשה לך עמלק של ימינו אלה אשר הכרית גוף ונפש של שש מאות רבוא בני–ישראל תף ונשׁים -- ללא מלחמה."