Chapter 26. To Le Touquet-Paris-Plage
At the end of June 1939, Dr. Saxl drove Lisa and me to Le Touquet-Paris-Plage in her gray Ford for what was to be a summer vacation. It was a long, beautiful drive through the French countryside. By late afternoon, we reached Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, a fashionable seaside resort on the English Channel [#1 ON THE MAP, PLATE 9].
We stayed in a bungalow by the beach with Ditti and Erich Wurmfeld — friends of the Zimmermanns — who had been our upstairs neighbors at 18, rue de l’Atlas. The Wurmfelds took care of other people’s children for pay. One of the two children in foster care with them was a retarded and very amiable chubby, be¬spectacled eleven-year old boy named Janni [PLATE 4]. The other one was a beauti¬ful, black haired and black eyed four- or five-year old girl named Jeannette Schwartz [PLATES 4 AND 5]. She could be vivacious, but her normal demeanor was sad and resigned, as her mother had recently left her in foster care with the Wurmfelds.
Lisa and I had a pleasant week with the Wurmfelds. Almost daily, we walked down to the nearby beach where I would spend most of the day swimming and playing in the sand with Janni and Jeanette. On other days Lisa and I took long walks through the affluent sections of town, admiring the magnificent resort mansions. I particularly liked the ones that were painted white with green shutters. I was also impressed and fascinated by the ubiquitous Rolls Royces, Packards, and Buicks that were to be seen all over town.
Chapter 27. Another Abandonment
At the end of that first week, Lisa took me for a walk alone with her.
“Listen Franzi,” she said. To me, those words by themselves already portended bad news. “I have to take care of some important business in Reims this summer. I have to get my récipicé and earn some money, and that will take me about two months. During that time, you’ll stay here with the Wurmfelds for a nice summer at the seashore.”
“I don’t want to stay here. I want to go with you,” I cried. Two months seemed like forever, and I wasn’t completely confident that Lisa would return at all. After all, Mother was supposed to have picked me up on her way to New York and look at what happened!
“You’ll have a good time here in Paris-Plage going to the beach with Janni, Jeannette, and the Wurmfelds. I wouldn’t be able to take good care of you in Reims,” she explained.
I knew I had no choice. I had overheard Lisa tell the Wurmfelds that Suzanne was putting great pressure on her to unburden herself of me by putting me into a home for Jewish children, a kind of orphanage. Lisa added that she had been resisting that pressure, and had told Suzanne that she would rather die than do that. Although I didn’t feel that Suzanne had my best interests at heart, I also suspected that she was right in saying that it would be in Lisa’s best interests to put me into an orphanage for children of Jewish doctors. So it was clear to me that I was riding without a ticket, so to speak, at Lisa’s sufferance and self-sacrifice. Although I was frightened at the prospect of being left with the Wurmfelds, whom I did not know well, the prospect of an orphanage was even more frightening. The Wurmfelds were, at least, a known quantity.
Upsetting though this new abandonment was, my main concern was whether it would increase or decrease my chances of eventually being reunited with my family. By comparison, everything else paled in importance.
Chapter 28. In Foster Care
While in foster care with the Wurmfelds, we went to the beach daily. I quickly became a good swimmer, and enjoyed building automobiles in the sand (mostly Rolls Royces) in which Janni and Jeannette were my regular passengers [PLATE 4]. The sand dunes, too, were a great playground. I was amazed at the height of the dunes from which I was able to jump into the sand without getting hurt.
Ditti Wurmfeld was a nice and warm person, though somewhat rigid, and I felt comfortable with her. I once asked her to explain to me how babies got out of the mother’s belly. Through a little hole next to the anus, she said. I was skeptical of that answer and put it into the same category as the stork story. For one thing, I couldn’t believe that a baby could fit through a “little hole.” For another, I couldn’t believe that the human body could have an opening located asymmetrically to one side of the body’s midline, which is how I interpreted her term “next to.” If she had said “above,” “below,” or “in front of” I might have found her answer easier to believe.
Although I liked Ditti, life at the Wurmfelds’ quickly turned into a nightmare. Ditti’s husband, Erich, who in his late twenties was quite a bit younger than she, beat poor little Jeannette mercilessly for all kinds of fabricated offenses and at the slightest provocation. In the face of that abuse, Jeannette was generally tearful, resigned, and stoical. I was pained by my inability to protect her from Erich.
Erich abused me, too, but only verbally. Any expression of a wish, complaint, or feeling by me would result in an immediate drawn-out harangue intended to humiliate me. Initially he succeeded in reducing me to tears by merely raising his voice. But I soon stopped reacting. Why should I care about what that man did or said to me? After all, none of that could have any effect on whether I would be reunited with my family, or whether Lisa would come back. I also learned to mislead Erich about my feelings on any particular matter. As I became more skillful at this type of deceit, the verbal abuse he directed at me missed its mark more and more often.
At night, after we had been put to bed, Erich and Ditti often engaged in violent fights. They would scream at each other, beat each other, and threaten to kill each other with knives. Those fights terrified Jeannette and me as we listened to them through the thin walls of the bungalow room we shared. We were afraid that Erich would kill Ditti, after which we would be completely at his mercy.
In spite of the terrifying goings-on in the other room, bedtime was our solace. Every night, as soon as Ditti turned out the lights in our room and closed the door, Jeannette would jump into my bed and into my arms. We shared a craving for hugs and caresses, as well as the pain of having been abandoned by our parents. Our love helped us get through that terrible summer.
Chapter 29. Lisa Returns
September came and Lisa hadn’t returned yet. I was quite apprehensive when Ditti enrolled me in the local public school. Did this mean that I would be here for another year? Was Lisa coming back? Was it becoming less likely that I would rejoin my family?
The school in Le Touquet was very different from the school in Paris. There was no loving teacher and no Alain. Instead, I was the new kid in a small town, and a foreigner, too. During recess, I would usually get beaten up. At first, in order to escape, I stayed behind in the classroom during recess. But after I did that a few times, the teacher made me go outside, into the arena.
At that point, I knew that I would have to learn to fight to defend myself. My small size and tame upbring¬ing put me at a big disadvantage in physical combat. But then, somehow, I discovered the headlock. It worked like a charm and made me feel invincible. I could even use it to bring down a much bigger kid by jumping up on him and using my arm as a vice around his neck. One sharp twist and he would be on the ground. Once I had that weapon, the kids stopped attacking me and soon began to treat me as one of them.
At the end of September Lisa came back. My class was lined up in front of the school building, waiting for dismissal, when I caught sight of her walking up the street. Oblivious to the rules, I broke out of the ranks and ran into her arms. Everyone, including the teacher, was in tears.
Lisa and I then moved into a small house in the northern part of Le Touquet. I felt terrible about leaving Jeannette, knowing that I had become her only source of emotional support. I knew from personal experience how unbearably painful abandonment can be to a child, and it hurt to know that I was doing it to someone I loved. But I was happy to be with Lisa again and away from Erich Wurmfeld.
Chapter 30. In Love with Monique
I quickly made new friends around the neighborhood and soon fell in love with a next door neighbor, Monique Cousin. Monique was a cute, fun-loving, solidly built eight-year-old. I admired her for her spunk, among other things. “Ma mère! Ma mère!” she once screamed as she ran toward her house at top speed to elude the big fat bully who lived across the street and terrorized all the neighborhood kids. I admired Monique’s uninhibited cry for help, as I would have found it unthinkable to complain to Lisa about the bully or my fear of him. Monique and I spent a lot of time together.
“Déchatouille-moi,” she would say, whereupon I would tickle her thighs and belly until she was rolling and thrashing about on the floor, begging for mercy.
One evening, Lisa went out and Monique came over to keep me company.
“Let’s surprise Lisa by cleaning up the house,” I suggested. Earning my keep by pleasing Lisa was one of my main preoccupations. Monique was delighted with the idea and we worked hard for about half an hour.
“What else is there to do?” asked Monique when we were done. “We could turn out the lights to save electricity,” I said, in a burst of inspiration. Monique agreed, and we turned out the lights. “It’s very dark,” I then said. “All we can really do now is get into bed.” That’s where Lisa found us when she came home.
Much as I loved Monique, I found her eleven-year old sister Ginette even more attractive. Ginette had a sweet, gentle smile, a warm and calm manner, and a more mature body. And she seemed to like me a lot. But I never even considered making any overtures to her. I thought that she would consider me too young for her, and in any case, Monique would have been hurt if I’d made a play for her sister.
Chapter 31. New Experiences
That fall, I saw my second movie (Snow White had been my first). In it, the heroes were taken captive by a drum beating African cannibal tribe that used bows and arrows. As a result of seeing that movie, I became obsessed with bows and arrows. Lisa told me that bows could be made out of either mahogany or bamboo. Having been told that mahogany doesn’t grow in Europe, I dedicated myself to the task of finding a piece of bamboo suitable for a bow. Unfortunately, no one had ever told me that bamboo does not grow in France, and that the reeds that grew in the local marshes, although they looked somewhat like bamboo, were not strong enough for making a bow. I believed that my problem was to find a suitably stiff piece of reed. That preoccupation continued for a long time.
Another passion I developed during those months was reading a series of beautifully illustrated children’s books about wild animals, published by Flammarion Press, with titles like Scaf le Phoque, Panache L’Écureuil, Martin Pêcheur, Plouf Canard Sauvage, Froux le Lievre, Bourru L’Ours Brun. I committed those stories to memory and never tired of studying their beautiful water color illustrations. About once a month, Lisa bought me an additional book in the series.
My male playmates were mostly kids from school. Many of them were rough and somewhat uncivilized by my standards. I was shocked to learn from them that many parents in Le Touquet disciplined their children with the martinet — a wooden handle with a bunch of leather thongs attached to it. Sometimes the leather thongs even had sharp objects attached to their ends. I once saw a martinet hanging on a peg in one of the kids’ homes —- a sight that terrified me — and one kid once came to school with reddish strap marks on his calves. I found it revolting that parents did that to their children, and kept wondering how a child could tolerate such savage treatment. Learning about the martinet made me miss the genteel and civilized life of Vienna all the more.
Chapter 32. Missing Vienna
The winter of 1939-1940 came and went, and Mother had left Vienna and traveled to New York with Johanna without picking me up. In the meantime, Hitler had invaded Poland and England and France had declared war on Germany. But the war had not yet reached us. Chamberlain was still trying to avert hostilities by making a deal with Hitler.
I continued to miss Vienna and my family terribly and had recurrent nightmares in which I was being chased after having been left behind on a beach. I tended to crave solitude and isolation, circumstances in which I didn’t feel the need to hide my unhappiness. When spring arrived, I often took long, solitary walks through the pine woods and rolling sand dunes that surrounded Le Touquet. I would start out immediately after lunch with my butterfly net and usually return to the house at sunset. On the walks through the woods, I would compulsively search for muguets (lilies-of-the-valley) because they reminded me of Austria. I would also conjure up memories of Vienna and my family by singing songs from my child¬hood and by rem¬em¬ber¬ing my butterfly-catching expeditions with Father. I tried to ration the number of times I sang any one song, so as not to use up its ability to evoke memories. One of the songs was a German Lied entitled Das Erkennen (The Recognition), by the great Lieder composer Carl Löwe, a contemporary of Franz Schubert. It was about a youth who returns to his native village after prolonged wanderings in foreign countries. He is so changed that no one recognizes him as he walks through the streets of his native village, until he runs into his mother. In Vienna, Father and his brother Carl — a former opera singer — used to perform Das Erkennen for us. I had loved that song, and now it had added poignancy for me.
Alone, I could indulge my daydreams without interruptions or reminders of my current situation. The pinewoods that surrounded Le Touquet, so similar to the forests of Austria, provided an appropriately suggestive setting. As soon as my reminiscences crossed a certain threshold of realism, I would start to cry and cry to my heart’s content.
Lisa and I went to the beach almost daily. There I would isolate myself by swimming far out into the ocean until I could barely see the people on the shore anymore, and would enjoy the challenge of the struggle to make it back. Lisa didn’t seem to worry about me, as she knew that I was a strong swimmer. Lisa, too, was an excellent and passionate swimmer, and would swim long distances along the length of the shore, but never far out the way I did.
Chapter 33. Lisa Is Good to Me
Even though Lisa was very good to me and did many little things to reduce my unhappiness — like buying me tartes aux cerises (cherry tarts) and books from time to time — my cardinal concern was still whether and when I would rejoin my family.
I also knew that Lisa’s life had become quite difficult, financially and in every other way. I devoted much effort to pleasing her and not being a burden to her. I was simply not willing to risk being put into an orphanage, which I regarded as a constant and real threat.
I knew that I could please Lisa by being cheerful and charming, by impressing her friends with my supposed talents, and by always being ranked first in my class. I did all that. To avoid placing any added burden on her, I concealed any problems or unhappiness I might be experiencing, and that was not always so easy. For example, one time as I was running down the street, I fell and hit my breast bone on a stone. The pain was excruciating, and for weeks, every breath I took was painful. I didn’t mention the injury to Lisa, or the even greater pain I suffered when I re-injured my breast bone in a similar fall some weeks later. I didn’t want to be a problem to Lisa under any circumstances.
On May 1, 1940, Lisa made me a party for my ninth birthday. She invited six of my neighborhood friends, including Monique and Ginette. Lisa was a fantastic baker and had baked my favorite Viennese pastries (Apfelnuss Schnitten, Vanilla Kipferln, and Linzer Torte). The table was decorated with muguets. She also overwhelmed me with birthday presents. The most thrilling one was a bow and arrow set made of real mahogany, with three arrows tipped with rubber suction cups. Almost as exciting was a set of hard wax crayons. Lisa certainly knew how to make me happy.
For days afterward, I spent hours in the woods and sand dunes shooting with my bow and arrows. I was thrilled by how high into the air the arrows would fly. But one time, as I was testing the limits of how high I could shoot an arrow, I pulled too hard on the string and the bow snapped. So did my heart.
“I have never been so unhappy in all my life,” I said to Lisa as I came home crying. Lisa took the bow back to the store, where they did a superb job of repairing it with glue, a screw, and a string wrapped tightly around the joint. It seemed stronger than before. But I didn’t have much time to use the repaired bow, as a new set of events took control of our lives.