I started reading Hélène Berr’s journal last night and I have been thinking about it all day. Hélène was a 21-year old woman in April 1942, when she started her journal. A brilliant student with a double baccalauréat, she was working on the final memoir for her English undergraduate, a dissertation on Roman history in Shakespeare. She was also a music lover and a violin player (my temptation is to assume she was an accomplished interpret since she loved music so much, and because she played Bach and Mozart with others several times a week, but I don’t know that for a fact), a nervous young girl in romantic turmoil, someone who noticed the hues of the light on any given day, and a very social little person. She worked as a volunteer librarian and with underprivileged kids. She had had a very sheltered life, her family being obviously rich, cultured and quite loving. And of course, she was Jewish.

It doesn’t seem like it was a very important part of her identity, but of course it mattered. She was not naive, though one of the surprises of her journal is to realize how numb people around her, in occupied Paris, seemed to be. Most of her friends just assumed that the Germans would win the war, and that it wouldn’t really change a thing. “There will always be sun and water*”, says one of her friend. Hélène has to make a real effort against the temptation to accept these pacifying words, and to remind him that “they don’t let everyone rejoice in the sun and water*“. It feels like she’s reminding herself at least as much as reminding him.

As “incidents” happen, which in hindsight make one want to scream to her to run away, my heart is breaking. Some piece of property (she doesn’t mention which) is taken from her father; she and her family have to wear the yellow star; her father is arrested, and released only against money and with the interdiction to show up at work again; she is denied the right to study for the aggregation, a diploma that leads to teaching, and decides to work for a Doctorate instead. And all the while, she thinks about love, friendship, and about her diploma; she has to push herself to care about politics and war. Nobody seems to realize what’s happening, and it is already 1942. Her father’s colleagues and business associates think it’s a shame he’s barred from work; the non-Jewish students at Hélène’s school make a point to be more attentive, kinder to her when she wears her star; people smile at her pointedly and salute her; there are indeed a few pointed fingers, mostly from children, but overall the feeling is one of support and foolish indifference.

Reading about World War II and the Shoah always brings out such strong emotions in me. It’s a subject with which I just do not manage to keep any distance, which is why I don’t go watch films including “pop-Nazis” (such as Inglorious Basterds or that latest Indiana Jones). I don’t really know that they’re necessarily blamable, but I don’t trust my reaction to them. When my husband told me about Germany’s embargo on games set in Nazi settings, I didn’t (and still don’t know) what to think: emotionally, I’m with them, though censorship doesn’t fit very well with my principles. I didn’t even watch La Vita e Bella, despite all the good press, because I am so afraid it’ll be one of these “if you really want it/ if you have the right attitude” movies I find obscene in this context.

I’ll write more about the Journal when I finish it, but had to post a little something today to evacuate some emotion!

* the translations are homemade, and rather quickly at that.