Melissa Quinnan
We may never understand the passage of time, but we do know that it moves diligently forward. On March 11 we found ourselves experiencing the last day in Paris, and I think many of our meetings and studies of the past reflected that bitterness of ending and our bracing for the fast approaching future. And so we progressed in the day from past to future, meeting in the morning with Marceline Loridan-Ivens, a survivor of Birkenau extermination camp, before meeting with the activists Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, before concluding over dinner (crepes!!). Our dinner guest was Stéphane Golderg-Cojot, whose father, Michel Cojot, attempted to avenge his own father’s murder at Auschwitz by an (ultimately unsuccessful) plan to assassinate Klaus Barbie, the former Gestapo chief in Lyon. In 1976, Michel Cojot found himself on the Air France jet hijacked to Entebbe, Uganda; in life or death circumstances, he served as a translator between the passengers and hijackers, ultimately negotiating the release of many of the hostages.
Our meeting with Marceline Loridan-Ivens in her apartment was an inspirational encounter that abruptly turned our focus from recounting the Shoah to its relevance to the present and future. If I expected Marceline, a feisty and spirited little lady of 88, to begin a long narrative of her time in Auschwitz like the other survivors, she had other plans. She simply wasn’t prepared to talk about it, and told us if we wanted to know her story we could read her memoir. Instead she expressed her frustration at the resurgence (although she says it’s not the same as during the Second World War) of antisemitism and the limitation of civil liberties. She hoped the new generation would learn a lesson from preceding ones, but wasn’t sure if the world wouldn’t end in violence, and reflected on how after the Shoah people didn’t want to or perhaps couldn’t listen. To her, there is “no exorcism possible” for such personal trauma, and seems to instead believe firmly in human resilience and spirit rather than God. She embodied the importance of fighting for freedom and the strength of human spirit. She struck me as someone who is impossibly brave, and I was impressed that she told us how to regard the present and refused to dredge up the memories she didn’t want to relive. I liked her a lot.
The meeting with the Klarsfelds was another that didn’t go quite as expected. They are living history themselves, as people who brought Klaus Barbie and others to justice. “Guerillas for memory,” as a recent film has dubbed them, they have been integral to documenting the history of the Shoah and to giving names to its victims. And yet they did not dwell on their successes or the history they were so dedicated to: in fact they were very matter of fact and businesslike, dutifully continuing their activism and documentation. They are just people doing their job. And their job was exactly what they did when compiling the massive French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial or protesting outside the apartments of known Nazis. They agreed that there are concerning reflections of war sentiments today but maintained that we can’t know the future. They warned about nationalistic politics worldwide and stressed the importance of getting involved in what you believe in. Politically, though, I was surprised to find them rather moderate, and I would describe them more as efficient than passionate. They were happy to educate, though, and were very modest considering their fame. It’s amazing how much they continue to do, fighting for education and traveling to the Middle East with the Aladdin Project, which aims to “build bridges of knowledge between Jews and Muslims,” according to its website. I think they embodied how important it is to keep busy and do what you can for the world in your own role without getting too invested in making it all make sense. We are all just people. And there is no predetermined fate. All we can do is our best, and the Klarsfelds prove that our best is far from insignificant.
Our last dinner was a final upbeat discussion over crêpes with Stéphane Cojot-Goldberg, a photographer and son of a deportee who wanted to but ultimately didn’t kill Klaus Barbie. He set our eyes firmly on the future as we ended our trip, encouraging us to keep up with news and caring about causes that mean something to us. Ignorance and indifference must be fought with knowledge and empathy. We pondered human psychology with mention of Milgram’s experiment and how it is easier to support violence if one can shrug off personal responsibility. Overall the discussion reminded me of the importance of staying informed and caring about others as a citizen of this Earth. I had to duck out early, but it was a wonderful conclusion to a very interesting and meaningful week.
Over the course of the week we talked a lot about the vital importance of memory, the acknowledgement of the past, and what we can do to ensure that remembering is not in vain. We faced the human and physical manifestations of memory and history, heard the pain, the warnings, touched the photos, the graves. Contrary to some perhaps, by Friday I confess I found myself desensitized to the past and ready to look forward. There are just so many dead, and little evidence that things are different now, so by the end I found myself observing and accepting and sometimes reluctant to talk about it anymore. While we may be powerless to change the past or human nature, however, I also learned that there is nobility in learning from the past and taking responsibility for it even as we let it rest. The activism of the Klarsfelds, and their continued work, is evidence for that. I choose to move on, educated and active rather than ignorant and passive, having accepted the horrors of the past and the reality of the darkness of this world, with respect for the people who came before and readiness for whatever the future will bring.
