Rue Ordener, Rue Labat by Sarah Kofman

Summary: Rue Ordener, Rue Labat is a moving memoir by the distinguished French philosopher Sarah Kofman. It opens with the horrifying moment in July 1942 when the author’s father, the rabbi of a small synagogue, was dragged by police from the family home on Rue Ordener in Paris, then transported to Auschwitz—“the place,” writes Kofman, “where no eternal rest would or could ever be granted.” It ends in the mid-1950s, when Kofman enrolled at the Sorbonne. 

The book is as eloquent as it is forthright. Kofman recalls her father and family in the years before the war, then turns to the terrors and confusions of her own childhood in Paris during the German occupation. Not long after her father’s disappearance, Kofman and her mother took refuge in the apartment of a Christian woman on Rue Labat, where they remained until the Liberation. This bold woman, whom Kofman called Mémé, undoubtedly saved the young girl and her mother from the death camps. But Kofman’s close attachment to Mémé also resulted in a rupture between mother and child that was never to be fully healed.

This slender volume is distinguished by the author’s clear prose, the carefully recounted horrors of her childhood, and the uncommon poise that came to her only with the passage of many years (Via Goodreads.com).

Pages: 85

Release Year: 1993

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

Review:

I was amazed by how precise and detailed Rue Ordener, Rue Labat was even though it was less than 100 pages long. It was a quick and engaging read. I found it amazing, yet terrifying at the same time. I do not know how to describe all of my emotions in regards to Rue Ordener, Rue Labat. The book is a memoir of Sarah Kofman's childhood during the Holocaust which includes her father's arrest and deportation. It also discusses the rescue of her and her mother by a woman on the Rue Labat. In addition, it explores how damaged her relationship was with her mother following the war because of the bond she developed with her "adopted" mother, Mémé.

I read Rue Ordener, Rue Labat for my French and Jewish Studies class on France and the Holocaust this semester. In class, we have read and watched films about Jewish children in France who experienced the Holocaust, whether they were hidden and protected, survived and/or escaped the camps, or were murdered. It was fascinating to see how damaging the life of a hidden child could be. I never considered how attached they could grow to their "adoptive" parent(s) and how it might be difficult for them to return to their "normal" life following the war's end. 

Individuals, such as Mémé, who hid Jewish children and families during the Holocaust should be acknowledged and appreciated for their efforts to save Jews; however, their aid to these families might have also been damaging. Not only did the Jewish communities within Europe have to regroup following the Holocaust, but some also had to reintroduce family members and children to their families and the Jewish community. The Holocaust damaged Jewish families and communities in an unknown number of ways. Mémé was also very anti-Semitic and separated Kofman from Judaism. 

I found Rue Ordener, Rue Labat extremely interesting. I easily finished it in one sitting and I highly recommend reading it. I found it fascinating to learn about Sarah Kofman's childhood and some of the lasting impacts the Holocaust had on her and her family. It was a very blunt book, which I enjoyed, but it was also difficult to read parts of it because she was so nonchalant about certain aspects and experiences from her childhood. Rue Ordener, Rue Labat was a fascinating book that I would highly recommend. I am interested to read more memoirs and stories about Jewish individuals from France during the Holocaust. It is a country I knew very little about in regards to the Holocaust and it was engrossing to learn more about the subject. 

Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano

Summary: Patrick Modiano opens Dora Bruder by telling how in 1988 he stumbled across an ad in the personal columns of the New Year's Eve 1941 edition of Paris Soir. Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Dora Bruder, who had run away from her Catholic boarding school, the ad sets Modiano off on a quest to find out everything he can about Dora and why, at the height of German reprisals, she ran away on a bitterly cold day from the people hiding her. He finds only one other official mention of her name on a list of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz in September 1942.

With no knowledge of Dora Bruder aside from these two records, Modiano continues to dig for fragments from Dora's past. What little he discovers in official records and through remaining family members, becomes a meditation on the immense losses of the period—lost people, lost stories, and lost history. Modiano delivers a moving account of the ten-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Nazi Occupation and the paranoia of the Pétain regime as he tries to find connections to Dora. In his efforts to exhume her from the past, Modiano realizes that he must come to terms with the specters of his own troubled adolescence. The result, a montage of creative and historical material, is Modiano's personal rumination on loss, both memoir and memorial (Via Goodreads.com).

Pages:

Release Date: April 2nd, 1997

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

Review:

I read Dora Bruder for a French and Jewish Studies class this semester that focused on France and the Holocaust. We spent the semester focusing on the experience of Jews in France as well as the lasting impact the Holocaust had on Jewish children in France. Dora Bruder focused on both of those aspects. Dora Bruder follows a narrator who was born around the time of liberation and explains how his childhood was impacted by his family's experience of the Holocaust. As an adult, he found an article about the disappearance of Dora Bruder, a Jewish teen in France, during the Holocaust and he goes on an exploration to discover what happened to her.

It was empowering to see how dedicated he was to finding out what happened to Dora. In class, some of my peers discussed that his motivations might not have been pure and he seemed almost obsessed with her, but I think that was beneficial. Without someone that cares so much about the lives of Holocaust victims, their stories and identities may never be known. The stories of Holocaust victims and survivors deserve to be known by the world. I did, however, think that he should have separated the narrated sections and Dora's story in alternating chapters. While he did bring Dora's story to life, I do agree that the narrator was using her story to tell his. I am glad that Dora's story inspired the narrator to write about his, but I think their stories should have been separated. I felt as though he took away from some of her story by telling his. The two stories needed to be told, but they should not have been intertwined because they were not in real life. He never knew Dora or knew of anyone in his family that knew her. I think he was trying to make connections to Dora that did not exist.

I liked the fact that he told Dora's story even though he knew he could never discover everything about her. Dora might have been murdered in the Holocaust and was never able to tell her story, but not having her story fully told is not necessarily a bad thing. She was able to take something away that her persecutors and executioners could not. They tried to take away her dignity and humanity, but she was able to take something with her to the grave that they could never take away from her.

I enjoyed Dora Bruder. It was an interesting and thoughtful book that I would highly recommend. I loved learning about her story as well as the narrator's. So many stories exist from the Holocaust, but many may never be fully known or known about. I hope other individuals will take this initiative and explore the stories of individuals that did not live to tell their own story. They deserve to have their story told as much as any one else does.