The Sweetness of Forgetting (38)

After checking in, I take a quick shower and throw on jeans, flat boots, and a sweater. Armed with directions from the concierge, I walk the few blocks toward rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier, where I know the Mémorial de la Shoah is located.

Paris in October is crisp and beautiful, I realize. I’ve never been here before, of course, so there’s little to compare it against, but the streets seem quiet and peaceful. I’m fascinated by the way the old mixes with the new here; cobblestone meets cement at some corners, and on others, stores selling electronics or high fashion inhabit buildings that look like they’re hundreds of years old. Having spent most of my life in Massachusetts, I’m accustomed to history being naturally interwoven with modern life, but it feels different here, perhaps because the history is much older, or perhaps because there’s so much more of it.

I can smell baking bread, and changing autumnal leaves, and the faint odor of fire, as I walk along, and I breathe in deeply, because it’s a blend I’m not used to. Little arched doorways, bicycles propped against stone walls, and nearly hidden gated gardens remind me that I’m in a place foreign to me, but there’s something about Paris that feels very familiar. I wonder for the first time if a sense of place can be passed down through the blood. I dismiss the thought, but despite the fact that the streets are unfamiliar and winding, I easily find my way to the Holocaust museum.

After going though a metal detector outside the stout, somber building, I cross through an open-air, gray courtyard, past a monument with the names of the concentration camps, beneath a metal Star of David, and enter the museum through the doors ahead. The woman at the front desk, who fortunately speaks English, suggests that I first try the computers opposite the desk, which are the first stop for guests seeking family members. On these too, as expected, I find the same information I found on the Internet. The names on my grandmother’s list, minus Alain.

I return to the desk and explain to the woman that I’m looking for a person whose name doesn’t appear in the records, and for information about what actually happened to the people whose names I have found. She nods and directs me to the elevator down the hall.

“Take that to the fourth level,” she says. “There, you will find a reading room. Ask at the desk for help.”

I nod, thank her, and follow her directions upstairs.

The reading room is home to computers and long tables on the lower level and rows of books and files on the second level, beneath a high ceiling that lets light pour in. I approach the desk, where a woman greets me in French and switches to English as soon as I ask, “Can you help me find some people, please?”

“Of course, madame,” she says. “How can I help you?”

I give her the names from Mamie’s list, along with their years of birth, and I explain that I can’t locate Alain. She nods and disappears for a few minutes. She returns with several pages of loose records.

“Here is all we have on these people,” she says. “Like you said, we cannot find Alain on any list of the deported.”

“What could that mean?” I ask.

“There could be many reasons for this. As complete as our records are, there are occasionally people who have not been properly recorded, especially children. They were lost in the chaos.”

She hands me the documents she has, and I sit down to read over them. For the next few minutes, I try to read the notations, some handwritten, some typed, all of them in French. It’s not until I flip to the third document she’s given me, a census page, that my eyes widen.

There, in tilted handwriting, on a list stamped with the word recensement, is a 1936 listing of the Picard family of Paris, and among their children is a daughter, Rose, born 1925.

As caught up as I’d been in finding out the fate of the names on Mamie’s list, and as much as I’d begun to believe that they were indeed her family, it’s not until I see my grandmother’s first name and her birth year scrawled in indelible ink that it finally sinks in.

My heart pounds as I stare at the page.

I read over the scant details. It appears that, like the deportation information I’d found online said, the man who may be Mamie’s father, Albert, was a doctor. His femme, his wife, Cecile, is listed sans profession. She must have stayed home with the children. The children—the fils and filles—including Rose, are listed, all but Danielle, the youngest, who wasn’t born until 1937, the year after the census. Alain’s name is on the list too. He was just as real as the rest of them.

I go through all the documents, which take me a long time to read, both because my eyes keep tearing up and because I need to keep referring to the English-French dictionary I’ve brought with me. At the end, I’m no closer to finding out what happened to Alain than I was before, nor am I any closer to finding out what happened after the family was deported. None of the copies of deportation documents are annotated with any additional information. The last record of everyone in the family—except for Rose and Alain, for whom no records exist—is that they were all deported on convoys bound for Auschwitz.

I take the documents back to the desk, where the woman who had helped me earlier looks up and smiles at me.

“Did you have luck?”

I nod and feel my eyes fill with tears. “I think it’s my grandmother’s family,” I say softly. “But I can’t tell what happened to them after they were deported.”