4/20/15, Your Question

Hi Everyone,

I hope all is well with you. I was very, very touched and pleased that you all liked my blog about the Shabbat Dinner, and were very interested in the fantastic red headed writer/film maker I mentioned, super active, still working hard, who just celebrated her 87th birthday. So I wanted to write to you to give you the info. Many of you wanted to read her book. She is the lady I mentioned who was deported at 14 or 15, and survived 4 concentration camps during World War II.

Her name is Marcelline Loridan-Ivens, and the book is called, in French, “Et tu n’es pas revenu”, which means “And you didn’t come back”. (The publisher is ‘Grasset’, a French publishing house). I don’t know if the book has been translated into English or not, but I imagine you could find out on the Internet. The title and the book really, refer to her father. She was caught and deported with him. They were separated in the camps they were in (in different buildings, but the same camps), but they managed to see each other a few times, but he didn’t survive the camps and was killed there. And she survived and went home to Paris when the camps were liberated at the end of the war. The book is incredibly poignant and touching, and clearly she and the whole family were deeply marked by her father’s not surviving. She talks about a letter her father wrote to her and managed to get to her in the camp. The deprivation, and the anguish, and the horrors of the camps come through her words so powerfully, when she speaks and when she writes. It’s quite a short book, but moved me tremendously. She goes right to the heart of the feelings and the experience. She’s a strong woman and a survivor, despite her tiny size. When she was deported, her mother and the two younger children escaped and were hidden by people for the rest of the war, and her two older siblings joined the Resistance and survived the war. (The Resistance were the brave people who did everything they could to sabotage the Germans while they occupied France). So out of 5 children, only she and her father were caught and deported to the concentration camps. And yet she survived it. She really is a monument to the strength of the human spirit. And the book is powerful and wonderful. I hope you can find it in a language you speak. It is a wonderful book!!!

Some of you were confused too by my saying I hadn’t been to a Shabbat dinner before, but ‘have been 3 or 4 times. When I went to the first Shabbat Dinner I was invited to, I had never been before. It was a Chanukah Dinner. Since then, the same friends have invited me 2 or 3 more times. I love it, and am always thrilled to go.

I hope you can find Marcelline’s book. I don’t usually answer questions in the blog, because there are so many of them. But so many of you asked about this lady, and her book, I really wanted you to know the information. Take care, and have a great week!!

love, Danielle

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