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'Writing the tragedy' By Gabi Levin Tags: Helene Berr, Nazis "Journal 1942-1944" by Helene Berr, Tallandier, 300 pages, 19 euros The diary of Helene Berr arrived at French bookshops on January 3, 2008 - 65 years after it was written. In the wake of the enthusiastic responses and the unprecedented media coverage, the supply of books ran out within a few days, and a great deal of effort, determination and goodwill, including on the part of Israeli "emissaries" in Paris, were required to find it. In the end, a single copy was discovered in the bookshop of La Memorial de la Shoah, the French Holocaust museum, where the manuscript of the journal has been on display since 2002. A great deal has been written and will yet be written about the quality of the book and about its documentary and literary value; in terms of its historical value and its clear and unique voice, it has been compared to the diary of Anne Frank. But it is also important to praise the wonderful foreword written by writer Patrick Modiano, in which he presents Helene Berr to the readers as a rare gem, as an exceptional literary and documentary phenomenon, and thus also reveals once again what a great writer he is himself. Advertisement Modiano deals extensively with the Holocaust, both directly and indirectly. In 1968 he published his famous book "La Place de l'Etoile," whose name can be interpreted either as the "place of the star" or the "place of the yellow star" - in other words, the place of the star in history, or the place of the star in the lives of the Jews who were forced to wear it. And thus he presents to us the young woman who one day in June 1942 was forced for the first time in her life to wear the "yellow star" that determined her fate and transferred her to another mysterious place, beyond anything she had known or imagined in her previous life: "... on the threshold of this book we must now remain silent, to listen to Helene's voice and to walk alongside her. A voice and a presence that will remain with us all our lives." The critics compared Helene Berr to Irene Nemirovsky, the author of "Suite Francaise," but that is arguably due to the fact that both manuscripts were published about 60 years after their writers perished in the Holocaust. At the time of her death, Nemirovsky was an admired writer and she wrote her last book without any hint of her Judaism. Moreover, the afterword of "Suite Francaise" contains the letters of her husband Michel Epstein, who turned to the Vichy authorities in an attempt to rescue her: In these letters he emphasizes the fact that they are Catholics, not Jews, and even adds examples from his wife's writings in which she expresses contempt toward Jews and mocks them. As compared to Nemirovsky, Helene Berr was 22, an anonymous student at the Sorbonne, who had completed her bachelor's degree in English literature. She had not published anything before, and this journal is the only evidence of her literary talent and her humanity, which were lost when she was murdered in Bergen-Belsen. This is also a document of courage and nobility, and an important document of the events as recorded almost daily between April 7, 1942 and February 15, 1944. A few days later, on March 8, Helene and her parents were arrested in their apartment in the Seventh Arrondissement, where they had insisted on remaining. They were sent to the Drancy transit camp and from there to Auschwitz. Helene's mother, Antoinette, had already been sent to the gas chambers in May of that year, and her father, Raymond, was murdered in September. Helene Berr died in early April 1945, a few days before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and after surviving the Death March. It is not known whether she died from typhus or from beatings. The evidence is contradictory. The journal was hidden with a loyal family servant, who gave it to Helene's brother at the end of the war. Afterward it was given to Jean Morawiecki, her fiance, who had joined the Free French Forces while she was writing the journal. She says she wrote the journal because she wanted Jean to know upon his return what she and her family had experienced, but she occasionally emphasizes that she also sees this record as expressing her sense of responsibility toward the victims, toward all those who suffer, and she is concerned mainly about the fact that all these things will be forgotten and will never be known. "To write, and to write as I want, in other words with total frankness, without thinking at all that others will be reading this - in order not to strike a false note, to write all the reality and the tragic things that we are living through and to endow them with their entire weight without changing them through words, that is a very difficult challenge that requires constant effort," she writes in October 1943. Decorated with courage As a member of a well-to-do Jewish family, an outstanding student of English literature, Helene Berr divides her time between playing the violin, flirting with young men in the Sorbonne amphitheater and the Luxembourg Gardens, or spending "perfect days" in the family's country house. The war is nothing but a nightmare taking place somewhere else until that sunny June morning when she is forced to wear the yellow star on her coat lapel. In a reaction of pride and identification with her fellow Jews, to whom she felt no affiliation until that day, she decides to wear the yellow star, to prove to herself that she has the courage to overcome the pain and the shame. She describes the sense of embarrassment in the face of the curious passersby, the anger toward the metro ticket-taker, who makes sure to enforce the law and sends her to the last car of the train, and her feeling about the expressions of friendship of her fellow students who try to ignore the star. Helene's world is shaken up with the arrest of her father, who was sent to the Drancy camp (he was later released after paying a bribe). During that entire period, Helene holds on to her old world, a world of literature and music, and continues to play. She is still moved by the beauty of English poetry, by "The Brothers Karamazov," the fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens, the sunshine. She refuses to lose faith in the beauty and aesthetics of art, and still believes that they can serve as a refuge from human ugliness. In light of all the horrifying events taking place around her, the arrests, the repression, the rumors about the fate awaiting the Jews in the camps in Poland, she understands that she has to stay and testify, to be a partner to the fate of her people and to help as much as possible. The lack of understanding and the indifference on the part of French acquaintances to the fate of the Jews tortures her. Her only consolation is compassion, genuine help. She begins to volunteer for a Jewish organization (the General Organization of Israelites in France, UGIF), which served as a kind of mediator between the Jews and the occupation authorities. To Helene, her activity in this organization, which many considered collaboration or a way of getting benefits from the authorities, is merely a means to help, to take care of the young orphans with whom she walks in the streets of Paris, to care for people in hospitals and occasionally to hide people with French families outside the city. Between November 1942 and August 1943, she stops writing in the journal and therefore there is no way of knowing what she went through during those nine months. Unlike other families, the Berrs refuse to flee and choose to remain in their apartment. Helene's mother also volunteered to help Jews, and provided a roof and a helping hand to many families. On October 10, 1943 Helene wrote in her diary: "I have to write in order to be able to show people later on what this period was like. I know that many will have more important lessons... I think about all those who were expelled, about all those rotting in prisons." Helene Berr wrote the lessons while she was still alive. The words that end the journal, on February 15, 1943, say it all: "Horror! Horror! Horror!" As Patrick Modiano wrote, this voice really will remain with us all our lives. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Grass is greener For the cannabis-growing residents of Lebanon, recent fighting has been a blessing. Piggy bank savings Welfare Minister Herzog unveils a plan to open savings accounts for every Israeli child.

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