Memoirs of a child of the past century - 2. Chapter 2 : My first years

Being an only child is never easy. However, if I go through my memories of my first 10 years, until the beginning of WWII, I had a happy childhood.

From 1929 to 1939, that is, until September 5th, 1939, the date of the declaration of war, I lived like any little boy with many friends, boys and girls, not being concerned by the economic crisis affecting many homes around us and by the increasing threat of Nazi power.

What are my first memories of my earliest childhood?

I remember (I was 3 years old) to have received a wooden hammer for my birthday from my maternal grandparents. I see me in Diez, in the house of my grandparents, seated at the foot of the two stairs between the dining room and a kind of loggia, tapping passionately with the hammer and enjoying the noisiness I made.

Later, (I was 5 years old), I was angry and very afraid, having to go to a hairdresser before a trip to Paris with my parents. I locked myself in the bathroom and standing on a chair in front of the mirror I cut almost all of my own hair, provoking the despair of my parents

Nocturnal terrors: When I was a baby, my parents left open a door between my room and theirs; and I fell asleep comforted by the little light that filtered. Later; I suppose I was 3 or 4 years old, the door remained closed when my parents went out at night. My only companions were my bear, my rabbit and a trickle of light from the alley through the glass door of the apartment. And I remained awake until the return of my parents, lying still on the side facing out, my right arm behind my head to protect me from dangers that may come from the wall behind me (there were cartoons figures on the tapestry, albeit friendly by day but more dangerous at night ....).

On numerous occasions (at the age of 5 till 7 if I remember correctly), whenever my parents took their own vacations to ski or to the sea, I was ‘placed’ in a children's pension In the Alps. A lot of ‘bad’ memories remain: the breakfast of porridge (Beh ...), the obligation to kneel each evening and to pray loud the ‘Our Father’ and the ‘Hail Mary’, the games of hide and seek in the forest naps with the obligation to stay put and remain silent, the ‘abuse’ of the little children (including myself) by the older ones, which made ​​us believe that the carpet was occupied by very naughty dwarfs : ‘These little men were very bad and it was very dangerous to walk on the carpets’ .

During the last trip to Diez (This was in 1937, I was 8 years old), I was walking with my mother on a path along the river Lahn, going to my grand-parent’s garden outside the city. We meet young oncoming cyclists and I heard shouting "dirty Jews" in German of course ... This was my first encounter with the hatred against Jews.

Until 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, my parents did not care too much about their Jewishness. Although believers, they were not practicing Jews and were not members of the Jewish community in Geneva.

We lived in the entourage of the ‘good Protestant society’. My father was primarily a member of numerous sports clubs (field hockey, tennis, etc.) and his major concerns outside of work were to participate in the establishment of a national professional organization and the management of the sports clubs of which he was a member.

The arrival of Hitler changed all that. My father realized that being Jewish could mean Death. Following the extension of Nazi Germany absorbing Austria and Czechoslovakia, with the lack of reaction from Western powers and with the attitude of several groups of Swiss politicians favorable to Germany, he realized that only a war between the winners of WWI and Germany could prevent Switzerland being annexed to Germany. However, neither France nor Britain was prepared to fight and the way that Daladier, French Prime Minister had submitted to Hitler in Munich in 1938 made ​​him see a very bleak future for all European Jews.

His decision was quickly made: his son had to know why a death threat was hanging over him, he had to know what it meant to be Jewish, and he had to know what it meant for him and for others.

But back to my story.

I remember very well the 1st September 1939. It was noon and we were at the beach, my mother and I, with many friends around us. Suddenly, the speakers around the pool announced that Britain and France would declare war on Germany. I still remember today the words of the speaker: “This evening at 5:00 p.m. we will be at war”. Everyone looked around, most left the beach and some began to cry. I was 11; I couldn’t understand; I didn’t see why we had to go home so fast.

Meanwhile, my father had acquired Swiss citizenship in 1936. At first he wanted to remain French, but all his friends and his colleagues had insisted. Having lived in Switzerland for 30 years, having followed all of its schools in Zurich, he had no real links with France any more, apart from his memories of his military career in Germany. By the way, the French and Swiss laws in this matter had a particularity: his son had to remain French till his majority. At the age of 18, I would have to choose between France and Switzerland!

Then it was the winter of 1939, with the « drôle de guerre » (‘phony war’) .While Germany was not allied with the Soviet Union to crush Poland, neither the French nor the British armies, or even the Germans, moved one centimeter on the Western Front. The French army felt safe behind the ‘Maginot Line’, forgetting that this line of forts began in Alsace, but didn’t go further than the Belgian border. A huge hole remained open in the Ardennes: the Germans would take advantage of it on May 10, 1940.

I remember the song the Frenchies sang during the winter at radio shows and in the music- halls:
‘We will dry our shirts on the Siegfried Line’ (German fortified line in front of the Maginot Line). On the other side of the ‘Channel’, an Irish songwriter, Jimmy Kennedy, sang the same song called ‘We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line’. Words, nothing but words!

The particular work that my father did (film distribution), the fact he had done his military service in the French army of occupation in Germany and his military rank in the French army (NCO) had the effect that he was drafted into the General Staff of the Army and made responsible for the distribution of films for military propaganda, intended to boost the morale of the population. He was appointed lieutenant and we did not see him at home for weeks.

Many years later, long after the death of my father, several historians analyzing this time discovered that the supreme head of the army, The General in Chief Guisan, was concerned that a Jew, apparently of German origin (?), was in charge of the military propaganda and had asked his chief of staff to replace him with a ‘pure’ Swiss. Fortunately, this order was soon forgotten by the Chief of Staff and my father remained in place. My father never talked about it and I suspect that he never knew the whole story. This is a perfect example of the latent anti-Semitism of some officers, but also an example of the honesty of my father’s supervisor.

The funny part of the story is that the initiator of this intervention by the general Guisan, a cinema owner in Zurich, became after the war one of the father’s best friends

And then Springtime 1940 came !

On May 10, 1940, I was almost 11 and since I was not sleeping well, I got up at 6:00 in the morning, turning the radio for the 7 hours news. It was the beginning of the Battle of France.

And everything went very quickly. the Germans invaded Belgium and Holland, crossed the Ardennes and broke the resistance of French and British armies. The British retreated to Dunkirk and back across the Channel. The French army was not prepared for a war of movement, and civilians, terrified by German planes dive-bombing, fled on the road, blocking the movement of French troops. June 25, the French asked for an armistice and the German army reached the Swiss border.

I was certainly not aware of the reality of our situation and I couldn’t imagine how bad it was for us. For the German army, the next step was the invasion of Switzerland. The German General Staff had long planned what was called ‘Operation Tannenbaum’, which included among other things an attack on Geneva, 10 km from the French border and almost surrounded by it. Geneva should have been invaded through a ‘Blitzkrieg’ operation in the first hours of the invasion.

The Swiss Nazis in Geneva, a party called ‘le Front National’ had already prepared for the destruction of all Jews as a follow up of the German occupation. My father was aware of it and the climate at home was gloomy. I was sent to a friend in the country, who was protestant. The schools were closed and, as I remember today, one of main occupation of my friend and me was to compare the size of a part of our body which was not the same for both, ignoring the soldiers laying barbed wires in the neighborhood (the house was about 2 miles from the border) and enjoying the late summer sun.