The Postcard

Vicente grew up unloved, did not graduate middle school, and struggled to find his way in France. He washes dishes, aspiring to be a mountain guide and poet. His post for a tutor brings him into contact with Myriam.

Soon, she falls for the dark-haired, handsome Spanish boy. He invites her to his house for tea, and Myriam accepts. At the apartment, she finds him nude, save for a robe, and drinking. He talks about his childhood and miserable family. She sleeps over, only to be awoken by Vicente’s mother, Gabriele. Vicente then tells his mother he will marry Myriam.

Anne interrupts the story midway to explain that she has so many things in common with her grandmother, Myriam: They share the same birthday, educational pathway, and the same street of residence in Paris.

Myriam is deeply in love with an ambivalent Vicente, introducing him to her friend Colette and sister Noémie. For Vicente, Myriam is a way to anger everyone in his rebellious life because she is Jewish. For Myriam, a beautiful man is all hers, something she never imagined as the undervalued sister.

Meanwhile, Emma’s parents in Lodz, Poland, are under lockdown, with Jewish people in the quarter dying in droves from disease and starvation. Emma is worried when letters go unanswered.

Back in France, new laws are enacted limiting the number of Jewish people in university, and both girls are forced out, just as their mother, Emma, was forced out of the Russian university system.

Ephraïm is offered the opportunity to work in Germany, but when they ask a trusted friend named Debord, he deters them. Ephraïm’s eagerness to please the French in return for recognition and citizenship nearly gets them killed.

In France, antisemitic rhetoric is rampant, and propaganda funded by the Germans disparaging Jewish people floods the streets. Synagogues are bombed and Jewish people attacked. The family’s assets are inventoried. Ephraïm’s friend Debord offers to help him out of France, but Ephraïm’s pride intervenes, and he feels the barriers imposed by foreign governments on refugees makes it impossible for him to flee. He turns down the offer.

Myriam marries Vicente and is taken off the list of Jewish people in their rural town when she moves to Paris. She lives a harsh life with Vicente, who puts her in constant danger to show off his Jewish wife. By 1942, the yellow star on her clothes sets her further apart. She ferries supplies to her family at the dacha and brings back food grown on the farm. One night while out drinking with Vicente and his friends, Myriam is arrested and spends several nights in prison for violating curfew. A police officer is bribed to let her go, and he gives her money for a train ticket to her parent’s dacha, warning her not to come back.

Jacques and Noémie grow closer in Myriam’s absence, and Colette joins them as they ride bikes, hiding their stars by folding their jackets.

Myriam visits, and the whole family is together again, which pleases Emma. A lovely meal set in the garden is interrupted by fists pounding on doors. Ephraïm answers the door, and the police explain that they are there for the two children, Jacques and Noémie. Ephraïm hides Myriam in the orchard and sends the other two children out to the police, who say the kids will only go to work in Germany and will not be harmed.

Lélia explains to Anne how the deportations of Jewish people in France came in waves, beginning with healthy men of Polish descent to give credence to the idea that the Jewish people were being sent to work in Germany. It also stripped the Jewish population of its most likely fighters—men of fighting age. Next, the younger men, women, and children are taken. Jacques was younger than the mandate required but was arrested to fill a quota. Only Myriam, because of her marriage and removal from the registry in that provincial town, was spared.

As Noémie and Jacques are taken away, Noémie dreams of how she’ll one day write about this adventure. Ephraïm and Emma go back to sleep as Myriam flees to Paris on her father’s bicycle, arriving at dawn. On the way, she finds a dead bird and buries it, praying the way Nachman taught her as a child. The dead bird is a symbol of coming death and loss, and Myriam is shaken by this. When Myriam reaches home, she collapses in exhaustion and awakes to Vicente’s older sister Jeanine shaking her.

Vicente’s sister Jeanine urgently forces Myriam to dress and accompany her down the street wearing all the underwear she owns. She is told not to drink anything in preparation for the escape. In the morning, Myriam slides into a false back in Vicente’s mother’s car, driven by Jeanine and her mother, Gabriele. A painter named Jean Hans Arp is also there.

At the demarcation line, the two women risk their lives to free Myriam and Arp. A sign posted at the gate says that all males 18 and over in any family will be shot if any single family member aids the escape of a Jew; similar punishments for children and women are posted. Dogs begin barking at the trunk, but Gabriele cleverly gets them across the border using dead birds. They arrive at a chateau, and Myriam is led to a room where she falls asleep. In the morning, she awakens covered in bruises from the long, hard journey. She finds Jeanine and Gabriele gone. She is alone.

Meanwhile, Jacques and Noémie wake up in prison, arrested for being Jewish. Still, Jacques believes they will be set free.

At the dacha, Ephraïm lays awake wishing he had listened to his father, to Anna, to all those who begged him to get his family out of Europe: “One day they’ll want us all to disappear,” Nachman had said (143). In the morning, they dress and go to the town hall, where they meet with the mayor, who hates them. Ephraïm complies with the mayor’s demand that he leave after learning nothing of his children, still firm in the belief that his compliance will yield favor.

Jacques and Noémie are taken to headquarters in Rouen, along with others. News of the massive roundup circulates, along with stories of cruelty. Ephraïm and Emma hear that the Jewish people have been taken to the stadium in Paris. They return to the mayor’s office, but he kicks them out.

Jacques and Noémie are taken to a concentration camp called Pithiviers—a French transit camp meant to hold Jewish people until they are deported by train to Germany. Noémie and Jacques find a prison-like compound where they will work from morning to night. If they listen, work hard, and comply, they’re told they’ll get more favorable future lodgings.

Noémie is trained as a medical assistant; the primary doctor at the camp wrote a book about her ordeal, which Lélia read. She is a French prisoner and stays in the camp to make sure the inmates are cared for. Jacques miserably cleans toilets; Noémie begins writing letters for people in the camp who wish to write home.

In Paris, rumors circulate that the men will be rounded up; many flee. Instead, it is the women and children who are sent to Pithiviers Camp. Conditions rapidly deteriorate, disease spreads, and many are slated for deportation. The doctor intervenes, and Noémie and her brother are placed on a list titled “Pithiviers Camp: Individuals Seemingly Arrested in Error” (168). The train departs without them on it, though the doctor must now convince others they are of Lithuanian descent. On the train, mothers are forced to leave their children behind.

Ephraïm writes for information about his children, but his letter is not answered. Still, he makes no fuss, believing everything will be okay.

Noémie and the camp doctor care for the children left behind at Pithiviers Camp. A second convoy prepares to depart for Germany, but the mothers refuse to leave their children, accepting beatings instead. Again, Jacques and Noémie are slated for the convoy. The women are given full cavity searches while their children scream for them from behind barbed wire. Noémie is pulled from line at the doctor’s request but refuses to leave Jacques behind. Thus, she is put back in line as a man from the crowd yells, “Friends, we are all dead” (176).

Noémie and Jacques board the train, 80 people to a car, and are told that any escape attempt will result in the execution of the entire train car of prisoners. After three days, they arrive and are rushed under the beating of batons to line up by gender. Corpses are cleaned out of the cars, including the bodies of children. Jacques gets in an infirmary truck, feeling ill from the dysentery and long journey. Noémie is selected as a worker. The siblings do not get to say goodbye.

Lélia interrupts the story to explain that prisoners were not tattooed in 1942, thus Noémie was not branded when she arrived at Auschwitz. Noémie is shaved bare and showered. The hair will be used to make slippers for submarine crew. Everything of value is stripped away, including glasses, gold fillings, and clothing. When Noémie asks where the infirmary is, a woman points at a billowing smoke stack.

The infirmary truck carrying Jacques, the pregnant women, the children, and the sick stops in a birch forest. They are told to get in line to shower, after which they can eat and rest. The doors to the shower are locked and Zyklon B is pumped in through the shower heads. The prisoners take several minutes to die, Jacques among them.

Noémie dies of typhus a few weeks later.

Debord tells Ephraïm and Emma he can get them to Spain, but they refuse, saying they will wait for their children. When two officers come for them, Emma and Ephraïm go willingly. They are booked, their money taken, and they are ushered to Drancy Camp, a temporary camp in France. Immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz, Ephraïm and Emma are taken to the gas chamber.

Back in their town in France, the mayor proudly writes that there are no Jewish people remaining in Les Forges.

Lélia concludes the story she’s been telling her daughter and reads a letter Myriam wrote long after the war, in which she claims her survival was luck. After the story concludes, Lélia goes to buy cigarettes, and Anne’s water breaks in the car.