The Postcard

Antisemitism is a constant throughout the novel. No matter where the family goes, they face the same thing: a hatred of Jewish people. In Russia, this antisemitism was inspired by Christians who believed the Jewish people were responsible for killing their savior. In Central Europe, a new wave of antisemitism would project hate at Jewish people as a race, rather than a religion. Eventually, rampant antisemitism would result in the Holocaust.

Antisemitism has a long history in Russia, where the Rabinovitch story begins. Ephraïm is 25 in 1919: “A brilliant engineer, he’s just earned his degree despite the numerous clauses in effect, which limited the number of Jews admitted to university” (12). His father, Nachman, limited by the May Laws, was able to earn his education despite limitations. After several genocides, clashes, and attacks, the family has had enough. On April 18, 1919, Nachman tells his family they must leave Russia, recalling times in his boyhood when Christian men at Christmas would rape Jewish women and kill the men to “punish the people who killed Christ” (15). Nachman experienced suffering and pain in Russia, and when he tells his children to leave, they obey.

Ephraïm and his young family flee to Latvia, where he finds success in a caviar business. They believe that antisemitism is not present in the young country, but the caviar business fails: “The gossips at the synagogue wasted no time in telling [Emma] that the Latvians had now targeted her husband and would harass him until he has no choice but to leave” (28).

They travel to Lodz, Poland, where Emma’s father’s home and business are covered in anti-Jewish graffiti. Children throw rocks at their passing wagon, “Myriam was hit by a sharp-edged pebble just beneath her eye” (32). They are not safe in Poland, either.

With nowhere else to go, Ephraïm Rabinovitch reluctantly takes his family to Palestine, but when work yields no profit and five years of toil leaves them destitute, Ephraïm eyes France, telling his father in 1929, “Better to be a wise man in hell than a fool in heaven” (45).

In France, antisemitism grew slowly but noticeably. In 1933 at the girls’ school, Emma overhears the other mothers whispering antisemitic, hate-filled slurs to one another, targeted at the Rabinovitch family. The following day, the Nazi Party would officially ban all other parties in the country. Jewish people in Germany were already being targeted.

The Rabinovitch family was safe nowhere: It was French police officers in tandem with German occupying soldiers who would come for Noémie and Jacques in 1942, and French police who would take away their parents shortly after.

That the family was not safe anywhere in Europe is central to the family’s history. Antisemitism was present everywhere they went, and they were unable to escape its reach. It was not France, though it was also the French. It was not Latvia or Poland or Russia either. It’s a pervasive, all-consuming ideology of hate that extended well beyond Germany, threatening the family regardless of which country they were in.