The transmission of the memory of the deportation
by the children To their children
Hugo Pauillac -
Léa Asman
Henri Sampson
II- What memory of the Holocaust were they transmitted?
Irène Sapir
Claude Sampson
III- Why this concern to testify?
Irène Sapir
Claude Sampson
During the Second World War (1939-1945), more than five million people were deported, Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents of the Nazi regime; These are also thousands of men, women, uncles, aunts and grandparents... They suffered the humiliation and rigor of the camps, whether they were for concentration, work or extermination. But, despite the multiple abuses inflicted on them, some survived. The testimony they gave reflects the horror against which they fought day after day.
But what about what they told their children? How to explain the absence of a father, the reason why it was necessary to hide his child, this number tattooed on the arm? To answer these questions, we asked two children of deportees, Irène Sapir, whose mother Léa Asman was deported to Auschwitz and Claude Sampson, whose father Henri Sampson was deported to the Langenstein labor camp, to share their personal stories. We were confronted with two different conceptions of the memory of deportation.
These representatives of the "second generation" were also asked whether they had any interest in passing on this memorial heritage to young people.
We were welcomed by Irène Sapir on Monday, May 2, 2005, and met with Claude Sampson on Friday, May 6, 2005.
Irène Bibergal and her mother Léa Asman, who lived in the suburbs of Paris at the time of the war, were both arrested on 16 July 1942 during the so-called "Vel d'Hiv" raffle because they were of Jewish origin although not practicing. The father, then engaged in the French army, had been arrested by the Wehrmacht during the debacle of 1940 and was held in a prison near Dresden. The status of a prisoner of war woman earned Léa Asman and her daughter to be released 48 hours after their arrest. From then on, the decision was made to hide Irene, who was then five years old, with family friends in Compiègne. Léa Asman was arrested again in March 1943, then taken first to Drancy before being deported to the Auschwitz camp.
Within her foster family, Irene integrated quite quickly despite her fear towards the other children in the family. She finally found her parents only in the summer of 1945.
Henri Sampson, of English origin, was arrested on January 4, 1944, in a train at Bayonne, following a denunciation. Considered as a terrorist by the Nazi occupier, he was sent to the fort of Hâ in Bordeaux where he will remain until March 29. He was transferred to the detention camp in Compiègne and did not leave it until April 27, 1945, in a convoy bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Arrived on April 30, 1944 after an exhausting trip, he was shaved and tattooed there. He now wore the number 186378. After being taken back to Buchenwald on 14 May 1945, he was sent to the Langenstein work camp for the construction of underground galleries for the manufacture of V2 missiles. He served as a locksmith-boilermaker, which he described as a 'quiet' Kommando. He escaped on April 21, 1945 at nine o'clock from a forced march where 2500 people died. He was back in Paris on June 4, 1945.
Beyond these family dramas hides a memory of the deportation that many former deportees maintain "so that we do not forget", according to their terms.
II - WHAT MEMORY OF THE SHOAH WAS TRANSMITTED TO THEM?
Léa Asman returned from the camps weakened both physically and morally. Until the end of her life, she will suffer from the consequences of her deportation, so that she did not practice any profession after the war. Her husband, a prisoner of war, lived well during his detention; he also made several escape attempts with his French comrades.
For Irène Sapir, there was a great freedom of speech at home, so her parents told her anecdotes and explained their stories to her as soon as she turned eight. She especially remembers amusing anecdotes about her father or comic situations that her mother had experienced during her deportation. This may seem paradoxical to us who only know the history of the camps through dramatic narratives... also it surprised us a lot. His young age can explain that one sought to minimize the atrocities of war. But however the psychological state of her mother was there to remind the fate she undergoes at Auschwitz.
Irène always knew what happened while she was hidden, even the reasons that had led her to leave her mother in 1943. She, moreover, continued to frequent her foster family long after the war, showing her deep gratitude since her early childhood. The fact that she was born before the war and that she was a hidden being gave her the role of witness. If she had been born after the war, no doubt she would not have known in detail the dramatic events related to the deportation in her family. However, the freedom of speech reigning within his family allowed him to assume his past and gave him an ease to address the subject of the Holocaust. Especially his parents passed on to him the respect of men, the respect of differences and minorities. His commitment to the fight against racism was therefore passed on to him by his parents.
Henri Sampson, as for him, has locked himself in a deep silence towards his son. His son, Claude, whom we met being born in March 1939, could not have concrete memories of the Second World War. Only the feeling of resentment seems to have marked his mind. Indeed, during the interview, Claude Sampson testified to us his resentment towards the Germans, whom he "will never forgive", according to his words.
It was only at the death of her father, in 1992, that her mother began a huge work of gathering documents, letters from her husband when he was detained in Compiègne and works concerning the Langenstein Lager. Claude Sampson recovered these documents upon his mother’s death in 2000, a way for him to reclaim the memory of this father who did not speak. This unknown part of his father’s life provokes in him a kind of perpetual commemoration, since he continues to make every year a trip to Germany in the footsteps of his father, and still lives in the shadow of "dad" as he has told us many times. However, it seems that his father was keen on the "rehabilitation of the 4500 from Auschwitz", political deportees from the convoy that led his father to the camps in Germany. Claude Sampson insisted very much on the fact that we did not talk enough about the fate of political opponents and "that we were doing too much for the Jewish deportees". Also the political and moral opinions of our interlocutor did not allow us to further exploit the issue of memory transmission.
III - WHY THIS CONCERN FOR TESTIMONY?
Irène Sapir participates locally in the transmission of the memory of the deportation through meetings with young people in high schools and colleges. However, it has only been a few years that she has been involved in this mission, as she was only recently contacted by a local association of deportees to ensure these public meetings. Former schoolteacher, one can undoubtedly think that she shared her testimony with children. If Irène agrees to tell about her family’s past, it is because she believes that our society still has dangerous excesses, particularly in terms of racism, since she believes, for example, that people of Maghreb origin are persecuted today, a bit like the Jews more than sixty years ago now. She thus hopes to contribute to showing the madness of men that leads to the unimaginable so that, collectively, we become aware of the danger of intolerance. Irène Sapir wants to testify especially so that we do not forget... The story of her family is told in a book entitled
Claude Sampson never shared his family history, because he never dared to take the necessary steps. However, he was recently contacted by a newspaper to testify; and since then he has been at the disposal of teachers to tell young people about the deportation.
The experience of parents deeply influenced the "second generation" who carry the heavy burden of the memory of the deportation, with the feeling of having to tell the younger generations so that the world does not forget what happened not so long ago. It appeared to us that it was important for parents to tell their children, otherwise a part of their identity is poorly lived and hardly assumed. The silence of the deportees is not a generalized fact since many of them engage in testimonies, and this for a long time like the literary production of Primo Lévi. More recently, people like Velibor Colic give us their testimony to show the rest of the world the cruelty of distant and unmediated wars.
We would like to thank Irène Sapir and Claude Sampson for the quality of their welcome, for dedicating their time to us and for providing us with documentation.