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well is also filled with water.” The mayor let a return address.
out exclamations of surprise as he peered “What can I tell you about our life
into the water filled abyss. here?” writes my great-grandmother. “It is
“We had no idea this existed. Thank you such a change that I often ask myself what
for the privilege of happened, and if it
letting us see it.” isn’t a nightmare. I
The man in‐ don’t lack courage,
jected a touch of and I can assure
levity with his next [you] that one
query: needs a good
“You live near amount of it here.
Los Angeles? I am a Thank goodness I
fan of the MIGHTY am with my daugh‐
DUCKS ice hockey ter Anny, otherwise
team! I follow every I could never have
game on the Inter‐ been able to stand
net!” this tribulation . . .
I made a mental note to send him a in addition to these
team T-shirt. emotions. My husband was not able to
withstand [this hardship] and was trans‐
Time was growing late as we continued ported to the hospital in Toul...” (where he
our walk to the town cemetery, where my died shortly afterwards).
escorts were eager to show me the new
granite slab bearing the names of Rosières’ My horror new no bound when I realized
Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The she had sent the letter the same day the
recently-established list included Fernand Nazis shipped her and the rest of the fam‐
and Anny, Blanche’s daughter. ily off to Drancy. At the entrance to Ecrou‐
ves, the first monument to greet us was a
Our final destination was their home, a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. A
grande maison, now turned into three narrow unpaved road led us right onto the
apartments. I wondered if the present oc‐ minimum-security prison grounds. A few
cupants had any idea of its sad past. men playing boules barely looked up when
I had a final “family pilgrimage” to we drove past. From the car, I caught a
make before returning to Châlons. In the glimpse of the barracks where Blanche and
valise, I uncovered a letter from Blanche her fellow internees probably spent their
sent from the nearby camp of Ecrouves, a last days until their departure for Drancy.
suburb of Nancy, to her friend Madame I was exhausted, mentally and physi‐
Gâteau in Châlons. Ecrouves served as a cally, hardly able to process the day. It
“holding area” for Alsatian Jews before was time to head “home” to Châlons-en-
they were sent on to Paris’ fearsome Champagne, to ponder less tragic family
Drancy internment camp, and from there, memories, and drown my melancholy with
loaded into cattle cars for the two-day a comforting glass or two of Châlons’
train trip to Auschwitz. I was struck by the famed bubbly.
fact that Blanche’s letter listed Ecrouves as
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