Hélène Berr (1921–1945)
Author of The Journal of Hélène Berr
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
(yid) VIAF:7708675
(dut) VIAF:7708675
VIAF:7708675
Works by Hélène Berr
Correspondance: 1934-1944 1 copy
Pariser Tagebuch 1942-1944 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Berr, Hélène
- Legal name
- Berr, Hélène
- Birthdate
- 1921-03-27
- Date of death
- 1945-04-10
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- France
- Country (for map)
- France
- Birthplace
- Paris, France
- Place of death
- Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
- Cause of death
- Holocaust
- Places of residence
- Parijs, Frankrijk
- Education
- Sorbonne
- Occupations
- diarist
student - Organizations
- General Organization of Jews in France (Union générale des israélites de France | UGIF)
- Short biography
- Hélène Berr was born in Paris to a Jewish family that had lived in France for generations. She was a brilliant English student at the Sorbonne when the Germans invaded France in World War II. As a Jew, she could not continue her studies at the university. She began to keep a diary in April 1942, at age 21. At first she wrote about her social life and ordinary events. Then the horror of the Nazi Occupation intensified. Hélène's close friends and colleagues were rounded up or just disappeared, and rumors reached her that Jews deported to the Polish border were being asphyxiated with gas. Hélène's intended the diary to be given to her fiancé, Jean Morawiecki, who had joined the Free French. As she wrote, Hélène gave batches of the loose pages to the family cook, Andrée Bardiau. Her final entry on February 15, 1944, ended: "Horror! Horror! Horror!" Three weeks later, the Gestapo arrested the family during the night. Hélène Berr and her parents were deported to Auschwitz on her 23rd birthday. Her parents were killed but Hélène survived for some time, including the death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen. There she was beaten to death because she was too sick and weak from typhus to get up from her bunk for the morning reveille. Five days later, the camp was liberated by the British Army. Hélène's diary did eventually reach her fiancé and remained private for more than 50 years. In 1992, Hélène's niece, Mariette Job, decided to track down the diary. Thanks to her persistence, it was published in 2008 in France and sold more than 100,000 copies.
- Disambiguation notice
- VIAF:7708675
Members
Discussions
WP:List of posthumous publications of Holocaust victims in Collaborative work (April 2012)
Reviews
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Statistics
- Works
- 4
- Members
- 460
- Popularity
- #53,419
- Rating
- 4.2
- Reviews
- 20
- ISBNs
- 38
- Languages
- 12
- Favorited
- 2
You might call this the French Anne Frank, but it isn't really. Helene Berr was French, lived in Paris, from a privileged family. During the German occupation of France she wrote this diary. It may seem astounding that her everyday life was not much different during this time than it had been before. She went with her family to their country estate frequently, to picnic, to relax. She continued to attend classes at the Sorbonne, even though as Jew she was limited in the courses of study she could take officially. She had friends, including some who became more than friends.
But she wasn't ignorant of the pain of others. She was aware that bad things were happening to Jews elsewhere and to other "classes" of Jews within France. Her father was a prominent citizen, initially exempt from seizure. As time went on, more and more people are taken, some to a nearby prison and some directly "deported". Helene did not know exactly what went on when people were deported. She seemed to have some idea that they were imprisoned for things that they had done, however slight the offense, and that they simply had to do their time. She heard of many deaths but she was not, it appears, aware of the concentration camps.
She worked as a volunteer at an organization the was formed to help Jews find their relatives or provide help with other problems. This organization was sanctioned by the German occupation as a way, it seems, to make the citizens believe all was not as bad as it seemed. However, secretly the organization found homes for Jewish children in non-Jewish families, many of them in the country and villages outside Paris. Thus a great many Jewish children were spared the fate of their counterparts who did not receive this help.
Over time Helene's family became increasingly aware that the net was drawing closer to them. They had chosen to live their lives as close to normally as possible. To escape to the "free" zone was considered cowardly (it wasn't all that free anyway). Helene in particular was less concerned about her own safety than that of others.
The diary provides a view from a a different perspective than most. It is well written, quick to read, yet of course horrifying because we know what's coming.… (more)