Isaac Millman

In the introduction to his outstanding Holocaust memoir for young people, author and illustrator Isaac Millman (born Isaac Sztrymfan) states that approximately 1,200,000 Jewish children were deported and murderd by the Nazis and their collaborators. Almost all children who managed to survive had been sent into hiding, sometimes in convents and monasteries, other times on the farms or in the homes of non-Jewish families. Millman doesn’t provide an estimate of the number of Jewish hidden show more children, and, as I discovered, it’s very hard to find out. A website for middle and high school teachers, Echoes & Reflections, estimates that “tens of thousands [of Jewish children] were rescued during the Holocaust by non-Jewish people.” But how many tens of thousands, exactly? . . . What we do know is that Isaac was one of them. In his case an entirely fortuitous—even miraculous—encounter in Paris with an older Jewish woman, a grandmother originally from Poland, would make all the difference.

Millman’s book is well-organized and accessible to older children and young adults. The chapters are short and chronologically ordered. Typically, the reader gets two chapters at a time followed by a spread of images which provides a visual summary of the preceding pages. Most images are wonderful illustrations—some truly poignant— rendered from memory, with a few photos included as well.

The memoir begins with the author’s early life in Paris before the war. Isaac’s parents were immigrants from Poland, who appear to have left Eastern Europe for political reasons. The author’s father, Moishé, an idealistic communist, had spent a year in a Polish jail. The appeal of France was that a person didn’t have to hide his politics or identity there. And that was true . . . for a time.

In early childhood, Isaac had a Sunday routine with his beloved Papa, a tailor. The family lived at 60, rue de la Fontaine au Roi in a six-storey building in a Jewish neighbourhood. Their apartment did not have an oven, so on Sunday mornings, Moishé and Isaac took Mama’s chicken to be roasted at the corner bakery. While it cooked, the two socialized with Moishé’s customers and friends at a local café. Like the Strymfmans, everyone present spoke Yiddish. At lunchtime, father and son would pick up the chicken and make their way home for the big midday meal.

In 1940, when Isaac was only seven, the Germans invaded. France quickly surrendered, and the country was divided in two: the German-controlled North Zone (ostensibly run by the Vichy government) and the Free Zone in the South. It wasn’t long before restrictions were imposed on Jews and Moishé began to announce that friends were being arrested. Soon he himself had to report to the police station. He was then sent to an internment camp at Pithiviers, roughly 90 km south of Paris. Isaac and his mother were able to see him only once. Some of the most touching illustrations in the book depict this visit. The last letter received from Moishé was dated June 1942. After the war, the author would learn that on June 25, 1942, his father was transported to Auschwitz along with 998 other men between the ages of 31 and 42. Only 51 of that group survived; Moishé was not among them.

For a time Isaac and his mother, Rivelé, remained in the family apartment, but it became increasingly dangerous to do so. The police were regularly coming around, banging on the door. Mother and son often hid in Papa’s workshop.

Rivelé wanted to go south, into the Free Zone, and a friend linked her up with a guide, who, for a fee, would take them and other Jews there. They reached the demarcation line, but were captured before they could cross, and spent some time in prison. Isaac was subsequently separated from his mother; she used what money and jewelry she had to save her son’s life. Taken to a hospital, where the doctors and nurses were evidently engaged in more than medical work, Isaac was instructed to act as though he were sick. He was to stay in bed and or be moved around in a wheelchair. The Germans regularly monitored the hospital.

Eventually, Isaac was returned to Paris to the address of one of his mother’s friends. The frightened woman wouldn’t take him, so the guardian escorting him left him with the concièrge. That woman refused to have a Jew in her house and chased the child onto the street. And then . . . along came someone who spoke to the crying child in the same thickly accented French as his mother. This was Héna, a Polish Jew whose own grandchildren were in hiding. She took Isaac home with her and that made all the difference. She found placements for the boy in the village of Pontault-Combault, roughly 30 km from Paris, where her sister and brother-in-law lived.

The rest of Millman’s book details his time in hiding, including his first terrible placement with the Merciers, a couple looking for some extra income. In their home, he was ill-treated and regularly locked up. When this came to light, he was moved to the house of a Belgian widow, Madame Devolder, who treated him like a son. He was known in the village as Jean Devolder. Another very touching illustration is the one with the caption “Madame Devolder shaves my head and scrubs and washes me.” Such was his sorry condition when he was first brought to her house.

The concluding chapters of the book focus on the town’s liberation by the Americans, Isaac’s time at Les Buissons (a temporary home for Jewish children—orphans or those separated from their families), and his eventual adoption at the age of 15 by the Millmans, an American family.

Throughout his life, Isaac maintained contact with Héna. He ended up marrying her granddaughter! He was also able to visit Mme Devolder. As for his mother: on August 26, 1942, she had been transported from Pithiviers to Auschwitz together with 947 other deportees, 23 of whom survived. Rivelé was not among them, but it was her love in action which started the chain of events that ultimately saved her beloved son.

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