The Hidden Child VOL. XXIII 2015 PUBLISHED BY HIDDEN CHILD FOUNDATION®/ADL AS IF IT WERE Two young children, one wearing a yellow star, play on a street in the Lodz ghetto, 1943. The little YESTERDAY girl is Ilona Winograd, born in January 1940. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ilona Winograd-Barkal. AS IF IT WERE YESTERDAY A JEWISH CHILD IN CHRISTIAN DISGUISE WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND 9 EXTRAORDINARILY GUTSY: THE MAKING OF THE FILM COMME SI C’ÉTAIT HIER (AS IF IT WERE YESTERDAY) (1980) THE SEARCH FOR PRISONER 1002: RICHARD BRAHMER By Nancy Lefenfeld 14 One summer day in 1976, while on a heavily on Myriam’s mother, Léa; she asked visit to Brussels, Myriam Abramowicz found her daughter to visit Mrs. Ruyts and extend herself sitting in a kitchen chair, staring at the family’s condolences. AVRUMELE’S WARTIME MEMOIR the back of the woman who had hidden her Myriam had been born in Brussels short- 18 parents during the German Occupation. It ly after the end of the war and had spent was four in the afternoon—time for goûter— her early childhood there. When she was and Nana Ruyts was preparing a tray of six years old and a student at the Lycée TRAUMA IN THE YOUNGEST sweets to serve to her guest. Describing Carter, there was, in Myriam’s words, “an HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS the moment nearly forty years later, Myri- incident.” “In the courtyard during recess, 26 am ran an index finger over the curve that a little girl by the name of Monique—her lay at the base of her skull and spoke of father was our butcher—called me a sale the vulnerability of this part of the human Juif, a dirty Jew, and I hit her, and then my LA CASA DI SCIESOPOLI: ‘THE HOUSE’ anatomy. “I looked at the back of her neck, parents were called to school.” At home 30 and I suddenly realized that, by the grace that evening, Myriam tried to make sense of this woman, I’m alive. Because she saved of what had happened: my parents. It was a moment of what they I showed him my hands, and I said, ‘Papa, A BOY’S REVENGE called in those years heightened conscious- why did she call me a dirty Jew? Look, my 34 ness.” Although she did not realize it, it hands are clean!’ My father called Georges was then that an unlikely undertaking was [her brother] over, and, with each of us launched, an undertaking that would com- sitting on a knee, he told us about the RECOLLECTIONS OF THE pletely change the course of Myriam’s life Holocaust and how his sister Lena and her HOLOCAUST & BEYOND and profoundly touch the lives of hun- two children and his brother Henry were 36 dreds—and perhaps thousands—of child at first denounced and then deported and survivors of the Holocaust. murdered in Auschwitz. At the time of the summer visit, the But the discussion did not end with the HIDING FROM THE HOLOCAUST thirty-year-old Abramowicz was a success- revelation of recent evils; her father went 40 ful young professional living on Manhat- on to describe the goodness and courage tan’s Upper West Side. Employed at Pan- of righteous individuals. He explained how theon Books, she served as an assistant Oskar and Nana Ruyts had, at the risk of “NAMES, NOT NUMBERS” to the publisher’s formidable editor-in-chief, their own lives, hidden him, their mother, André Schriffrin. Although Myriam had and—for a short time—baby Georges. 43 made trips to Belgium on previous occa- From that point on, the subject of the sions, she had not made a point of looking Holocaust and what family members had A VOICE VERY MUCH FROM in on Nana Ruyts. But this time was differ- endured was not a secret in the Abramo- THE MARGINS ent: Nana’s husband, Oskar, had died just wicz household. Georges was reticent to 44 a few months earlier. The loss weighed Contined on next page BUILDING A FUTURE FOR RESCUED JEWISH CHILDREN HIDDEN CHILD FOUNDATION/ADL 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-3560, © 2015 Anti-Defamation League (212) 885-7900 Fax 212-885-5869 45 Vol. XXIII E-mail: [email protected], EDITOR Rachelle Goldstein BOOKS ADVISORY BOARD Dr. Eva Fogelman, Dr. Nechama Tec 47 CO-DIRECTOR Rachelle Goldstein CO-DIRECTOR, DIRECTOR, SOCIAL SERVICES Carla Lessing DIRECTOR, FAMILY TRACING SERVICES Evelyne Haendel DIRECTOR, SPEALERS’ BUREAU Lore Baer 2 AS IF IT WERE YESTERDAY AS IF IT WERE YESTERDAY ask questions about it; Myriam was not. Léa Abramowicz was pregnant with her In 1955, after much effort and with the second child during that terrible summer. assistance of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Four years earlier, the couple had joyfully Society (HIAS), the Abramowicz family welcomed the arrival of a daughter, whom immigrated to the United States and set- they named Jenny Ita. However, they lost tled in Borough Park, Brooklyn. For the the baby to pneumonia when she was first time, her mother revealed a trove of only six weeks old. The Abramowiczes old family photos of her parents, grand- went into hiding shortly after the depor- parents, and other members of the Meshe- tations began but, in October, Léa went rowsky clan from Odessa, then part of to the hospital to deliver her baby. Doing Soviet Ukraine. “I would always ask her to so placed both herself and her baby at bring down these bags within bags within risk of being seized. Fortunately, the phy- Léa Abramowicz and Nana Ruyts, in the Ruyts home other bags and to go over these pictures sician who attended her at the delivery, in Brussels, 1979. endlessly,” Myriam recalls. And how was Docteur Snoock, was part of the fledgling © MYRIAM ABRAMOWICZ. it that the photos had survived the war? resistance movement and sympathetic to Oskar and Nana Ruyts had safeguarded Léa’s plight. He saw to it that Georges was ity to capture the voices and stories of these and other cherished belongings. given a false Aryan identity and placed in people from many different walks of life. On that summer afternoon in 1976, Myri- the hands of a Christian family. For a sec- “Upon my return, I immediately call Studs am finally had the opportunity to hear and said, ‘What do you think about my Nana Ruyts speak of what had happened doing a book like something you’ve been during the German Occupation. “A stereo doing but with people who risked their moment” is the way that Myriam describes lives to save Jews?’ He thought it was a it today: great idea.” Myriam told Schiffrin that she It was like one ear heard it all these years would like to have a year off in order to ago and now, all of a sudden, the other ear investigate the subject and interview res- was getting the same information but from cuers. Perhaps it was not surprising that another side. I was aware that it was her he granted her request. He had been born take on it. I remember exactly what she was in Paris in 1935. Early in the Occupation, wearing. I took pictures of her that after- after the Germans issued ordinances bar- noon... She had a big menorah in the house ring Jews from most types of employment, that one of the Jewish families gave her. I André’s father, Jacques, was dismissed have a picture of her near her menorah, from his position at the Gallimard publish- and she was wearing a little flowered dress. ing house. In 1941, the family managed to Prior to the outbreak of war, Mendel leave France and reach the United States. Abramowicz and Oskar Ruyts were well By July 1977, Myriam had made the Nana Ruyts, in her home in Brussels, 1977. acquainted with one another, having worked © MYRIAM ABRAMOWICZ necessary arrangements for her depar- together on the stock exchange. The Ruyt- ture. She had trained someone to fill in ses also owned a dry goods store, which ond time, Léa was unable to mother the for her at Pantheon and had sublet her Nana managed. Shortly after Belgium was baby she had borne. apartment to a friend. She left for Belgium occupied, in May 1940, they closed the For nearly two years, Léa and Mendel with the equipment she believed to be business. Myriam attributes the decision eluded arrest by moving from place to essential—a still camera and a reel-to-reel to close to the fact that the couple did not place. At some point, the Ruytses began tape recorder. She remembers that in the want to serve the German military person- using the dry goods store as a place to middle of August, when she learned of the nel and civilian administrators who were hide nearly two dozen Jews—a number death of Elvis Presley, she was living in posted in the city and who were quickly that included, at times, Léa and Mendel. temporary quarters in Brussels, struggling becoming the store’s main clientele. If discovered, Oskar and Nana would have to locate people who had hidden Jews. In the early years of the Occupation, faced arrest, deportation, and death along She felt completely miserable, and asked Belgium was home to an estimated 66,000 with those they sheltered. After Brussels herself, “What am I doing here?” Jews, of whom the great majority lived in was liberated, in September 1944, Léa and Myriam began contacting representa- Brussels and Antwerp.