Read Online Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano - Free Book Online

ask you a favor in respect of my husband,
Zelik Pergricht, so that I may know where he is and have a
little news  .  .  .
    Â 
    TO THE PREFECT OF POLICE
    SIR,
    I humbly beg you in your great kindness and generosity
for news of my daughter, Mme Jacques Lévy, née Violette
Joël, arrested about 10 September last as she was trying to
cross the demarcation line without wearing the regulation
star. She was accompanied by her son, Jean Lévy, aged
eight and a half  .  .  .
    Forwarded to the Prefect of Police:
I beg you to have the kindness to release my grandson,
Michel Robin, aged three, French-born of a French mother,
who is interned with him at Drancy  .  .  .
    Â 
    TO THE PREFECT OF POLICE
    SIR,
    I would be infinitely grateful if you would be good
enough to take the following cases into consideration: my
parents, both elderly and in poor health, have just been
arrested as Jews, and my little sister, Marie Grosman, aged
fifteen and a half, a French Jew, holding French identity
card no. 1594936, grade B, and myself, Jeanette Grosman,
also a French Jew, aged nineteen, holding French identity
card no. 924247, grade B, have been left on our own  .  .  .
    Â 
    TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE POLICE FOR JEWISH AFFAIRS
    SIR,
    Excuse me if I presume to write to you in person about
this, but my husband was taken away at 4 A . M . on 16 July
1942, and as my little girl was crying, they took her at the
same time.
    Her name is Pauline Gothelf, aged fourteen and a half,
born 19 November 1927 in Paris, 12th arrondissement, and
she is French  .  .  .

.................
    F OR THE DATE OF 17 APRIL 1942, THE POLICE BLOTTER at Clignancourt station has this entry under its usual
headings, Date and subject. Marital status. Summary:
17 April 1942. 20998 15/24. P. Minors. Case of
Bruder Dora, age 16, disappeared following Interview
1917 has regained maternal domicile.
    I don’t know what the figures 20998 and 15/24 stand for.
“P. Minors” must mean Protection of Minors. Interview 1917
is certainly the transcript of Ernest Bruder’s deposition, and
the questions concerning Dora and himself put to him on 27
December 1941. This is the sole reference in the archives to
Interview 1917.
    Â 
    A bare three lines on the “case of Bruder Dora.” The
entries that come after it in the blotter for 17 April concern other
“cases”:
Gaul Georgette Paulette, born 30.7.23 Pantin, Seine,
to Georges and Pelz Rose, spinster, lives in hotel 11 Rue
Pigalle. Prostitution.
    Germaine Mauraire, born 9.10.21 Entre-Deux-Eaux
(Vosges). Lives in hotel. 1 P.M. report. 1
    J.-R. CRETET, 9TH ARRONDISSEMENT
    So the list goes on, throughout the Occupation, in the
police blotters: prostitutes, lost dogs, abandoned babies. And
runaway adolescents—like Dora—guilty of vagrancy.
    Apparently, “Jews” as such never came into it. And yet they
passed through these same police stations before being taken
to the Dépôt, and from there to Drancy. And the phrase
“regained maternal domicile” suggests that the Clignancourt
police were aware that Dora’s father had been arrested the
month before.
    Of Dora herself, there is no trace between 14 December
1941, the day she ran away, and 17 April 1942 when, in the
words of the blotter, she regained the maternal domicile, that
is, the hotel room at 41 Boulevard Ornano. For those four
months, we have no idea where she went, what she did, whom
she was with. Nor do we know the circumstances of her
return to the “maternal domicile.” Was it of her own accord,
after having heard of her father’s arrest? Or had she in fact
been stopped in the street, the Brigade for the Protection of
Minors having issued a warrant for her arrest? So far, I haven’t
found a single clue, a single witness who might shed light on
these four months of absence, for us, a blank in her life.
    One way not to