Commemoration for Odette and Moussa 2021
October 17, 2021 (updated: October 26, 2021)
With the passing years, the late announcement of the date and the marathon restricting travel in Paris that day, I feared there would be fewer of us this year around Odette and Moussa to honour their memory. Not at all. Despite a few cancellations and people being unavailable, there were still nearly twenty of us, of all generations, at Montparnasse cemetery on Sunday, October 17, 2021. Everyone’s kind loyalty under the autumn sun helped make this traditional gathering unique.
Andrée Karsenti opened the ceremony on the theme of remembrance, giving an important place to Rabbi Daniel Farhi, who left us in August and who officiated with us every year despite his growing difficulty in getting about. Victor Kuperminc recited the Kaddish, thus bringing the religious voice to this moment of remembrance. Andrée did not fail, as usual, to recall the role of Pastors Gagnier and Evrard in the history of the Marcel network.
Conversations then took over, people answering one another over Odette and Moussa’s grave, recalling their work and their personalities through anecdotes, each of us holding our own memories. A few unknown stories sometimes emerge from the meanderings of our memories. Others are repeated from year to year; yet we always hear them with the same affection, and will no doubt repeat them next year.
The number of living witnesses is falling, as sadly as it is naturally, while, conversely, the bond uniting those present today is growing. More than a gathering of hidden children, children of the Righteous and friends, this event is more and more like a family meal. Everyone meets at Odette and Moussa’s to pay them the tribute they deserve and to remind one another of the emotion that unites those whom they enabled to still be in this world today to remember.
The history of the Shoah and of its heroes (even if they did not see themselves as such) must endure. It reminds us that there must always be fine souls to save lives. History repeats itself, and although it regularly changes its doublet, the mechanisms are the same. As Moussa said: “…be watchmen, watchmen and awakeners. Talk to your children.” Do not forget. Do not let memory die out. Carry the message of those who saved, so that others may save again.
Emmanuel Gagnier
There are missed appointments that we regret and that we can sometimes make up for… a little…
Our friend and fellow hidden child Victor Haïm would have liked to join us that Sunday. Fate was against him, and despite all his efforts, public transport, the marathon and the progress of a taxi got the better of him. It was only after the ceremony had ended that he finally reached the cemetery, to find no one there. He was all the more disappointed because he had come intending to read a text written by his wife Margareta, a friend of Odette. We share with you this affectionate text, which thus takes back a little of the place that was meant for it.
I was a close friend of Odette. We used to meet in cafés, and also with Moussa when they came to dinner at our home. They came often and knew our daughters when they were little.
When my husband Victor had a disagreement with Moussa about the theatre and for a while they stopped speaking, Odette pleaded vigorously on Moussa’s behalf, saying he had done very courageous things during the war!
That is all she said! We only found out what it was about after Odette’s suicide. Knowing that she had been deported, I had asked her about that period, and she told me she had seen Mengele in the camp!
I felt ashamed because my country, Sweden, was neutral – “neutral” in inverted commas, since it opened its borders so that the Germans could cross the country and invade Norway. But to be fair, it must be said that Sweden took in many German and Danish Jews. I was so ignorant of the situation that when my parents sent me shopping at a charming shopkeeper’s in Malmö who sold, among other things, newspapers –
since my parents told me to go “to the Jew’s” – I would go into his shop and ask whether Mr Jew had in stock what I had come for!
“Thank you, Mr Jew… goodbye, Mr Jew!” He remained smiling and adorable, and it was from him that I bought the weekly “SE” – which means “Look” – around the beginning of 1945. On the cover were photographs of deportees, and I was so shocked that I lost my faith and never went to church again!
When I met Victor and he told me about his flight from the Nazis and the deportation of 9 members of his family, I was devastated. Spending time with Moussa and Odette and hearing the stories of Victor’s friends have made me feel Jewish at heart! Learning what is happening in Malmö now, with a terrible surge of antisemitism, I am horrified.
Odette’s sensitivity and discretion, Moussa’s intelligence and culture, confirm me in the idea that Jews are exceptionally gifted! People laugh when I say that! Never mind. I hold firm to my convictions. Odette and Moussa are human beings one cannot forget. I never stop thinking of them. I loved them so much.
Margareta Haïm, née Hansson
October 2021