The children were taken to Poland.
The children were taken to Auschwitz in Poland
         singing Vous n’aurez pas L’Alsace et la Lorraine.
In a farmhouse still standing in Izieu, le silence de Dieu est Dieu.

In the night-vaulted corridors of the Hôtel-Dieu it is winter.
If a city, ruin, if an animal, hunger.
If a grave, anonymous.
If a century, this.

Are the present hundred years a long time? But first see whether a hundred years can
       be present.

We lived in Ste. Monique ward over the main corridor, Ellie and myself, in the Hôtel-
         Dieu on the Place du Parvis Notre Dame.
Below us jonquils opened.
Ellie was afflicted with scales again, tiny Ellie, at the edge of her bed, peeling her skin
         from her arm as if it were an opera glove,
and weeping cachée, cachée, cachée all during the war.

Barn to barn in the haylight, field to cellar. Winter took one of her sons, and her own
         attempt to silence him, the other.

Le Dieu? Le Dieu est un feu. A psychopath. Le Dieu est feu.

It isn’t normal for a mother to outlive her children.

It isn’t normal that my sons should be dead.

Paris! Oh, how I loathe this city because of its past.

Then you wish to leave Paris?

Mais oui. I wish to leave life, my dear.
My parents? Deported. My aunts and uncles? Deported. My friends? All of them
   deportees.
I don’t know what became of a single one. How they came to the end.
My papers said I was Polish. When the money ran out, we ran. When the Nazis came,
     we ran. Cachée, cachée, cachée!

The tubercular man offers his cigarette and the snow falls, patiently, across the spring
       flowers.

My life, triste. Do you understand? This place. No good! France. No good! Germany.
       No good! Ni l’Union soviétique. Fascists! It is no good.

Then why not leave Paris?

I am Jewish. Do you understand? Alone in a small room on the third floor, always alone.
To remain sane, I sing librettos to myself, and German lullabies, can you imagine?

Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit
ich kehrte gern zurück,
denn bleib ich auch lebendige Zeit
ich hätte wenig Glück

My husband was a soldier against the Nazis. Résistance. Agir. He wasn’t killed in
       the war.

He even returned to me. It was after the war he died. He died of cholera.
         And the world is worse now than it was then.

Worse?
Mais oui!

We must wear our slippers and not smoke. We must not go further than the sign No
       ADMITTANCE.