Vanished Children, Poignant Portraits

"This book is born of my obsession to be sure that these children will not be forgotten. I publish [it] hoping it will strike a blow against anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia."

Serge Klarsfeld

From the Author's Preface

There is a poignancy in the conversation of a small group of people who have helped to bring to the public eye a particularly appalling shander - Yiddish for a shameful act - as one of them put it.

The matter involves 11,400 Jewish children, some not yet 2 years of age, whom the French Vichy Government turned over to the Nazis for extinction at Auschwitz and other death camps more than 50 years ago. Only about 300 survived, among them Ernest Nives, now of East Hampton and New York City.

Mr. Nives, along with some others from the East End, has been working with Serge Klarsfeld, a French author, attorney, and a Holocaust survivor who has devoted his working life to documenting war crimes, hunting down Nazis, and researching the fate of French Jewry during World War II.

Tracked Down Barbie

It was Mr. Klarsfeld and his wife, Beate, who in the 1970s located Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief known as the "butcher of Lyons," living comfortably in Bolivia, and brought him to justice in France in 1987.

Mr. Klarsfeld's most recent work is "Le Memorial des Enfants Juifs Deportes de France," a 1,700-page tome published in 1994 by the French organization he heads, known as the Sons and Daughters of the Jewish Deportees of France.

Last month, New York University Press published a 1,900-page English version, edited and translated in part by Howard Epstein, also of East Hampton and New York. Its title is "French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial."

"Most Satisfying"

"This is the most satisfying project I ever did," said Mr. Epstein, noting though that because he knew "how the story ended," he experienced "some periods of self-despair" while working on it.

Mr. Epstein, an editor and publisher and a retired president of Facts On File, said he did much of his work on the book at his East Hampton house, where he could be "undisturbed."

The two editions, results of extraordinary effort, contain the photographs of 2,500 children and their brief biographies - brief because their lives were brief - which were gathered from surviving relatives and family friends all over the world.

Mr. Klarsfeld also gathered the photos over 20 years by appealing to the Red Cross. Others come from memorial plaques, and, in some cases, the author is reported to have taken legal action against the French Government archivists to gain access to 50-year-old identity cards.

Giving Them Names

The book is "a gravestone to all those who did not have one," Mr. Nives said this week. "Each one will have a face."

"It is my duty as one of the survivors to speak for those who cannot," he explained. "I am putting my strength to make sure they will not fall into oblivion."

Before Mr. Klarsfeld's exhaustive work, said Mr. Epstein, none of the children was known by name - listed "only by a number" in the available German records.

Ironically, as a student in Paris after the war, Mr. Epstein had lived in an apartment owned by the family of Juliette Mowszowicz, one of the children transported east from the Paris/Bobigny railroad station and gassed at Auschwitz in September 1943. Juliette is listed in the book.

Visited Auschwitz

Mr. Epstein recalled meeting Mr. Klarsfeld through Peter Hellman, a journalist who had done a piece for The New York Times about a trial of former Gestapo officers. Mr. Hellman and his wife, Susan Cohen, also helped launch the English edition.

Years later, in October 1994, after Mr. Hellman and Mr. Epstein visited Auschwitz together, Mr. Epstein said it was "like someone reaching down your throat and turning you inside out."

Steven Scheuer of East Hampton, another supporter of the project, said he and his wife, Alida Brill Scheuer, herself an author and philanthropist, met Mr. Klarsfeld in Paris through a cousin who had lost family members in the Holocaust. Mr. Scheuer noted that his European family had strong roots in Strasbourg.

Found It Devastating

"He is one of the great men of the century - selfless and dedicated," said Mr. Scheuer of Mr. Klarsfeld, characterizing him as "gentle, kind, and enormously persistent."

Mr. Scheuer said his wife, who speaks "beautiful French," was "devastated by the French edition." The couple decided to start a small foundation to help fund the publication of an English-language version.

Mr. Scheuer said the book is "a remarkable piece of work" that should be available to all universities, libraries, and synagogues. The English version was introduced at a publication party at N.Y.U. last month, where he recalled that "the power and impact of the work brought tears to everyone's eyes."

Web Site?

Backers of the English edition hope to sponsor an exhibit of the photographs, first at Manhattan's New School for Social Research in February, and later on tour. One of the stops might be the East End, where Mr. Scheuer said Guild Hall or Southampton's Parrish Museum could act as host.

Supporters also hope to create a web site on the Internet for the project, in part to be able to gather additional photographs and information about those children the whereabouts of whose photos are still unknown.

"I want my children to know and to be aware that the Holocaust is part of history," said Suzanne Slesin of Bridgehampton and New York, another supporter. Ms. Slesin, formerly an editor at The New York Times and now a design editor at House & Garden, said Peter Hellman originally sent her the French edition. She said she donated some money from a family foundation toward the translation in honor of her son's bar mitzvah.

Like A Family Album

The photos in the book are so "ordinary," resembling those in any family album, said Ms. Slesin, and "that makes the book even more powerful. Everyone knows someone who looks like" the children in these pictures.

Mr. Nives, for many years an accountant in the entertainment industry, said he attended a 50-year reunion of Holocaust survivors in Paris not long ago. He had been arrested at age 17 in Clermont-Ferrand, near Vichy, in August 1942, when he was separated from his mother.

"We were slaves cut off from the world," he recalled. "I had worked hard in the fields as a farmer so I was strong. But you couldn't survive alone. You had to have friends within the camp, and you had to help each other."

"We had an absolute determination that we would make it, but you also have to talk about fate..."

Copies of "French Children of the Holocaust" can be purchased for $95 each through the publisher, the N.Y.U. bookstore, and the Harvard Coop. Orders also may be placed through a toll free number, 800-996-6987.