A Paler Shade of Red: Memoirs of a Radical. W. E. Gutman

solid food on Yom Kippur but consumed large quantities of Turkish coffee, chain-smoked aromatic oval cigarettes and read the Tarot. Come Passover, they gingerly took part in Seders at which both bread and matzoth were served, presumably to help ease pork medallions and lobster tails onto their forks.

      Just in case, prominently displayed under an ivory crucifix, and sharing honors with an ancient Russian Orthodox icon, a bisque statuette of St. Anthony sat on the mantelpiece ready to hasten the recovery of lost treasures. Locating common objects -- so long as they were misplaced on the premises -- was entrusted to a crystal glass turned upside-down and set atop a lace-trimmed handkerchief.

      When they dare to confront the devil, men burn witches; when they fear him, they turn to occultism.

      Superstition, it seemed, regulated every facet of their existence. Countless canons warned of impending calamities. Occult formulas, spells and incantations shielded against them. Compliance with strict taboos secured the blessings of a hundred unseen spirits: Knock on wood before engaging in self-praise. Spit three times when admiring a beautiful and healthy child lest he fall prey to the “evil eye.” Defiance or carelessness could unleash unimaginable evil: Break a mirror and you’ll suffer seven years of sorrow. Never offer a gift of soap. Never pass a sharp object -- a needle, fork or cutting tool -- from hand to hand; place it first on a neutral surface. Biting one’s tongue was evidence of a lie unuttered. If your left ear tingled, someone was talking about you. If the right one did, you could expect news from afar. If your nose itched you were on the verge of a quarrel. An itchy left palm portended a windfall.

      “And if your rectum itches,” my father would add not without annoyance, “you have hemorrhoids or worms, both of which are far easier to cure than your meshugene superstitions.”

      Everyone laughed heartily but when the laughter subsided, my grandmother or my uncle would icily chide my father for mocking forces and conventions beyond his comprehension. His use of Yiddish colloquialisms also drew mortified expressions from my grandmother who deemed the language “dissonant and vulgar.” He was often counseled not to speak Yiddish “en société,” (in company) and advised against listening to cantorial music, which he enjoyed the way a child delights in a nursery rhyme or a lullaby. He obeyed these contemptible injunctions out of love for my mother, but he resented them and he never forgot. The Holocaust, and the birth of Israel from its ashes, would infuse my mother’s family with a fresh sense of Jewish self-awareness that prevailed, to their immense credit -- along with a few unconquerable superstitions -- for the rest of their lives.

      UNDER THE OCCUPATION

      Spurn Messalina’s advances and she’ll have your head. Sleep with her and Claudius will chop it off. Its conscience subverted, its soul disfigured, trapped in a paradox of its own making, Paris fell with a speed resembling haste. Capitulation led to compliance and collaboration. Accommodation invited opportunism. Parisians rushed headlong into the foe’s embrace, some with grudging resignation, many displaying unmasked, if heretofore dormant veneration for the conqueror. Energies and resources that might have been pooled to undermine the occupation and bedevil the occupiers, at least for a while, were eagerly expended to reap profit from catastrophe and secure comfort from the enemy. Cynics have suggested that if the French had truly believed in, or acted in conformance with, the image of daring and invincibility their history books so tenaciously promoted, they would have either repelled the Germans or drowned them in a sea of French blood. Defeat, instead, exposed the myth and bared a dispirited and faint-hearted France.

      *

      “If you want solidarity,” Aldous Huxley wrote in Ape and Essence, “you’ve got to have an external enemy or an oppressed minority.” The external enemy was now inside, aided and abetted by domestic turncoats and profiteers. Heretofore unmolested -- though often the casualty of subtle forms of intimidation -- the minority quickly became the focus of an evil fellowship dedicated to its extinction. Said Joachim von Ribbentrop at the Nuremberg Trials:

      “You know, I was never an anti-Semite. I disagreed vehemently with Hitler and had a terrible argument with him on the subject. I told him that it was a mistake to pit world Jewry against us. It was as if we had a fourth world power to contend with: England, France, Russia and the Jews.”

      It began with a series of assaults against synagogues and Jewish study centers. At first, the Germans blamed the Jews, accusing them of seeking publicity by burning and pillaging their own houses of worship. But German intelligence soon confirmed that the attacks had been the handiwork of French provocateurs, albeit with Berlin’s knowledge and blessings.

      Two Jewish traitors brought from Berlin -- Israelovitch and Biberstein -- both working for a special German detail charged with “solving the Jewish problem” persuaded independent Jewish organizations in the occupied sector to consolidate and centralize their operations and resources, ostensibly to facilitate “discourse and interaction” with the German military administration. Simultaneously, Israelovitch and Biberstein helped the French police create a Jewish “membership roster” meticulously compiled alphabetically, by address, profession and nationality.

      A French decree had also ordered a census of Jews living in the free southern zone but a happy coincidence of sabotage, confusion and bureaucratic ineptitude prevented the inventories from ever getting into German hands. The list turned up under a pile of scrap metal in a garage after the war.

      Nevertheless, the Paris “roster” proved invaluable in three major operations. Ordered by the SS, the raids netted large numbers of Jews. Soon, a mandate signed by Adolf Eichmann, the man responsible for the liquidation of at least four million Jews, called for the deportation of Jews living in France. Logistics and a shortage of transports delayed the convoy’s departure.

      The SS then demanded the arrest, at the hands of French police, of 28,000 Jews aged between 16 and 50. Spreading over two nights, the raids brought in only about 12,000 people -- 3,000 men, 5,800 women and 3,500 children. The German report, from which these numbers were gleaned, observes laconically,

      “The persons apprehended constitute, for the most part, the dregs of Jewish society. Creditable sources reveal that a number of influential stateless Jews had gotten wind of the raids and managed to slip through the net. We suspect that members of the French police may have warned, in exchange for tribute, the very individuals they were supposed to arrest....”

      Similar raids took place in the unoccupied sector. At first only stateless or foreign Jews, such as my parents, were targeted. But the Germans made it clear that these dragnets were aimed at eliminating all Jews, including French nationals -- which meant me as well. By 1942, the number of Jews deported reached 27,000. A year later the number exceeded 49,000.

      *

      Life in Paris under the occupation was hard and perilous. But it was not without play or diversion, both ventured at great risk and with reckless disregard for curfews, raids and other intrusions on personal freedom. Now “Verboten to Jews,” the Casino de Paris reopened weeks after the occupation. So did the city's temple of earthly delights, the Folies-Bergère, dozens of nightclubs and at least a hundred watering holes where high society, celebrities, performers, writers and philosophers toasted life and liberty with the enemy. A number of classy whorehouses, now the exclusive turf of high-ranking German officers, offered “membership” to a select French clientele less in need of sex than business connections and protection from their ever-obliging German hosts.

      My father’s medical practice, which had flourished until the war, waned to a trickle then dissolved. Money nearly ran out. He borrowed from friends and repaid them by selling clothes, furniture, jewelry, bric-a-brac. It was around that time that the Résistance recruited him as a medic. At first, he was also entrusted with delivering coded messages. Much of this commerce took place in public, mostly in city parks. I remember tagging along on two or three occasions. There was plenty for me to do as I waited for my father to complete these risky missions. I would keep him in sight from the corner of my eye while I took in puppet shows or launched paper boats in the Tuileries garden basins. Or I'd romp in the sandboxes of the Jardin du Luxembourg,