Soeurette Joseph Part IV: A New Life

After landing in El Salvador, Soeurette was quickly introduced to her new household including her husband and brother-in-law Fred Joseph. A staff of maids, cooks, and one gardener assisted her in household duties and soon after her arrival, a new member of the family was born....

Yeah. It’s not that easy. I had a easy life, to tell the truth, because when I arrived – Fred(brother-in-law) had taken care of the household so for a few months he got – really took care of it so I was like being in a hotel. I was sitting there, everything was done, and it took me about six months to be able to talk Spanish and then it worked. Those six months helped me enormously. Andre would drop me at the Circulo Deportivo at eight o'clock in the morning, pick me up at 12:00. I go home, the table is ready, the food is ready.

(How did you learn Spanish?)

I had a teacher and it was the worst teacher you can imagine. He was so bad. I don't remember his name. They had taken him because he knew French but he was a miserable teacher. You don’t need somebody who speaks your language to learn a foreign language. It was such a mistake and he was so bad. And you learned with the time. You have to learn. I really had a rough time because we never spoke Spanish, we spoke French at home. And with the maids I didn’t have to say anything, they knew their job, they were there for so many years they didn’t need me to tell them something. It was too easy. And when you went somewhere, your grandparents the Reich's, for example, spoke German, the others spoke – other people spoke English, other people spoke French.
I had no problem.

(What kind of food did the maids make?)

Well, what we always ate, regular food. In Salvador we had very European food. You know, it was always the same things, what we were used to eat, nothing very special. We had Sunday morning frijoles and guineos fritos [fried bananas], things like this. For the rest of the time like everybody else.

(What did you think of Salvador – the people, the country?)

I liked it very much. I had no problem whatsoever. You have so many people who hated it, who were unhappy. I loved it from the first day. I was happy as can be. You know,after what we had lived through everything was paradise.

(What did you love about it?)

That I could do what I wanted. I could listen to music, I could read, I could do whatever I wanted. And I had food three times a day. When I worked I could afford one lunch and breakfast and I never had dinner because I couldn’t go out and have another meal outside and so on and so on. All of a sudden you come and everything is there and you don’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to do my own wash, I didn’t have to do cleaning. I didn’t [chuckle] – you know, it’s very easy to be lazy.

(What about your children? When did you have your first child?)

I arrived in January and he was born the year after in September.

(Jean-Paul.)

Jean-Paul. And that was so wonderful to have a child and so easy.

(Where was he born? At home or in the hospital?)

No, in the hospital, at La Merced. No, that was easy.

(What was he like as a baby?)

Oh, he was beautiful. He was so beautiful when he was born. The maid used to call him El niño de Dios [the child of G-d]. And he was so easy. It was very easy with children. And then I had Sylvia who was difficult as a baby but a wonderful little girl afterwards.

(What was she like?)

Oh, she was a doll. She was so – such a happy child, such a happy child. The only problem I had I could never take her anywhere because the little children on the streets would go and touch her, touch her hair 'cause they had never seen a red-head and all the children on the street would run and touch her and so I could never take her outside our circle. I took her once to the mercado. I was scared to death. They had never seen a
child with that coloring.

(So they were only about a year apart.)

Three years.

(Oh, they’re three years apart, sorry.)

Yeah. Jean-Paul was born September ’50 and she was born January ’53.

(Why did you name him Jean-Paul?)

That was – my sister-in-law decided. It was the name of her parents – Andre’s parents. Jean and Paul and I had to call him Jean-Paul. They didn’t give me a chance.

(Did he have a second name?)

No, Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul, that’s it. I didn’t have a chance.

(And Sylvia?)

Sylvia I decided. I wanted a name that would work anywhere in the world and that’s what I did.

Transcription by Claudette Allison, Word-for-Word.com

Soeurette Joseph Part III: To El Salvador

Once France was liberated, members of the Resistance began joining the French Army; Soeurette enlisted as soon as possible. She served in occupied Germany until 1945 and then decided to go back to school. The army would only sponsor her education if she studied social work so Soeurette registered for social work school and then interned for three years. She finished her internship at the end of 1947 and started working in the Army in the north of France. As Soeurette had a contract of five years, the only way to leave the Army was to pay them back for her education or to get married.

She was married less than two years later.

(How did you meet Andre?)

I was introduced by a friend of ours who knew his aunt who was – Andre was in France on vacation and he was leaving, actually, two weeks later. And then we were introduced so he stayed a little longer and I didn’t see him. I saw him twice – once the first time and then I didn’t see him until December and in December I saw him and January we were married.

(So you didn’t know each other very long before you got married?)

No, absolutely not.

(What did your parents think of you moving to Central America?)

Nothing. Nothing special, no – everybody has to make his own life, everybody has to decide what they want to do. You know, it was not that easy for girls to get married at that time. First, there were a lot of young men who had died during the war and a lot of people who had disappeared. So it was not so easy at that time. Not that easy.

(Where did your parents move to after the war?)

My father had died in 1942 and my mother came back to the town where we lived near Strasbourg after the war and stayed there a few years and then moved to her hometown of Metz because my sister lived there.

(Which sister is that?)

The older sister lived in Metz. She was a dentist in Metz. She was married there and my mother moved to Metz and she died there.

(And your other sister, where did she go?)

She left for Israel before Israel was Israel. She left with a bunch of young people who decided to go to Palestine, landed on – somewhere on the beach.

(Before you married Andre did you – how did you feel about moving?)

I was ready to do anything, you know. We had had such a rough life that anything was better than what we had so it didn’t make a difference. Whatever we could do was welcome.

(What day were you married?)

We were married – in France. The civil marriage took place on the 6th of January 1949 at the mairie [city hall] and religiously on the 16th of January. I arrived in Salvador on the 31st of January.

(Were you married in Obernai?)

No, in Strasbourg.

(So immediately after your wedding you go to Salvador?)

Two weeks later.

(Did you go by ship?)

No, we flew. And it was very funny because I needed a visa to go through the United States and I was told it was impossible, it would take weeks. So we had already decided Andre had to go and I would come as soon as I would get my visa and that could take four weeks, two months, three months, who knows. And so we went to the American consulate with the idea to tell them that I needed to go with my husband and so on, the whole story. I had a new passport with my new name. I get into the embassy and an American girl comes down the stairs, she looks at me, says, “What are you doing here?” I knew her from the Army because I used to go to the meetings of the American/English/French. They used to take me along and I had met that girl. I got my visa in five minutes. It didn’t take more – the girl said, “I guarantee for her,” and I got my visa. Didn’t even have to fill out papers. And so we left and stopped in New York for a few days and then in New Orleans where we met Alice Liebes who stayed there and gave us Roberto and Raquel to take home to Salvador.

(Did Alice speak French?)

No. Alice spoke German and Spanish.

(So how did you communicate with her?)

Oh, I had no problem. I never had problem talking [chuckle].
I spoke – English with her or – English with her or some German, how much I knew which was poor German. But I got along. It didn’t take me long to – My problem was when I got to Salvador to know what the people talked. If they spoke German, if they spoke French, how do I know what they talked? I once met Jaime Gabay and Gabay spoke French but I didn’t remember that and I made a whole conversation in Spanish and he never said to me that he spoke French.

(So from New Orleans you took Raquel --)

And Roberto and went to Salvador. We were on the plane I think six people and one cow.

(Six people and one cow.)

And one cow. And you arrived in Salvador on the tarmac and everybody came to the plane. You remember that time? Everybody came to the plane and we got – flowers. And they had dozens of roses and now they had the most beautiful ones and everybody came to the plane.

(Who is every – who came for you?)

I don't know but a lot of people. The whole [Jewish] community.


Transcription by Claudette Allison, Word-for-Word.com

Soeurette Levy de Joseph: Part II

Soeurette's work in the Resistance became more dangerous as the war progressed. Here she describes two very close calls.

…..And then I had another experience that’s so funny that I could tell you. I took an elderly man from one town and I had to take him – we had to hide him somewhere. And we had found a place in a town called Montelimar and I took him on the train to Montelimar and I told him – we don’t talk to one another. Actually, he didn’t speak French, he only spoke German.

He was a refugee of Saargebiet. And I said to him, “We don’t talk to another one. When I get up, you get up, you follow me. You follow me, you don’t know me, you don’t talk to me. You follow me until we get to a certain house. I will touch the door, I will walk away and you get in there and that’s where you are going to stay. But you don’t talk to me and you follow me.” We arrive in Montelimar, I get out of the train, he doesn’t move.

I get out, I am on the outside and I make him a sign, “Please come.” Finally he comes and he starts yelling at me in German in the train station with all the people standing there that I want him to be taken by the police, that I arranged everything for him to be arrested. What had happened was Montelimar is a place where they do nougat.

You know what nougat is?

And it says everywhere “nougat, nougat.” And he thought it was not Montelimar, it was nougat.

Finally he followed me. I had to go into the house to discuss with him what had happened and then I left and I never saw him again. I know that he survived the war and [chuckle] but that was an experience. A lot of things like this happened during the war. There were so many things happening. Then I went to, like I say, I went to Chateauroux I was arrested by the Gestapo on the 9th of August 1944. And there I was for several hours. Those were seven very long hours.

(What happened during those seven hours?)

What happened? I came out with a broken nose, missing eight teeth, burned all over, missing a nail, and very strangely after seven hours they let me go. They hadn’t gotten anything out of me. They had seen me at the train station on a certain day. Actually, the 6th of June, the day of – the D-Day. They had seen me at the station going to a place called La Chatre where there was a very big parachutage of weapons. We had gotten an incredible amount of weapons from the air. That was one of the most incredible things you could see in your life. They had big containers with weapons that came down and they had Jeeps – we got Jeeps out of the air. I was sitting the days before and before for hours listening to hear the messages when they would tell you when you – they would call you and let you know there would be something sent by the parachutage. And it was unbelievable. The parachutes coming down with material and sometimes people even that they send down. Unbelievable.

(Who sent this?)

From England they came. It was unbelievable. No. It was unreal. And they knew, they had seen me and they wanted me to say that I had been there and I wouldn’t talk. And it was – it was hard. When I left they told me that my papers were not in order, I should go to the police. And I went to the police and when I got there the man said to me, “You have to hurry. I --you have to leave as quickly as possible because the man that comes after me I don’t trust him – the policeman. You leave. Go to the hospital and ask for Sister So-and-So. She’ll take care of you.” So I went, took my bike.

When I got into the Gestapo one said to the other, “Take the bike, she won’t need it anymore.”

That tells you a little about what I thought was going to happen to me. And I got to the nun and the nun said, “I'm going to wash you up to see what I can do and I'm going to send you out. You are going to go for the night to somebody. Don’t ask questions, she won’t talk to you.” So she put me – so a carriage comes with a horse with the dirty wash from the hospital.

-- and she said, “You go under the wash and you get out of the hospital.” And the man took me with the wash to a certain place, got me out, got me into that woman’s house. I never saw the woman, I don't know where it was, I never knew the address. I come in, there was a young Jewish boy there hidden by her too. She said, “You can talk to one another and I'm going to give you to eat. She gave us to eat but we never saw her face. She didn’t want to be known. And she said, “They will come for you tomorrow and pick you up. Your bike is going to be delivered later.” Because the bike was in the hospital. They came, actually, to the hospital to look for me and the sister said, “Oh, she came but she was so afraid – she didn’t want me to touch anything in her face and she disappeared. I don't know where she is.” And from there, the next morning they took me out and they gave me my bike and the told me to leave to a certain place. I don't know how many miles, I have no idea. I should look into a map once to see how far it was. And I was told to go and see such-and-such a family, such-and-such an address, and they told me, “They won’t talk to you. You just go in and you rest and then next day they will tell you where you go.” So I took my bike, I left, and I was so sick and so tired that I put my bike down and went to sleep next to the road. What happens? A German convoy comes. I saw the German convoy, I didn’t move and they didn’t say anything. I waited until they had left – until they were far. I took my bike and went on. I arrived in that place near to Saint Benoit du Sault in the middle of France and the people opened the door for me, said, “You are going to sleep here and I am going to bring you food.” I never saw the people, they did not want to see me. But all of a sudden – and that was one of the worst things that ever happened to me – comes in the priest and he said to me that he’s.....I don't know how you call it in English when someone --

(Last rites?)

Last rites.

They found me– I looked so miserable. I was so tired that they thought it was the end and I got the last rites. You are twenty years old and they tell you you are going to die. What do you think? What goes through your head? I didn’t want to sleep, I was afraid I would die in my sleep. I didn’t know. I didn’t even tell him I was Jewish. He didn’t even ask me what I was. It was something absolutely awful because when you are twenty you don’t think you are going to die and they tell you that’s it. So the next morning I was still alive [chuckle] and they told me to go to a certain place and they would take care of me. So I left again – always on my bike ......

Transcription by Claudette Allison, Word-for-Word.com

Soeurette Levy de Joseph: Part I

These excerpts were originally posted online some six months ago. In order to correct various errors, Soeurette kindly agreed to sit down with me during her vacation in San Salvador in order to perfect this newly improved version.

Soeurette Levy de Joseph was born on April 29, 1923 in Metz, in the French region of Lorraine. She spent the war years in France and later arrived in El Salvador as the wife of Andre Joseph, eventually becoming the mother of Jean-Paul and Sylvia. She has five grandchildren and now lives in New York City. Here is a piece of her incredible story.....one you will want to follow closely.

(Well, what made the family get up and move to the south of France? What was the -)

It was when the war started and the Germans passed through the Maginot Line. They went to Holland, they went to Belgium, they went to Luxembourg, and they came into France and all of a sudden they were there. So we had no other choice than to leave and
go.

(So where did you move in the south?)

First we went to Belfort which is just south of Alsace.

(And this is in 1939.)

June 1940. We left actually the day I was supposed to receive my baccalaureate--that’s graduation. That day we left and we went to Belfort. And then we left – that was too near to Alsace. The Germans were already all the way into that region so we left and went to Dijon, which is a little further down. And then my father had a sister who went to a little town near Avignon in Nyons. They rented a house and we decided to follow them. And we passed that line – there was a line in France dividing the part in France that was occupied by the Germans and the part of France that was not occupied by the Germans. So we went south and went to Nyons following the family.

(So total there were many people in this town from your family. You all --)

No, it was my aunt, her husband, her children, her daughter-in-law and baby [baby of the daughter-in-law]. We were five, six people from the family. And we settled down there and we stayed there until more or less the end of the war.

(What did your father do during this time?)

He was a rabbi.

(He continued to -)

He continued. He was supposed to come to New York as a rabbi at the congregation that is on Lexington Avenue and he decided not to do it. He didn’t want to leave his sister and leave the family and come to New York. We had our tickets. We were supposed to go to Lisbon and then to New York and never did. Which was actually a good idea because my father had cancer and died in 1942. So we would have been miserable in New York. That doesn’t make too much sense.

(So what did you do in this town near?)

In Nyons? There it was south of France. It was a completely different life from what we knew. In the south of France life is much happier than in the north of France. The weather changes the mood of the people. It was nice. We lived there for a while and
then I was contacted in school by people who were followers of DeGaulle and we started with little things, doing things you were not supposed to do. And I got a job.

(What were those things that you weren’t supposed to do.)

Stealing IDs, stealing food stamps to give to people who were in need, a lot of things that we did, little things. And then I started working for the resistance headed by General de Gaulle who was in London. And there I started doing other things, transporting papers for people who were hidden, giving them false papers. We were doing a lot of things. That was part of the resistance. And it went so far that in April ’44 I had to leave. It was too dangerous for me, I couldn’t stay there anymore. I was too known by the police and I was traveling too much and I couldn’t stay there. So I left and went to Chateauroux in the middle of France. In the meantime I had finished my baccalaureate, I had a baccalaureate in philosophy and I was out of school. For a while I was learning how to sew because I had to do something not to be on the street, it was too dangerous to be on the streets. I went on with my work for the resistance and at the same time I was making long trips with children, taking children from one place to another who had to be hidden in some places. We would take them on the train, making convoys for the Red Cross, taking children from one place to the other. That was quite a job.

(Can you tell me more about that? Were they French children, German children?)

German children whose parents very often had already been taken, who had to be hidden somewhere, that we would take and place in villages. And it was a very, very difficult job.

(Can you tell me about one of these transports that you did?)

Not especially. It was always the same. You had the children and you didn’t want them to say their names. If the German would come into the wagon not to have them and have them being happy and telling them that we are taking them for vacations. We didn’t say
we were taking the children to hide them. So we were singing and playing games and being very loud so it would look very happy. It was extremely difficult.

(Did you have any close calls?)

There were close calls all the time. There were all kind of things happening. There were always things happening. One of the funniest stories is I got to a train station in Valence and all of a sudden I see German soldiers walking down and one of them looks at me and says, “Mamsel Levy, Mamsel Levy.” And I recognized the German. He was from my little town in Alsace. As Alsace was occupied by the Germans, the young men were drafted into the German army. He recognized me. I ran so quick and disappeared, got into a train who[sic] was going I didn’t know where and left. Later on – a few years later I met him again and he said, “I was so happy to see you. Why did you run?” He didn’t figure out that if he had told the other soldiers who I was they would have arrested me immediately. I ran as quick as I could. He was not smart enough to close his eyes when he saw me. That was war.

Transcription by Claudette Allison, Word-for-Word.com

KEHILATON

This week's Kehilaton entry includes a brief excerpt of Eric Bymel's interview. Translated for the Spanish readers of the newsletter, the text has been edited slightly and shortened for publishing purposes.
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Miembros que viven fuera y dentro de El Salvador están interesados en las historias de nuestros antepasados así como amigos, vecinos, y familiares. Esta serie de artículos sobre nuestra comunidad estará incluida en la sección “Yo También Cuento” dándonos la oportunidad de conocer más sobre la comunidad israelita. Como les he contado, mi trabajo está basado en la historia oral, o sea, los testimonios de cada uno de ustedes. Con sus historias orales, textos antiguos, y memorias escritas cada día intento entender más sobre la vida judía salvadoreña.

En Agosto 2005, viajé a Israel para entrevistar los individuos que tenían un pedazo de su historia personal basada en El Salvador. Algunos nacieron en la tierra cuzcatleca, otros vivían aquí después de pasar años traumáticos en Europa durante la segunda guerra mundial. Las historias son diversas. En los meses que vienen, quisiera compartir las historias de los miembros Salvadoreños-Israelíes con ustedes, así que mas que nunca, Israel esta en nuestras mentes y corazones.

Eric Bymel, hijo de Félix y Rita, hermano de Dian, esposo de Dassi, padre de Maayan, Ofer, y Yuval, nació en El Salvador. Se mudó a Israel en 1979 para estudiar en la universidad y no ha regresado desde ese tiempo. En estos párrafos, Eric describe como su vida en Israel ha cambiado su manera de ver el mundo y la vida diaria.

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Estábamos en Haifa cuando estalló lo de la Tormenta del Desierto y empezaron a impactar los misiles Scud. Allí estábamos, sentados en la habitación de Maayan. Ella era apenas una infante, tenía dos años. Esa primera noche nos pusimos las mascaras de gas, eso jamás lo olvidaré, fue absolutamente traumático. Saddam Hussein, de alguna manera siempre lo bendeciré. Debido a que teníamos que estar escondidos en esa habitación, tuvimos que montar las defensas de las ventanas para que no pudiera penetrar el gas; la habitación ya estaba aislada. Los niños estaban sumamente serios sobre lo que estaba sucediendo. Se pusieron sus máscaras de gas y nos ayudaron con Maayan y yo coloqué una toalla mojada bajo la puerta para que nada se pudiera colar por la rendija. En esos momentos no teníamos televisión y las redes telefónicas colapsaron porque todo mundo estaba haciendo llamadas telefónicas. De verdad que era aterrador. Mirando hacia atrás me dije “mi Dios, pudimos haber muerto”. Uno de los misiles Scud cayó cerca de donde vivíamos, cayó en uno de los centros comerciales. Yo pienso que esto me hizo cambiar mi forma de ver las cosas y me guía todo el tiempo. De repente podemos dejar de disfrutar porque somos demasiados severos y esperamos demasiado de nuestros hijos y no los dejamos estar. Entonces los dejamos estar. Yo creo que eso les ha gustado. Los he escuchado; a veces se tiene que leer entre líneas, sin embargo ellos aprecian mucho el hecho de que los hemos aceptados como son, y que los hemos dejado desarrollarse como ellos quieran.


Maayan ya tiene dieciséis años. El año pasado durante sus estudios de secundaria, como asignatura principal estudiaba matemáticas y computación y a mediados de año me dijo, “esto no es para mi”. Además estaba estudiando árabe. Ella es una estudiante muy seria y muy buena, pero me repitió que quería estudiar otra cosa. A esto le pregunté “¿y que quieres hacer?”. Quería estudiar arte y drama y ya estaba aburrida de estudiar árabe. Y nuestra conversación siguió, cuando le pregunté, “¿Bien, y ya hablaste con tus maestros acerca de esto?”.



Lo hizo y cambió todas sus materias principales; dejó árabe, la computación, todo. A ella no le pasaba que habíamos sido tan flexibles. Ella pensó que nos íbamos a oponer a todo y que le íbamos a decir que las matemáticas eran más importantes que el arte. Y me dije a mi misma, “Saddam Hussein.” Sabes? “Recuerdas el misil Scud, recuerdas la situación adonde de repente toda la familia pudo haber sido eliminada? Claro que ha sucedido”. Y bueno, lo que quiero decir es que tantos miembros de mi familia murieron debido a Hitler. Se tiene que aprender de eso. Se tiene que dejar ir a los hijos, hay que disfrutarlos, y dejarlos…… desarrollarse por sí solos. Esta fue una revelación. Esa experiencia me persigue pero a la vez, me guía.

Traducida por Leonor “Lori” Schoening

Trascripción por Sandy Adler, Sandy Adler Enterprises LLC

Editada por Jessica Alpert con el permiso de Eric Bymel

Spatial Relations

This article, originally published on Nextbook.org, explores a young woman/mother's experience during the recent violence in Israel. Jessica Apple, a fiction writer currently living in Tel Aviv was born and raised in my own hometown of Houston. In this piece she describes the difference between her own childhood and that of her two sons.
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Spatial Relations


How a childhood in Tel Aviv differs from one in Houston

by Jessica Apple

My best friend, Rachel, is a top-notch endocrinologist at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. At her encouragement, in the midst of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, I went to see a trauma healer. The healer, Itai, works through talk, flower essences, and massage. His Tel Aviv office is fully booked, and he gave me an appointment only because he knows and likes Rachel. "I can tell how stressed you are," Rachel said. "Itai will be great for you. He has a gift. He knows things about you that you don't even know yourself."

When Rachel first told me about the healer, I laughed him off. And I still wasn't quite sure why I'd decided to see him now. But I had two good clues: I was barely sleeping at night and I had no appetite. Maybe seeing a healer was a way of admitting to myself that since the war broke out and my husband went to reserve duty, leaving me alone with our two young sons, life had become difficult.

I'd received many wonderful offers from family and friends in America to come spend time with them, but as tempting as a quiet American suburb was when compared to the threat of Hezbollah missiles, I didn't budge. Ten years ago, after graduating from college, I made Israel my home. Though I now felt far from calm here, this was the place I wanted to be, and I couldn't bring myself to leave. My biggest step since the war began was crossing Tel Aviv to see the healer.

At first, I was disappointed. Itai, a small, barefoot man with peach-colored hair, seemed nothing but irritated at me. "Your husband went to the army. You're alone with your kids. These are not reasons to come to me," he said. "This is not trauma."

"Wait. Listen," I said. "That's just part of it. I have had real trauma."

But then I got angry. The war was traumatic. And I was tired of hearing Israelis say, "there's nothing to do about it. In war, there are deaths." I had heard this stoic acceptance from the cashier in the supermarket, from the pharmacist, from my son's camp counselor, and even from my husband. I couldn't swallow it, or go along with the masses who called the war "just" and tolerated its consequences. I would willingly admit to being a kvetch, but I wasn't whining. I just couldn't stop myself from saying this time was difficult, scary, and most of all sad. Every hour I listened to the news on the radio and heard about the dead, the injured, the exploded missiles, the ones in flight. And I feared those still to come.

In the early days of the war, an electrician came to my apartment to fix a broken socket in the kitchen. When I mentioned I was afraid of being home alone with my sons during wartime, he said, "What's the problem? If you hear a siren, stand in the middle of the building, away from the windows." He said it as if he were saying "if you're thirsty, drink some water." And the electrician, like most of the people around me, wasn't really worried about missiles falling on Tel Aviv. Itai, too, was among this majority. "Hezbollah won't send missiles to Tel Aviv," he said. "This is not something to worry about. Now tell me why you are here."

My list of problems and anxieties was long. I decided to start with what I considered the general problem. "I have an imagination of disaster," I said. "I always jump to the worst conclusions."

"Why?" Itai asked.

"I'm sure it has something to do with my mom. She got sick when I was five, really sick."

"Did she get better?"

"No."

Finally, I had said something Itai considered traumatic. "Just a minute," he said. He turned to his computer and looked something up. "Five years old," he said. "Five is the year when children become shy. You must know this. You are the mother of a five-year-old."

My five-year-old, Tom, was anything but shy right now. Since my husband left for the army, Tom had been having tantrums, daily. At his summer camp, where a number of children from the north had come to escape the long days in bomb shelters, I saw boys throwing beach balls at each other and shouting "Katyusha," a sight that made me think of my own childhood in Houston, where rockets were things we went to visit on school field trips to NASA. Tom could find Texas in his atlas, and at bedtime he liked to hear stories about my childhood. He knew all about my dog, George, who liked to swim in the bayou. He knew that my brother and I had a clubhouse in the backyard where no grown-ups were allowed. The stories I told Tom were nothing like the tales he was bringing home from summer camp.

Many of Tom's stories, like the ones about Katyusha rockets falling in Eilat, and the war we were fighting with Egypt, were false. But the scariest stories, the ones about civilians getting killed in their homes on both sides of the border and the ones about Israeli soldiers dying, were true.

And Tom had seen his father put on a soldier's uniform. I explained to him that Daddy was not going to Lebanon. He was being deployed in the West Bank which I called, with great irony, a safe place. I knew Tom couldn't make sense of the geography. He was afraid, like any five-year-old whose father, out of the blue, put on an army uniform and disappeared, would be. And his fear was evident in his behavior. More than ever, he picked fights with his three-year-old brother, Guy. When Guy was playing, Tom took his toys. When Guy sat quietly watching TV, Tom put his feet on Guy's head. One day when this happened, Guy leaped out of his bean bag. His eyes gleamed with revenge. He leaned over and bit Tom on the forearm. The parallels I drew between my sons' fighting and Nasrallah and Olmert astounded me.

"He bit me," Tom cried. "He started."

"I didn't start," Guy screamed. "He started."

I entered in my role as the UN. I strongly condemned both of their actions and told them, as I would have liked to tell Nasrallah and Olmert, "I don't care who started. I want both of you to stop it, right now." I told Tom to go to his bed and stay there. I told Guy to go to his bed and stay there. "If you can't be nice, just stay away from each other," I said.

***************
To read the rest of this essay, copy and paste the following link into your web browser:

http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=403

Eric Bymel: A Conclusion of Sorts

In this final excerpt, Eric discusses identity while also describing memories of his childhood in El Salvador.
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(So today, do you identify as Israeli?)

(pause) I would say yes. But I don’t know. People always tell me, you know, “You’re not Israeli.” They look at me: “Oh, you’re not Israeli. You’re something else.” I don’t know what it actually means. I’m against the compartmentalization of people, putting them in little boxes and saying, “You are this and you are that.” I always ask, “What is Israeli? I don’t know. There’s so many different people here, so many types.”

So I have a citizenship that’s Israeli. I’m also Salvadoran, although for many, many years I didn’t have the citizenship. I had this laissez-passer, you know, this special document that I could travel with. It’s awful. I always had to show this at passport control, and they always looked at it like, “What is this?” It’s the weirdest thing, very unpleasant. So now I’m Israeli. But I don’t give it much importance. When people ask me, I talk about it, but I don’t give it too much weight. As also with my Judaism, the same thing. It’s part of me. I know I’m Israeli, and I supposed if somebody would attack my Israeli side, I would take defense. But I don’t make a big deal out of it. I’m not afraid of criticism. I’m not afraid of anti-Semitism. I suppose I would be afraid if it would threaten me physically, but if somebody said something against Israelis or Jews, I’ll just deal with it. As I deal with anything else, you know.

I always want people to live and let live, somehow, to do their thing and let me do my thing and not step on me. I won’t bother them, just don’t put your expectations on me. I think that’s something that bothered me a lot as I grew up, expectations: you must do that, you must go to the synagogue, don’t forget this one, don’t forget to call up that one, bless that one, and so on. I try to keep a low dosage of that in my kids. I don’t know if I’m entirely successful, but it always comes back to, don’t expect too much.

(Your sister lives nearby. I know you’re close, but is it nice to have someone else here in Israel who understands your background?)

Not very, not very important. I mean, with my sister, we talk almost daily. It’s not a big deal in my life to meet with all these people and bring up memories. It’s not a simple thing because memory is a very tricky thing. Like I said, even my memory, you asked me what my first memory is, and I immediately followed with pictures that become your memory.

(Do you have a desire to take Dassi and your kids to Salvador?)

Oh, very much. It would be fun. I would love to walk up to that house where I grew up and see what it looks like. It’s so embedded in my memory. Or go to the school, or show them around; I would love very much to come unexpectedly.

But it’s like it’s not part of me any more. And it used to be so important, this whole thing, the youth movement that I was the head of. I was so busy with that. We did so many activities as kids. It’s like a capsule. Somewhere lying there in my past, almost not part of me. I don’t know how to explain that. Like, we barely talk about it now, and it was very, very important. I was head of that movement for maybe three or four years. I was busy all week long with that.

(What kinds of things did you do?)

Celebrated the holidays, of course, and prepare activities, like Boy Scouts, you know, camps and outing, games. I always think—I don’t know how I dealt with all that. I had school, I had Hebrew, German, I was in drama, I had plays all the time at school, preparing stuff, learning lines, productions. And Noar Shelanu. That was a big deal.

(Is there anyone that you don’t talk to any more that you’d like to talk to? Not even become friends with again, but just have one conversation with again? Any friends?)

Oh, lots, lots. Lots of people from school. Non-Jews. Sure.

(Just an update?)

Yeah, I suppose, an update, looking back on certain things, mend a few things, erase a few things….

(Is there anything that I didn’t ask that you’d like to add?)

What is your purpose? That’s what I ask myself.

(I’m very interested in memory, in identity, in migration. I’m never looking for any one statement or—just interested in how people remember their lives, especially people who don’t live in Salvador any more. These have been very interesting for me. Most people, especially Israelis or people who live in Israel, have really moved forward and embraced this new place. People like Judith [Meissner], who really feel Israeli, it was very important for her to speak Hebrew without an accent, to be fully Israeli. She’s very proud of her children, who are now extremely involved and successful in the army.

Then you have someone like Noemi, who loves Israel, feels like it’s her home, but felt very strongly that she was raised in Latin America and it’s a part of her and she won’t hide it. She has friends from Latin American who live in Israel and that’s enjoyable for her. But she said, “I never felt like I was from anywhere. I always felt like, yes, I lived in Salvador, but I wasn’t really Salvadoran. I came to Israel and I’m not really Israeli. So I wanted my children to have what I didn’t have. I want them to have a language and a home, and they do.” So that was more in the end what she wanted to get across. This is all very interesting, what people decide.)

I speak with my kids in English.

(You do?)

I do. Since they were born. Spanish is very, very mild. They know almost nothing. English is their second tongue, or first, sometimes. I don’t know. Noemi I think speaks to her children in Hebrew.

(In Hebrew.)

And my kids are so thankful that I spoke to them in English. For them it’s a great thing, it’s an asset. And they don’t care. When Yuval was growing up, I remember I used to speak to him in English, and when his friends would come over, I would turn to Hebrew so they would understand. He would always tell me, “No, no, stay in English, please.” But he would refuse to answer in English. He spoke to me for years in Hebrew when I would speak to him in English. And only when he was five or six, then it started coming out, the English.

(Do your kids ever want to go to the States?)

Oh, yes, they have been, of course.

(But do you think they ever would leave Israel and live somewhere else?)

Yes. Ofer would. He wants very much to be in the music scene in New York. Oh, yes, he would do that. Yuval also. Yuval, he’s studying electrical engineering. But one of his fascinations is television. He’s been writing a script with his friends for a television series or something. He’s very secretive about it. We know almost nothing about it. So his friend is now in LA studying movie directing, I don’t know what, and he wants very much to join him. So that could be a possibility. I don’t mind doing it again.
…..Migration goes on.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Eric Bymel continued

In this excerpt, Eric discusses his son's decision not to participate in the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and the family's struggle both before and after.
*************************
(So that [experiences during the Gulf War] probably also guided you when your son decided not to go to the army?)

Yes. Yes, exactly. Ofer came up and said, “I don’t want to go to the army. I don’t want any part of that.” “OK,” I said, “what are you gonna do?”

“I’ll deal with it,” he said, “you let me. I might need your help,” he said. “Maybe not.”

And he didn’t.

He didn’t need our help. He went to a doctor, he went to the army, he did what he wanted. He filled us in once in a while on what’s going on. And I said to him, “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? What about your friends? What do they say?”

“Some of them are against it, some of them are for it,” he said.

It was very mature and open-- not telling him what to do. I mean, I said to him, “Listen, I wouldn’t do that. I would go to the army. Because we’re here, and everybody does it, and it’s important. But I respect your decision.”

Yuval [eldest son] was adamant. He was furious. And they had all-out discussions about this. But I suppose because of the way we dealt with it, in the end, it was sort of like flexibility won at the end. Although, like I said, I think that Yuval is still resentful. He still thinks that we should have forced him to go. But I said to him once, “We didn’t force you to go, either. You did what you wanted.” I reminded him that I told him, “‘Why don’t you defer it as a student, maybe you should study first and then go to the army?’ And you didn’t want to. You chose what you want. He does as well. And Maayan will do the same,” I said to him.

(So what did he [Ofer] do instead of the army?)

Nothing. They let him go. They were fed up with him because he didn’t cooperate. He didn’t cooperate with the interviews and the testing, he didn’t come on time. All the preliminary things that they do. So in the end he got a letter that said, “We don’t want your services,” or something like this. And that was it. He couldn’t believe that he was so successful, that he had got out of it without trouble. Because they could have sent him to jail, and he knew that he could go to jail. Unbelievable how it worked out. So he went to study, and that’s what he’s doing. He’s studying at Jerusalem in the Academy. He’s a musician, a very good one, in fact, and he loves it. He loves his music. He drums and he plays the piano and he has groups. Heavy metal, rock, classical music. He plays classical music on the piano, and jazz. That’s his life. Music is his life.

(Does he ever talk about what’s going on? Is he very political? He’s apolitical? Is that why he didn’t want to be in the army?)

They are involved, more or less. But not too involved. I mean, I always invite them, “Come and listen to the news.” The news is very important, for me anyway, I always want to be up-to-date somehow. I always offer it to them. “Come and listen if you want.” Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. So they’re sort of involved but not too involved. And neither are we…..neither are we. I miss that somehow. I think I should be a little more involved. But I don’t know how to go about it often. Life is too hectic, too busy. (pause)

I definitely do not trust the political parties, so I don’t belong to any of them, even though I identify more with the left. But I also don’t know which group I would belong to since all these movements that spring up. I don’t know how corrupt they are; I cannot always take at face value what they say. So I keep a distance…..

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Back...but in Bloomington

Dear Readers,
Apologies for the lapse in entries. The past few weeks have been absolutely crazy with moving, boxes, and more boxes. Last night, I unpacked my the last one and am happy to say that I am finally settled into my new little apartment in the heart of Bloomington, Indiana. A week from today, I start grad work in Latin American history here at Indiana University and hope to be able to finish my doctorate within the next six years. !!! At the same time, I am thrilled to continue this work and will have some exciting announcements to make in the upcoming weeks regarding the project in the press.

Back to Eric Bymel tomorrow.

You can't prevent death but you can prevent yourself from living....

In this third excerpt, Eric Bymel discusses life in Israel.
***********************
I think who helped me out was Saddam Hussein.

When Desert Storm hit, we were here in Haifa, and the Scud missiles hit. There we were, sitting in Maayan’s room. She was a baby then, she was three or four. We were with gas masks that first night. I’ll never forget that. It was absolutely traumatic. Saddam Hussein, I always bless him, in a way. Because this situation of sitting in that room, we had to quickly set up all the windows so that no gas would come in. It was insulated. The kids were very, very serious, grave, about what’s going on. They put on their gas masks and they helped us with Maayan and I put a wet towel under the door so nothing will come in. We didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t have a TV at that moment, and all the phones broke down because everybody was calling. So it was absolutely scary. And so looking back on it, I said, “My God, we could have died.” Because a Scud missile hit not far from us, one of the shopping centers. So I think that made me change my whole way of looking at certain things. And it guides me all the time, you know. We can suddenly go and miss out on so many things because of being stern or being rigid or expecting things from your kids and not letting them be. So we let them be. I think they appreciate that. I’ve heard them, you have to somehow read between the lines in whatever is said, but there’s a lot of appreciation there about us accepting them how they are, letting them be and letting them develop whichever way they want to go.

Maayan is now sixteen. Last year, she was studying—majoring in high school——in math and computers, and in the middle of the year she said, “This is not for me.” Oh, and she was studying Arabic. Very serious and very good student, and she said, “This is not for me. I don’t like this. I want to do something else.” So I said, “What do you want to do?” She said, “I want to study art and drama. I’m fed up with Arabic. I don’t want to do this any more.” I said, “OK. Have you spoken to your teachers about it?” She said, “I’ll speak to them. I’ll do something about it.” So she did. She went and changed her whole thing, left math, left computers, the whole thing. And she couldn’t get over the fact that we had been so flexible. She thought she would come against a brick wall and we would say, “No way! You stay with what you’re doing! God forbid! Math is more important than art.” Or I don’t know what we could have said. And we could have said that. And I said to myself, “Saddam Hussein.” You know? “Remember that Scud missile. Remember the situation where suddenly your whole family can be wiped out.” Of course it’s happened. I mean, I lost so many of my family because of Hitler. So you have to somehow learn from that. You can’t prevent death, but you can prevent yourself from not living. You have to let them go, enjoy them, let them (pause) develop. It was a revelation. It haunts me and guides me at the same time….that experience.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Eric Bymel: Two Sons, Two Decisions

In this excerpt, Eric discusses his (surprise!) traditional Yemenite wedding to Dassi as well as feelings regarding his children's participation in the Israeli army.
***************
(What did your wife’s parents think of you?)

They liked me very much immediately. I liked them also, and it was very comfortable. I liked the food. When you like the food, it’s very easy then, because you don’t make faces. Not only do you not make faces, you want more. So it was great. I think that helps a lot because it’s part of the culture. They are in general very liberal. Even though they’re religious, they don’t force their religion. We had our clashes about different things. But in general it was very easy-going, free. They keep Saturday, they keep Shabbat. We don’t. We mix milk and meat [referring to kosher dietary laws]. They don’t. And so on. But they don’t force it on us. We don’t force it on them, either.

(What about your wedding?)

Our wedding was very special. Unfortunately, my parents couldn’t come, because they had just escaped from El Salvador. They were setting up camp in Miami, so when we got married they were barely there. So they said to me, “Well, either we somehow make it, or we’ll pay you for your honeymoon and you come to the States.” That sounded attractive, so we decided we’d take that offer. So it was special because we prepared the wedding ourselves without all the traditional wedding things. We rented a little restaurant for the evening and we brought the plants ourselves from our garden to decorate it. I wore jeans and sandals and a shirt and Dassi bought a white dress that she found at the flea market and she fixed her hair alone and put flowers on it from the garden. So it was very simple.

We didn’t want to make a big deal. What was even more special was that Dassi decided she wanted to have a traditional Yemenite wedding, but she didn’t tell me about it. Have you seen pictures of Yemenite brides? They wear huge amounts of jewelry from top to bottom. She didn’t know how to go about it, but she wanted to surprise me. So she decided to learn Yemenite dances and songs and joined a troupe. She said to them, “I’ll join you on condition that you come to my wedding and dance.” So she joins them and they help her out. I didn’t know of this. This went on for months, this plan. Then the rabbi who married us, his wife had this traditional Yemenite bride jewelry and all that. So she said, “OK, these are the jewels. Please could you dress me up as a Yemenite bride?” “Sure, I’ll do that.” So all this, of course, clandestinely. Nothing was told. I had no idea, no inkling of what was going on.

So we had the traditional wedding with chuppah and breaking the glass and all that, and then she said to me, “Listen, I have something important to do. I’ll come back in a second.” So she left as we finished the ceremony, she left to the side, and got dressed up as a Yemenite bride, and all the dancers came out in their dress, dancing, and the men also danced in front of me, took me—we have this on film. So it’s special. It was amazing. It was a complete surprise. For all the guests, too. For her family, too.

(What did the family say? They must have been thrilled.)

They were thrilled. They were awed. You can ask Perla [Meissner] about that. She was there. It was amazing. Completely amazing. Of course, surprising, but fascinating. The dances, the songs, the whole thing. I didn’t want it to finish. They did maybe four or five songs, that was it. That was their show. It was great.

This was in 1980. So after that, we—the whole wedding was completely unconventional, the way we were dressed, how we behaved. Good friends of ours got married on the same day, so we finished the wedding, everybody finished eating and left, and so we went to their wedding after that. The whole way we dealt with it was completely different.

And a few days later we left for the States.

(And did you take a tour, or you just went to Florida?)

No, we took a tour. We went to Florida. We went to Chicago, where my sister was living. We went to California. We went to New York. It was fun.

(Was that Dassi’s first time in the States?)

Yeah.

(Was she born in Israel?)

She was born in Israel. She was born in ’52.

(Did they speak Arabic?)

They speak Arabic, but at home they spoke Hebrew.

(Does she understand? Does she speak Arabic?)

Very little. She’s sorry about that. But at the time, there was a lot of pressure on people to speak in Hebrew. And I think they were embarrassed. The children, they didn’t want them to be considered Arabs. If they spoke Arabic or Yemenite, it was looked down upon. So that was a taboo.

(During college, did you go back to Salvador a few times to visit?)

Yeah, a few times.

(How were those visits?)

Not easy. Not easy. I was sort of disconnected already. I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know what——like a time machine, you know, just meet certain people, see certain things, not too much of it, though, because I had mixed memories, mixed feelings about the school and about the people I knew then, although I know that I missed a few class reunions. I was warned that next time I have to come.

(When’s the last time you were there?)

I left the morning that Ernesto Liebes was buried. A few hours later I left, and since then I haven’t been back, so it’s twenty-five years, more or less.

(And you left on quite a sour note?)

Yeah.

(What about your children? You were married in 1980.)

Yuval was born in 1981, Ofer in ’84, and Maayan is sixteen.

(And the oldest one has already finished with the army?)

Finished with the army and he’s already starting his third year at university.

(So one son has gone through the army. How does that make you feel? I mean, part of living in Israel is—having your children, both boys and girls, join the army. Is it a difficult part of being Israeli?)

Yeah. I accept it. It’s a part of me. I (pause) I used to consider myself a pacifist. But I think looking back, it wasn’t necessarily so. I just thought that the army would be a horrible experience and you should get out of it somehow. But once I was summoned and I went, I didn’t have to deal with army—I didn’t have to kill anybody, I didn’t have to oppress anybody, you know. So luckily, I didn’t deal with it, really. But I learned to manage a rifle and so on. So there was no pacifist there. But Yuval very much wanted to go to the army. I said to him, “Why don’t you defer it? You can study and then go to the army.” He said, “No way. I’m going to the army, where they tell me to go. I want to go into the army, I want to go into attack. I want to do what I’m supposed to do.” He was very convinced.

(What did he end up doing in the army?)

He was a tanker—a tanker, it’s called? He was in a tank. He dealt with it. But he didn’t want to be an officer. They offered him to do an officer’s course and stay in the army for another year. He said, “No, I’ll do what I have to do and finish. I’ll go study. I don’t want to stay longer.” Ofer, on the other hand, refused. He said, “I am not going to the army. I’m not taking part in this. I don’t believe in this. It’s wrong.” He had all these arguments, and it was a very tense time at home. Because the difference between them is two and a half years. So one was in the army and the other one was playing around, saying, “I’m not going.” It was a very difficult time, a lot of tension, a lot of anger and resentment. Yuval, I think up to now… he still hasn’t gotten over it. He resents the fact that we did not force Ofer to go to the army. So we had a lot of arguments, a lot of dinner time was dedicated to that. Our dinners are Friday-night dinners, you know. That’s when we have a lot of time to be together and we talk and——usually have a lot of fun. It’s very easy-going. I remember Ofer once brought a girlfriend from Germany. She had dinner with us Friday. We talked about this and that. It was very nice. And after dinner, she said to him, “I’ve never had a dinner like that. At dinner we always fight. There’s always tension. It’s always, eat this, don’t eat that, don’t forget this, do that. And your parents are completely different.” We didn’t think of it. For us it’s natural. We just talk about whatever comes up, have fun, make jokes. They have a lot of fun making fun of us, the kids, you know, our different mannerisms, what we emphasize, how we cook, how we prepare it, “This came out horrible.” They don’t pretend. Whatever they think, they say. So it’s very good. When I look back on my childhood, you know, it was very different. We had to behave. We had to listen. We didn’t talk unless we were told to talk, things like that. It was very strict. We are completely not strict. We are lenient, maybe too lenient sometimes, but I say, what the hell? We die anyway, so we might as well enjoy ourselves somehow, if we can, and make the best of it. I think that’s one of my basic philosophies now.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.