Journal

The joyful but ultimately heartbreaking journal of a young Jewish woman in occupied Paris, now published for the first time, 63 years after her death. In 1942, Hélène Berr, a 21-year-old Jewish student at the Sorbonne, started to keep a journal, writing with verve and style about her everyday life in Paris--about her studies, her friends, her growing affection for the "boy with the grey eyes," about the sun in the dewdrops, and about the effect of the growing restrictions imposed by France's Nazi occupiers. Humiliations were to follow, which she records, now with a view to posterity. She wants the journal to go to her fiancé, who has enrolled with the Free French Forces, as she knows she may not live much longer. She was right. The final entry is dated February 15, 1944, and we now know she died in Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, within a month of Anne Frank and just days before the liberation of the camp.--From publisher description.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member joellalibrarything

This is a piece of writing that wasn't meant to be published... and that does make it a bit impenetrable at the beginning, all the personal references and seemingly irrelevant details that come with reading someone's private journal. But in the end it's this that makes this such a remarkable and

heartbreaking read -- of *course* we weren't supposed to read this, because she wasn't supposed to die. Hélène's gradual shift in awareness of what was happening is almost impossibly painful to imagine -- and she never was really aware, which is a very powerful message in itself about what happened to European Jews in WW2 -- the consequences of which are still being lived out today. The version of her Journal that I read has an excellent afterword, which basically says 'don't go round thinking that if you'd been in her position, you'd have seen it coming and got out. Instead, think about what might be going on in front of your own nose that you're not seeing'. That's the message I shall take away from this book, and I thank Hélène's family for allowing its publication.

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LibraryThing member Smits

although it was difficult to follow keeping people straight, it was a real story.
At the end of this journal, i really appreciated how the reality of her life dawned upon Helene in a way that could only be real life. This for me made the second part of the book more interesting then the first part.

LibraryThing member cat-ballou

Really 3-and-a-half stars for this one. I did enjoy it, it was a quick read, and there were a couple of really pithy passages that I would like to copy into my own journal.

LibraryThing member anieva

This book falls short of five stars not because of its author, but rather the editors who did not nearly footnote enough the large cast of characters and the backstories which are contained between its overs.

LibraryThing member Paulagraph

Although I read this book in French, it is available in English translation and I highly recommend it. My reaction is best summarized by the French word bouleversée, which means deeply moved, utterly distressed, shattered. Although I abhor any manipulation of my emotions on the part of a novelist

or filmmaker, the experience of reading this young woman's journal was quite different. Perhaps it comes down to the authenticity of witness and her commitment to recording what she was thinking, experiencing and seeing as a young Jewish woman in a Paris subjected not only to the nightmare of occupation but also that of collaboration, as well as complicity in the form of passivity, indifference, & the closing of eyes and shutting of doors to the suffering of others. At the same time, there are many who take great risks, who act selflessly and with compassion. The journal begins just as Jews in France are ordered to wear the yellow star in public and as Hélène meets fellow-student Jean Morawiecki for the first time, the young man who will become her fiance: a love story truncated by the war (Jean leaves Paris to join the French forces in North Africa) and matured within the context of increasingly harsh restrictions imposed on Hélène. The pace of arrests and deportations picks up. First, it is the foreign Jews who are taken, then all Jews. Finally, there is no longer any safe zone, no Free France, no protected status anywhere.
Certain passages, certain of Hélène's thoughts regarding her decision to remain in Paris (not entirely her decision, since she was living with her parents throughout) and not try to escape made me think of Simone Weil, particularly certain references Berr makes to her reading of the teachings of Christ. But unlike Weil, Berr isn't obsessed with self-abnegation. And, so, her concern for the suffering of others, her refusal to turn away from that suffering, which is also hers, is both more palatable to me and more heroic. Early on, she writes "Because, even in suffering, liberty is a consolation."
Hélène's arguments with herself over staying or leaving fuel a longtime obsession of mine with this question. She resists abandoning her official life (French intellectual, student at the Sorbonne, accomplished musician) for an unofficial one. She resists accepting the identity being imposed on her by History, that of the victim and of the one apart, an identity assigned by way of an attribute (the word "Jew"). To acknowledge the label Jew, to wear the yellow star, to obey the Nazis' increasingly insane and unjust laws becomes both an act of capitulation and one of solidarity. And, it is from within this fraught and contradictory space that Hélène thinks and acts. The question she wrestles with is whether it is more courageous, more "right," to stay or to leave. In any case, it is clear that she feels she cannot leave as long as her parents and other loved ones stay. For her, compassion, being "with" in suffering, is more important than saving her own life. It remains unclear whether there were realistic opportunities for Hélène and her family to flee--at first, many deportees were apprehended attempting to cross the border into the "free" zone; later, after Germany occupied all of France, escape would have been even more difficult. Hélène doesn't discuss the possibility of hiding in Paris except when toward the end, after repeated warnings of raids, her father decides that they won't spend nights in their own home and instead take refuge in the homes of their housekeeper and other friends. It is after a night when they fail to do so and instead remain at home that they are apprehended, detained and, finally, deported to Auschwitz. After evacuation to Bergen-Belsen in November, 1944 , Hélène, sick with typhus, is murdered by a guard in May, 1945 just 5 days before liberation of the camp.
The utter absurdity of having to make impossible choices brings to mind a nightmare I once had: "I’m waiting in a car for an explosion that is set to go off in a garage in front of the car. This seems to be a group suicide, with a male “leader.” I don’t know how I became involved in this, but my adult son is also in the car, seated in the rear. A toddler with a mop of black hair is cavorting around nearby. We try to shoo him away from the car, but he doesn’t understand and is playful. Suddenly, I jump out of the car, grab the child and run. As I run uphill away from the car, the toddler morphs into a still hairless infant. I reach the limit of my uphill flight and turn to the right, hoping that I’ve gotten far enough away from the car to save the child from the blast. As I contemplate how to get through a neighbor’s hedge, I hear an explosion go off behind me and realize, horrified, that my own son has remained behind me in that car."

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