Recollection: A Birthday Party

While looking at old pictures for some past posts, I found a couple that reminded me of a birthday party from long ago, when I was 11 years old.  My parents and I had been living in an apartment near the Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre but I had problems with my lungs.  I went regularly to the doctor for ultraviolet treatments (was never told why) but kept on coughing and our doctor advised that we move away from Paris - somewhere with fresh air.  My parents found a house in a suburb not far away near a large forest, but I was sad to leave Paris and my friends.  I knew I would also miss playing in the gardens of the Sacre-Coeur as shown in the postcard below.

My parents kept the apartment in Paris for years but our main home was now in Saint Leu la Foret, in the Val d'Oise.  It was close to the large Montmorency Forest with its 2200 hectares or 5,382 acres of land.  I could walk up to the forest and did, with my dog, every week or more.  Below is a map showing where St Leu is located - it is about 15 miles from the center of Paris, or 24 kms.  The letter A below is at Kilometer Zero, which is located near Notre Dame de Paris, and B, near the forest between St Leu and the next town called Taverny.

I have a few vintage postcards of St Leu la Foret and not many photos.  It is an old town, like most towns in France.  It was called St Leu-Taverny until 1915 then it became St Leu la Foret.  It was close to Paris but when we took the train from St Leu to Paris it took about 45 minutes or more, in a steam train.  The station had an Alsatian look and it still retains the same architecture now.  Below are postcards of the station - the left and top right pictures are modern, the middle one is from 1910 or earlier and the bottom one is from around 1914 or later, I think.  (Click on collage twice to embiggen.)

I did go back to St Leu la Foret about ten years ago but I did not have a digital camera and took film pictures.  I took my husband to the forest which had changed somewhat.  Now it has better paths and there are more houses closer to it.  When I lived there I would just go up the street and soon there were paths into the forest.  I would walk high up in the forest and there was a point where I could see all the way to Paris.  The forest was beautiful in all seasons - with wild hyacinths in spring, lovely green foliage in summer, mushrooms in the fall and chestnuts in winter.

My house was at about 9 o'clock in the aerial view of the forest above and about 20 minutes from the forest itself.  I also would ride my bicycle to the small lake.  Last time with my husband we walked to the "Pont du Diable" (Devil's Bridge) which looked innocent but was a bit scary when I was 10 to 13 years old and walked there alone with my dog.  Here are are some vintage postcards of the forest.

When we moved to St Leu la Foret I was about 10 years old and had to be admitted in primary school during the school year.  I knew no one and felt quite alone.  The school was not far from our house - there were no school buses and no subdivisions, everyone had to walk to school even if they lived a distance away.  Below is a postcard of the post office on the left then the elementary schools, the boy school and the girl school.  The bottom photo shows the girl school as it looks now.

After a while I did make a friend.  Rachel was an orphan who lived in an orphanage in Taverny.  In the school picture of that year, 1950, I am the 5th from the right on the top row (the tallest ones were placed on top) and Rachel is the 4th one from the right in the middle row.

I did not realize at the time why Rachel was there.  I knew she lived in the Chateau de la Tuyolle in nearby Taverny, that she was Jewish and that her parents had been killed during the war in a camp.  Below are vintage postcards of Taverny from the forest and the castle Chateau de la Tuyolle.

So I knew that Rachel's parents had died in the war in some camp but was not sure where or why.  At 10 years old I was not that current with world affairs.  I found the history of the castle on the French web.  The castle named Chateau de la Tuyolle was built by a rich family in 1853, the Guntzberger.  In 1869 it was purchased by Lady Ashburton, Duchess of Grafton, then after the First World War it was used by French Forces.  Later, with the help of two American women - Mrs Royall-Tyler and Wharton, it was made into a sanatorium treating women with tuberculosis and lung ailments.  In 1920 it was purchased by the state and kept as a hospital/sanatorium and called The Hospital of the Park (L'Hopital du Parc.)  From 1940 to 1944 it was one of the headquarters of the German Army and was used by them to train the "Milice" from the French Government in Vichy.  The Milice were additional corps to the German Gestapo.  They looked for agents of the Resistance to fight them.  After the Liberation in 1945 the castle became one of the four children centers of the OSE association (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants.)  This can be translated as "Organization to Save the Children," a French Jewish humanitarian organization saving and helping Jewish refugee children.  You can read about it here in Wikipedia.  Picture below of children coming back from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp is from Wikipedia.

The Chateau de la Tuyolle was an orphanage for children and teen refugees from the Buchenwald Nazi Concentration Camp in Germany.  One of the teens who stayed there was a Romanian/Hungarian Jewish boy who later immigrated to America named Eliezer Wiesel (born in 1928.)  At the age of 15 he had been moved from Auschwitz to Buchenwald and at 17 was admitted to the chateau.  In the US he became a professor at Boston University and wrote 57 books, fiction and non-fiction.  In 1986 Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for speaking out against racism, repression and violence.  But he withdrew from the chair of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide when the conference refused to include the Armenian Genocide.  In 2008 he re-visited the Chateau de la Tuyolle and the castle was renamed "Maison d'Enfants Elie Wiesel" (Children House Elie Wiesel) in his honor.  (Photo of Elie Wiesel in Taverny in 2008 below courtesy Primo-info.)

When I was 10 years old I did not know all this history or where Rachel came from.  She was shy, friendly and nice.  I think the reason we became friends was because the other girls did not like us - her because she was a Jewish orphan and me because I had this weird and impossible to pronounce foreign last name.  But by the end of my first year there I had made several other friends.  So now I have to come to my 11th years old birthday party on Monday, March 26, 1951.  My mother told me I could chose a birthday cake from our local Patisserie - bakery. At the time I was very fond of a chocolate cake called "Patate au Chocolat" or chocolate potato cake.  On the outside it looked like a potato covered with cacao powder but inside was a creamy chocolate filling made of madeleines (not potato,) almond, butter cream and flavored with rum.  My mother ordered a cake for 8 servings.  Here is a small patate chocolate cake below, courtesy Marmiton.

I could not invite Rachel to my party because she had to get back to the Taverny castle with a group of other orphans right after school.  I had asked 5 girls to come after school and my mother had given me written invitations for their mothers earlier that week.  They all told me they would come.  My mother had sewed for me a special white dress in organza for the occasion so I quickly left school that day to go and get dressed before my guests arrived.  They never did.  By 8:00 pm my parents told me the girls would not come and we better eat dinner then we could eat the cake.  I was so dejected - why didn't they come?  Why didn't they call?  Mother, to make me feel better, told me that I looked so nice in my dress that she would take me to the photograph shop the next Saturday and have my portrait taken with my dog, a boxer named Woo-hoo.  He was a pedigreed dog and was born the year of the letter W.  I did find this old portrait last week in a box.  My mother always placed ribbon in my hair - I wish she had not...

When I went back to school I asked my friends why they had not shown up at my birthday party.  They all told me they wanted to come but their mothers refused because ... "we don't know these people, they must be foreigners, and who knows what they are going to feed you - you can only attend parties given by French families."  I told them I was French like them and that my father, even though he was an Armenian, had fought in the war and become a French citizen.  That did not help.  So, this is a bittersweet memory - a pretty dress and a birthday no-party.  That's when I understood that most people don't care for foreigners (they don't in the US usually, too - I know.)  I don't remember my 10th or 12th birthday but I remember this one.  I guess out of a lack of understanding of diversity comes fear of the unknown, of people unlike ourselves.  This happens in all countries and it is sad that children have to suffer adults' prejudices and bigotry.  I did not invite girls to my home after that.  In a way it gave me strength - the strength to be by myself and not count on others - that maybe the reason why I could leave France at 21 and travel to the USA, alone.

"There are victories of the soul and spirit.  Sometimes even if you lose, you win."

- Elie Wiesel (American activist and writer born in 1928.)

 

(Joyeux Anniversaire means Happy Birthday in French.)