The Postcard

“Language is a maze, and the mind can get lost in it.”

Many years after the war, Lélia and her daughter Anne attempt to understand the Alzheimer’s disease-ridden notes Myriam left behind after her death. Later, Myriam will lose her ability to speak French and will only recall Russian—which she spoke only in her youth. Importantly, the novel is centered around inherited legacy, trauma, and pain. Book 3 is entirely about the importance of first names, their meaning, and the way a person can get lost in the words, the meaning, and the language.

“Knowledge is the true essence of nobility.”

Ephraïm Rabinovitch believed that he and his family would find acceptance in Europe, if only they were educated enough, appeared French enough, and didn’t complain but rather always complied. This would prove false, as Nachman warned; however, the family continues to be well educated. Myriam, after the war, goes on to be a teacher while Lélia becomes a professor. Anne and her sister become authors. For the descendants of Ephraïm, knowledge does make them noble, whether they are members of the nobility or not.

“‘Does it make you sad that your son doesn’t believe in God,’ Jacques asked his grandfather. ‘It used to, yes. But now I tell myself, the important thing is that God believes in your father.’”

Ephraïm wanted so desperately to be modern, to fit in among the nobility, that he shunned everything Jewish, which he saw as old-fashioned, including God. Nachman was never judgmental or cruel about his son’s modern ways, education, or fixation on communism and equality. Rather, Nachman lived life his way and allowed his children to make their own lives, content with their differences.

“You see Emma; your husband is like all men! He knows he will die one day, and yet he doesn’t want to believe it.”

Nachman believes that Ephraïm’s fear of death is what drives him to seek acceptance and belonging in Europe. Nachman, a prophetic character in the novel, clearly understands the world around him, and while he advises his children and grandchildren, he understands that he will not always be heeded. Interestingly, Nachman’s early assertion about Ephraïm proves true. Ephraïm and Emma go willingly with the French police when arrested, and believe, until the end, that they will not be harmed. So confident was Ephraïm in his immortality that he never saw himself as at risk of harm during the rounding up of the Jewish people in France.

“And so the weeks passed in that surreal, resolutely carefree atmosphere common to troubled times, the rumors of war impossibly distant, the large numbers of dead merely an abstraction.”

Noémie, who later dies at Auschwitz, writes of the environment in France leading up to the arrest of the Jewish people. They were carefree and naive as death slowly came for them, always believing they were safe. And yet, Noémie’s diaries portray a young girl acutely aware of the war as it creeps closer. She was able to live between the knowledge of the war, and the knowledge that her life in Les Forges was peaceful and distant.

“The uniqueness of this catastrophe lay in the paradox of its insidious slowness and it viciousness. Looking back, everyone wondered why they hadn’t reacted sooner, when there had been so much time to do so.”

As the family is slowly destroyed because they did not heed the pleas for them to leave France, the narrator expresses people’s wonder as to why they didn’t see the danger coming. Myriam takes the most risks as the Germans sweep into France. She goes out drinking, relaxes at cafes, walks around Paris with Vicente, and lives carefree. She does not see the danger coming, despite knowing that it is present. This paradox is troubling for the heirs of survivors, and the family members of those who were killed.

“Indifference is universal. Who are you indifferent towards today, right now? Ask yourself that. Which victims living in tents, or under overpasses, or in camps way outside the cities are your ‘invisible ones?’ The Vichy regime set out to remove the Jews from French society. And they succeed.”

As readers wonder how no French family comes to the aid of the Rabinovitch family, Lélia explains that indifference is universal. Later, she and her daughter would blame the Nazis for the deaths of their family members, not the French police who arrested and deported them, forgiving the indifference of the neighbors who did nothing, the friends who were silent and the government that betrayed and abandoned them. This quote builds empathy for the complexity of the time and asks readers not to judge the whole of French society.

“Phosphate-rich human ashes were used to fertilize reclaimed marshland. Melted-down gold from dental work furnished several kilos of pure bullion every day; a boundary was established near the camp, shipping gold bars to secret SS vaults in Berlin.”

A beautifully written story of a family determined to find belonging takes a hard, harsh turn when Noémie and Jacques arrive at Auschwitz, and the author removes the guard rails. The slow march toward this moment does not prepare readers for its brutality, much like the experiences endured by those arriving at Auschwitz. In the chapters that cover the deaths of the Rabinovitch family, the setting overtakes the plot and characters as the horror of Auschwitz is outlined.

“They handed themselves over to the police. Truly, they handed themselves over willingly.”

Ephraïm and Emma close down their home and organize their belongings, ready for the police who come and usher them to their deaths. Ephraïm did not believe this would happen; he had forgotten the warning of his father at Passover. He believed he would be accepted. He believed in civilization, in humanity, and in the good of man.

“Whether these situations were commonplace, risky, comical, unbelievable, or accepted, luck was on my side.”

Myriam writes of her Survivor’s Guilt, musing as to what made her survive when so many others, including her entire family, did not. She took risks as a resistance fighter in France. She was saved by mere coincidence of her name being removed from Les Forges. She was able to evade police, even as they knocked at her door at the hostel. Luck was on her side, and that, sadly, is the hardest part for survivors to understand.

“I’d reached the age where something, some force, pushes you to look back, because the horizon of your past is now more vast, more mysterious, than the one that lies ahead.”

Anne Berest explains why she became fixated on the mystery of the postcard. Her midlife crisis resulted in the publication of an award-winning novel, a strong and growing relationship with a Jewish man, a better relationship with her mother, and an open dialogue with her daughter. She repairs the situation with her sister Claire. For Anne, turning 40 turns out to be a turning point for the betterment of her life. And yet she realizes that turning 40 and having the time and opportunity to grow and fix relationships was something Noémie and Jacques were never afforded.

“My grandmother, the sole survivor of their family by war’s end, never set foot in a synagogue again. For her, God has died in the death camps.”

This quote offers an incredibly powerful sentiment for anyone who witnessed and suffered from the antisemitism of WWII. Her family was never very religious, and only practiced their Jewish faith at Emma’s moments of insistence. And yet, it was enough to get most of them killed. For God to have forsaken them, Myriam feels, is enough for her to do likewise.

“There are, in the genealogical tree, traumatized, unprocessed places that are internally seeking relief. From these places, arrows are launched towards future generations. Anything that has not been resolved must be repeated and will affect someone else, a target located one or more generations in the future.”

Anne quotes Alejandro Jodorowsky in her own words as she grapples with the trauma of her family’s past and her budding relationship with Judaism. She believes she is Myriam and her sister Claire is Noémie. They repair their relationship, in part, because Myriam and Noémie didn’t have the chance to do so. They struggle with the burden of being heirs to a survivor and ancestors to a murdered people. These arrows of trauma reappear.

“And then I thought of all the books that had died along with their future authors in the gas chambers.”

Anne, an author and researcher, has penned three well-received books. Despite this, she wonders if she became a writer in part to give voice to the people whose voices were stolen. Noémie was also a writer before she was murdered at Auschwitz, her novels and diaries left unfinished, never published, never revealed. Anne grapples with not knowing what the silenced voices could have said.

“That subconscious drive to write as many books as possible, to fill those places left empty on the library shelves, not just by the books burned during the war, but by the ones whose authors had died before they could write them.”

Anne wonders if the reason she writes The Postcard is to give voice to her murdered relatives. Beyond that, she recognizes the wealth of novels, research, histories and memoirs surrounding the Holocaust, especially one generation removed from those who survived, and speculates that the number of books may be a response to replacing lost voices, to keeping their contributions on the shelf.

“All roads les led us back to the war. It’s deflagrations still resonated within us.”

No matter what Anne tries to do, everything she thinks about in regard to the Rabinovitch family returns to WWII. She cannot separate the family from their demise. Moreover, she believes she bears scars from inherited trauma. It is a burden she was born with, and must live with, even if she (like her relatives) is not a practicing Jew.

“I realized that, when we were born, our parents gave us both Hebrew first names as middle names. Hidden first names. I’m Myriam, and you’re Noémie. We’re the Berest sisters, but on the inside, we’re also the Rabinovitch sisters.”

At the core of the novel lies the struggle Anne faces in reconciling her past with her present. While she is not a practicing Jew, she is Jewish. And while she knows nothing of the traditions, holidays and rituals, she feels them in her cells. Her middle name Myriam has blessed and cursed her, and she feels Myriam’s life within her own, mirrors reflecting infinite lives, all the same.

“One night you called to me from the other side of the bedroom. I came over to you in your little bed, and you said, ‘I’m the reincarnation of Noémie.’”

Inherited trauma, the reliving of lives in subsequent generations and the burden of being the heir of a survivor all appear in a six-year-old girl’s nightmares in Book 3 of The Postcard. Anne asks her adult sister Claire what she thinks about inheriting the middle name Noémie, and Claire reminds her that she called out that she was Noémie. She was not named after her but living her life again. The burden and weight of that realization for a child was overwhelming and defining.

”Your child was put in an oven, madame. Your father was stripped naked and put on a leash, like a dog. For entertainment. He died from the cold, insane.”

Myriam is searching for her missing relatives among the returnees in Paris, who know the horrors of the concentration camps, and yet say nothing. They know the truth is too horrible to utter and they pity the innocence of those left behind in Paris. This section of the novel’s recollections of treatment within Auschwitz is painful, brutal, and sickening, and yet it is based entirely on facts researched extensively by Anne Berest.

“Who would take the risk of talking and not being believed? And who could bear to say things like this to the waiting families? The survivors know these naive people are to be pitied.”

The returnees do not tell the people of France awaiting news of their loved ones the truth of what happened in Germany. For many years, there was only silence. So many histories went to the grave with survivors because the truth was too unbelievable to speak. They wanted nothing to do with the horror of their experiences and did not speak with their children about the war. It is only the generation removed, the grandchildren of survivors, who are beginning to research their family histories.

“A true friend isn’t the one who dries your tears. It’s the one who never causes them to be shed.”

As Anne gets closer to uncovering what Myriam did after the conclusion of the war, she asks her mother if she wants to know what she uncovers. Lélia utters these lines and says Anne will know when the time comes if she should share what she uncovers. Again, this harkens back to the concept that the generation of survivors and their direct offspring are unable to process the trauma or deal with the weight of it directly.

“What does it mean to wonder what it means to be Jewish?”

Anne feels guilty that she does not understand Judaism better, and she is accused of being Jewish only when it suits her. And yet she knows what it means to be Jewish—the part of that inherited trauma that lingers in the very cells that are passed down from generation to generation. Although she does not directly respond to the woman who accuses her of being Jewish only when it suits her, she does think about the accusation honestly and concludes that in fact, she does.

“I carry within me, inscribed in the very cells of my body, the memory of an experience of danger so violent that sometimes I think I really lived it myself, or that I’ll be forced to relive it one day.”

At the core of Anne’s novel is the concept of Inherited Trauma, a central theme of the work and a strongly held belief of the author. She may not understand the Jewish rituals or festivals, but she understands what it means to be hunted, to be killed and to be thought of as nothing. She understands because she was born with that knowledge in her cells, which is a strong and powerful realization in the novel.