There is an Ana Frank in each country beaten and occupied by the Third Reich. France has just come to light, and thanks to a new Gallic feature film with historical dyes and based on real events: ‘Life before us’. … Tauba Zylbersztejn, which gives life in this newly released movie Violette Guillonit passed more than two years hidden from the Nazis and the collaborative government of the France of Vichy With his family. Days and days in which the dread to be discovered and the shortage of food and coat garments marked that kind of inner exile.
‘Life before us’ is parapeta under the umbrella of Nazi terror. Suffocated by deportations of the winter velodrome and mitigated by the dread, the parents of the little Tauba – represented by the actors Guillaume Gallienne and Adeline d’Hermyû– They decide to hide in a attic in Paris. Just a few square meters of those who only leave to make fleeting visits to a toilet located at the end of the hall. The bulk of the film develops in this tiny space; From its entrails, dark and unhealthy, the director seeks to participate in the viewer of the claustrophobic environment that accompanies family members. And he succeeds, although without reaching the mastery and touched the monotony in a timely manner. You can’t have everything.
From the historical point of view, ‘Life before us’ looks impoluta. It’s not for less, then Guy Birenbaumson of Tauba and Robert, her husband, has collaborated in the script as indispensable support. In turn, it has era images of the German occupation of France that the director intersperses with the footage. A resource that, although it has been used by as many recent films such as ‘Propaganda Minister’, by Joachim Lang, does not stop calling attention. The last leg are two personal interviews with the couple; one to open, and another to close the feature film.
Raid
The feature film starts with what was a point and apart in the gala history: the winter velodrome raid. It was the summer of 1942 in a France taken by the Nazis and drank from the anti -Semitism of its allies. A sigh had not passed since the third Reich approved the Final solution – the systematized murder of human beings – at the Wansese Conference and since Vichy’s collaborative government promoted a long list of anti -Semitic laws equally restrictive as Germans. Bad wicker for a basket. In those, any Pellepoix, General Commissioner of Jewish Affairs of the country, mobilized 9,000 gendarmes with orders to capture and deport the semi -population of the area.
For two days, on July 16 and 17, this colossal army of agents arrested 12,000 people. Germany had requested adult deportation; The collaborative France overreach and also added children between two and twelve. The coldness with which the operation was carried out was evident in the message that, during the first day, sent the prefecture of the area to the police: «The operation against the Jews began at 4 o’clock this morning. […] Many men left the home yesterday. Women stayed with one or more young children. Others refuse to open. It is necessary to call the locksmith ». There was no mercy for anyone.
After the arrest, Vichy divided the prisoners into two groups. The single and without family were transferred to internment fields such as Drancy. The rest, women and children, found their bones in the winter velodrome in Paris, a very popular building at the time. There, life was a nightmare: hunger, unhealthy conditions … on 18, the inmates began to be transferred to Germany or to other intermediate fields; Many ended in Auschwitz. In practice, it was deported to a quarter of the total of Jews who would leave France. The numbers were shocking: 12,884 Jews based in the country were arrested. Of these, 4,051 were children, 5,802 were women and 3,031 were men.
Two hidden years
The real story of this little girl has sailed so far in the sea of ignorance. One of the few essays that talks about her is’16 ANS, Résistant‘, in which his future husband, Robert Birenbaumhe sketched the details of his captivity:
«While I walked Paris fighting the enemy, Tauba Zylbersztejn, Thérèse by his French name, Polish Jewish, remained locked up with his parents, Moshe and Rywkain a warehouse of six square meters. They lived there hidden from July 18 or 19, 1942 to the defeat of the Germans in the summer of 1944, in the heart of Paris, at number 209 of the wheel Saint-Maur ».
The family suffered all kinds of deprivations during those two years: hunger, cold … This time is where the feature film focuses. Although it also analyzes the figure of their guardian angels: the marriage that protected them and gave them that tiny space. Two also historical characters. «They were a modest French couple and with nothing remarkable. Rose and Désiré Dinanceauwho protected, putting his life at risk, this Jewish teenager and his family for more than two years, ”explains Birenbaum.
They demonstrated arrests since, according to the same author, “they did it despite the fact that their eldest son was a member of the Legion of French volunteers against Volchevism,” a unit that had decided to fight on the side of the third Reich.
‘Life before us’ puts the end there, but I could have followed. “After this incredible confinement, Thérèse returned to the streets of Paris with her friend Suzanne, a teenager, like her, who had managed to go see her discreetly in view when,” says Birenbaum. That friend enlisted Tauba in an organization with headquarters “in a Jewish social assistance center on Elzévir Street”; a place where Jewish prisoners were provided. That was where Birenbaum saw her for the first time: «He proudly wore a uniform of the French army recovered from the reuilly barracks. It was the woman with whom I built my life for 65 years. The calendar marked on August 25, 1944, Day of Liberation of Paris.
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