Brownian Motion for People, Or The Uncertainty of Life

by Michel Jeruchim

I don’t know exactly when I came to the conclusion that life is a gamble. For most people the odds that we will live long and prosper, as the saying goes, are reasonably good, but it’s not a sure bet. You have probably heard, or read, about a person who overslept thereby missing a flight he or she was scheduled to take, which crashed and killed all on board. What were the odds for that single individual or for those who died?

When I was five years old, the odds that I would see my sixth birthday were close to nil, until an unlikely event changed them, seventy-eight years ago. What happened? 

I have two stories to tell, or, if you like, two parts of the same story. They don’t overlap in time, but they live together, side-by-side and intertwined in my consciousness and my unconscious. Part 1 is my childhood in France, interrupted and fractured by the Nazi occupation. Part 2 is my immigration to, and life in, America. Part 1 lasted only twelve-and-a-half years but left an indelible impression on my psyche. 

I made my entrance into this world in 1937. I was born in le quatorzième arrondissement in Paris, France, born into a family of four: my parents Sonia and Wolf Samuel, my sister Alice, nine years older and my brother Simon, seven years older. I suspect my arrival was somewhat of a surprise. Initially we lived in an area just east of the Paris boundary called Vincennes, and when I was about one, we moved just north to a neighborhood called Montreuil. Both are served by the Paris métro. My parents were born in Poland and had migrated to France in the early 1920s. I say “migrated,” not “immigrated” because I’m not sure if they initially intended to become citizens of France. Most countries in Europe harbored a healthy dose of Xenophobia, so I don’t know how easy that would have been. French citizenship laws varied over time, reflecting the political moods. But in the period of my siblings’ birth, foreign-born parents could petition citizenship for their children, and my siblings became French citizens.

My father was a watchmaker who had been trained in Warsaw. That is, he ordered parts from wherever they were made: movements, cases, straps, etc. It’s a skilled profession. Watches were then considered an exclusive object, and a hedge against inflation, like jewelry. He was “brought” into Paris by another Polish watchmaker who had established a workshop there. I suppose that guarantee of employment allowed him to live in France. Something about my father’s story is reminiscent about the situation nowadays, of immigrants or migrants who are skilled in some way and want a better place to live, and who are needed in their new culture, but resented nevertheless.

It might seem overly facetious to say that almost everybody has heard of World War II, but I’m only partially tongue-in-cheek. Recent polls indicate how much of the population is unaware, or only vaguely so of the scope of the war and the Nazi genocide. 

When the German army invaded France from the north, having violated Belgian neutrality, a massive civilian exodus ensued. People from Belgium and northern France were eventually joined by two million Parisians and formed a column of refugees trying to stay ahead of the German army. Paris was almost emptied in fear of German bombardment. The number of refugees swelled to eight million (or so). To make matters worse, German planes aided by Mussolini’s air force strafed the terrified and weary wanderers. 

My family and I were part of this exodus, but to avoid being killed together, we went in two groups: my father and siblings in one, and my mother and me in another. My brother recalls diving into a ditch on the side of the road as one of those planes appeared overhead and started firing. Was there a strategic reason for killing innocent people? I can’t think of one, except to establish violence and instill terror in order to prevent resistance.

Try to imagine the colossal upheaval of such a massive number of people trudging down country roads. Where would they eat? Where would they sleep? Did they have enough money to buy milk or bread from famers?

Fortunately for the refuges, but not for France, this state of affairs lasted “only” six weeks because, in that stunningly short period of time, the German army defeated the French forces. The stream of refugees could now reverse course and go back home. But for Jews, “home” would never be the same. I was three years old. Does such an experience, surrounded by chaos, tension, palpable fear, embed itself in a young child’s unconscious? Or is it quickly forgotten?  Whatever impression this might have left was soon supplanted by something much deadlier.

Once France capitulated, the Nazis partitioned the country into an occupied zone and an unoccupied zone in the South administered by the collaborationist Vichy Government. Almost immediately, the Nazis set out to implement their obsession – the annihilation of the Jewish people in Europe, already begun in the East.

In France, round-ups (rafles in French) of Jews began as early as spring 1941, but the largest of these was planned for July 16, 1942, in Paris and surrounding areas, where the majority of Jews lived. My family would have been caught in that dragnet, were it not for my mother.

It happens that she had a dental appointment on the preceding day. The dentist had learned from a French policeman, perhaps one uncomfortable with what was about to happen, about the raid, and the dentist informed my mother. 

Would everyone have accepted that information as true? My mother did, and we spent that night at the home of our cleaning lady. What would have happened to us otherwise? Here is the answer, from The Holocaust, the French and the Jews, by Susan Zuccotti:

This book is dedicated to the more than 3500 Jewish children under the age of fourteen who were arrested in Paris on July 16, 1942, and forcibly separated from their mothers at the French camp of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande two weeks later. Their mothers were deported. The children had to fend for themselves until they too were deported, bewildered, terrified, and alone, in sealed cattle cars without light or air, to be murdered upon arrival at Auschwitz.

We were now essentially homeless, but through various contacts my mother had made, we hid in the back rooms or store-rooms of local merchants until one of them connected us to a Protestant family, who it seems, were part of a rescue network (réseau de sauvetage). Shortly, thereafter, my siblings and I found ourselves with different families in Normandy – me, with Marcel and Suzanne Leclère and their son Gaston, in the town of  St. Aubin-lès-Elbeuf, about 75 miles northwest of Paris.

I was five years old when I saw my parents for the last time, separated from my older siblings, dislocated from everything that was familiar to me, and thrust into the hands of strangers. After my siblings and I had been secreted to Normandy, my parents attempted to escape to the unoccupied zone, but they were arrested and shipped to Drancy, an internment camp near Paris, from which they were transported in cattle cars to Auschwitz. There, my mother and father were murdered upon arrival: September 11, 1942. 

When we speak or write about people whose lives ended in an extermination camp, words like “died” or “perished” or “did not survive” are often used. These are euphemisms. They are technically correct, but even “murder” is not a strong enough word. Everyone dies, but how they die is important. There are no words for being gassed, asphyxiated, and incinerated because of one’s religion, except perhaps martyred. Because of bureaucratic bungling by the arresting officers, we did not learn our parents’ fate until more than fifty years later.  

My life with the Leclères was uneventful. Like most French boys, I went to school, church and catechism on Sundays. I played soccer. I was hardly aware of the German presence, although there was one nearby. What does a six, seven, or eight-year-old understand? Somehow, I understood that I was a hidden child, and I internalized a sense of danger which followed me into my adult years. 

Time passed in St. Aubin, as elsewhere, but more slowly. However, the destruction of the Nazis was at hand. D-day, June 6, 1944 arrived. My town was liberated by the Canadian army on August 27, 1944 and Germany finally surrendered unconditionally on May 7, 1945. At the end of the war, when my parents hadn’t surfaced, I suppose the Leclères assumed that they had not survived. And, soon after, my siblings and I were claimed by one of our uncles.

I have often wondered what my life would have been like had I stayed with the Leclères. I don’t think I would have had the opportunities that I took advantage of in the USA. But, who knows?

What to make of my story? I think life is much more complicated than the folksy philosopher Forrest Gump telling us that life is like a box of chocolates. I think it’s much more like Brownian motion, a concept in physics and chemistry that describes the motion of particles in a gas, randomly bumping into one another and going off in different directions, only to bump into still other particles, and so on.

We, the people, are the human particles that randomly bump into one another, with consequences good or calamitous, depending on conditions we have no control over. However, “bumping” into the Bonneau family and the Leclère family was obviously all to the good, for which they deserve unending gratitude. But these last “bumpings” were just the end of one particular sequence of human particle bumpings begun much earlier, whose conclusion could not have been foreseen.

Bio Michel Jeruchim

Michel Jeruchim was born in Paris and survived the Nazi occupation of France. He immigrated to the USA when he was twelve-and-a-half and learned English by osmosis on the streets of Brooklyn. After high school and college, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. An expert in telecommunications systems, he was selected by the State Department to participate in the first Space World Radio Administrative Conference (WARC) where he helped develop the first set of technical rules for geostationary satellites. Dr. Jeruchim has authored or co-authored more than forty journal and conference papers on various topics in communications, and is co-author of two books, Communication Satellites in the Geostationary Orbit and Simulation of Communication Systems. 

“Brownian Motion for People” is adapted from Michel’s Memoir: Out of the Shadows – A Memoir; Survival in Nazi-Occupied France and Making a Life in America, published by Tree of Life Books. To order Out of the Shadows, click here.

Michel Jeruchim sharing his story at the Franklin Inn Club, Philadelphia, PA.