One Hundred Twenty-One Days by Michèle Audin, Christiana Hills Page B

he added. “That was the pseudonym he used to publish his last two mathematics articles.”
    He had signed as André, thought Mireille, and she smiled as she remembered how André had laughed in explaining his choice of pseudonym to her. Pariset had then received a postcard from André, written in German and signed with his own name, sent from the camp. Pariset had rushed him a package, for which André had acknowledged receipt with a second postcard. Pariset explained the mechanism of this correspondence: the card wouldarrive in the offices of the Union Générale des Israélites en France (the Union of Jews in France), an office created by Vichy France, he clarified, but Mireille knew what the UGIF was. But she didn’t know about how this correspondence worked, which is what Pariset explained to her. The UGIF would call in the addressee and give him or her the letter, along with an official memo stating the rules that had to be followed when writing a response. Pariset had thus written back (in German). He specified that the first postcard from André had taken more than six months to get to him, that André had said in it that he was doing well, he was keeping his spirits up, and he had asked that the professor pass this news along to his family and friends. Pariset added that the card had most likely been addressed to him because André didn’t want to risk putting anyone in danger, and that he, Pariset, a professor at the Sorbonne and, above all, a non-Jew, was a good recipient. Writing to his family, who were hiding in Clermont-Ferrand, would have been too dangerous. For the same reasons, André hadn’t given the names of the friends he was thinking of.
    “That’s why I wasn’t able to let you know,” Pariset added kindly.
    But Clara could have, thought Mireille. Pariset then said he was already working on getting a scholarship for André so that he could start working on his dissertation again as soon as he returned.
    “Without a doubt,” he concluded, “a tall, handsome, athletic boy like André has made it through. He’s going to come back.”
    The mass of hope took shape once more. He was going to come back. It had already been two years since the roundup in Clermont. Mireille looked at the flags on the map of Europe—Upper Silesiahad been liberated in January. They now knew that the camp, which was called Auschwitz, had been evacuated of almost all its deportees before the Red Army had arrived. So where would he be coming back from? And when? The surrender hadn’t taken place until May 8th, they would have had to find trains for them, of course, and then how many days would it take to come back from so far, because it was far, across a devastated Germany, on railways that had suffered so many bombings? Maybe he got sick, they had treated him, that had caused the delay. He wouldn’t be delayed any longer, others were already coming back. She went to the Hotel Lutetia, where they were taking in the survivors, in the joy of some, but in the anguish and pain of all. She came home terrified. And what about him, what had become of him?
    They were coming back. In July, Pariset wrote Mireille to say that Doctor Sonntag, a friend of the Pariset family who had been at Auschwitz with André, had returned to Strasbourg. He had arrived from Buchenwald in April, but had left almost immediately to go help deportees returning from Bergen-Belsen. Now that he was back, he was gradually starting to see patients again. The mass of hope was unraveling. Mireille called, arranged an appointment, caught a train, walked through Strasbourg while avoiding the Silberberg’s shop, sat patiently in the waiting room, and was finally called in by the doctor, to whom she admitted that she wasn’t sick, but rather that she was a friend of André Silberberg’s and Professor Pariset had told her that, just maybe, the doctor would be able to give her news about André.
    “My friend Pariset called me. He told me about you,”