Seventy-three years after her grandmother entered the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau internment camp, Monique Saigal-Escudero saw what her history class had never covered.
She saw the rickety wooden structures that served as beds for prisoners where women slept side by side, often several on each plank. She walked through bathrooms made up of only a barren steel tub. It was a state Saigal-Escudero described as fit for animals, the lowest form of degradation a human could face.
As I sat across from Saigal-Escudero, an emerita professor of romance languages and literatures at Pomona College, she leaned over her laptop and pointed at a mounting pile of hair. Upon entering the internment camp, each prisoner was stripped and shaved; I was looking at the raw material for what would become German textile products, socks and rugs.
Grasping for the words to describe the experience, Saigal-Escudero paused. Silence hung in the air before she replied, “It was — I don’t know. [It] gave me goosebumps.”
The feelings that surfaced for Saigal-Escudero can be traced back long before her 2015 trip to the internment camp. Born in 1938 in Paris, France, World War I and World War II were enshrined in her childhood. German words glared from street names across then-occupied northern France. The Star of David soon took on an entirely new meaning in itself: All Jewish individuals over the age of six were required to wear it, soon transforming the symbol into the ultimate mark of ostracization.
This history is belied by the lively elder. With a petite frame and rosy cheeks, Saigal-Escudero is a jovial woman who speaks with a slight French accent. Often found at the French language table of Pomona’s Oldenborg Center, she can be seen engaging in lively conversation or, perhaps more often, breaking out in song. Still, her family’s rich history is a mere arm’s reach away for anyone who takes the time to listen.
Saigal-Escudero was only a few years old when her father died fighting in 1940 at the onset of WWII. Not long after, Saigal-Escudero’s mother attempted to enroll her in an organization dedicated to providing host families for children whose fathers had died in the war. She was denied because her family was Jewish.
Saigal-Escudero’s grandmother, Rivka Leiba, refused to accept this. In August of 1942, with threats from police against Jewish citizens, Leiba, fearful for her granddaughter’s life, took three-year-old Saigal-Escudero to the train station and threw her on a train headed for Dax, France.
The young Saigal-Escudero, engulfed in tears and utterly alone, exited the train and entered the small city. While groups of children entered the station to unite with their host families, Saigal-Escudero stood helplessly, 450 miles from home.
Her frazzled red dress and blond hair caught the attention of 20-year-old Jacqueline Baleste. Baleste arrived at the station that day with her father in search of a four-year-old boy who had never come. Unaware of who Saigal-Escudero was, Baleste quickly decided to take her in. Days later, informed of Saigal-Escudero’s Jewish identity, Baleste was far from deterred from adopting her as her own. To her, the young girl was nothing short of a gift from God.
“She saw me crying, so she came to me and she said, ‘An angel sent me to you,’” Saigal-Escudero recalled.
It wasn’t long before Baleste became her godmother.
Hundreds of miles north of Saigal-Escudero’s former home, her grandmother displayed a similar altruism: Nearly a month after she saved her granddaughter’s life, she did the same for her son.
On a September day in 1942, police arrived at Leiba’s apartment building in search of her. The concierge of the building informed police that Leiba was not there but was babysitting at the house of her daughter. Motivated by a reward for helping the police find Jewish individuals, the concierge gave the police the address.
Not long after, a hard knock came on the door. Terrified for her Jewish son’s life, who was at the house, Leiba quickly told him to hide under a bed. She then opened the door, the Star of David shining from her chest, and stood face to face with the police. She was told to pack a bag, that she wouldn’t be gone for long. In an act of defiance, she stood in the doorway and refused to move.
“To go where I’m going, I don’t need anything,” she said.
It was that moment that spared her son’s life. Had she entered the house to grab her belongings with the authorities behind her, her son would have been at the mercy of the police.
On Sept. 30, 1942, roughly a month after she saved her granddaughter and several days after she saved her son, Leiba was gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For Saigal-Escudero, it wouldn’t be until many years later, on her 2015 trip, that she came close to understanding the depth of her grandmother’s courage.
Thousands of miles from the internment camp, the young Saigal-Escudero was entirely unaware of her grandmother’s murder. She relished life in her new home. From the onset of her eight-year stay with the Balestes, she seamlessly integrated into the family, latching onto them with the same affection she once showed her grandmother.
Eyes wide and animated, she recalled, “The first time I opened my mouth [to the Balestes], I said … ‘We have to wait for daddy! Il faut qu’on attende Papa!’ I thought this was my father.”
Catholicism became central to Saigal-Escudero’s upbringing with the Balestes. She attended church each morning and evening with the family and got baptized at a young age. Through religion, her passion for storytelling and song thrived.
Abruptly standing up from her spot next to me, she waddled to a bookcase in the other room, where she pulled out a hand-crafted book of songs and illustrations gathered from the church services she attended as a child. She laid down the booklet and suddenly erupted into a French melody, snapping along with the rhythm of her voice.
“I love to sing,” she said. It was the remnants of a habit that began as a child, when she first parroted her godmother’s sing-songy disposition.
The young Saigal-Escudero was entirely enamored by her godmother. Watching the work Jacqueline Baleste did as a social worker, Saigal-Escudero soon followed. She’d mimic her, inventing lofty reports of imaginary children who didn’t want to go to school and craft elaborate documents on her fake trips to important places.
There came a day later in Saigal-Escudero’s stay with the Balestes when her birth mother came to visit her. Saigal-Escudero’s mother was notified of where her daughter was staying by Leiba, who informed her of the train she put Saigal-Escudero on.
To this day, Saigal-Escudero doesn’t know where her mother was staying before she made her visit, which didn’t last long; after a chance encounter with German soldiers, Saigal-Escudero’s Jewish mother fled in the night.
The next time Saigal-Escudero saw her birth mother was in 1950 when she was picked up from the Baleste house, uprooting the life Saigal-Escudero had come to know so well. On the cusp of her teenage years, she reunited with her sister and moved in with her mother and her American stepfather to the outskirts of Paris.
She spoke of the period with disdain. Her American stepfather brought milk with each meal and ketchup seemed to be everywhere. This resentment, coupled with a fractured relationship with her family, motivated her desire to escape Paris and pulled her to the United States.
After gaining American citizenship during a visit to Los Angeles in 1953, she returned there in 1956 at 17 years old. There, she moved in with her stepfather’s sister and worked as a nanny. It wasn’t long before she enrolled in community college at Los Angeles City College that same year and then transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she obtained her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate in French literature — a decision that once again brought her grandmother to the forefront of her life.
When a teaching position in Pomona College’s language department opened in 1965, Saigal-Escudero filled the spot. She’d remain for 45 years, teaching Spanish and French literature, language and culture. Much of her love for languages, storytelling, and history would eventually come together in her two books: “L’écriture: Lien de mère à fille chez Jeanne Hyvrard, Chantal Chawaf, et Annie Ernaux” and “French Heroine 1940-1945.”
The latter book tells not just of women’s courageous experiences during WWII — a journey that took the French professor around the globe — but is also a homage to her grandmother, whose courage is the ultimate reason for Saigal-Escudero’s ability to tell the story. This reminder lies on the book’s face, the premier image of a French hero: Rivka Leiba standing proudly, hand on her hip with a tight-lipped smile, forever embossed on its cover.
Facebook Comments