Dora Broder was a Jewish girl who was murdered in the Holocaust. Thanks to Patrick Modiano's book dedicated to her, she emerged from obscurity and a street in Paris is named after her.
Ingrid Tersen is the daughter of the character Dora Bruder, whose life and death Patrick Modiano invented, inspired by the real model. What is the connection between the two books, one an investigation centered on Dora and the other a novel centered on Ingrid? This article will answer the question and examine Modiano's connection to the occupation period.
Two interrelated titles
The title “Dora Broder” is a biographical and autobiographical story published by Patrick Modiano in 1997. The author devoted time and effort to tracing a Jewish girl, Dora Broder, whose last months in the dark Paris of the occupation period were shrouded in fog.
The book was published in Hebrew, translated by Hagit Bat-Ada, a year after its publication in France and was reprinted the year Modiano won the Nobel Prize.
Why “What happened to Dora Broder”, why not “Dora Broder”, as in the original? I am not the only one who believes that the change is unnecessary. The lengthening of the title detracts from its dramatic sharpness, which is a shame.
Full disclosure: I read the book in French.
For six years, Modiano thought he would never be able to rescue Dora Bruder from the abyss of oblivion. He lacked details. So he turned aside to write a novel whose role was to free him from the void. After finishing the novel, called “Marriage Trip,” he resumed his research on Dora.
The title “Wedding Trip” was published in 1990 and has not been translated into Hebrew, as of today.
Dora Broder – All because of an ad
An ad Modiano saw in 1988 in an old issue of France Soir that caught his attention. In the ad, the parents of a 15-year-old girl, Dora Broder, ask for the public’s help in finding their daughter, who had escaped from the boarding school where she lived. December 31, 1941, is the date of the issue that published the ad. Dora’s parents lost track of her on the last day of that dark year.
The neighborhood in the 18th arrondissement where the Broder family lived also attracted Modiano's attention. Boulevard Ornano, the cinema there, the Samplon metro station, Modiano knew Dora's surroundings well.
As a child, his mother took him to the Saint-Ouen flea market on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, so Boulevard Ornano was familiar to him for a long time. Patrick used to go to the cinema at number 43 of the boulevard. Dora lived most of her short life with her parents in a poor hotel, a room and a kitchen, at number 41. Did her parents take her to see films at the same cinema? Modiano wonders, it was enough to cross the road to get there.
Jewish deportation memorial book France – Serge Klarsfeld. The cover of the new printing, 2012, of the book
In Serge Klarsfeld's book, which gives the names, dates, and other details of the 182 Jews arrested on French soil and sent to the camps, Modiano found further shocking information: Nine months after her disappearance from the boarding school at the convent, Dora was sent to Auschwitz. Her parents also died in the same circumstances, her father with her and her mother five months later.
Dora's father returned to Paris 100 percent disabled after inhaling poison gas during World War I, when he fought with the Foreign Legion for France. He died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, to which he had been deported by the police of the Vichy government.
Serge Klarsfeld's contribution to the book, A Collaboration That Ends in Conflict
In 1994, Modiano received important help from Serge Klarsfeld, thanks to whom he continued and completed the book. Serge Klarsfeld provided Modiano with details about Dora's stay in a boarding school in a Catholic convent in the 12th arrondissement that no longer exists, and about her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz.
Klarsfeld's contribution to Modiano's research was great. For two years, from 1994 to 1996, Klarsfeld continued to send Modiano documents and photos about Dora and her parents. The author wrote him moving letters of thanks and expressed his appreciation for the book of remembrance in which he commemorates the Holocaust of French Jews.
But for some unknown reason Modiano did not mention Klarsfeld's name anywhere in his book “Dora Bruder.” Serge Klarsfeld was rightly astonished by this lack of awareness and wrote Modiano a letter of astonishment about the irritating omission.
God knows, Klarsfeld wrote, that I spared no effort to find documents about Dora. Did my presence weigh on you so much that you erased her? Did you want to be the sole creator of the plot? Or perhaps you fell in love with Dora or her shadow and wanted to keep her for yourself while sharing the experience with the wider public? (In my free translation from Danny Kusnar's blog ).
Why didn't Modiano thank his benefactor Klarsfeld, at least at the beginning of the book or at the end, if not in the body of the investigation? God has solutions, and I must express my great disappointment in the face of the great writer's kindness.
Following the information Modiano received from Klarsfeld, the former asked the police headquarters and the Catholic order for more information about Dora, which he received. The boarding school and convent in the 12th arrondissement no longer exist, as mentioned, but nuns from the same order in Normandy answered Modiano's questions.
Identifying with Dora and her parents
Modiano found no rest. It seemed to him that Dora had disappeared twice. Once when she ran away from the boarding school (why? Because of the poor conditions and harsh discipline?) and a second time when she was arrested and sent to her death.
And wasn't the Catholic monastery a safe capsule in the heart of the spider's web? If she hadn't escaped from the monastery, maybe Dora would have been saved? Modiano was also a boarding school student in his youth and he also ran away from it. A strong identification with Dora, which did not give the author any rest for six years and caused him to immerse himself in writing the book.
Identification with Dora and also identification with her parents. In many of Patrick Modiano's novels, the narrator, a double of the author, searches for lost characters who are part of him, like an adult searching for the child he himself was. In the novel "Sympathetic Ink," for example, the speaker searches for a disappeared childhood friend who embodies a period, a place, a being, and connects with him like a pair of Siamese twins.
But the similarity between Modiano's fate and the fate of the Jewish girl, her parents, and their colleagues who were murdered in the tragedy of the Holocaust has a clear limit, and the author is acutely aware of it. Young Patrick was born after the war and was not directly exposed to its horrors; the danger of deportation never threatened him as it did his father.
In the case of Patrick Modiano, it is an intergenerational transmission of a mental state in which the offspring feels persecuted like his parents and their contemporaries. Modiano's father, for example, passed on to him the experience of being arrested when he was taken to the police station from where he was to be sent to the death camp. A split minute in which the lights went out in the police station and Albert Modiano found his way out. The father's life influenced the son, even though he was not a good father, to say the least. Albert Modiano abandoned his son and even turned him over to the police after the war, he himself was arrested during it.
And it was not only his father's life in the shadow of the occupation that influenced the son. The lives of all of his father's contemporaries entered Patrick's soul dressed as ghosts that had no grave, in the words of psychogeneticists and the writer himself. Patrick Modiano and the heroes of his novels feel persecuted, watched, at risk, even long after the war is over.
She invested in research on Dora Broder and her family as a psychogenealogical therapy whose function was to free the sufferer from the obsession that had gripped him since he saw the advertisement by Ernst and Cecil Broder asking for the public's help in searching for their daughter Dora. Just as psychogenealogical therapy provides a coherent and rational version of a vague and unclear family story and helps to release the anguish that its ambiguity causes, so too did conducting the research on Dora Broder help Modiano give a voice to speak and a name to remember the ghosts of the victims of the occupation period who visited him and asked him to write down their stories.
Here to speak and there to remember
A saving hand from death can no longer be extended to Dora, Ernest, Cecil, and the other people and children that Modiano talks about in this book. But to rescue them from obscurity, to quote their names, to treat them and their fate with care and compassion, this is the role of the written word.
Modiano quotes, reflects, connects himself with the unfortunates who were born before him, in the wrong years. A hopeful letter written by an art critic before his death, letters written by relatives of detainees in which they beg the blind and mute authorities for information about their loved ones. A baby who was arrested with his mother and they are French, with French citizenship , not foreigners…
Slowly, over the years, with diligence and patience, Patrick Modiano put together a clearer picture of the milestones in Dora Broder's short life:
Dora Broder was born on February 25, 1926, at Rothschild Hospital, in the 12th arrondissement.
L'hôpital Rothschild, 15 rue Santerre, 75012, Paris
The current entrance to the hospital is at number 5 on the street.
Dora lived most of her life with her parents at the Hôtel Dell at 41 Boulevard Ornano, 18 Paris. The hotel has not existed since the 41s.
On May 9, 1940, when Dora turned 14, her parents transferred her to a boarding school run by Catholic nuns for girls from impoverished families, the “Nuns of the Christian Schools of Compassion,” on Rue des Picpus, in the 12th arrondissement.
L'Œuvre du Saint-Cœur de Marie, Sœurs des Écoles chrétiennes de la Miséricorde, 60, 62, 64 rue Picpus, 75012, Paris
The monastery on the corner of rue de Picpus – rue de la Gare de Reilly no longer exists, but many other typical buildings from the period remain standing and you can wander around the area to admire them.
On June 19, 1942, Dora was sent to the Tourelles detention center on Boulevard Mortier in the 20th arrondissement (Centre d'internement des Tourelles, 141 bd Mortier, 75020, Paris).
The original barracks, which became a prison facility during the occupation , is now the seat of France's intelligence agency.
On August 13, 1942, Dora was sent to the Drancy transit camp and from there to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where she was murdered on September 18.
On June 1, 2015, the “Promenade Dora Bruder” was inaugurated in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, at the initiative of Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris , and with the participation of Patrick Modiano.
This book by Modiano, an extraordinary work that brought Dora Bruder out of obscurity, commemorates not only her but also all the children murdered in the Holocaust. A book that charts the short journey of a Jewish girl from Paris to Auschwitz, it has become a symbol of all the victims of the monstrous extermination machine.
Commemorating all the children murdered in the Holocaust through Dora Broder
After Modiano won the Nobel Prize, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, read several of his books. “Dora Bruder” moved her so much that she decided to name a street in the 18th arrondissement after the girl. This is what Danny Cousnar says in his excellent blog that follows Patrick Modiano, the writer and the man.
At the initiative of Anne Hidalgo, then, the “Dora Broder Promenade” was inaugurated on June 2015, 18 in the XNUMXth arrondissement. Thus, Dora was brought out of obscurity not only on the pages of the book in Modiano’s words, but also on the street map of the city where she was born.
If Modiano had not come across an ad placed by Dora's parents, he would not have written the book and a place in the city would not have been named after her. The book gave birth to a street. The name of an unknown Jewish girl was forever immortalized in the geography of Paris.
At the inauguration ceremony of the promenade, in front of Dora Broder's family, representatives of the Jewish community, Parisian elected officials and schoolchildren, Modiano found the right words to commemorate the girl.
Who on September 18, 1942 was deported to her death in Auschwitz.
Dora was a local, her parents married in the 18th arrondissement, Modiano said, she went to the school whose facade we see, then to another school, which is a little further up the hill. She lived with her parents on Rue Lamarque at first and on Boulevard Oranno later, her grandparents lived a few meters from where we are standing now.
The Book of Remembrance for the Deportation of French Children – Serge Klarsfeld The cover of the new printing, 2001, of the book
Dora Broder became a symbol, Modiano continued, and from then on represents the thousands of Jewish children and girls, boys and girls who were sent from France to their deaths, and whose photos Serge Klarsfeld worked tirelessly to collect and publish in his book, so that we could get to know their faces.
In between, Ingrid Tersen
Modiano stopped writing the book “Dora Bruder” to write the novel “Marriage Trip” and after finishing it he returned to the original book. He had to take the long break in writing “Dora Bruder” to fill the void created by the temporary lack of information about Dora. Thus was born a poetic, rich and poignant novel, in the style of most Modiano novels, around an imaginary double of Dora Bruder, inspired by her, whose invented name is Ingrid Tersen.
In the novel, Dora Broder takes on the character of Ingrid Tersen, a girl of her age, who also lived during the occupation with her father in a hotel on Boulevard Oranno, who also escaped, for whom an advertisement was published looking for her as well. However, unlike Dora, Ingrid managed to escape capture completely by chance, without any planning on her part, while still in Paris. In 1942, she fled with her partner to the south of France and stayed in a hotel in the coastal city of Juan-les-Pins with him.
About twenty years later, the novel's narrator, Patrick Modiano's double, Jean, meets her by chance, and she, together with her partner, with whom she stayed in the south of France during the war, takes him to the same area, the Azure Coast, to the city of Saint-Raphaël this time, and hosts him as a son when she extends her protection to him. Ingrid and her partner serve as a kind of substitute for his biological parents who did not fulfill their role.
About ten years later, Jean meets her again, this time in a hotel in Milan, after he learns that a woman who committed suicide a few days before he arrived in the city in the middle of August is the same Ingrid who had been so kind to him in the past. The reason for her suicide is revealed at the end of the novel and sends shivers down his spine. The attentive reader understands that Jean-Patrick identifies not only with Ingrid's partner, whose mother did not care for him as a mother, but also with Ingrid herself, who suffered from the torments of the survivors' conscience.
Ingrid was born in the author's imagination, inspired by Dora Bruder, and lines of resemblance do indeed connect her, as mentioned, to the real model. But there are also lines of separation. Ingrid was the daughter of a doctor, not a poor laborer, and it is not about her mother at all. Ingrid survived the Holocaust physically but not mentally, and paid a heavy price for it.
Modiano did not find out and therefore does not know what Dora Bruder did during her escapes (she escaped twice), this is her secret, the author says at the end of the investigation. But in the novel about Ingrid Modiano meticulously tells the story of the heroine's escape, of her meeting in a cafe with the man who became her partner and with whom she fled to the south of France. This is the difference between an investigation in which the writer is subject to facts and a novel in which he has the freedom to be alone and to combine imagination with reality in combinations that are unique to him.
Personal impression
The investigation into Dora Broder, an extraordinary book in Modiano's work, is very important from a human and historical perspective, as the article has shown. In addition to being a poignant and moving document on the Holocaust, in addition to its contribution to its commemoration, the book allows Modiano's admirers to deepen their acquaintance with the man and the sources of his inspiration, providing keys to entering his world and deciphering his work. It is a book in which Modiano reveals himself more than in his typical novels.
A book that is strong from a human and historical perspective, as mentioned, but less so, in my opinion, from a literary perspective. Modiano's writing reaches its peak when he is not bound by facts from reality, when he combines dreams, hallucinations, imagination, fiction and reality, linked together by the hypnotic magic of his literary talent.
Modiano's characteristic novels, to which "The Wedding Trip" belongs, fascinate me with their ambiguity, their enigma, the way in which the author leaves the reader with the possibilities of interpretation. Modiano speaks in hints, leaves landmarks, dreams up the plots, as he says, and thus his uniqueness.
The book “Dora Broder,” on the other hand, is not a novel. Not a Holocaust novel, nor a novel at all. It is a biographical and autobiographical book, behind the scenes of the novel “Wedding Trip” as well as of the other novels characteristic of the author, and therefore lacks the Modian poetics.
However, his literary weakness pales in comparison to his prosaic ability to give expression to the barbarity of history, and thus his strength and power. There is no doubt that without this document Modiano's work would not be complete.
Note
I wrote two reviews of Patrick Modiano's two books, "Dora Broder" and "A Wedding Trip," edited differently. One for this site, with an emphasis on Francophile aspects, and the other for Meirav Golan's culture blog, which has a number of additional details. The two reviews are similar but complement each other, and those interested in expanding on them are invited to Meirav Golan's blog.
For another article by Dr. Orna Lieberman about the writer, you are invited to read A Visit to Patrick Modiano's Study and His/Our Trip to Paris Through the Novel "Sympathetic Ink . "
More on the subject
Ilana Harel
What an operation.
Exciting, fascinating and challenging. Very in-depth and comprehensive.
How much did you invest?
inhale
By the way, I save all of your (funny word) posts.
My response to Ilana Harel
You touched me. I did invest a lot in my reviews of both books and I'm glad you felt it and responded. A response like yours is quite rare and shows generosity of heart.
While browsing the bookshelves, I came across Patrick Modiano’s book, “What Happened to Dora Brodeur?” Inspired by an old advertisement he found in a newspaper, the author recreated the fate of the 15-year-old Jewish girl who disappeared along with thousands of others from occupied Paris and died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. I read Dr. Orna Lieberman’s article with great pleasure. Thank you very much!! I really enjoyed reading the comments. They greatly enriched the experience of reading the book.
Thank you very much. It is indeed very enriching when you know the background, the behind the scenes.
Peace
Praise and thanks for the persistent initiative and constant enrichment of Francophiles.
It's fun to read you.
This time, special thanks for Orna Lieberman's articles on Patrick Modiano and Dora Bruder.
Breathe!
Miri Paz
Sophie Rakhlenko
Thank you very much, Orna, for the article, which is actually a fascinating investigation not only into the tragic story of Dora Broder, but also into the way in which Patrick Modiano was exposed to it, what his sources were, and even behind the scenes of the collection of the material with the assistance of Serge Klarsfeld, who did not receive thanks... which indicates that even in a great writer, some weaknesses are sometimes discovered.
With deep appreciation for your instructive, honest, and beautiful writing, Sophie.