For the Hillsdale students who visited the Holy Land over Christmas break, the experiences were largely separated into two categories: those which touched the treasury of Israel’s past, and those which wrestled with the realities of Israel’s present.
But past and present converged on Jan. 11 with a trip to Yad Vashem, Israel’s central Holocaust memorial, which ended with the group hearing the personal story, both poignant and paradigm-altering, of a Holocaust survivor.
Berthe Badehi, 83, was a young Jewish child living in France in 1941, when Nazi Germany began its attempt to scour the world of her people. Her parents, who were politically conscious enough to have an inkling of what was coming, went into hiding, placing Badehi in the trust of a local farmer, Marie Massonnat. From that time, she lived a double life.
“At that moment, I took my life into my own hands,” Badehi said. “At 9 years old, I was not a child anymore. I had to play another person.
Badehi’s new identity as a young Christian girl dominated her existence. Whether at school or at church, she guarded her words carefully, keeping her head down to avoid revealing that she knew little of the religion and culture she was surrounded by. Even at home she kept up her guard, because Massonnat, wanting Badehi to stay consistent in her narrative, never told her that she was in on the scheme.
“What I didn’t know is that Madam Massonnat knew I was a Jew, because she has been contacted through the Jewish organization,” Badehi said. “But she never told her children, and whenever I was studying my stories, she never once told me ‘You know, I know that you are a Jew.’ She was a very simple farmer, but she had a heart of gold.”
Once, when Badehi’s mother was visiting in 1944, a Nazi officer came to the Massonnat farmhouse to inquire about deserters from the army. If he had entered the house, both Badehi and her mother would have been identified and taken. Massonnat met the officer at his car and managed to turn him away.
Badehi’s life story did not match the narratives of gut-wrenching horror, of concentration camps and gas chambers, that Americans generally associate with the Holocaust. But it illuminated a reality quieter and more easily forgotten: the creeping dread and confusion of a child forced into hiding, and the unassuming heroism of a woman who risked her own life to protect another’s.
“It was a simple story, and it wasn’t a horror story,” junior Sarah Reinsel said. “A very impressionable child who doesn’t really understand why she’s doing what she’s doing, but knows that she needs to keep this secret. I think that’s just a psychological story that you don’t hear that often.”
For the Hillsdale audience, Badehi’s story gave a face to the Holocaust unlike anything they had previously seen.
“It gave us a different perspective of showing how horrific the Holocaust was, how it tore families apart,” senior Tim Troutner said, “showing the way that good people in various countries helped the Jews, but also how strange an experience it was for her to have to deny her ethnic and religious identity. So it was just a refreshing perspective.”