EPILOGUE: FIFTY YEARS LATER...

My name is Marcel Braitstein, or Motl Brajtsztajn, or Marc Breedsteen, or Branstein, Brightstone, Bratsien, or any variation thereof. I will leave myself the option to deny or to acknowledge the veracity of any of those, depending on the situation. You never know! Better to play it safe and have the possibility of choice. Given the right circumstance, I might even revert to Marquet, maiden name of my Godmother, which was the name I bore during the war, when I was hidden in Belgium by Šmile Lebeau, his wife Henriette, and their daughter Lucienne. What's in a name after all? It is just an outer garment, a means of distinguishing yourself in a group of people.

But who am I really? As a child, I knew that I was Jewish, but it did not signify anything special until the day that I had to start wearing the yellow star. That badge transformed me into an easily identified target for the world's contempt and hatred. I became overnight a pariah of humankind, banished to an interior exile and condemned to death.

When I was lucky enough to be welcomed into a "normal" family, meaning a Christian one, I embraced that faith with the same desperation that a drowning man might show at the sudden appearance of a life jacket on a stormy sea. I had found what I was looking for most at that time: a feeling of safety. Given the right circumstances, a seven year old boy grows up fast and learns quickly to to do whatever is needed to survive.

When we were liberated, I was so convinced that I was Christian that I wanted to become a missionary. It was a shock to find myself suddenly deprived of my camouflage. When I went back to live with my grandparents, I felt once more vulnerable because they were openly and visibly Jewish. I was aware that I was in danger of death or persecution, because the war was not over and could have turned out badly for the Allies. Deep inside me, I knew my true identity, but because of my terror at the possible consequences, I did what I could to deny it, even when the war finished and the danger for my safety had passed.

When I turned thirteen, even though I had finally admitted to myself that I was not Christian, I refused, in spite of my grandfather's insistence, to have my Bar-Mitzvah and thereby to affirm my Jewish identity.

Today, I see myself first as a human being, equal to all others. Even though I do not practice the religion, I know that I was born a Jew and that I will die as one. Even if I wanted to forget that fact, which I don't, there are still enough anti-Semites in this world to make sure that I could never do so; and it is simply realistic to be aware that the evil of bigotry can raise its ugly head anywhere, and when least expected. One should therefore be prepared to fight it, either opposing it in every possible way, or by evasive action. Do whatever seems most likely to succeed under a particular circumstance. And if need be, drop everything at a moment's notice and just go, disguise, escape....

I can smile at my own fears and think of them as being totally irrational, in Canada, half a century after the end of World War II. On the whole, I feel secure in my everyday existence but I have to admit that deep down there still lurks a certain doubt as to my safety, a lingering feeling that one can never be quite sure of what turn History may suddenly take.

Some would say that I am paranoid, but it is hard at times to feel safe when one looks at the general state of our planet.

The yellowing newspapers that I saved so carefully in 1945 are now slowly crumbling away, like the the false promises that they held. "Peace forever in a better world" had been a beautiful thought, and one that I wanted desperately to believe, but since the day that I reverently stored away those written words, until this very moment, there have always been wars going on somewhere on this planet of ours -- colonial wars, wars of national liberation, cold and hot ideological wars, civil wars, tribal wars....

As I am writing this, thousands upon thousands of people in Africa, in Asia, as well as in Europe, are being slaughtered for the sole reason of being of the "wrong" tribe, or of the "wrong" religion or ethnic group. The images of these events that are shown every day on television stoke memories that I had tried to bury deeply and bring them once more to the surface.

In addition, I read daily about some occurrence or other that drags me back unwillingly to an earlier time: Jewish cemeteries being desecrated or schools daubed with swastikas, neo-Nazis in Germany killing "foreigners" while the police seem unable to stop them, a neo-Fascist minister of culture in the newly-elected government of Italy, a Japanese government minister who denies that his country had ever been an aggressor or that there ever was such a thing as the rape of Nanking....

And to top it all off, we have the Holocaust deniers. As the survivors slowly pass on, the deniers become more visible and always seem to be given a platform for their fabrications, no matter how absurd and far-fetched their hypothesis might be. That they should be found within racist organizations is of course to be expected, but they also appear in the most unlikely places, such as among elementary school teachers or even the respectable world of higher academia.

My childhood fears were fortunately tempered by subsequent experiences where I have witnessed or heard about individuals, from every walk of life and in every country, who have risked their lives and those of their families to help others. At a time of brutal and repressive dictatorships, there were many instances of courageous people who deserve to be honoured with the title of Righteous Gentile. They were not only from countries that were themselves under occupation, such as Belgium, France, Holland, Denmark and many others, but also from among the aggressors, Germany and Japan.

Some acted out of religious belief, others out of compassion and humanity. These individuals, many of whom are still anonymous to this day, compensate for the all too common indifference or the downright collaboration of the rest.

While I was struggling with my identity problems, I became aware that I was suffering from a feeling of guilt although I could not quite pin-point its source. There were probably a number of reasons for it.

I could say perhaps, tongue in cheek, that the first one comes from the first days of the invasion, when I was convinced that Hitler had come to get me because I had not eaten all my supper! But among the more serious reasons, a few come to mind. The death of my mother, for example. I must have done something terrible! How else could I explain her abandoning me, just like that, without a word? I heard, of course, the explanations that my father gave, but at age five or six, one already knows that grown-ups don't always tell the truth. And what other atrocious crime must I have committed, except the one of being born Jewish, for my father to abandon me in his turn shortly later?

Once I was Christian, I was happy to find myself in a world where one was guilty only of the sins committed, rather than the hereditary ones. But I am now aware that I must have felt , unconsciously, a feeling of guilt for having abandoned my ancestral faith and a God that could not protect me, for one that promised more safety and security. At Liberation, torn between my conflicting identities, I felt once again guilty when I abandoned the world of Christianity that had given me such good protection.

Of all the possible reasons to explain my guilty feeling, I am convinced that the main one is the fact of having survived when so many others have disappeared into the night and fog. Why was I hidden and saved? Why me and not the others? Did I take the place of someone more worthy than me?

After the war I found myself among children who had all lived through the same wrenching questionings and feelings of guilt. We would meet once or twice a week. By what I now understand as a tacit agreement, we rarely spoke of our war experiences. When we were not busy playing games or being involved in various sports activities -- an excellent form of therapy without any doubt -- our counsellors would speak to us about a promising future where there would be no discrimination, but this future was in our own hands. It was up to us to fight for it.

It was at that time that I resolved the ambiguity of my religious identity as well as my desire to rid myself of my guilt: I rejected all forms of religion to become a Marxist. At age fifteen, when most young people thought only of having fun, I decided to become a militant revolutionary to create an ideal world. It was my own way of justifying my survival of the Holocaust.

A year later, when the Cold War risked becoming a Hot War at any moment, I left Belgium with my grandparents. Convinced that with an ocean between us and Europe, there was no danger of finding ourselves once more on a battlefield, we emigrated to Canada and settled down in Montreal.

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a large North-American city where one could speak French. What disappointment though when I learned that I could not pursue my studies in that language because I was not Catholic. Once more, even though I thought I had left all that sort of thing in the Old World, I had to deal with my religious origin in spite of the fact that I had rejected all forms of religion.

After High School -- an English Protestant one -- I had to decide what to do with my life. It is not easy to know how one finds one's vocation. It was by process of elimination that I ended up choosing the visual arts, and sculpture in particular. To create, to uncover, to convince, to enchant, to change the world, all those while finding satisfaction in the process of artistic activity, what could be more desirable? At times I had wanted to be an engineer or a writer, but my weakness in math on the one hand, and a disquieting feeling that it might be dangerous to put one's thoughts in print on the other, directed my focus to the visual arts. Photography? Film making? Painting?

As far as I can remember, sculpture was for me a natural means of expression. And as strange as it may seem, the war gave me an esthetic stimulation, an imagery and symbols that allowed me to give form to my ideas. It is with feelings of terror as well as fascination that I remember the fragmented silhouettes of bombed houses, and the sight of human bodies, either broken and wounded, or full of strength as they emerged glistening with black sweat from the mines. The latter have always merged in my mind with the bronze world of Rodin figures.

When I felt the deep need to express my ideas through sculpture, I was convinced that I would be able to use that medium to change the world. Having suffered injustice, and still bearing some of the fears of a hunted child, I could not remain indifferent to the plight of all those who were in similar conditions. I was affected by what is known in German as "weltschmertz", pain for the ills of the world. When I embraced the Marxist credo, I had done so almost fanatically, convinced that the planet would become a paradise on earth. I was brutally brought back to reality after the horrific revelations of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in Moscow. I did not lose, however, my desire to do something for society.

And so I started to think of myself as an "artiste engagÈ". The subject matter of my work, as well as the formal treatment, expressed concerns and ideas about destruction, hatred, and the human condition in general.

I did not want to speak only of my own involvement as a Jewish survivor or as a hidden child. My aim was for a more universal meaning, because I sincerely believed that the Jewish experience, in spite of its very particular ordeal, had to have a higher significance and a message for all Humankind.

I was not the only one to reflect upon these subjects, but like many of my contemporaries, I realized that our influence on society was negligible, and that painting and sculpture have a very limited impact. In any case, one usually ends up preaching to the converted.

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A half a century has elapsed since the events that I related in this story.

During the D-Day celebrations, I have to admit that I was very moved. Even though I was not a participant but a mere child in a small town of occupied Europe, I feel very emotional about that event. It was for me the beginning of hope that the nightmare might come to an end, and I shudder in retrospect as to what would have happened if the Allied landing had failed. Would the Nazis have managed to develop nuclear weapons before the Americans? That possibility is too frightening to even contemplate.

There have been other moving remembrances, the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the end of the war in Europe, the capitulation of Japan which marked the end of the second world war.

As a child, I was privileged to escape the fate of millions of victims. During the fifty years that followed, I was still lucky, being able to lead my life in a country both prosperous and at peace. After my studies at L'Šcole des beaux-arts de MontrÈal, I pursued a successful career as a sculptor and professor, and I had the satisfaction to see my works acquired by numerous public as well as private collections. But the greatest happiness of all was to create a family, to see my children grow up to become women both intelligent and aware of the world's ills.

None of this good life would have happened without the selfless individuals like the Lebeau family, the resistance fighters, the soldiers in the Allied forces. Many of them paid with their lives so that I and others like me could live out the span of life which was allotted to them by Fate. To all of those heroes, sung and unsung, all I can say is thank you.

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