When Memory Comes

When Memory Comes

Saul Friedlander; author of this storybook memoire, was born four months before Hitler came into power. He grew up in Prague, Czechoslovakia to a simple middle class family. In the rise of Hitler’s power, Friedlander’s parents took him and fled to France for their safety. After realizing that it was an uncertainty to escape the war as a family, his parents decided it was best to leave their ten-year-old son in a Roman Catholic Boarding School. To protect Saul Friedlander from being discovered, his name was changed to Paul-Henri Ferland and he was converted and baptized as a catholic. Throughout the years, he prevailed in his schoolwork and eagerly looked forward to one day becoming a priest, non-hesitantly wanting to leave behind his Jewish Identity.

It is only after the war is over that, Saul Friedlander becomes aware of his parents faith. They had tried escaping to Switzerland but were arrested and turned over to the Germans where they were sent to Auschwitz death camp. Friedlander ends up blaming himself, believing that if he were with his parents that day, then maybe they would be alive. Close to graduating high school, Friedlander begins to regain his Jewish identity and becomes a Zionist, which later on leads him to join the Israel army. He states in one chapter of his memoire,

“ For the first time I felt myself to be Jewish, no longer despite myself or secretly, but through a sensation of absolute loyalty. It is true that I knew nothing of Judaism and was still a Catholic. But something had changed. A tie that had been reestablished, an identity was emerging, a confused one certainly, contradictory perhaps, but from that day forward linked to a central axis of which there could be no doubt: in some manner or other I was Jewish” (Friedlander 138).

Even though, Friedlander has many questions that are still unanswered, he has been able to answer some. On being; what Jewish Identity means to him today. From his memories, Saul...