The commitment
Director Michèle Massé
Countries
Duration 52 min
Synopsis
My mother, Josèphe Cardin, nicknamed Jo, phoned me one evening to tell me that she was to undergo surgery the following day. She said that I knew what to do if anything should happen to her. I laughed and said that nothing would happen to her. She died suddenly in the middle of the operation. It was 5th March 1992. By “what to do”, did she meant the place where she wanted her ashes to be scattered ? I began to look for the answer to this question, retracing my mother’s history until her past was revealed. On 8th June 1942, Jo, a high-school student in Paris, was wearing a yellow star of David, although she was not Jewish. She was arrested and was immediately sent to the internment camp of Tourelles, and then to Drancy, for being a “friend of the Jews”. There, she looked after the first children who arrived at the camp in transit before being deported to Auschwitz. Frightened and revolted by what she saw, Jo did everything she could to help them. When, by a miracle, she was freed on 31st August 1942, she refused to give in and decided to join the Resistance, as did her parents, Albertine and Joseph-Marie. After the war, Jo married, tried to forget, and gave birth to seven children. Forty years later, she saw the “Holocaust” series on television and her past came back to her. Jo then recontacted her former comrades. She adopted Voltaire’s motto “That which touches the heart is engraved in the memory” and fought to keep remembrance of the Holocaust alive. She never ceased to describe the months of detention which marked here life, publishing her eye-witness accounts in “The Jewish World” or privately. A few months before her operation, an old dream came true when she visited Israel for the first time. In fact, she hoped to go back there as soon as possible. In December 1992, Jo and her parents were posthumously awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. I know instinctively that I will find the answer to my mother’s request in her past. I therefore commit myself to looking for it. This film tells of my quest.
My mother, Josèphe Cardin, nicknamed Jo, phoned me one evening to tell me that she was to undergo surgery the following day. She said that I knew what to do if anything should happen to her. I laughed and said that nothing would happen to her. She died suddenly in the middle of the operation. It was 5th March 1992. By “what to do”, did she meant the place where she wanted her ashes to be scattered ? I began to look for the answer to this question, retracing my mother’s history until her past was revealed. On 8th June 1942, Jo, a high-school student in Paris, was wearing a yellow star of David, although she was not Jewish. She was arrested and was immediately sent to the internment camp of Tourelles, and then to Drancy, for being a “friend of the Jews”. There, she looked after the first children who arrived at the camp in transit before being deported to Auschwitz. Frightened and revolted by what she saw, Jo did everything she could to help them. When, by a miracle, she was freed on 31st August 1942, she refused to give in and decided to join the Resistance, as did her parents, Albertine and Joseph-Marie. After the war, Jo married, tried to forget, and gave birth to seven children. Forty years later, she saw the “Holocaust” series on television and her past came back to her. Jo then recontacted her former comrades. She adopted Voltaire’s motto “That which touches the heart is engraved in the memory” and fought to keep remembrance of the Holocaust alive. She never ceased to describe the months of detention which marked here life, publishing her eye-witness accounts in “The Jewish World” or privately. A few months before her operation, an old dream came true when she visited Israel for the first time. In fact, she hoped to go back there as soon as possible. In December 1992, Jo and her parents were posthumously awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. I know instinctively that I will find the answer to my mother’s request in her past. I therefore commit myself to looking for it. This film tells of my quest.