Christa cooked for me some of my favorite German dishes, went shopping with me, showed me how to purchase the train tickets from computerized machines, and finally helped me with my luggage to the train station and waited with me for the tardy train. I even could still take the same bus at the same hours from and to the train station I had been taking from Christa’s place to visit mother. To top it all off the Lord gave me yet an extra little icing on this delicious cake of divine provision to demonstrate His loving care: during my morning prayers on my hosts' garden terrasse a flock of swallows kept circling overhead in the blue sky, twittering as they did. 

I love – and dearly miss in Beer-Sheva - in particular swallows!

Christa liked Stefan & Hanni very much as they did her, and I told them of her and her selfless service of love and help she has rendered my mother and me without much ado for the last 20 years. She has been and still is G-d’s answer to my prayers, His angel in our lives. For without Christa I would not have known how to properly provide for my mother who did not want to leave Germany. Through Christa’s efforts my mother is lovingly taken care of around the clock in this wonderful home for old people not far from where she used to live. Twice a week Christa faithfully visits my mother for at least one hour, sees to it that she got decent clothes and a pretty wig to wear (mother lost most of her hair) and proper nourishment and health care. And year for year I am Christa’s trusted guest, her home being “my home away from home” when visiting my mother. What would we have done without her?! She has been a balm on my soul from the wounds other Germans had inflicted on me, a “peace-maker” between me and Germany. 

Yet she thinks her acts of kindness are nothing out of the ordinary!

For years now I have petitioned the Lord for Christa’s salvation, and I believe the many years of our friendship and my witnessing have readied her for Hanni & Stefan to lead her to the Lord. I would have loved to be the one having this privilege, but when G-d answers prayers He usually has more in mind than we do. Then Christa will finally be coming “home,” for G-d’s laws are already written on the tablets of her heart!

The shuttle bus took me to the airport, and when I arrived at the Charles de Gaulle airport another shuttle bus, standing directly in front of the exit/entrance of the Lufthansa terminal, took me straight to the front door of the building in which my friend Stéphane lives. Her daughter Raphaelle was waiting for me, recognizing me immediately. 

This also was prepared by the Lord in advance. For when I was e-mailing with Stéphane she told me that her daughter was in Israel just then and gave me a phone # by which I could reach her. One day the Lord suddenly prompted me right urgently to call Raphaelle. I did so immediately and asked where she was. “In Beer-Sheva, at the Canyon,” she told me. What an amazing thrill! I went at once to meet her.

Now we hugged and carried my luggage of “bricks” up to their apartment, then went for a stroll through Montparnasse, the Parisien district where Raphaelle and her mother live, until Stéphane would come home from work. It was grey, cool and drizzly. Raphaelle claimed that this was typical Parisien weather… “always,” she said. 

But the next day the sun shone from a blue sky with white puffs of clouds, warming the air, so that people filled up the sidewalk cafés enjoying the summer weather. And it stayed that way all the way through the day of my departure.

Stéphane arranged for my transportation to Drancy by calling the “right-hand man” of Serge Klarsfeld. Following her instructions I took the Metro to make it to the place of meeting which I actually found. Then we drove to the Memorial in Drancy for the ceremony. I was full of expectation. The Lord’s timing… oh, now it would happen! I was like a little child expecting the impossible!

Only about a dozen people showed up, mainly older folks, and because I had come all the way from Israel I was called upon first. I had so well prepared, knew exactly what I would say, had it all written down in proper order. But as I stood there with the eyes of survivors fixed on me, to honor my mother’s father whom I could not remember because I had been too little, I began to tremble and my eyes filled with tears. 

All the years of experience with talking in the presence of many people went up like smoke in the awful memory of the holocaust. I stammered, I babbled, I mixed up the pages, and finally could not read anything through the veil of my tears. It felt as though thousands of eyes were fixed on me like witnesses, the eyes of my family diminished to a fragile “succah,” just like the eyes of that dozen people present with me. It felt as though I was the last link in this long line of family to carry the torch, both of memory as well as of restoration. It felt as though these eyes were pleading, “don’t let us down!”

”I won’t! I won’t!” I cried out in my spirit, stuttering about the family’s book of generations. I was so very small, such a tiny link, yet --- “The eyes of the L-RD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show His might on behalf of those whose heart is blameless toward Him,”⁸  the Holy Spirit breathed into me. Right! It did not depend on me but on the Lord! He would do it!

But no one came with the book, no one knew of the book, and those twelve advised that I should not get my hopes up. Klarsfeld himself was so very negative I suffered a severe Asthma attack, feeling desolate. But I quickly comforted myself in the Lord, as David had done at Ziklak.

However, there was one kind old gentleman, a survivor of camp de Gurs who, though he had not known my grandfather, personally knew the director of the “Amicale de Gurs” whom I had written earlier, and had his phone number. Back at Stéphane’s I called Monsieur Laharie. He was very kind and advised me which of the Archives I should try first, and gave me name and phone # of the Archive and the archivist.