3: The Camp at St. Cyprian

"The Kanfers were finally free and reunited with Anna.  This was another of the happiest days of his life. Unfortunately, the family of three was not yet free.  They still had a ways to go to get to the train. They walked to a church with no belongings except their visas, VERY scared  that they would again be captured and separated only to get put in those awful concentration camps once again. Luckily, this did not happen."

Here is where the tale gets fogged. In my essay from fourth grade, I used the film of Grandpa Fred and my fourth grade thoughts to piece together a story.  In reality, though, everything became much more complicated as my family and I began to unravel every event that really occurred in Europe, leading up to Grandpa Fred's freedom in America. At this point in our family vacation, Perpignan was one of the first stops, and we were only getting a feel of the type of sleuthing we would need to continue on with. It was important to, if nothing else, find the beach in St. Cyprian, where we could imagine Grandpa Fred walking for miles, looking ahead to the mountains looming above, signifying freedom (or a freedom he only imagined existed).

In the video interview of Grandpa Fred, he mentioned eating peaches after peaches for days as they walked over mountains after escaping the concentration camp. In preparation for our day of finding whatever we could relating to St. Cyprian, we stopped at the local grocery store near our hotel and loaded up on fruits and candy, and of course, a peach for each of us.

The GPS took us about as far as St. Cyprian, the town. It revealed a deserted carnival set up, which looked like it both hadn't been opened for 10 years, but was, at the same time, ready for a debut that night. Creepy. We drove around looking for anything that hinted at an internment camp sight, both near the ocean and much more inland, with a vast terrain of empty, dry prairie land. Giving up hope of finding the camp on our own, we explored the town a little bit--mostly just looking for a center for tourism. It seemed weird to me that such an empty place would even bother with something like that, but sure enough, we were able to locate, and then wait outside of it for twenty minutes waiting for someone to unlock the doors and man the front desk. The woman we met took a while to understand what we were trying to ask her about--which was simply, where the camp was located during World War II. She explained to us first what World War II was, then more about the Spanish Civil War, and finally gave in. She used and encourage us to use hand gestures, like a game of charades, to communicate what we were actually looking to find. It worked, with a sigh of relief and excitement from both ends, before the letdown of "I don't know for sure." We worked it out though, and in broken English and a lot of gestures combined with pen markings on our map, she was able to give us an area along the sand where the camp would have been. With that, we set off.

I'll make a long story short and let you know off the bat that the one monument we found was, yet again, dedicated to those who were interned at the camp during the Spanish Civil War. Nothing related to World War II or the Jewish internment camps. Just like in Vienna, though, the real monument turned out to be the splashing and playing and families with their children spending a day at the beach. "The youth is our future," is, after all, what Grandpa Fred always believed.

This discovery was good enough for our family. We sat together, eating peaches and looking at the ocean and the mountains in harmony. My brother buried his peach pit in the sand, as if it was some sort of our own monument for Grandpa Fred and everyone else who suffered in these internment camps. We headed home for the day, with our first real success on the trip to France.

2: Perpignon

"Ziegfried continued on with his life. It took them months, still with three suitcases, to walk to France.  His family eventually just got too tired and abandoned all their suitcases, but still they went on.  Little did Ziggy know, that in about twenty-four hours, one of the saddest days of his life would occur.  Just before his family was expected to be at the U.S. embassy in France, French soldiers quickly captured the family.  Ziegfried and his father were separated from a wife and mother.  They were taken to separate concentration camps in France. This was not the saddest day of his life, but the saddest three whole months! Ziegfreid was taken to a room with a few thousand men, no bathrooms, and food as little as stale bread and dirty water. Can you imagine three months in that filthy, gross room? You’re now probably wondering, “If Ziegfried got to America, when was he released--after the Holocaust?”  Well, the answer is he was never released.  After Anna got out of her concentration camp using proof of the visa, she waited for days outside of Ziegfried and his father’s camp.  One night, when no one was looking, a kind, an extremely kind guard, did not speak, but pointed to a hole in the barbed wire.  Ziegfried, his father, and other men climbed through!  The Kanfers were finally free and reunited with Anna.  This was another of the happiest days of his life. Unfortunately, the family of three was not yet free."

This past summer, after my three week long Spanish language emersion trip with my school in Spain, my family joined me for a vacation on our own before heading back to America. Apart from seeing the cites of Barcelona and Madrid, we spent a lot of time hunting around for clues regarding Grandpa Fred's journey. 

We arrived in Perpignon, France, with minimal French comprehension skills and absolutely no clue about the town we found surrounding us. The only thing leading us to this cute little town was a stamp from it on Grandpa Fred's passport. We had hoped to uncover traces of his presence here, but had no idea where to start. 

Our first move was to look up the phone number for the local Chabad House, which is an Orthodox Jewish organization that has chapters all over the world. The woman from the phone, who was from Canada and spoke English as a first language, invited us into her home and offered to help us with whatever questions we had. This was the first time we told Grandpa Fred's story to a stranger on this trip, and we'd soon learn that it wouldn't be the last. We didn't know what we were looking for, and we didn't know what we wanted to hear. 

The camp Grandpa Fred was at is called St. Cyprian. It's a little town on the beach, not far from Perpignon, and we needed directions. Had this woman ever heard of a concentration camp in this area? Yes, she said, but wasn't sure of any museums or preservations at the site today. She called her husband and some other contacts she had relating to the Holocaust and St. Cyprian, and gave us the address of a cemetery, where many Jews are buried, and the location of a supposed memorial for them. 

Though our new friend invited us to dinner that night, we now had an adventure to conquer, and it was time to get moving! A quick stop at a market for fruit and candy to last the day began our expedition.  

Following a long drive filled with mapquest and car games, we spotted the cemetery, pulled up right in front of it, and pryed open the closed but unlocked entrance gate. It was most definitely one of the most eery experiences on the trip. It was still day time, but the cemetery was empty of livelihood, and the wind was howling just like in those ghost movies. We searched that cemetery up and down for the memorial said to be displayed inside of it, until we were all very ready to just give up. A disruption of the silence came from my dad's shouting, "I found it!" He was referring to an open space in a cut off section of the graveyard with benches and a fountain and plaques everywhere. We spent twenty minutes working to decipher the French, and the names, and the purposes of these plaques. 

Just like in Vienna, disappointed feelings came next. The plaques, the whole memorial even, was dedicated to the Spanish Civil War and the refuges from it that were interned when they arrived in France. It was a vast memorial, and did inspire us to look more into Spanish Civil War research after we returned. Even leaving with some newfound knowledge, though, we hadn't reached our goal of seeing something relevant to my Grandpa Fred or the multitude of Jews also interned in the camp at St. Cyprian. 

It was a letdown, but so many excursions on the trip were and will be. But all it meant was that we needed to wake up again the next day, and be ready to work even harder.