Michèle Audin - One Hundred Twenty-One Days

But you wanted me to talk to you about Silberberg.

Yes, I knew him well. We were students at Strasbourg together, until 1939. Yes, both in mathematics. André had passed the exam for his teaching degree in 1938. Then he had started working on a dissertation. After a few months, he had already obtained his first result, which Henri Pariset, his professor, had called “very important.” Pariset sent it to Professor Motfraus, in Paris. And Motfraus presented it to the Academy of Sciences.

No, André didn’t know Motfraus personally, and for that matter, neither did I at the time. But if you don’t mind, I’ll speak about Motfraus at some other point.

Where was I? Oh yes, André Silberberg’s note. We were both so happy! The Silberberg family even organized a little party when it was published. André’s parents weren’t scientists or even academics. You see, they were business owners, but their two children were in college. Yes, André did have a sister, named Clara. She died not long after the war.

No one in the family, neither Clara nor her parents, understood mathematics, but you don’t need to know what a number field is to understand the honor of having an article published in a journal with your name printed underneath. I think André’s father had been rather disappointed that his son hadn’t tried to get into the École Polytechnique. At the party, he declared how relieved he was. And we all drank white wine on the balcony of the family apartment, overlooking the Ill River.

André was brilliant, good at everything. Very athletic. He was the goalie on our soccer team at the university. He also won the silver medal in the 800 meters at the university track championship. In 1938, I believe. He trained almost every morning at the Vauban stadium. At that time, you couldn’t just go running out on the street. And he was a musician. He played the piano. You know Mozart’s Fantasia? He really liked Mozart.

Yes, I was a student, too. Not as brilliant. And I had to work to pay for my schooling. Pariset suggested I work at the library of the Mathematics Institute. That way, I would earn a little money while being surrounded with books.

Here’s what I wanted to tell you about. André, a few other students, and I formed a defense group. Yes, against the anti-Semites. In those years, signs that said “Forbidden to dogs and Jews” were appearing in the windows of more and more cafés and restaurants in Strasbourg. In French or German. You’re a historian, you must speak German. “Juden unerwünscht,” Jews are unwanted, it’s more elegant… They tried, a little more each day, to apply the bans that affected Jews on the other side of the Rhine to this side as well. Since Jews were the enemies of Hitler, they were called “warmongers.” A few months earlier, at the time of the Munich Agreement, there was even the start of a real pogrom against Jewish business owners. Fortunately, the shop André’s parents owned (and his parents themselves) had been spared. The atmosphere was terrible. We don’t have the right words to talk about that time. I’m not going to tell you the atmosphere was, I don’t know, “deleterious.” It seems to me that it’s up to people like you to invent words. Are you recording this?

But I wanted to tell you about our “actions.” We ripped down more than one of those nauseating signs. Of course, this generally led to fights. But we were well trained. André even tried to teach me French kickboxing. We took a few serious blows now and again. One evening, we attacked the headquarters of a party pretending to be “Alsatian separatists”… needless to say, their autonomy was simply an allegiance to Nazi Germany. A real brawl followed.

But we took the most serious beating during the attack on the bookstore. Does that surprise you? It was clearly a Nazi bookstore, the Volksbuchhandlung. We broke some glass, nothing major, but that time we had a little trouble getting away. The guards were pretty burly. André got a bit scratched up. Well, I say scratched up, but it was serious enough for him to need a doctor. We called Doctor Sonntag, who was the doctor for the Silberberg family, but also a professor at the school of medicine and a personal friend of Pariset’s. Have you heard of Sonntag? Sonntag sewed up what needed to be, at the hospital, but in a discreet manner. André, with his right hand bandaged up, couldn’t write anything for two weeks. He was quite pleased to find piano études for the left hand.

Since I was telling you about that bookstore… I’m going to show you something. A book I snuck out with me, or rather confiscated, that day, and which by some miracle I still have. Since you read German, look at how they taught addition and subtraction in German primary schools in 1939.

You see: they added the areas of the territories “we” had confiscated in the “Versailler Diktat.” That’s what Hitler called the Treaty of Versailles. Yes, of course, you know that already. Alsace-Moselle was part of it, for 14,521.8 square kilometers. Note the “point 8.” There are other square kilometers, with decimal points, in Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, without forgetting Danzig, and especially Poland. It’s very instructive: a big sum, with decimal points. And look at this one: subtraction, now. Before the war, the Reich’s territory was 542,622 square kilometers. You have to find the total area before 1938. Yes, they stop in 1938 because, by then, the conquest had already started, thanks to the Anschluss and the Sudetes. The book dates from 1939. Ah! The blue notebook. No, don’t take notes, it’s not worth it: if you want to look at the textbook in more detail, I’ll let you borrow it. There’s a whole series of exercises like this.

But I was talking to you about André Silberberg. Didn’t you say you did some research in the Heinrich Kürz archives at the University of N.? Did you know that he came to Strasbourg, precisely in 1939? Yes, Kürz. And that he had a discussion with André Silberberg? Let me tell you about that. He came to speak at Pariset’s seminar. He was an important guest; Pariset had promoted the talk in his class and invited all the students to come listen. So I went along with André. Kürz had just proven, I can no longer remember what exactly, but it was something very important in number theory. It was actually Motfraus who had invited him to give a series of lectures in Paris, and Kürz was stopping in Strasbourg on his way back. He was the Vice-Rektor of his university, you know, and for us there was no doubt he was a Nazi. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been appointed Vice-Rektor. I suppose Pariset went to pick him up at the station. What I remember perfectly is that they arrived together. I can still see them climbing up the monumental stairs at the entrance to the university. And I can still hear them, especially Kürz, who was speaking very loudly, and in German. Pariset was content to nod in agreement.

André and I, in fact our whole generation, learned French at school. German was our mother tongue, the language we spoke at home. A lecture in German was no problem. Besides, I should say that Kürz was an excellent speaker and his lecture was fascinating. Even so, let’s just say he was perhaps a little too smug. At the end, there was applause, one or two questions, and then people started standing up and speaking amongst themselves. Pariset introduced André to Kürz: “As you may know, this is the brilliant young man who proved that…” But Kürz knew: “Ah! It’s you! Excellent work! They told me about you at the Academy of Sciences, where I was invited last week.” The professors then went to have a beer in a nearby brasserie. Pariset kindly invited André to come along with them. Of course, the other students weren’t invited. So I didn’t go. But the very next afternoon, André came to tell me what happened.