Baggage Claim #1The year is 1929. I have flunked high school and come to Berlin to study modern dance with Margarete Wallman the representative of the Mary Wigman technique. That is where Genia and I met. We had similar backgrounds and felt like sisters. We discovered the arts, shared our dreams and our hopes for meeting Prince Charming. Both our mothers were French and Catholics and our fathers came from Russia. Her father had gone to Romania, mine to Germany. She did not know her Dad because he died when she was too young to remember and my parents had divorced before I was born. Anyone can see, we were soul mates. From Berlin we went for a year to school in Dresden where Mary Wigman actually taught. From there we went to The Folkwang School of Art in Essen where Kurt Jooss was teaching and forming a dance troupe then known as the Ballets Jooss. I auditioned for one of 25 openings and was accepted under the condition I would have to study for a year to get my diploma. Genia, who actually was an accomplished musician, left Germany with her friend for Denmark as members of an orchestra. One of my fondest memories about Genia and I is how we had schemed to protect our virginity from the male animal. We would secure our garments, over and under, with safety pins - large ones and small ones - instead of buttons, needed or not, a formidable barrage at the threshold of chastity and our willing passion. We also rehearsed a game we called “Don’t touch me, I have syphilis. You will get sick,” just in case a man got past all the barbed wire. We would laugh gleefully. Well, as I said, Genia found her companion. I graduated in April 1933 and diploma earned, a secure job as a dancer and teacher at Dartington Hall, England, where Kurt Jooss had found a safe haven that year from Nazi Germany, I left Germany for good for a vacation at home, home being a village near Paris. My landlady and landlord took me to the train station to make sure that I would board the international coach. Anything else could be fatal at the German-Belgium border. They talked to the conductor, maybe they even tipped him to look out for me. He assigned me a whole compartment to myself and said “don’t step outside, do not step out onto the platform and you will be as safe as on international territory.” After the train departed I locked my door and laid down to sleep the time away through German territory, through Belgium and safely into France. But suddenly, I don’t remember how much time had passed, I feel cold creeping up my legs. I am immediately wide-awake. The train is not moving. I see a veritable caricature of an SS man towering over me, his trousers down to his knees, sort of hobbling him while he busies himself with my arsenal of safety pins. With Amazonian strength I bounce into a sitting position, throwing him off balance. He does not have the use of his trouser wrapped legs and caught by surprise he is thrown off balance. Follows act two, “Ich bin eine Juedin,” I scream. “Sie werden sich beschmutzen. Betuhren Sie mich nicht.” (“I am a Jew. You will dirty yourself. Do not touch me.”) I then throw myself against the door screaming for the conductor. I do not now recall what actually followed. I know the train moved on. The SS man did not stay on board. I wish I could have told Genia but life separated us. I never saw her again. “Border Incident”, Pâquerette Pathé, April 2, 1997 |