We huddled outside as her body was buried and put to rest, half expecting her to get up and correct some of the speakers, still argue that is the Jewish secret of youthfulness. Afterwards, we walked through the wintery Parisian park with its mourning trees. We all went back to the warmth of her apartment, to feel and spend a few more hours in her presence. I remembered I had sat in her recessed settee talking with her as I grew up and visited Paris. If anything, she was more present than ever that afternoon, sharing her life, interrupting our conversations, with her memories and opinions. In the alcove of her settee were her family books of their family tree and history. I sat there and read them. Eva’s daughter Toutik sat down with me, and we started talking about family stories for the first time. Toutik has these large, infinite blue eyes, which can look at you like the sky. She told me the story of how her blue eyes had saved herself, her mother and father from the Nazis when they were escaping. Toutik had been caught in Paris as the Nazis invaded, with her mother Eva and father Salomon Rosenblum. Salomon had carried on his work as a physicist. He had worked with Marie Curie and with the Institut du Radium. He couldn’t get out to England, and part of him also wanted to stay to continue his important work, the life he was dedicated to. Salomon continued his daily routine, as conditions deteriorated and got more and more difficult in 1940. Eva’s family had grown up in Munich, as part of the Blauer Reiter, and had advised my grandmother on paintings, buying Kandinskys, Kokoschkas and Klees. She thought she knew Germany, its art, its psychology, and its people. What was happening could not be happening, like a lifelong friend whose character had changed.
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