Noah's child
Noah's Child is a novel by the French author Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt from 2007. The work was published in 2004 in Paris under the title “L'Enfant de Noé” . The story of the Jewish boy Joseph is told, who becomes a refugee when the Germans invade Belgium. His journey takes him to the “Yellow Villa”, an orphanage , where he meets Father Bims, who helps him to get to know himself and his roots.
After the novels Milarepa ( Tibetan Buddhism ), Monsieur Ibrahim and the flowers of the Koran ( Islam ) and Oskar and the Lady in Pink ( Christianity ), the novel represents a kind of combined consideration of Judaism and Christianity.
content
Joseph grew up in Brussels as the son of a tailor in humble circumstances, but after the occupation by Germans began the ever increasing discrimination against Jews . Joseph, who is so far not very familiar with Jewish tradition, has to wear a yellow star on his jacket. After his mother learns of an imminent raid in their residential area, his parents decide to give him to a Christian noble family with whom they are friends. Seven-year-old Joseph suspects he's special now that he's with the wealthy nobles, but he soon begins to miss his parents. However, he only stayed with the nobles for a short time, as they feared for their safety since he narrowly escaped control by the German soldiers. He is brought to Father Bims in the “Yellow Villa”.
With the support of a small village and the atheist pharmacist Mademoiselle Marcelle, the Christian father hides Jewish children in his boarding school, but also houses and teaches Christian children. Here Father Bims helps him to find what he is: a child of Noah . Joseph quickly befriends Rudy, whose entire family was deported because, Rudy believes, they were all intellectual, while the only reason he was able to avoid arrests was because he played on the street.
The two protect each other and give each other comfort. Rudy tells Joseph that Father Bims leaves the villa at night, whereupon Joseph finds out that the Father has set up a small synagogue in a chapel that is no longer in use. In this place he collects books on Judaism and, like Noah, tries to preserve evidence of an endangered species. After Joseph enters the chapel, he agrees with the father to study Hebrew together and read the scriptures of the Jews. The two become friends, but keep their secret to themselves, even Rudy doesn't tell Joseph anything. At a later point in time the children play outside, then they shower, Father Bims makes sure that Jews and Christians wash separately.
Suddenly a German soldier is standing in the locker room and immediately recognizes the situation, but instead of revealing it, he just smiles and gives them money for sweets. He explains to his train that he has not found anything. In the meantime the Americans have landed in Normandy, whereupon the pharmacist becomes cocky and plays the Belgian national anthem in the church. The Gestapo appears and leads them away, and shortly afterwards the Germans find the forged passports of the Jews that Mademoiselle Marcelle had made for the children. German soldiers penetrate the boarding school and want to deport the Jewish students.
Father Bims asks to wait another day before making the arrest and the German commander agrees, as he cannot organize a suitable transport at such short notice. The students who support Father Bims in teaching hit each other and are tied up so that everything would look like the Belgian Resistance would rescue the Jews . The Jews hide in the chapel, pretending to flee across the nearby lake. Local residents and members of the Resistance support the people in hiding with food.
After the war, Rudy's mother and Joseph's parents return. At the urging of Father Bims, Joseph reluctantly agrees to return to Brussels with his parents. He inherits his father's successful company and financially supports the new state of Israel, but, unlike Rudy, refuses to move there.
characters
Joseph
Seven-year-old Joseph tells his story. He quickly finds out that he is special, at first he thinks he is aristocratic, like the Sullys, the noble family with whom his parents hide him. He later discovers that Father Bims is particularly interested in those who are oppressed in the world and remembers them in the crypt of an abandoned chapel, what it means to be a Jew . He is learning Hebrew and is being taught about Judaism . After the war he returned to Brussels with his parents. Years later, he helped build Israel as a donor .
Father pumice
“A long, slim person who looked as if he consisted of two disconnected parts: the head and the rest. His body did not seem to be there at all, nothing was visible under the black cassock that hung flat on him as on one Hanger. But his head was unmistakable, made of flesh and blood and as rosy as that of a freshly bathed baby. You really felt like taking him in your hands and kissing him on both cheeks. " (P.29f)
Father Bims directs the “Yellow Villa.” He feels sorry for all the oppressed and does all he can for them; in this sense he is the prototype of the Christian who acts out of charity . With many helpers he manages to save the lives of two hundred and seventy-one Jews. In Israel, a forest with two hundred and seventy-one trees is dedicated to him.
Rudy
“Rudy was endless. He was shot up so high that one could have thought that he was tied to a rope behind his hanging shoulders, and legs and arms dangled weakly in the void like a jumping jack. The hair on a heavy, nodding head didn't even seem to believe that it was so brown, dense and stubborn. " (P.46)
Joseph's tutor in the “Yellow Villa” is a simple boy. They spend a lot of time together and discover, for example, Father Bims hiding in the crypt. Rudy later moves to Israel and thus takes an active part in building the state.
Mademoiselle Marcelle
“Mademoiselle Marcelle resembled everything, except not a woman, more like a potato on a bird's body. Her face, dull, brown, spotted and misshapen, with its narrowed lids looked like a freshly harvested turnip (...) " (p.35)
As Chemlay's pharmacist, Mademoiselle Marcelle supports the work of the orphanage and helps Father Bims with the creation of the false papers, although she has great problems with the Church. Because of her tendency to vulgar curse, she is also called the Crucisturk. On the day the American troops land, she enters a church for the first time and plays the Brabançonne on the organ . She is arrested by the Nazis. In 1948 a street in Chemlay was named after her, who never returned from the concentration camp. (cf p.137)
expenditure
- Books
- Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt: The child of Noah (L'enfant de Noé). Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16959-7 (translated into German by Inés Koebel ).
- Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt: L'enfant de Noé . Albin Michel, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-226-15108-7 .
- Audio books
- Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt: Noah's child. Radio play (L'enfant de Noé). Audio-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89813-392-3 (1 CD, read by Ernst Jacobi ).
- Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt: L'enfant de Noé. Texts intégral lu par l'auteur . Audiolib, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-35641-004-7 (1 CD).