Free Hitler Made Me a Jew by Nadia Gould

on the floor, crying and begging not to be moved until I went to my friends. Even though I was out of control, the social worker dragged me out. This time I was placed in a home with many children—American children. The lady in charge of the foster home was a widow whose husband had jumped out a window during the depression. He had owned a shoe factory and had lost his money in the crash of 1929. Her grown-up daughter helped her run the home. They didn’t interfere with the children. I had to share a room with a girl my age named Margaret who told me she was in a foster home because her father had killed her mother. Her brother was in another foster home across town. I liked Margaret. Every day I went to pick her up from school at three to go to the movies together. We used my money—the money people had given me when they saw me cry.
    I think the movies helped me a lot with my English and with getting adjusted to the American Way of Life! After the movies we had ice cream. In France, we rarely ate ice cream, but French ice cream didn’t compare with this American delicacy.
    In the mornings, I was alone in the house. I took bubble baths while I listened to the radio. I used Jergen’s lotion on my hands. I loved the almond scent. I was losing my sadness and enjoying the luxuries of my new life.
    One day, Margaret and I went to visit her brother. I thought he was good-looking, and I daydreamed that he would like me too. I was feeling things again, and I loved Margaret. I felt sad to leave her when it was time for me to go to Concord, New Hampshire.
    Sasha, Luba and Gaby were living in Concord when I came to join them. I imagine Gaby was as unhappy as I had been when Lilo came to live with my parents and me. I was an intruder She had to accept me as her “sister” as I had had to tolerate Lilo. I knew she would have preferred Lilo as her sister. Lilo had been her friend in Marseille. I was a year older, which meant she couldn’t be my superior. There was nothing I could do to change her feelings under these circumstances, so I tried to stay out of her way.
    Gaby was charming and attractive even if her mother wished she had a prettier face. As a friend she was loyal, fun and bright. She had many friends and she was popular. I felt embarrassed and guilty to be in her company at first until I had friends of my own. Even so, I hoped my troubles were over now that I lived with these friends and that they were trying to get a visa for my mother. I could speak French, and most of all I could speak about my parents. But then Luba said to me, “What enormous breasts you have, just like your mother’s, and look at your legs, a train could go through them. Why didn’t your parents do anything about that? There are operations and treatments for that. Gaby’s nose is horrible, but at least she has a good figure and that’s all men care about in a woman: a good figure!”
    I didn’t know how to answer her and at that moment didn’t know how to convince myself she was evil. All I wanted to do was to cover my body. From then on I refused to take off my coat even in the summer. I felt like a freak with huge pendulous breasts and crooked legs. I kept thinking about these parts of my body all the time. I was obsessed with them, and if I had to cross a room I hugged the walls instead of walking in a straight line. I wanted to be shadow.
    Luba belittled my mother to me, she called her a rotten housekeeper, without discipline, unfeminine, too naive, too kind to every one. I didn’t know what to say, how to defend my mother when Luba tore her apart. I wished I could have told her off. I hated her for saying the nasty things she said about her.
    Luba loved my father. I suspected that they had had an affair. This suspicion irked me, as I had to listen to her as she called him so intelligent and how she couldn’t imagine what he saw in my mother. The more she praised my father the