
One
of the children of La Maison d'Izieu was eleven-year-old Liliane
Gerenstein. Lilliane and her brother Maurice were sent to their deaths a few
days after she wrote this letter to God:
God?
How good You are, how kind and if one had to count the number of
goodnesses and kindnesses You have done, one would never finish.
God? It is You who command. It is You who are justice, it is You who
reward the good and punish the evil.
God? It is thanks to You that I had a beautiful life before, that I was
spoiled, that I had lovely things that others do not have.
God? After that, I ask You one thing only: Make my parents come
back, my poor parents protect them (even more than You protect me) so
that I can see them again as soon as possible.
Make them come back again. Ah! I had such a good mother and such a good
father! I have such faith in You and I thank You in advance.
The
letter was found in April 1944 in the abandoned home in Izieu. Liliane's
mother had been deported and was already murdered. Her father, Chapse, miraculously survived the
horrors of the Holocaust and
emigrated to the United States after the war. He died in 1979, never
knowing the fate of his children.
