Holocaust

In the French equivalent of ninth grade, classes spend about eight hours on World War II, which includes around two hours devoted to the Holocaust, Maloberti said. But visiting Drancy is different.

“It seems unreal to them. So there it is, it’s true, it really existed,” she said. “The numbers are there. The buildings, the documents are there. I have never had a student who denied the information once we gave it.”

But what Perahia was after was something more powerful than just teaching the truth. An atheist, he has visited Auschwitz repeatedly to intone the Jewish prayer for the dead for his father and grandfather who died there.

And for the children listening to him on this day, organized jointly by the Drancy memorial and the Jewish umbrella organization CRIF, it seemed he had succeeded in leaving something behind.

“Victor Perahia will leave a mark. That’s the thing that will leave a mark, what I will tell my family, my children, if I have any. This will surely stay with me the rest of my life,” said Iness Boubaajat-Lebreton.

By now, the light was fading but Perahia said he would join the class outside. More than two dozen teens surrounded him, slowing their pace to his as they walked toward the buildings where he had spent almost two years of his life, before being deported to Bergen Belsen.

The transit camp buildings were converted into apartments almost immediately after the war for people whose homes had been bombed. This troubled some of the students, but not Perahia.

“After all you have survived, all you have gone through, are you happy?” came one of the final questions of the day.

“I am happy,” Perahia said. “But it is a little late.”