to start

How to start?
The beginning of my own story started before i was born.
According to the Torah, i am a shiksa and my mother too. She has been raised catholic but she always denied her religion and all religions.
Fascinated by the Jews since her childhood, born in 1933, 6 years before the WWII began.
During the war, she was living in Normandy, terrorized by the nazis who came to her place to ask for food sometimes. She hid behind a wardrobe until they left. No one could move her.
And American and the English arrived for the Normandy landings.
One of the teacher in her school used to sleep with a German and she asked the pupils to put their head on their desk to sleep. She was tired after the nights she spent with her German boyfriend.
My mother remembered the shaved heads of women after the liberation.
She hasn't been tortured or in trouble with the Nazis but the war moods became rooted in her spirit for ever.
My father is a Litvak, born in France. My grand-parents immigrated in France when the Communists invaded Lithuania.
They left everything. During the WWII, they were all separated and hidden in different families. None of three of them has known the camps, but a part of my family has been killed in camps.
After the WWII, they have been gathered and decided to live a secular life: no Kosher food, eating pig…
My mother met my father. She was very blonde and my father thought she was German.
They were in love and i was born.
They were separated and my mother raised me in the fear that Hitler could come back one day.
So, i was a little girl, and it was strictly forbidden for me to say that my father was Jewish. She said to some of her friends after knowing them better. Some were in the same case than me. But with them, i didn't talk about my roots.
I remembered asking my mom when i found boxes with pieces of soap in a drawer in the bathroom, why she kept them. She explained me that in case of a new war we could miss soaps. I don't know how many years she kept them but maybe 17 years, until we moved in another area in Paris. I liked these soaps, different sizes, different colors, no more scents… After visiting Auschwitz, i understood better why my mom kept them.
I had Jewish friends at school. I was an observer of their culture. I didn't catch everything.
We didn't have TV until my 9 years. A friend of my mom gave us a black and white but i imagined the colors.
One day, there was a TV series called 'Holocaust' and i insisted to see it. My mom didn't want, because she knew i will be traumatized. But i insisted so much that she decided to give up. In this episode, they put the Jews in a house and light a fire to kill them. I was crying so much because i didn't understand why they killed people for a religion or something else. My mom didn't know what to do and told me that i will never see the series again.
She had many books about Israel, WWII, i read some and, later i bought new ones. The one which impressed me so much was written by a young woman who has been in camps. She wrote everyday a journal and one day, she lost it. But she remembered everything and she wrote it once again like a duty of memory. Everyone has to know what it happened there.
When i started to travel by my own, i visited the areas where the Jews used to live. I spent three weeks in Poland from a city to another one in 1996. I have been in different cities visiting the cemeteries, the areas… and Auschwitz. I was looking for an understanding of killing people en masse just because they were Jewish… I have some answers so far.
My first time in NY in 1998, i have been in the Lower East Side to find them. I never heard about Williamsburg because all the tourists books talked about Manhattan. Internet was limited in the research at this time.
I have been in Coney Island and saw the Jewish Russian but i couldn't imagine there was an area as Williamsburg was.
Oh my first time there was during Savuot. All these men in black that i was supposed to see in the Jewish area of Warsaw were there. I was biking and i couldn't stop watching them. I was totally fascinated: a call from the deepest of my heart told me to come back and spend time.
I was with friend and a man came to my boyfriends asking them to follow him. He has to switch on the AC in a room full of Hasidic sweating as hell. He was their Shabbos boy. I stayed outside with the other friend, a girl. She asked me if we have to follow them. I said no, they can't ask women and we are wearing non modest clothes. But i was totally attracted to follow them in mind. I was looking forward to hearing what my friends will say. The Hasidic wanted him to drink something, he was their 'Messiah'.
I wanted to be a man just at this moment.