I Didn’t Say Goodbye

Claudine Vegh

Aug 2019 · Plunkett Lake Press

About this ebook

Approximately 1,500,000 Jewish children were murdered during the Holocaust — almost ninety percent of those alive in Europe in 1939. The vast majority of those who survived were hidden, either with their parents, or with strangers. For decades, they were considered too young to remember their experiences during the Second World War. I Didn’t Say Goodbye, by Claudine Vegh, a hidden child who grew up to become a child psychiatrist, was one of the earliest studies of a group known in France as “les enfants de déportés,” or “children of the deported.” The adults Dr Vegh interviewed were all hidden between the ages of five and thirteen. One or both of their parents were murdered in the Holocaust. Thirty-five years later, in the 1970s, many still felt as though they were alive “by accident.”

“I Didn’t Say Goodbye, published in France in 1979, is an extraordinary collection of interviews with 17 French men and women who lost one or both parents in the deportations — and never talked about it... Anguished and raw, [the interviews] dramatize the awful inability to mourn.” — Wendy Kaminer, The New York Times Book Review

“They were all children during the last war. They were all taken away from their families and kept in hiding... They are children of people who were deported... A small but worthy addition to the archives of Holocaust testimony.” — Kirkus Reviews

“[A] book of haunted and haunting testimonies by men and women who lost one or both parents in the Holocaust.” — Chattanooga News-Free Press

About the author

Claudine Vegh (née Rozengard) was born in Paris in 1934. Her father was from Warsaw and her mother from the Ukraine. In 1939, the Rozengard family left Paris and took refuge in Saint Girons, in southwestern France near the Pyrenees. Claudine’s parents had to flee the area in 1941, leaving Claudine behind with their neighbors in Saint Girons. Her father died while in hiding near Grenoble. In 1945, Claudine returned to Paris to live with her mother. She attended Lycée Hélène Boucher and medical school. She is a child psychiatrist who has always practiced in Paris. Her two children are also psychiatrists.