I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Rating | ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Through the Morgue Door is the story of Colette Brull-Ulmann and her role in saving over one hundred Jewish children from certain death had the Nazis had their way.
Brull-Ulmann had decided by age fourteen that she wanted to be a pediatrician. In 1941 she was twenty-one and in her second year of studying medicine. She was an intern at the Rothschild Hospital, the only hospital in Paris that allowed Jewish physicians and patients.
By 1942 Brull-Ulmann and her family were forced to register as Jews and her father was arrested and sent to Drancy. This did not stop her from undertaking the mission that would ultimately save so many children, under the guidance of the hospital's social worker, Claire Heyman.
Things had become so dire that by 1943 Brull-Ulmann had fled the hospital. She continued her resistance work however. Working with her father's network, she gathered intelligence and delivered it for De Gaulle's agency until at last France was liberated in 1945.
This memoir is suffocating at times as Brull-Ulmann recounts what it took to survive in Nazi-occupide France. We get the details of how food rations and transportation difficulties made the work of resistance fighters that much harder in a world where they were already constantly in danger. Brull-Ulmann's fear of being caught never leaves the reader, even upon finishing the book.
Brull-Ulmann's voice is clear and frank about what happened in her time at Rothchild. She does not point to herself with the insinuation of, "Look how good I am", but discusses herself as one of several within the hospital doing whatever it took to smuggle as many children out as possible. She and her co-workers helped because it was the right thing to do, there was simply no other option. The author also does not shy away from the not-so-happy endings, the children they could not save. Her sorrow over these children has stayed with her, so many decades later.
While I have read several books about various resistance fighters and activities across Europe, this was the first I learned of the activities at Rothschild. I do wish this had been a larger portion of the book, detailing at least a few of her trips out with the children in her care. I wonder if the memories were simply too overwhelming for the author to give more information. I can imagine she thought of the ones she couldn't save just as often as the ones she was able to get to safety.
While I do wish for more detail, to know more about the children who were spirited away, this is an important memoir. There can never be too many stories of helpers, to prove once again that we can and do care about one another. We can and will do the right thing, when we are in that moment.
Highly recommended.
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