Patty Vest:
Welcome to Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College. I'm Patty Vest.

Mark Wood:
And I'm Mark Wood. This season on Sagecast we'll be talking to current and former Pomona faculty about the personal, professional and intellectual journeys that brought them to where they are today.

Patty Vest:
Today we're absolutely delighted to talk to Monique Saigal-Escudero, a Meredith Professor of romance languages and literature. Monique taught at Pomona for 45 years and was the recipient of the WIG Award for Excellence In Teaching.

Mark Wood:
Welcome, Monique. It's good to have you with us.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
Well, I'm glad to be here.

Mark Wood:
We want to talk first about your life story, which is an amazing one. Can you begin by telling us a little bit about your childhood in France?

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
Ooh, that's a long story.

Mark Wood:
Yeah.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
Well, I was born in Paris in a Jewish area because I have Jewish grandparents and parents. And I was born in 1938, I am not ashamed of telling you what my age is. However, I had a sister who was born a year after me and she now lives in Washington, D.C. She's had all sorts of medical problems. And for me I was lucky, but it was more mental, psychological I should say.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
When I was three years old, that was 1942 and in France we had Hitler called Peyton and [inaudible 00:01:52] Peyton who was the great hero of World War 1, and a French people just loved him. And when France declared war to Germany, September 3rd, 1939 the German soldiers entered Paris and things were not going well at all. So nine months later, Peyton signed the armistice with Hitler.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And in September 1940 the Jews had to register as Jews. And in 1942 they would have to wear the Jewish star outside of their clothing so they could be seen and arrested. So Peyton became the chief of state. France was no longer a republic. It became a state. And he was the chief of state in July 1940. And since he had signed the armistice with Hitler, things were not going well at all, not only for the Jews, but also the communist and the gypsies and the Mormons, et cetera.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
There was a whole group but the Jews of course were the biggest group. Anyway, when I was three years old, Peyton had created an organization called [inaudible 00:03:16] the national relief. And within, there was another or an annex called the family of the prisoner. And the family of the prisoner was sending children whose father had been a prisoner or had died at war to spend a month vacation with a host family in Southwest France.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
So my mother tried to enroll me with his group, but she was told that since we were Jewish, we were not accepted. And of course I must add where the train was going because the kids were going in a train, it was going to the occupied zone. So that would have been dangerous for Jewish children. But anyway, since I was not accepted the 26th of August 1942 that was the departure.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
My grandmother threw me in the train where these children were and all these children had the name of the family, a little badge with the name of the family with whom there were supposed to stay for a month. But of course, since I was not enrolled, I didn't have any name or any badge or nothing. So when we arrived to destination, there was no one to pick me up since I was not enrolled.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
But there was a young woman, Jacqueline Balestre, who was almost 21 years old and she had come with her father who had been wounded in the First World War. And he had received many awards for his courage and they had asked for a four year old little boy. But this 40 year old little boy didn't show up. It was her idea. She talked to the person in charge who was the mayor of that town.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
The town was Darks and she said, "what about this little girl over there? This little girl who is crying". And she actually came to me and said, because she's a very Catholic lady. She said, "an angel sent me to you". And so she said, "where could we take this little girl since the little boy whom we asked didn't come. So that he said the man in charge [inaudible 00:05:55] He said why don't you take her and we'll let you know who she is. And so they did find out, et cetera. So then I was supposed to go back to Paris in 26 September 26, 1942.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
But it turned out that it was the raid of the Romanian Jews and my grandmother, who was our babysitter was taken. But I forgot to say that what happened September 24th, 1942 it was the raid of the Romanian Jews. So the French police went to her apartment to pick her up. And of course since Jews had to register as Jews, she had done her job but when the French police arrived to her apartment, she wasn't there, but her concierge was too happy to let the French police know where she was because if you denounced Jews, you were rewarded.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
So the French police went to my mother's apartment where my grandmother was babysitting my sister. And my grandmother was also there with her son Danielle, who was 18. And when you were between 18 and 50 you were sent to Germany to work for German industry. So when the French police knocked at the door, my grandmother told her son to go hide in the back bedroom. And my uncle repeated to me that he heard the French police say you could take a suitcase with a few things, you won't be gone for long.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And my grandmother answered to go I'm going, I don't need anything. And my uncle was supposed to be 96 years old, Christmas day, this 2018 and he died a few months ago. So it was an accident in his apartment. But anyway, so he has given me a lot of information that I know now and I put in my book.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And of course the lady who saved me when I was three years old is now 98 years old and she has a memory which is better than mine and she has given me a lot of information also. So I ended up staying with this family ballast. There was her father, her mother, her grandfather, her grandmother, and across the street was her cousin who was the same age and her aunt and her paternal grandmother. This was the occupied zone and every family had to give a bedroom to two German soldiers.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
So the family I was with had two German soldiers. When my grandmother was taken. Then my uncle left the apartment and contacted my mother, told her what happened and my mother sent a telegram to the ballast family asking them if they could keep me a while longer and find a place for my sister. So I ended up staying with his family for eight years. But Jacqueline Ballis, that was the name of the young woman, she said we need to baptize the girls.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
Because my sister, nobody was able to tell me who took my sister to the family she stayed with because it was not the same village where I was. We were separated for eight years with my sister. We were baptized when my sister got to be sent to another family in another town. She was brought to where I was a small village of 500 inhabitants and we were both baptized and I was raised Catholic and I did my communion, my confirmation. I lived eight years with that family.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And in 1995 we had a president in France, Jacques Chirac, who asked forgiveness for the people, the victims who had been killed because of Peyton and because of Hitler. And at that time I honored that family. I decided to honor the ballast family. It was done in Paris, and I say Yad Vashem, but it was the Jewish Memorial, but it was in Paris it was not in Israel.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And the Israeli ambassador gave my godmother a diploma to thank her and her family for what they had done during the war. And then in 2007 she received a Legion of honor and she said a few things. And her last sentence I forget exactly the words, but we are never wrong when we choose the road of love. It was that. So this woman's that I told you, she's now 98 years old and I see her every year and we speak every Sunday because in France if you have TV, internet and phone, she can call me free here.

Mark Wood:
Yeah.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
So we talked for an hour.

Mark Wood:
So how much of all of that did you know as a child?

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
I knew nothing.

Mark Wood:
As far as you were concerned you were about us or.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
No, no, I knew I had parents because I slept in the bedroom with the grandparents. And on the chimney there was the picture of my father and my mother and I was told these were my parents. And at one point I guess it was still during the war. My mother came to visit me with my uncle, with her brother and then my uncle left and my mother was outside on a bicycle and there was a German soldier who was dating a woman from the village. And when he saw my mother on the bicycle, he said to the woman, you see that woman, she's Jewish. And so that evening she came to tell our neighbors and the neighbors came to tell us.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And so they hid my mother in the attic. And that evening a German soldier came with a dog and he was not a Nazi thought other guy was not a Nazi either because he would have taken care of my mother a lot faster. And the German soldier who could come in evening, he was not a Nazi either because he didn't ask to come in the house. So my mother was able to leave during the night.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
But my mother never told me anything about what happened during the war about what she did about my father and her grandparents. She said she repressed everything. And also the one interesting thing for me is that my mother had said that her marriage to my father was an arranged marriage. But I found out that it wasn't true because when my mother died in 2007 my aunt gave me a box full of letters that my father wrote to her every day.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
He went to a dance and my mother was a great dancer. She was even a ballet dance, but she was a great regular dancer and she danced in all sorts of erotic, sexy ways. And so he danced with her, but he said, Oh, I'm not going to marry this woman because she's just nothing. She has no brain and she will not be faith or she won't be able to cook or take care of me. And so when she left the dance, he didn't even know her name was Rachel. But I suppose there was a Jewish dance because somebody knew her address and gave her address to my father who was interested in seeing her again.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
But this was 19, that was not 2020, where people do different things when they first meet. Anyway, he wrote a letter to my mother and he came to her apartment, and my mother at the time lived with her mother, et cetera, et cetera. That was 1937. So at 1938 I was born. And then he died in a trench as a soldier in 15th of June 1940.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
So that is why I should have been able to enroll with these students, with these children because my father was killed at war, but that didn't workout.

Mark Wood:
Now you also didn't know you were Jewish.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
I never thought of it. I don't know. What happened when I was 12 years old, so I'd been eight years in my family. My mother met an American who was in the war, as an American and spoke French very well. And he was looking for a room to rent and she said, I have a room to rent if you want. So then they got together and they got married and so they decided, and I guess his mother, his name was Gene Abrams.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
So then his mother and his sister had come to Paris because of their wedding. And so they decided to come and pick me up. And me my way of resisting was that I had the mumps and everybody was crying and I was crying and it was just a terrible time. And for some reason I couldn't stand the mother of my stepfather, but she didn't speak French and I didn't speak English.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And then the sisters spoke some French, but because I had the mumps, that family had put big cottons on my ears. And so the sister of my stepfather, she jumped what is her, those brown, Oh, she took them out. And it was a totally different types of life. For eight years, I lived in the village of 500 inhabits, no toilets, no refrigerator. It was simple life.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And then I get to live with my mother and her husband and my sister, whom I barely knew. I didn't really know her. The American way we have to eat ketchup. We have to drink milk when you eat. I was used to drinking water and wine. Because these people, they made their own wine. So give me water and wine in it.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
No milk and milk after the dinner, after the meal, not wine. It was horrible. So then in 1953 we came to the United States because he worked for the American government. So he had to come here every three years. And so in 1953 where we stayed with his family in Los Angeles and my sister and I became American citizen just by saying I do, that was it. And then back to Paris, I wet to high school there Holy Say and then that's when I learned English and Spanish.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
But I wouldn't say that I was fluent. And then in 1956 we came back to Los Angeles. And this is when I decided to stay here because I wasn't happy at home. My mother, she was a newlywed. You have a newlywed with two children. One is 12 the other one is 11 she has no idea how to raise children. Anyway, then I came here and I went to LA City College. I became a nanny.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
I lived with my stepfather's oldest sister who just adopted a baby. They said I could live with them and my mother gave some money. I don't know how much, but anyway, the point is that I lived in the room with the baby, took care of the baby. That was the summer but then in September, October, I forget when school started, I went to LA City College to learn English and then I went to UCLA, et cetera, et cetera. So that's that.

Patty Vest:
Monique, you said you were separated from your sister when you were so young. When do you reunite and tell us about that relationship. How did that evolve?

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
I remember that she lived in a small town, and I remember I had gone there, I forget what exam it was, but it was for the Catholic thing. It was some exam that I had to take and I have to take this exam where she lived. So that's when I spent some time with her that day because it was only six kilometers from where I live. But nobody nobody could take me there.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
So I didn't see her and she told me once that I had given her chewing gum when I went that day. We didn't become close, but then later she married an idiot. Well he was too young. He was 19 you can't get married when you're 19 and she was 21 I think. And then he took up with her best friend and then she got divorced, but she was so close to my stepfather that she took his name. So her name is Abrams, my stepfather's name. So we weren't very close but when I got to be in my forties 42, 43 I had some personal problems. And so she came to California and that's when we reunited and we became close and we'd talk to each other every day.

Mark Wood:
How did you begin to piece together the pieces of this story? You didn't know it as a child. When did you begin to realize that there was a story there that you needed to know and how did you pull it together?

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
Well, there was one thing before in 1995 as a matter of fact, when I honored this family. What gave me an idea to honor this family is there was a woman who lived in Claremont or that Myers and her husband was a poet and he taught at Pitzer and they were Jewish. And she had honored her conceals who had saved her, but she hadn't stayed with us. She was with her parents. It was a different story.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
So when she said she was going to honor her concierge, I decided to honor the family who had saved me. But what happened is that in 2001 there was a professor of history at Cal State Los Angeles who wanted to bring a group of people to visit the former internment camps in France. And I had never heard of that.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
I know there had been internment camps in France because in France nobody taught you about where we were two. Not even where we were one when I was there. So I said, maybe that's my chance now because by then, I was married. I got married in 1972 to a Catholic man from Bolivia. As a matter of fact, I was more Catholic than he was. He didn't know very much.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
I could tell you, but that's not the moment to tell you about why he wasn't definitely, but the point is that I took. My children were baptized. I took them to church there, that communion. He only came to church for Easter and Christmas. But his family was extremely Catholic, of course. Anyway, I wrote to that professor and I said, yes, I would like to to join this group.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And I asked Pomona College if they would help me and they said they would help me so that was nice. However, the thing didn't come out. It did not work out. Maybe because he didn't have enough people. So I asked him to send me the information and I told my Catholic husband, why don't you and I go and we do it on our own. So he was all for it.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
In 2002 we went to visit. We didn't visit all of them, but there wasn't very much to see. There was only one that had thing. Don C was actually an internment camp that has little museum, but you could only visit it between two and four on Saturday afternoon. Since I was there on Saturday, I was able to visit, but it was just a bunch of photos, nothing big. And a cart, a wagon, what do you call them this team where they threw the people in this train and I can't think of the word now [crosstalk 00:24:26]

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
It was like for animals, something where you put animals in there. I can think of the cattle car, that's it. It was a cattle car so there's one as a model, not the real thing. Because I did find the real thing in Poland and in Auschwitz and I took the picture. Then we went and another thing that was in this, [inaudible 00:25:03] beside the museum and the cattle car was a tunnel because before 1943 it was a little bit easier in France because was taken care of by French people, not Germans.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
But after 1943 German said it's much stricter. And before 1943 you could send packages, you could send your laundry out. And I interviewed one woman who sent her laundry out and her sister had hidden a message in her pink Brazil with pink thread. Anyway, it was interesting. So anyways, we went there. The interesting thing about that trip beside the internment camps that didn't have much of anything was the Protestant enclave. I have a lot of respect for Christian people.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And I'm not talking about the Catholic, I'm talking about the Protestants. It was near the outs, [foreign language 00:26:05] and the pastor of this town, although it was all the surroundings also that protected Jews. And it said that it was 5,000 people who were saved by those Christians, but 3,500 Jews.

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
And when I went there, I went there with my husband and I interviewed people there, but I didn't put them in my book because they're men and I have women in there. So the funny thing is about several years ago when I was teaching at Pomona, College when I was teaching literary analysis, I told my students about my book that I was doing and I told them about [foreign language 00:26:56]. And this one student raised her hand and said, "my grandmother lives in Minnesota and she is the daughter of that pastor that you told us about".

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
So I was so excited. So she gave me the grandma's email. So we started connecting through email. And then one day the woman said to me, her name was Nancy [foreign language 00:27:23] Hewitt. And she said to me, I'm coming to that area. She was giving a talk somewhere and she said, "could I stay with you"?

Monique Saigal-Escudero:
She thought that Los Angeles was right near. It is close to Claremont, but still. So she said, "could I stay three days and three nights with you"? And I said, of course. And she wanted to visit the area and I was so nervous, I was always getting off at the wrong exit. And when I took her she had arrived in Ontario. And when she was leaving, when I took her to the airport, I thought I was on the freeway 10 but I was on the freeway 210 and I've been in, Oh my God. But she had wanted to leave so early that it's saved me, because I ended up, so anyway, that was the interesting part.

Mark Wood:
So for instance, your grandmother, you said that your grandmother was deported to Auschwitz. When did you learn that? How did you learn that?

Monique Saigal:
Well I don't know how I learned it but in 1949, my mother didn't tell me that in 1949, but in the papers that I found. I found out that in 1949 she had received a paper, I think it was from the police, saying that, it has all the information about my grandmother and it was not written with letters, it was written with letters, not figures. Like, the 30th of September 1942, with letters. And her name and when she was born and how she was gassed at Auschwitz, the 30th of September 1942. My oldest daughter said to me, "Mom, since your grandmother was gassed at Auschwitz the 30th of September, we need to go 30th of September." So we went in 2015 and it was a horrible experience for me. You know, when you see it on TV or in a film, it has nothing to do that. When you are there in person and you know your grandmother has gone through all that.

Monique Saigal:
You know what they did? They, they selected people, you know that, but they shaved them, they put them naked. In those days, I remember myself, I never saw a woman naked the whole time I lived with my godmother. Women did not undress even in front of women. So they undressed the women, they shaved them from top to bottom and in Auschwitz has a machine that shows you that they were making, like for instance, socks for Marines with hair. They were doing textile things. So it is, it was, I mean. I'm glad I went. I would have never gone otherwise. I was too scared.

Mark Wood:
Yeah. So you were born Jewish, you grew up Catholic. How have those two religious sort of poles of your life affected you through the years? How, where are you now and you're in your-

Monique Saigal:
I'm going to tell you. I'm proud that I'm Jewish, but I'm not religiously Jewish. I'm culturally and emotionally and now I go to an Episcopalian church in Ontario. I discovered it because my neighbor, I don't know if you've heard [Morris Berger 00:00:07:48], his name was [Morris Berger 00:07:48]. He used to go there and he died. There was a Memorial there. So I went there. I never knew what church he went to. I really liked the atmosphere because they're very liberal. I go every Sunday morning, there are two women in front of me who are gay and they say it, they heard themselves. I like that. I just like the fact that it's liberal. They accept everybody. And I know some Jewish people and they don't say anything bad against the Jews. And you know what? They have women who serve the pastor and it's free. I like it.

Monique Saigal:
So I also was discovered. I mean, I don't know because I gave those PowerPoint presentation and some rabbis have, I don't know how we found out, but some rabbi, [inaudible 00:03:41] Riverside invited me because he had been told. And there was another rabbi at Huntington beach or something. Anyways, so I've gone to different groups, Jewish groups, and this rabbi from Riverside lives in Claremont and he is, I think, an Orthodox. I have never gone to a religious thing, but he invites me for Shabbat and he invites students and I go there. I even give him money to help him out, but I don't want. I said an Orthodox rabbi, you can't even hug him. You can't even touch him and you're supposed to be dressed a certain way. Me, I go in shorts, I go, whatever and he accepts anybody because, I've been to Shabbats with my husband and it's okay. He's very free that way. But no, not religious. But if I had to choose between Jewish and, Catholic, well I don't want to say, I don't want to-

Mark Wood:
But your identity is somewhere? Is basically independent of those things now?

Monique Saigal:
Yes, it's independent. But when I hear about if I see a paper about Auschwitz or about the Jews, I will read it in a paper. I will not necessarily read about the Catholic people. But I will read because now that I've become so knowledgeable about what happened to my grandmother, I'm sorry I missed all these years. When I started this book, cause I started interviewing women in the French resistance cause I didn't know what to do with all my information. There's so much information. There were not that many about women in the resistance. So that's why I started that. My mother knew I was doing that and she was very pleased that I was becoming interested in my Jewish origins. But I, now that I've done all these research and I've written this book, am sorry that I didn't know then what I know now because I would have been closer to my mother. I would have understood her better and now it's too late.

Monique Saigal:
And you know, I was living in Claremont and she was leaving in Geneva. So I wasn't seeing her very often, especially after her husband's parents died. So this is something that makes me feel sorry because I had no idea about what happened. I'm sure it must have been difficult for her when she was told that her mother had been sent to Auschwitz. She didn't know my father died in 1940, she only found out in 1942. That's why I should have been able to go with that group of children. I should have been able to be accepted. So now all I do, is give PowerPoint presentations. I think I must have given about 300 by now. I was at the Holocaust museum last Saturday and February, I forget what date. I'm also going back there to speak to Mexican students who are coming there.

Mark Wood:
So it's about your book or is it about your life experience?

Monique Saigal:
Well, what interests people is my story. When I was at the Holocaust museum last Saturday, that's about the third time or the fourth time that I go there. I've been there before, it's the real museum. It's not the museum of tolerance. It's a Holocaust museum. This time, there was an 11 year old girl who was fascinated, who said, "I want you to come to my school, I want to buy your book." And 11, 11, and so I just love to do it because a lot of people don't know who Pétain was, Le Maréchal Pétain. People don't know that we had a Hitler in France and they think it was just in Germany. Actually in Germany, now, they're nicer. They're not the same. The young German people, they feel bad about what happened. You know, it's not-

Patty Vest:
They talk about it, they acknowledge it.

Monique Saigal:
Yes. When we went to visit Le Struthof in France, it was one concentrate. There were interment camps, but there was only, they were, weren't in camps in Southern France that were used for the Spanish refugees in the time of, what's his guy's name, 1936, Franco in the time of Franco. And then they were used for, for the people you know, that they wanted to get rid of. But there was only one concentration camp in France and it's in Alsace. You know, your wife must know about this. It's called Le Struthof and in Germany there is one [inaudible 00:08:51] Stutthof. There's no, R, Germany. But in France, Le Struthof, S-T-R-U-T-H-O-F.

Monique Saigal:
In Le Struthof that's where they had, they were gassing people. They were, they had the, that's the one I show in my PowerPoint because I took a picture of that gas, not the gas chamber where they, the crematorium I took, that's the only place that had, that I know of in France, that had a crematorium. And we've visited it with my husband and he actually took pictures there. But afterwards, every other summer I would go on my own to interview women and to take more pictures of, different things. So a lot of the women whom I interviewed now have died and I'm glad I was able to interview them. So to tell you the, to go back to your question, when I was at the, at the Holocaust museum, they wanted to know more about the women whom I interviewed. So, but sometimes they had enough.

Monique Saigal:
So depends who I talk to. If I talk to older people, like I'm young. No, but San [inaudible], San Antonio guardians or people like that people sort of fall asleep depending on the time.

Patty Vest:
[Monique 00:10:32], storytelling is such a big part of your life. Your story, your personal story is so amazing. How did you decide to go into academia and into what, what interested you in French literature? Like how did you make that, reconciling all your personal story and from so young, how did you decide to go into teaching?

Monique Saigal:
Well, I told you when I went to UCLA and I got my BA and then I needed money. So they told me that I could be a teaching assistant in French, but I would have to take graduate classes in literature, upper division. And when I was in France, there were two things that I disliked.

Monique Saigal:
I don't think I ever really had literature and for, I don't remember, but I wasn't interested in French literature and I hated history. [crosstalk 00:11:13] So then they told me if I became, so then I decided I was a teaching assistant for three years, so I had to take literature classes and I liked it. I loved it. So, and especially poetry, then I wrote my thesis on, on Victor Hugo, but one poem, I don't know how I did that. I don't understand. It's called [foreign language 00:11:41] and I, wrote 400 pages. I don't even know where my thesis is. I don't know what I did with it. But anyway, so I did that. And actually my, the professor who was my, thesis director, he was antisemitic. He was Egyptian. And he had this long, I remember once he had a long discussion or discourse.

Monique Saigal:
Now his speech with [Putiani 00:12:09] was just the opposite put. [Putiani 00:12:11] was a gay man of Italian origin who was taught literature, contemporary, modern literature, French literature, and he was too pro Jews. And the other one was anti and they had this, this speech, I mean this presentation. So I don't think I went to it. I don't remember it. I know they did that.

Monique Saigal:
So then I got, when I got my PhD, Pomona college was looking for, I know I didn't have the PhD yet. I had taken the exam, but I had not written my thesis yet. I had started, but I wasn't finished. The Pomona College looking for a professor of Spanish and French. Well, I think at first it was to replace [Howard Young 00:13:08], who was a Spanish teacher. And when they saw that, well, I could teach French. They hired me for doing both. I was supposed to be for a year. I was supposed to replace [Howard Young 00:13:19] , but then luckily they kept me for three, four years later today. That's how it happened. So I didn't really choose, I just fell in it.

Mark Wood:
Now you tell us a little bit about your second book. [Crosstalk 00:13:30].

Monique Saigal:
Another book? It was before in 2000. I mean, this is the second book

Mark Wood:
Can you tell us about your first book?

Monique Saigal:
The first book I tried to, it was about, it was called riding [foreign language 00:13:48]. Riding Link Between Mother and Daughter during the books of three contemporary French women who had a problem with their mother. And so I wrote this book in French, but it's more for people who are interested in, it's not like this one, this one anybody can read because these are interviews. It's easy to read. The other one, it was more, I wouldn't say intellectual, but it was based on their books,

Mark Wood:
So it was literary analysis.

Monique Saigal:
Yeah, it was literary analysis exactly. Thank you. It was that. So, these three women whom I interviewed are still alive and, [Anneire No 00:00:14:31], and [Anneire No 00:14:34] is pretty famous. She actually just wrote another book.

Monique Saigal:
I saw her on [foreign language 00:15:20] and then [Jenivrere 00:15:08]. I still see her when I go to France every year. So [Jenivrere, Anneire No 00:15:02], and who's the other one? I think of who the other one is right now. Well anyway, this was published also in France. But I haven't translated, I haven't asked anybody to translate them and I don't know is anybody would be interested in. I don't even remember what I said, but I know that the three of them had a problem with her mother.

Mark Wood:
Why did you decide to write that book? What drew you to that subject?

Monique Saigal:
Because I had a problem with my mother. Yeah, I had a problem with my mother. I had some hostility. I remembered she would say, for instance, when you were four years old, when you went for you. I said, you don't know what I did when I was four years old because she could have picked me up in 1945 she picked me up in 1950. So sometimes I had hostility, but I'm really sorry. I didn't know what she had gone through. It's just [inaudible 00:16:03].

Patty Vest:
So how did you know she could have picked you up in 45?

Monique Saigal:
Well, because that's when the war was over and she was actually in Paris. It was 1944 but I mean total. It was 1944 and 1945. But I don't know what she, I think she got, she married somebody else first. Yes, she had my father and then for a very short time, I think she was married to a Frenchman who was in the resistance. I don't know much about it, but then she married her American husband in 1950, that I know. So that was for her, the one, the husband who counts, but for some reason they were not able to have babies to have children, so, and he loved children. That's how it goes.

Patty Vest:
How different was your life once the war ended?

Monique Saigal:
[crosstalk 00:16:55] Well, it was different because I no longer lived with the same family in the same place. I was the youngest at school there in that village it was a small village, so it was divided in, in rows. One row we had six students and the other row, you know, we were different age. I even, on my PowerPoint, show a picture of the class, of the children when I was seven, so I was still there. So I show that picture.

Patty Vest:
Are you so close to your godmother?

Monique Saigal:
Oh yeah. We talk every Sunday. We speak every Sunday. The thing that happened is that 1950 then I went back to France. I Went back to visit them the following year. Her mother, I don't forget if she had cancer or what, but her mother died and, I don't think it was the following year. I don't know if it was the following year, but either 19. 1952 that's it.

Monique Saigal:
1951 yes. I went back because 1952 she got married. When I was still living with them in 1949 a young man with lots of diplomas came to start the model farm with special machine to, for the cows to draw the milk. And every Sunday we used to go to church in the morning and in the afternoon and then all the young people of the village would get together and we would play, we would look for things that were hidden that kind of games. And so when this young man came, his name was [Leonel De Sankonta 00:18:56] when he came, he joined the group. And so then at that time he started taking care of the men, the boys and my godmother of the girls, the women and my godmother, she put on, they put on plays, she just loved theater.

Monique Saigal:
So then he started becoming interested in my godmother. My godmother is very formal. And I remember when this one time that they went to a little town, little. We must have driven there and we were sitting in a park, the three of us cause I was the chaperone and here I was 11 then I guess it was before I left, I must have been 11. I was sitting on the bench with them and I was so jealous because he was putting his arm around her. Then at one point she asked me, he asked me to marry him. What do you think?

Patty Vest:
And what did you say?

Monique Saigal:
Oh yeah sure. I don't know what I said. But they got married and they got married the following year. They got married in 1952. So of course I was part of the wedding and my sister also, we were both part of the wedding. Then they moved somewhere else to, not Alsace but to the champagne place then. So [foreign language 00:20:21]. And then I think maybe for one year I might have not have seen her or two. And then she had three children. And then in 1976 I had, my first child was born in 1973 and my second in 1975. 1976 her middle boy, she had three boys, was coming to visit us and he was going to. He was going to fly up New York and take a Greyhound and come to California and he was going to stay with us.

Monique Saigal:
But something happened, I got a telegram saying he was arriving. And then three days later I get a telegram saying he had died. It was terrible. He, he died in that village. He was driving, he was with a friend. The friend was lying down. He went through the front window and of course, no belts at the time. And he hit his head against a thing that hold, that says how many miles, kilometers they're thick, they're bricks. So again, then I had the telegram saying this, I could not believe it. So I said, well, I have to go to Paris. So I left with my youngest child who was, I think she was, what, eight years at eight months, eight or nine months. She was wonderful here, over there. She was a problem. She wouldn't eat, she wouldn't sleep.

Monique Saigal:
And it was an apartment. [inaudible 00:22:06], I don't cry, this is an apartment. So and then people would come and visit her and she was crying. It was a very tough time, but in a way, I'm glad I went. I think it was good for her that I was there because I had that small child who was not always crying, but still. So then that was the beginning. I started to go there pretty often. As a matter of fact, we bought an apartment in 1989 next to her and there's a balcony and we used to, we could go out on the balcony and go right to her living room. But then her husband died in 2009, so then she sold the apartment and now she lives in [Po 00:23:12]. But I go every year. As a matter of fact, I'm going in, at the end of March.

Patty Vest:
Nice. Right. Good.

Mark Wood:
So on that note, we're going to have to wrap this up. Thanks to Monique Saigal.

Patty Vest:
Monique thank you for sharing your story. We really appreciate it. [crosstalk 00:23:12] No, that's great. And to all who have stuck with us this far, thanks for listening to Sagecast, the podcast at Pomona college. Until next time.