L'histoire d'Annette Zelman (2022)

In [year unspecified], Paris lives under a curfew. Annette Zelman and her friends Bella, Claude, and Jean spend entire days discussing poetry and literature at the Café des Arts in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Annette is attracted to Claude, but Bella keeps a close watch. Annette is a young woman passionate about art and literature who takes drawing classes at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, directed by Paul Landowski. Jean is very much in love with her, and she is very much in love with him. She teaches him some Yiddish basics and introduces him to her family, where he is warmly welcomed. In turn, Jean introduces Annette to his family, who belong to Paris’s Catholic upper bourgeoisie. He takes her to a party hosted by his parents, where Annette is horrified to hear the antisemitic remarks made by Jean’s godfather, the actor Robert Le Vigan, who has just returned from a tour in Germany and recounts that [the source leaves the anecdote unfinished]. Also present are Charles Laville, the organizer of the exhibition The Jew and France, and the lawyer Juliette Goublet, who once defended Communists but now expresses her admiration for the exhibition to Laville. Annette and Jean want to marry, against Jean’s parents’ wishes because of Annette’s background. Meanwhile, the Germans’ execution of the son of one of Moshé Zelman’s suppliers prompts the family to cross the demarcation line and settle in Limoges. Annette refuses to go with them and stays in Paris. Robert Le Vigan, Jean’s godfather, suggests that Hubert Jausion contact a friend, Inspector Jalby, who works for the Gestapo directly under SS Captain Theodor Dannecker, the official responsible for Jewish affairs. Jausion meets Dannecker and Jalby at Gestapo headquarters and asks them to “send a signal” to the young Jewish woman. Annette is arrested at the academy and taken to police headquarters on suspicion of subversive activities. Given the very harsh conditions of her detention, Hubert Jausion goes back to the Gestapo to try to undo what he has done, but Dannecker is in Berlin and Jalby refuses to act in his superior’s absence. Hubert Jausion unsuccessfully appeals to Fernand de Brinon, Vichy’s delegate in the occupied zone. The order requiring Jews to wear the star in the occupied zone comes into effect on [date unspecified]. A few days later, Annette is transferred to the Tourelles camp, where she tells Jean that conditions are better than at police headquarters: she shares her cell with just one other girl, and the food is edible. Hubert Jausion turns to the lawyer Juliette Goublet, who knows Dannecker personally. She offers to intervene but demands a concession: Jean and Annette must give up the marriage, which Annette refuses to do. But Jean signs the document and then persuades Annette. However, Maître Goublet puts herself at the service of the Reich by taking charge of the women’s section of the New Europe Youth and leaves for Germany. Hubert Jausion then goes to the Gestapo and offers himself as a hostage in place of Annette, in response to the terrorism, but Jalby tells him there is nothing more that can be done for Annette, because the Germans are organizing a mass transfer of the Jewish population to Eastern Europe. Jean joins the Zelman family in Limoges, which he now considers his true family. For the next two years, Jean stays with the Zelmans to finish his novel, as Annette had asked him to. He gets a contract with Gallimard; sometimes he works all night, and in the morning Michèle, Annette’s younger sister, who is in fact the film’s narrator, types up the manuscript. Months go by without any news of Annette. Camille and Guy, the Zelman sons, leave to fight alongside the Allies against the Nazis. Jean says he is ready to travel across Germany and Poland to find the woman he loves. After the liberation of Paris, Jean works for the newspaper Le Franc-Tireur, covering the Allies’ advance in Lorraine. The detachment he is accompanying falls into an ambush; many soldiers die, and Jean is reported missing. In [year unspecified], the Zelman parents learn that Annette had been deported to Auschwitz and had died a month after arriving at the camp.