Marguerite De Bourgogne

1. Eric and Charline (Part 1)

Eric Prager, 1909 to 1999

V ienna-1909 Eric Prager was born to a wealthy industrialist Heinrich Prager and his wife, Olga. He had a sister, Margaret, five years older than he. Eric’s first memory of his dad involves the two of them riding in the 1914 Duisenberg being driven through the streets of Vienna, Austria by the family chauffeur.

Sadly, Heinrich passed away a few years later at 59 years of age leaving behind his wife, Olga and his children, Eric 7 years old and Margret 12 years old. An uncle bought Heinrich’s company for a song, thus cheating the widow out of a small fortune. The family still had the three-story house, a cook, and maids and enough money to keep them.

Eric was precocious in many ways, especially when it came to women.

Eric was a favorite among his teachers. They loved his curly dark hair and his looks. His second- grade teacher would comb his hair every morning when he got to school. As he grew older, girls liked him too. From ages 13-14 he ran after the household maids to pinch them. They had the speediest maids in the neighborhood as they ran to escape his grasp.

They were afraid to tell his mother for fear of loosing their jobs. But, one day Margret discovered the truth, he got into trouble.

He played soccer and due to his mother’s insistence, the violin.

His mother had had to open a small perfumerie downstairs of the house because they needed the money. His sister worked in the store regularly and Eric worked whenever he wanted, as a spoiled child that he was. He had a good heart, however, and he gave away whatever he had. Once on the streets of Vienna, he saw that the man was cold and it was the end of December. The man had no coat. He was shivering. Eric, at 19 years of age, had just received a beautiful new coat from his mother. He gave it to the man, knowing full well that he had an old coat at home and knew that he would not be without one. Everyone was please but Olga.

Nineteen was a busy year for Eric. It was the year he went to Brazil without even saying goodbye to his mother. He sent her a letter when he got there. He met a beautiful, young prostitute. She let the handsome young man live with her. To earn money for food, he played his violin in restaurants for tips. His gypsy music pleased the hearts of many young couple in love.

When he was ready to come home, he didn’t have enough money, so he wrote to his mother. She answered back. You got there on your own, get back on your own. This was truly uncharacteristic of his soft-hearted mother. She must have been very angry with him.

Who goes out in the noon day sun, mad dogs, Englishmen and Eric Prager! He fell asleep by the beach and got a terrible sunburn was so bad that all he could think of doing was taking cold showers with a sheet wrapped around him. When the sheet came off so did the first layer of his epidermis. Nevertheless, he recovered sufficiently for him to go to Paris with his friend Erich Freudman. Erich Freudman was heavy into politics and already perceiving Adolf Hitler as a future menace. In 1928, both young men returned to Austria and started to do underground work against Hitler.

In 1936, Eric was at the dentist when a friend rushed in. Eric he said, go home and pack immediately. The SS has your name, they are coming to get you, you have to leave Vienna!

Eric instructed the dentist not to fill his tooth, just to pull it, and he rushed home. At the house his sister, her husband Bruno and Olga had already packed a suitcase for him. And his mother had packed a precious violin. They gave him all the money they had in the house which wasn’t that much. He begged his mother to come with him to Paris, but she wouldn’t leave. His sister and brother-in-law Bruno were leaving for Chicago in a few weeks on the ship whose captain was a friend of Bruno’s. Olga would not leave with them either, what would they do with an old woman like me. I have nothing to fear.

Eric left Vienna on the last train allowed from Vienna to Paris by the Germans without checking anybody’s papers. What was his surprise when he saw his mother had exchanged his violin for that of the very expensive and rare violin belonging to his mother’s lover, Ludwig Opalka. Can you imagine Mr. Opalka’s surprise and dismay when he saw that his precious instrument had been exchange for a decent but not special violin! Maybe he thought it was retribution for when he had tried to slither into Margarette’s bed when she was 16 years old. She put up such a fuss that the whole household have been awakened and he slithered out the way he had come in and never tried it again. (Yea, Gretl)! That fall in 1936, he played his violin in the streets of Paris for whatever coins strangers would throw at him. His friend Erich Freudman showed movies at a movie house and showed him how to run the projector. This would be his new trade.

He met a lady named Therese who immediately was fond of him and put up a bed in her apartment for him until he found a room at the hotel.

In 1936 at the end of the year, Augustine, who had been Eric’s girlfriend in Vienna, came to Paris to see Eric. She was not Jewish and who come and go as she pleased. Inside of her coat in the lining was a letter form Eric’s mother as well as a gold watch and a gold Turkish cigarette case with a diamond in it and some money from his mother. That was the last communication Eric had from his mother.

Unfortunately, thinking Eric was still in Vienna, the SS came for him just before the end of the war, and not finding him there, took his poor mother away to Aushwitz. After the war, her daughter found proof that she had been put into one of the large ovens used to get rid of Jews.

Anne Charline Blondeau 1917 to 2016

In 1917 in the rural Hamlet of La Forét, a coal miner’s daughter, and Charline Blondeau was born. She began to assert independence at age three when she walked away from the family home and about a kilometer down the ridge. After searching for her at neighbor’s houses she was finally found comely sitting by the road, counting rocks. She got a good scolding for scaring her parents’ half to death and was never let out of their sight after that episode.

A few years after that, the family bought their own house, also in La’Forte. Marguerite, Pierre, Charline and Roger moved into their own house, the very house were Pierrot and I were born.

It did not resemble my first home because it was one big room and that was it. My grandparents added on a dining room and an upstairs. They slept in the kitchen, one big room, with which the house had started. My grandfather was the first one up every morning. In his long men’s nightgown and cap to cover his bald head, like all men wore in those days, he would start the fire in the big black stove and put on the coffee. Then my grandmother would awaken and sit up to a cup of coffee in the nice cozy room. Eventually, the rest of us would meander downstairs drawn by the smell of the coffee and wishing to share in the warmth of the kitchen and the breakfast of café ou lait, bread and butter. The dining room had a bed under the winding-staircase, there were two beds upstairs, one was for Charline, and the other bed was for her two brothers. Eventually, I inherited Maman’s wooden bed.

Her Pre-Teens Years. 12 year old girls are the devil

The goat droppings (crottes)were beautifully arranged in a paper cone that the evil child had made. It was just like the fine Chocolatier in the town of Nolay! Fortunately, Madame Clary, in her 75th year, no longer cared for crottes de chocolat. Besides, she was old enough and wise enough to be wary of a group of giggling geese offering suspicious-looking (and mildly odorous) candy. It was done to impress her friends, Maman Demures, looking chagrined that we would believe she would really let the old lady eat them. It was just to show that she dared. I believe her! Who wouldn’t want to gather goat poop and feed it to an unsuspecting old woman?

Let’s Play Doctor

During the pre-teen years, girls are very curious about their bodies. Charline and her friends were no exception. They decided to play doctor. You be the patient, I’ll be the doctor. They inserted an acorn into one of Yvette Macon’s tender parts. But, she couldn’t get it out and started howling. They didn’t know what to do, so she ran home screaming all the way.

Then after that episode, the twelve-year-old girls were a lot less curious about functions of the secret parts of their bodies. Fear can do that sometimes.

Charline in Paris

She kept hearing how Monique Duchene was earning good money in Paris. She wasn’t earning any money at home therefore, she was pushed to go to Paris.

She met and went out with Robert Poulet. He was very stingy, not to say cheap. He considered her his fiancé although she would not even kiss him. My darling said Robert, but after we’re married, you will have to kiss me. Ha said she to herself! One day, he and Jajane and Charline were walking along the Boulevard St. Michel the two women were saying how thirsty they were, but Robert made no indication of wishing to stop and one of the dozens of cafés for a refreshment. Don’t worry, he said, there is a drinking fountain of fresh water four blocks down. Jajane and Charline exchanged meaningful looks. Also, he kept mentioning that after they’re married they could have a very small apartment, but very inexpensive. Ha, thought Charline laughing to herself.

While in Paris, she worked in a bakery then she had a job as a nanny to a thirteen-year-old boy, name Remi Lifschitz. The first day that they met, he started a confrontation. He threatened to bite her and she told him that she would bite him back twice as hard. He had had the last nanny fired for theft, which was not true, but Charline was not afraid of him and she let him know that. From then on, they became good friends. They would go for walks in Paris and stop at cafes for a limonade. It was at that point that she had met Robert Poulet.

Grandmother Lifschitz lived with the family. She did all the cooking for them and taught Charline how to make many different dishes. Charline remained with the Lifschitz family until Rémi was at least fifteen and she had been promoted from nanny to general help.

Then, one day came a terrible news that Charline’s grandmother, the one she called m’man Berthault had died. And Charline went back to La’Forét immediately telling the concierge of the house where she lived not to give monsieur Poulet a forwarding address.

She had found out that her grandmother, whom she loved so much had been bitten by a horsefly on her finger and it had become infected. In those days before penicillin, not much could be done. They cut off her finger hoping to save the hand, but of course, it did not work and the poor woman died.

Charline was inconsolable. She had spent so many of her young years with this kind woman who was much a mother to her as her own.

Paris, France, 1939

She was an elegant 5’6" which made her appear more elegant in those days of shorter French women. Charline worked for a temporary agency in the hotel sector. She replaced personnel on leave or absent for whatever reason. In this case, there was a small hotel on the rue Lepic where she would stay for 3 days. Charline would take on whatever duties were needed and would be given a room at the hotel: not a bad deal if you were young and wanted to experience life in the big city. There was a lot to see and do in the City of Light. At 22, the attractive country girl had already lived and worked in Paris for six years. She worked as a nanny, in bakeries, and now with hotels. She loved it. Charline was a compliant and pleasant co-worker. It was also good to be young since the pitch of the street that the rarified air gave nosebleeds to the faint of heart and surely disheartened the faint.

It was a friendly, family-owned hotel, one reputed for reasonable rates and a nice, clean atmosphere. The popular French actor/comedian, Fernandel, well known for his comic films, often came to visit a nephew who lived at the hotel. In those days, it was not unusual for people to rent a room in such a hotel by the month, as there were few apartments available, unless one had lots of money, and even more luck. Seeing Charline in the lobby, the showman pinched her cheek and uttered his famous "Pitchoune!" as he passed. This was pure Southern French argot from his origins in Marseille, the language and accent for which Fernandel was noted. It was tantamount to, Sweetie! The French saw him with his mobile facial features, gestures and speech as one of the funniest comedians of his time. Charline’s dimpled smile beamed at the greeting. Pitchoune! Beam! Dimple, dimple!

On her first day