What started as four pages of notes scribbled onto yellow legal paper became a sprawling novel telling the experiences a young boy hiding in France during World War II.
Even now, seven decades removed from his experience, Guy Geller — who was born in Hungary to a French-born American mother and a Hungarian-born French father in 1936 — still bears the burdens of war placed on him as a child. Though a Catholic, Geller, 83, is of Jewish heritage, which put him in danger during the war.
Geller told a small group of listeners at Progress Public Library on Thursday about his time hiding in France from the start to the finish of the war.
The story goes from the arrest of his father in 1942 to his journey to America with his mother after the war.
“We have naysayers, and people say, ‘You know, that stuff never happened,’ ” Geller said. “You never forget.”
Geller’s father was arrested on Oct. 13, 1942. He remembers the date because he came home to celebrate his father’s 35th birthday to find he was not there.
In Geller’s book, there are personal letters sent from his father to his mother during the time leading up to his death.
“By another indirect way, as dangerous as the first time, I’m forwarding this hasty note that will not tell you all the love I have for you,” Geller read from one of the notes. “You must know that in this very tragic period in my destiny, there are only affectionate thoughts and fateful attachments which I regret I was unable to show you lately. Never forget that I keep a picture of you in my heart that will beat for you and our sons until the very last. I will be able to accept this undeserved misery with courage and confidence,”
“This is his last letter,” Geller said. “It says, ‘To my only love, tomorrow at daybreak we are leaving. Our destination is unknown, as is our fates. Still, I hope to come back and embrace you and the children. To kiss the ones (who) kept some affection for me. Can I tell you how I would have loved to see you even once if only for a minute? All is finished,’ It ends with, ‘Live your life ...’”
Geller, through tears, was unable to read the last sentence.
His father suffered from tuberculosis when he was younger, which led to complications making him unable to work. When he stepped off the cattle car in Auschwitz, he was immediately sent to his death in the gas chamber.
Geller said when his father was arrested, Geller was sent to live with his grandparents on an island off the coast of France named Île de Ré with only a small leather bag his father gave him. Later he was moved to a French farmer’s home where he went to school and lived for years under German occupation.
While on the island, Geller got sick, and the local doctor was unable to diagnose the problem.
“The doctor came the last time and said, “I’ve done everything I can. It is in God’s hands now, and he probably won’t live,’ ” Geller said.
A German officer came to his grandparents and said he heard they had a sick child. The officer took Geller to the mainland to a hospital where he was treated and saved.
“In very fluent French, the German officer said, ‘I hear that you have a little boy who’s dying. I’m a doctor,’ ” Geller said.
He said his grandfather was skeptical of the officer and said, “But you’re German."
The doctor responded. “Yes, but above all, I’m a physician.”
One story in particular Geller told involved riding to a nearby city with the farmer taking care of him. They stayed the night at a family member of the farmer’s house. That night someone fire-bombed the Germans, who were looking house to house for the culprit. Geller was shoved into a sack and hidden in a root cellar next to other bags of potatoes while the Germans searched the house.
“I heard the gas mask hitting the rifle butt, so I was down there scrunching up,” Geller said. “The German came down, and I felt a push on my bag, and he was satisfied and left.”
When the German left the home, the farmer explained the situation.
“He said, ‘You know you are very lucky,’ ” Geller said. “He was taking a bayonet and sticking it in all the bags.’ He didn’t get my bag.”
When asked how much of the war he noticed as a child, Geller said it was inescapable, even during the early years. He said when he lived in Paris, there was bombing almost nightly. He lost school friends and neighbors.
When living in Paris, his mother was working and his brother was off at school. It was his job to get weekly milk and bread rations. One morning he went to get the milk, and on the way back, he stopped at the bakery. He stepped in and noticed the roof was missing. The building had been bombed overnight.
“I started looking around, and sitting behind the counter was the baker, his arms around his wife. He was just rocking back and forth, and there were no legs. She was dead.
“Every once in a while, I wonder why I’m here.”
When the war ended, Geller and his mother reunited and went back to their home in Paris to find everything gone. His mother had let people stay in their apartment while they hid, and upon moving out, the people who had been staying in the place stole everything, including his father’s possessions. Geller and his mother were almost out of money at that point and decided that since his mother still had American citizenship, they would make the long journey across the Atlantic.
Once they landed in New York, They found his mother’s passport had expired the day before they landed. Geller said his mother, being a strong-willed woman, argued with the man checking them for entrance. The man wanted them to turn around and go back to France, but after arguing, he decided to let them through.
Upon coming to America, Geller knew no English, but quickly learned and grew up in many states with family members and friends until he graduated from high school. His family friend had planned to send him to Yale but backed out when she remarried, so Geller went to college in southern Connecticut.
“I never did make it to Yale, but that’s OK,” he said. “These days, I’m sort of glad I didn’t.”
Geller said he left college to join the Air Force. He originally trained to be a pilot but failed the eye exam.
In the Air Force, Geller’s main function was communications. While stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Geller met his wife, Patsy Alford Geller. They immediately hit it off and married despite family objections over his heritage as a Catholic of Jewish decent from up north.
“We corresponded for 18 months, and lo and behold a few months after I got back, we were married,” Geller said. “That was 63 years ago, and it wasn’t going to last six months.”
Geller said he has returned to many of the places he talked about during the speech with his wife and daughter, who was born in France.
“We got to see quite a few of the things,” he said.
Geller said the book he wrote came from his children asking about his experiences.
“The way the book came about was our oldest daughter came and said, ‘Daddy, we know something happened when you were a kid. ... We’d like for you to tell us,’ ’’ Geller said. “I said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’ I got a yellow pad. ‘I’ll write some note,’ and that yellow pad evolved a little bit.”
Once he finished the novel, he sent it to a publisher in New Orleans but was rejected, leading him to self-publish the book. He said he printed 1,500 originally and now has “a couple” left. He said the novel ends around the time he joined the Air Force, but he is 88 pages into the sequel, and he is unsure if he will ever finish.
