Alexa Morris is the co-author, with her father-in-law Benjamin Parket, of the memoir The Courtyard. It focuses on Parket's experiences as a child during the Holocaust. Morris works in the nonprofit field, and she lives in Northern California.
Q: How did you end up working with Benjamin Parket, your father-in-law, on this memoir, and can you describe the process of cooperating on the writing?
A: I’ve known Ben for over 25 years now and, early on in our relationship, he would talk a bit about his story. He had started writing, but was struggling to get beyond a first chapter. My partner Karen (Ben’s daughter) suggested that we work together. And so, over 10 years ago, we began.
I interviewed him, time and time again, and I slowly built the book around his stories. Whenever I completed a chunk, I passed it to him for his feedback. In this way, he corrected my errors and filled in details I would otherwise have missed. It was a slow, but wonderfully collaborative, process.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The title was chosen very late in the writing process; it was something Ben and I determined together.
My initial proposed title was Lucky because I was constantly struck by just how much luck played a role in the family’s survival. Their survival hinged on a series of seemingly miraculous events, and if one of those events had gone differently, the entire family would have almost certainly perished.
Ultimately, The Courtyard was the only possible title: the courtyard itself plays a significant role, and is essentially a character in the book. The courtyard at 5 rue de Charonne brought these people together; it was the literal and figurative center of the community that lived and worked there.
The courtyard also hid and protected them: by definition, a courtyard is an enclosed space surrounded by buildings, insulated from the world outside it. Because of the courtyard and the people in it, Ben’s family survived the war.
For my family and friends, and for your readers, I hope their home feels like Ben’s courtyard—a place of community, of safety.
Q: The Kirkus Review of the book called it a “mesmerizing, nightmarish story that, for once, has a happy ending.” What do you think of that description?
A: I’m extremely grateful for the positive review, of course, and I hope readers find the story to be mesmerizing.
But I will admit that “a happy ending” doesn’t quite capture the full complexity of the situation. The Parkiet family was protected by their courageous neighbors, and after two years in hiding, the family emerged from their warehouse hideout together.
But they were not unscathed. No one who survived the Holocaust was unscathed. Almost all of Ben’s extended family lived in Warsaw, and they were all murdered in the Ghetto or the camps. The Jewish community in Paris was also decimated, which meant many of their friends were gone.
The Parkiet family was lucky indeed, but to survive was to face the reality of what happened to Jews across Europe. This is not a fairy tale where “everyone lived happily ever after.”
Q: Especially at a time of increased antisemitism, what do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: These are indeed troubling times. We are seeing an increase in antisemitism and anti-immigrant ideologies. These are the sort of sentiments that Hitler exploited to take power. Here in the United States, we are seeing government agents come for our neighbors, and when the local community tries to intervene, the consequences can be deadly.
So, when someone reads The Courtyard, I invite them to ask themselves, What would I do for my neighbor? It’s no longer an academic exercise; it’s a real-world question.
Whenever I talked with Ben about the people who saved him, I was astounded by the bravery his neighbors exhibited.
As I write in the book: “These kind, brave people weren’t family. They weren’t even friends, not by most people’s definition. We had little in common. We didn’t share a religion or heritage. In the case of my parents, we barely spoke the same language. Taught to be respectful of adults, I never even knew their first names. We never had a meal together, and we didn’t visit each other’s homes. They were our neighbors. And, for them, that was enough.”
And so, I can’t help but wonder: would I do the same thing? Would you?
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am in the early stages of a novel, a very different book from The Courtyard. I’d classify it as a literary thriller. I’m having a lot of fun playing in a different genre, and I’m excited about where it’s going.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: One of the goals in putting The Courtyard out into the world is to properly recognize those courtyard neighbors who stepped in to help Ben and his family. But first, we need to identify them. Ben was a young boy and, taught to be polite, he greeted his neighbors by their surnames.
There was Madame Nicolas, the upstairs neighbor, who warned them to flee. Monsieur Thibou, who hid them in his warehouse. The Raymonds, who, as concierges, kept watch to ensure no one betrayed the Parkiet family.
These brave people should be recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. If any of your readers can help us identify who they were and/or locate any living descendants, I would love for them to reach out to me via my website: alexamorris.com.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment