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How a Yellow Umbrella saved my life: The story behind the story of SISTERS AT WAR by Jina Bacarr

June 11, 2023 by Jina Bacarr in category historical fiction, Jina’s Book Chat, Paris, Paris novels, sexual assault, women's fiction, Writing tagged as #historical fiction, #MeToo, #sexual assault, #sisters, #womens fiction

My gorgeous cover for ‘Sisters at War’ up for pre-order on Amazon pub date September 25, 2023

Once upon a golden summer day in Amsterdam I got caught in a wild storm… drenched and vowing never to get rained on again, this California girl rushed into a shop near the canal and bought a yellow umbrella.

Easy to carry and it fit snugly into a sturdy, plastic case.

I loved that umbrella. I took it with me everywhere. Paris. New York. Rome. Then one day, that umbrella saved my life.

I was living in Pisa, Italy and working at a US Army base as a Recreation Director at the Service Club taking care of the troops. Army and Air Force servicemen and women and civilian personnel.

I made coffee every night in a restaurant-size, aluminum coffee urn with a vivacious Italian lady who’d worked at the club forever. We played records, cooked up snacks (my chocolate chip cookies were a hit), set up game boards, puzzles, took the men on restaurant field trips (Italian food to die for!), played pool with them, and piled them onto a school bus and drove them to Pisa to attend Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve in a medieval church.

We always had something going on for the men when they needed a ‘home away from home’.

The rest of our Italian staff consisted of an artist, a photographer, and a housekeeper… I worked in the service club under our American club director along with another American girl who was like a big sister to me.

It was a real growing experience for a girl who had spent her college days living at the beach and surfing. We were una famiglia, a family.

I felt safe. Until one afternoon…

Rain was in the air when I was walking home to my apartment in Pisa after visiting the Italian lady who cleaned my apartment (I gave her husband German lessons since he was going to Switzerland for a job—teaching German while speaking Italian was a real challenge). I had my yellow umbrella with me and I was feeling good about using my proficiency in languages to help the young man find work.

I took my usual route home through the winding cobblestone streets, keeping an eye on the gathering dark clouds overhead. It was riposo, that time of day when shops closed and everybody was having lunch and few people were on the street. (I remember one afternoon when my car battery died and my local mechanic said he’d help me… after he finished his spaghetti and vino. Then he smiled and invited me to join him and his family.)

I was surprised when a tall, young Italian seemed to materialize out of nowhere and fell into step beside me, flirting with me. I smiled, then kept walking. I was in a hurry to get home before it started raining. (I was getting used to the locals flirting when a girl walked down the street with Che bella ragazza! as their battle cry).

And then everything changed in an instant.

How, why… I still don’t know what prompted him, but when we turned a corner, he moved with the swiftness of a predator and pushed me into the alley and came at me from behind. He grabbed me around the neck so tight I couldn’t breathe.

I can only imagine the expression of fear circling in my ears, the sheen of sweat glistening on my face.

I was terrified… I stopped breathing. Why is he doing this?

He kept whispering in my ear, ‘Be still…’ then slowly loosened his grip. I started choking and barely got my breath when he slammed me against a wall and pinned me there… and is that a penknife he’s waving at me? Then I realized what he was about when he unzipped his trousers and—

‘No!’ I cried out and tried to run, but he was too fast and yanked me backward. I thought I was a goner… then he made a mistake. A big mistake when he ripped open my black crepe pants with the sharp blade of his knife.

That did it. I saw red. Those were my favorite black pants.

I got so angry, I lost my fear and jammed my Dutch yellow umbrella into his ribs then bolted out of the alley and ran.

All the way back to my apartment. I never looked back.

Fighting back tears and nausea, I raced into the foyer where I ran into my concierge who was horrified at seeing me… wide eyes, flushed cheeks… and my ripped pants.

Then he pointed to my leg.

‘Signorina, guarda… look!’

I looked down. My thigh was bleeding.

Oh, my God, he cut me.

I wrapped a towel around my leg and sat in my apartment… alone… crying and rocking back and forth like a hurt child… until it got dark. I didn’t know what to do. The bleeding had stopped, but the cut was jagged… dirt, cloth pieces could contaminate the wound.

I finally got up my courage and drove to the Army base after dark. Lucky for me, a medic was the only one on duty and he cleaned the wound (I still have a scar on my left thigh). I pleaded with him not to report the assault. I was certain I’d be blamed and the Army would send me home. So I remained silent.

Until now.

When I was researching my new novel about war crimes in France during World War 2, I realized sexual assault is more common than we think. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), one in four women are victims of ‘completed or attempted rape’.

Upon further scrutiny, I discovered how little about sexual assault during the war had been covered in historical fiction. I decided the time was right to talk about it, that women have been silent too long. How sexual assault affects a victim’s everyday life… the guilt, the shame, the silence.

And Sisters at War was born.

The story of the Beaufort Sisters living in Paris in 1940 when one is attacked by an SS officer and how the assault affects the lives of both sisters.

So, to every woman who was ever afraid to speak up re: sexual assault, remember, we get courage from each other. Tell your stories.

You are not alone.

Jina

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The Secret Babies of Dachau by Jina Bacarr

January 11, 2022 by Jina Bacarr in category Holocaust, Jina’s Book Chat, Paris, Paris novels, perfume, Reading, Writing tagged as historical fiction, Holocaust, Paris, WomensFiction, World War 2

(The video above takes place on a train in 1944 Germany — my heroine, Angeline, is very pregnant and on her way back to Auschwitz with two SS guards…)

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Nothing is more heartbreaking than holding a newborn baby in your arms and it doesn’t cry.

The anguish, holding your breath while you wait for that first sign of life, the tears that fall upon your cheeks as you pray for that lovely, beautiful cry.

Then… a burst from the baby’s lungs and a heart-swelling joy overcomes you when the infant’s wail fills the air like an angels’ choir.

But what if you’re pregnant and imprisoned in a concentration camp in Southern Germany? A place where American soldiers were so devastated by the horror they found when they neared the camp, they wept when they liberated Dachau on April 29, 1945.

They discovered more than thirty railroad cars filled with dead bodies.

What if you were imprisoned there? Would you have lived? The odds were against you if you were a soon-to-be-mother.

It’s well documented the chances for survival for pregnant women and their babies in the camps was practically zero. They were immediately singled out for execution when they arrived.

It pains me to write this, but Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, was determined to exterminate all Jewish children (he proclaimed his policy in a secret speech in Poland on October 6, 1943).

As many as 1.5 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust.

Thanks to survivors’ stories and seven Jewish mothers from Hungary, we have the miracle of the Dachau babies. How for reasons never made clear, these mothers were allowed to live and brought to a sub-camp of Dachau in the waning days of the war known as Kaufering I.

And how under horrific conditions (no hot water, no instruments for the prisoner/doctor), they delivered seven healthy babies from December 1944 to April 1945 when fate stepped in and dealt them a cruel blow… I shan’t spoil it for you, but I promise you, I followed these events as they happened in ‘The Lost Girl in Paris’.

My heroine, Angéline de Cadieux, was there and very pregnant.

How did this Frenchwoman born Roma find herself in a concentration camp with Hungarian mothers-to-be? It was a challenge to orchestrate the series of events that bring her there… counting the days of her pregnancy in Paris, being honest to the unsanitary, degrading conditions found in the camps, the treatment of Roma by the Third Reich. Few have written about the Roma Holocaust and how anywhere from 220,000 to half a million Romani people died at the hands of the Nazis.

I admit it was a tremendous undertaking bringing all this to my story. I spent many sleepless nights trying to bring justice to these unbelievable women who not only survived the camps, but had the courage to tell their stories.

I have tried to tell one woman’s story albeit fiction, but everything Angéline de Cadieux experiences in the camps is based on truth.

So, my friends, cry as I did, become angry these events ever happened, but most of all, never forget.

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THE LOST GIRL IN PARIS is now available across all platforms.

Available in e-book, print and audio

The Lost Girl in Paris universal link: https://books2read.com/u/3LyrdN

It’s the story of woman who survived both Auschwitz and Dachau, but never spoke about it until she meets a young reporter named Emma Keane who touches a nerve in her that now is the time to speak about those times. Her memories are as vivid to this eighty-year-old as if she were the seventeen-year-old girl who ran away to Paris to become a parfumier after losing her mother to the Nazi war machine.

I wrote THE LOST GIRL IN PARIS to pay tribute to the strong women who survived the Holocaust and willingly shared their stories with us. The horror of Nazi brutality, the loss of family, their dignity… but also about their strength just to ‘survive another day’.

And the strong bonds with their sisters-in-arms they formed with fellow prisoners. How they learned to trust each other and stood up against the enemy to save each other.

We must never forget.

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Here is a second short excerpt from THE LOST GIRL IN PARIS: