by Alex Amit
“Philip, I have two more volunteers. Where should I send them?”
Since the Gestapo raid, we have had a shortage of people, they managed to penetrate so deeply, and now we are already past twenty-four hours of fighting all over the city. The police headquarters in Île de la Cité is already ours, but the people there are besieged, and ammunition is running low.
“Do you have any more resistance armbands?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Give them to the new ones and take them to the barricade in the direction of the invalid. They have a shortage of fighters. See if you have some guns to give them.”
Since the Gestapo raid, the connection between the members has been severed, even with her, and I have no idea if she is still alive. The chances are that the Gestapo got her. I’m trying not to think about it, even though it’s so hard.
“Philip, we got another German machine gun. Where should we place it?”
“Take it to Saint-Michel, tell them to try to pass it to the fighters at Île de la Cité.”
“Shouldn’t we try to overcome the German snipers firing at us from the Louvre?”
“No, we’ll get along here. They’re in trouble there.”
“Philip, we are receiving information from Versailles that they can hear the American tanks.”
“Pass that information to all commanders, tell them they have to hold on for a few more hours.”
It is my fault. I led her to the traitor. He must have managed to get enough information out of her. Even though he is dead now, it doesn’t make me feel better. Lizette was killed, and the newspaper boy was killed, and they probably killed her too.
“Did you hear anything from the Breton?”
“No, should I replace you here? You’ve been in position since yesterday.”
“No, I’ll be here a little longer.”
Since the first time I saw her, I wanted to know her better. She was standing scared in front of me, in that old warehouse, afraid but willing to fight for her life. Every time we met, I adored her outbursts of anger, saying what she thought and not what I wanted to hear. But she did not want to see me, and now it probably does not matter anymore.
“Philip, they’re running out of ammunition at the barricade in front of Luxembourg Palace.”
“They’ll have to settle with what they have for now, I’ll try to arrange more.”
Only her diary arrived somehow. Apparently it’s hers, I’m not even sure of that. How much of her handwriting had I seen? I always told her to be careful. One woman from an alley shop in the Latin Quarter passed the diary to someone who passed it on to someone, and he came to us. Since then, we have been lurking near the bridges, hitting the Germans when they try to get closer. But she just disappeared.
“Are you sure no one has heard anything from the Breton?”
“I’m sure. I also checked on the positions in San Michelle.”
Only the man from the market, the giant Breton, might be able to recognize her. He is the only one who knows her and is still alive. He volunteered to search for her, but he has been wandering on the east bank for several days now.
“Philip, pay attention, there are shots from the Louvre area, near the German position.”
“Bring the machine gun that controls the river here. I want you to place it next to me.”
A few gunshots stop for a moment as we tense and examine the other bank, and suddenly two people climb on the bridge and start running towards us, and the fighter next to me asks whether to shoot them or not. I tell him to wait, and the German soldiers in the Louvre start firing at them, and I shout for them to bring the machine gun to start returning fire towards the windows and the Germans. The people running towards us are already at the center of the bridge, one big and one smaller, probably a woman. It seems like they’re advancing so slowly, and the big one suddenly falls, as he’s been hit. The woman turns and stops next to him and leans over. She might have been hit as well. I can see the gunshots around them on the bridge, and I yell at the fighters next to me to start firing at the windows with everything they have. I jump over the barricade and run towards the bridge. It seems that another one or two are running after me, and I hear the whistle of the bullets as I approach, shouting for the woman to leave him and keep on running to the bank. Her hands are full of blood as she tries to drag the big man lying on the wooden bridge, and she doesn’t stop yelling at me: “Help me carry him, help me carry him.”
Epilogue
Monique experienced fear many times in her life, some have been told in this book, and some have not.
Like those long minutes at the barricade next to the Pont Des Arts, when someone gave her a bottle of wine to drink, and she tried to catch her breath and searched for the right words to say to Philip, hoping he would forgive her, and that maybe he could love her someday.
And that day in May 1946, as she walked through Paris City Hall in a white dress, accompanied by a huge Breton who held her hand as if he were her father. She was looking at Philip waiting for her at the end of the aisle, praying he would forgive her for sleeping with someone else before him. The Breton was wearing a clean new button-down shirt.
And January 1950, when her first daughter was born and a second seemed like an eternity until she heard her screaming.
Or 1954, when she received the Medal of Honor and feared the dress she wore was too simple for the event, with the President of the Republic standing in front of her.
And November 2005 as well, when Philip held her hand in their shared house on Rue Georges Bizet while lying in bed and smiling at her, closing his eyes forever.
But on August 8, 2012, when she took her last breaths at the Les Issambres Paris nursing home in the Seventeenth arrondissement, she was not afraid at all. She just looked at her daughters and grandchildren around her, and finally waited to meet Philip, Lizette, Mom, Dad, and Jacob.
In memory of all the Jews of France who perished in the Holocaust
In memory of all the resistance members who fought against the Germans, the few against many.
VII
Author’s note
Pieces of History
Author’s note: Pieces of History
When I started writing this book, I knew I would write about an emotional period for the French nation: days of living, collaborating, and resistance under German occupation in World War II, and above all, the help given to the Nazis to capture the Jews and send them for extermination.
Operation Spring Breeze, mentioned at the beginning of this book, is the first step of Paris’ Jewish deportation. During the surprise operation that on July 16, 1942, the Paris police carried out the capture of Parisian Jews for the Nazis. The captured people, men, women, and children, were held for several days without food and water in the Paris Winter Stadium, south of the Eiffel Tower. (The Stadium does not exist anymore. It was demolished in 1959.) After five days, all the Jews were transferred to the Drancy detention camp north of Paris, and later on to Auschwitz by trains.
The role of the Paris police in this operation is undeniable.
But while according to Gestapo records, the French police had to seize over twenty thousand Jews in this operation, in the end only fourteen thousand Jews of Paris were arrested and sent to Auschwitz. It turned out that many policemen had warned Jewish families to flee ahead of time. There were a lot of policemen that endangered themselves to warn the Jews.
Seventy-seven thousand of France’s Jews perished in the Holocaust, most of them sent to Auschwitz, but the majority of French Jews survived the war. French citizens hid Jews in farms and villages outside the big cities, or helped them cross the border into neutral Spain. At the end of the war, it became clear that 78% of the French Jewish population had survived the Holocaust. This is the highest number of Jews who survived the Holocaust of all the countries under German occupation. In the Netherlands, for example, only 29% of Dutch Jews survived the war. Did the French population help the Germans eliminate French Jews? History
shows that besides citizens who helped the Nazis, most of the French population assisted the Jews and did not extradite them.
And what about collaboration with the Germans in everyday life?
Paris was not a uniform city throughout the war. Alongside open cafés and clubs on the Grand Boulevards, full of German soldiers and French citizens, poor people walked in wooden shoes searching for food. I tried to show both sides.
Throughout the book, I have touched on several historical events or landmarks that serve as the story’s backdrop.
Monique’s fictional story about the escape with her parents describes the escape of French civilians from the German army in June 1940. The German forces outflanked Maginot Line from Belgium and were running to Paris. German fighter planes fired on refugee convoys, intensifying the disorganization on the roads and preventing the French army from sending reinforcements.
During the picnic on the Maren River, Fritz mentions the Maren’s first battle in World War I. In this battle, French soldiers bravely stopped the German army approaching Paris. Six thousand soldiers were sent from Paris by taxis. All Parisian taxi drivers volunteered to drive the soldiers into battle in an endless convoy. Thanks to them, they managed to stabilize a line against the advanced Germans, and stopped them.
During Oberst Ernest and Monique’s first trip, they travel to La Coupole, a village near Dunkirk and the Belgium border. In a hidden site between the woods, the Germans built a huge bunker that would contain the V2 missiles, Hitler’s revenge weapon. Towards the end of the war, these missiles would be launched against London, exploding in the city and causing destruction.
The cannon battery mentioned on the second trip to Normandy is the cannon battery near Longues Sur Mer’s village on Normandy’s shore. This battery controls the areas that later would be called ‘Gold Beach’ and ‘Omaha Beach’ in the American code maps for the D-Day invasion.
Slava, the Polish soldier Monique meets at the shore, is a civilian recruit. Despite the German army’s uniform image, the terrible losses at the eastern front against Russia forced the Germans to begin recruiting civilians from occupied countries, with promises of monetary reward and often with threats. Since 1943, many German army units were combined with civilian recruits under German commanders. Such companies were also stationed in Normandy, used mainly for defensive battles.
At night, Monique and Ernest slept in the town of Cabourg in a luxurious hotel near the coast. This area was also heavily protected by the Germans in preparation for an invasion from the sea.
When Ernest takes Monique to the Tuileries Gardens on a Sunday morning in the winter, they purchase paintings looted from Jewish families. The works of art were collected in the old tennis hall located on the edge of the Tuileries Gardens, near Rivoli Street, and German officers used to go there and buy paintings at ridiculous prices. After the war, some of the paintings were returned to their original owners or their surviving family members. But some of the search efforts and legal battles for looted paintings continue to this day. The signs prohibiting Jews from entering public parks and museums were hung on the gates after German occupation began in June 1940.
Although it is commonly thought that the Allies did not bomb Paris, this is not true. During the preparation for the coming invasion, the Allies began bombing all over France, with American and English bombers trying to hit railways and industrial factories that supported the German army. The first bombing described in the book, during which Monique and Ernest are in the bedroom, took place at Renault’s car factories and complexes in the city’s industrial area. The second bombing, in which Monique escapes the apartment and helps her neighbor, is the big bombing on April 20, 1944, in which the eighteenth arrondissement was hit.
The invasion of Normandy began on the night of June 5, 1944. During the night, three paratrooper divisions parachuted in all over Normandy, and in the morning, another six divisions stormed the heavily protected shores. American and British intelligence managed a series of deceptive moves aimed to confuse the Germans, making them believe the real invasion would take place on the coast of Calais near Belgium. During the first hours of the invasion, German intelligence couldn’t decide where the American-British main effort was, so they held the German armored divisions in reserve rather than throw them into the battle at Normandy. Therefore, it was only on the afternoon of June 6 that BBC Radio began to publish credible news of the invasion’s real location. All those misleading steps, aided by the French resistance disconnecting telephone lines and damaging railways, led to a long delay in German response, allowing Allied forces to establish themselves on Normandy’s coastal shore. Throughout the German occupation, listening to BBC was forbidden, and the Nazis would execute anyone they caught listening to it.
The French resistance movements against the Germans contained several groups with different interests, but all had one common goal, fighting Germans. In the first years of occupation, the Communist underground was the strongest and most active among all the movements, working almost separately from the others. But as the war progressed, they began to cooperate, helping British intelligence with information and receiving instructions for actions against the Nazis, assisting in preparations for the coming invasion. The Gestapo made great efforts to infiltrate the resistance. The Gestapo headquarter was at the building at 84 Avenue Foch.
The trap, in which Monique escapes from the vehicle and Lizette is killed, took place on August 16, 1944. Thirty-five Resistance men fell into the trap of a planted Gestapo agent and were executed. This was the last significant action of the Gestapo against the underground before the battles for the city’s liberation. Whoever follows the book will find that I brought the event forward by a few days.
The liberation of the city took several days. Despite Hitler’s explicit instructions to raze Paris to the ground in revenge for the bombing of German cities by Allied planes, in the end Paris was not destroyed. There are several arguments as to why this is the case. The prevailing opinion is that the Commander of Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, chose to defy Hitler’s order until it was too late, and the uprising in the city began.
The uprising in Paris began on August 18 with a general strike. The next day firefights developed between the German army and the Resistance members who lacked weapons but managed to occupy the Paris police headquarters at Ile de la Cité. On August 24, the first American division of the Free French Army entered the city, and on August 25 General von Choltitz signed a letter of surrender, leaving Paris almost unharmed.
The citizens hurried to embrace American soldiers and turned their rage against the French women who had surrendered horizontally to the German soldiers. Tearing clothes, shaving hair, and drawing swastikas on those women’s foreheads was a common punishment in the eyes of the crowd seeking revenge after four years of German occupation.
I could not be precise in all the historical details, some I changed and others I had to omit, and I’m sorry I can’t let them into the story. But for me, writing this book was an exciting experience of learning about Nazi-occupied Paris, trying to imagine life in daily fear through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old Jewish girl fighting for her life.
Thank you for reading.
Alex Amit
About the Author
Alex Amit is a historical fiction writer and author of the novel The Girl Under the Flag.
After dedicating more than a decade to learning the history of WW2 and armed with a BSc in Psychology, Alex’s writing focuses on woman’s bravery during those dark days.
Today he is writing his second novel, The Girl in the White Uniform.
When Alex was a child, he would lie in his bed at night, reading history books, imagining himself traveling in a time machine to all those great moments. Many years have passed, and finally, he built his time machine, using his words and imagination.
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