Suzanne's Children

by Anne Nelson

  Chertok wasn’t easy to find. Over the previous six months, scores of his friends and fellow activists had fallen. He wrote, “One knew that Paris was the most dangerous place because of the French police in the Special Brigade, the ‘scientific’ police from the Préfecture. The Gestapo could never have done the job themselves.”17 By this time, over a hundred members of the Special Brigades had been assigned to Paris, charged with the pursuit of only sixty partisans from the FTP-MOI. Chertok’s security restrictions were more severe than ever.

  Now the Spaaks gave Chertok what he called “the biggest scare of my life.” One day in October, Claude asked the doctor to meet him at La Trinité, an ornate church in western Paris. Chertok was thunderstruck by what Claude had to say:

  There he told me an abracadabrante [“preposterous”] story: a Russian spy, head of an international network, captured by the Gestapo but who succeeded in escaping from the Pharmacie Bailly’s back door, who’s hiding out in a boarding house in Bourg-la-Reine, and wants to meet with the Central Committee of the Party!18

  Chertok had long trusted Suzanne, but this was his first encounter with Claude. He knew only that he was a writer and the brother of the Belgian minister-in-exile, Paul-Henri Spaak. Chertok tried to put him off, but Claude insisted that Suzanne knew that Chertok could reach the committee. Chertok was aghast. “I was sure that they had been taken for a ride by a pathological liar,” he wrote. “But they were old enough to know where it could lead.”19

  Chertok reported to Charles Lederman several times a week. The lawyer listened to what Chertok had to say and passed it on. It turned out that the tale was true. A few days later, Lederman told Chertok that a meeting between Trepper and Kowalski had been arranged for October 22.

  Unknown to them, Trepper’s plans had been derailed. The previous Sunday morning, the Gestapo had arrested the elderly Madame May. She had fallen into a trap laid by the infamous “French Gestapo,” known as the “Bonny-Lafont Gang,” which ran a torture shop at 93 Rue Lauriston in western Paris.

  Madame May found the Gestapo agents waiting in her apartment. Heinz Pannwitz, the officer in charge, found her to be a “very resolute and energetic woman”: “She screamed at us, kicked me quite vigorously in the leg and hit me over the head with the handle of her umbrella.”20 She was carted away for interrogation and held out as long as she could, but when the Germans threatened to murder her son, a prisoner of war, she surrendered Trepper’s hiding place and Spaaks’ address.

  Trepper had been scheduled to meet with her, and when she didn’t appear he guessed what had happened. On Sunday, October 17, he set off by taxi from Bourg-la-Reine to warn the Spaaks. As he climbed the stairs to their apartment he clutched his cyanide capsule tightly in his hand in case the Gestapo was waiting.

  Claude, who was on his own, answered the door. Trepper regarded him anxiously.

  “Are you alone?” he asked. “Or are they here?”

  Trepper realized from Claude’s calm demeanor that the Gestapo had not yet arrived. For the moment, the cyanide was unnecessary. He felt, he recalled later, as though the blood had begun to flow through his veins once more.

  “Your family must disappear,” Trepper told him. “The Gestapo could be here any minute.”

  “What about Suzette?” Claude responded. Suzanne had gone to Orléans for the day to pick up some blank forged documents. She was due to return with several dozen ration cards hidden in her girdle, the possession of which was punishable by death. There were other people to consider, such as the woman who had hidden Trepper along with her Jewish charges in Bourg-la-Reine. Trepper had placed them all in danger.

  Claude walked Trepper to the door. “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, and left. He spent the night shivering on a park bench.

  That evening, in a house in a northern suburb, the Gestapo arrived to arrest Georgie de Winter.

  At the Palais Royal, Claude prepared the family’s evacuation. Claude gave Pilette the bundle of gold coins and told her to take them to Ruth’s flat off the Champs-Élysées. She left them with Ruth, saying, “Father wanted me to tell you that mother’s going to come stay with you.”

  Pilette returned home and found the large leather suitcase Mira Sokol had left with Suzanne. She packed it with items she thought her mother would want—some clothes and a few pieces of jewelry—then added some clothes for herself and Bazou.

  Suzanne arrived at the Gare de Lyon around 6:00 p.m. Claude was waiting to intercept her. She tried to make light of the matter, but Claude cut her off. “We have no right to risk the lives of our children.” She finally agreed to go into hiding, but first she had to warn her contacts and make arrangements for her absence. She told Claude she would meet him and the children at Ruth’s.

  After she left, Claude enlisted Pilette to help him go through the apartment, starting with Suzanne’s desk in the vestibule. They ransacked it for incriminating evidence, incinerating it as they went along. Well after midnight, Claude stopped short in front of the huge bookcase at the entry. He looked at Pilette. “Do you think?”

  He picked a book off the shelf, opened it, and gasped. “Nom de Dieu.” To his horror, a flurry of paper fell out containing names, addresses, and forged documents from various resistance movements. He picked up another volume, and underground tracts spilled to the floor. They went through each book, page by page, working until four in the morning. Claude piled the evidence in the stove to burn and sent Pilette to bed.

  The next day, Pilette and Bazou were told to attend the first day of school as though nothing had happened. Claude stopped by the Belgian consulate to request authorization for his wife and children to visit their family in Belgium, and Suzanne arranged a hurried meeting with Peggy Camplan from the MNCR.21

  Suzanne was directly responsible for forty-five children; now she entrusted Camplan with the records of their identities and their whereabouts.22 But this was only part of the challenge, as Suzanne was an essential thread in a network that served hundreds more. She had been responsible for delivering some 50,000 to 60,000 francs a month for the children’s upkeep, and Camplan and her associates would be hard-pressed to replace the funds. But Suzanne was confident that this was a temporary arrangement; she told her friend that she expected to be back to work as soon as the threat blew over.

  Trepper continued to press Suzanne to help him contact London, and Jacques Grou-Radenez agreed to send a Gaullist representative to meet Trepper at a church in Auteuil. But as Trepper approached the church he spotted a black Citroën, the Gestapo’s vehicle of choice. He fled and telephoned the boardinghouse in Bourg-la-Reine. A stranger answered. Now Trepper knew that the Gestapo was only a step away.

  On October 19, Claude accompanied Suzanne and the children to the Gare du Nord, and stood with them on the platform waiting for the train to Brussels. Pilette regarded the other passengers. “You could feel the fear in the air,” she recalled. Nonetheless, Pilette thought her parents looked relaxed. “I remember the two of them talking before the train started to move.”

  Pilette recalled:

  He said that should there ever be the necessity to correspond between the two of them, if he meant what he was asking, he would sign the letter “Toutou” (a nickname he had when he was very young—in common language it’s the name of a nice little dog). And if he did not mean it he would sign it “Claude.” And she would sign “Suzette,” but if she did not mean it, it would be “Suzanne.”

  The atmosphere was not as tense as it could have been. I truly believed that I would be back before the end of the month. So did mother. Dad always seemed to be so prudent and certainly mother went through life light-hearted. The reason to go to Belgium was to cool off and be sure that everything was all right before continuing.23

  Claude waved farewell to his family as the train pulled out of the station. The journey from Paris to Brussels was arduous in wartime, lasting from seven in the morning to six in the evening, but the Spaaks had made it befor
e. The children knew there would be a long stop at the border, requiring everyone to leave the train for it to be searched. Passengers waited fretfully in line to show their papers. With a single nod from the police, an unfortunate soul would be hauled off to a room to be undressed, and some would not return.

  Claude went back to the Palais Royal. He knew it was risky, but he had arranged for Léon Chertok to call at noon, and he had to be warned. At noon the phone rang. Claude picked up the receiver and blurted, “We’ve been burned. No one should budge.” He hung up and returned to Ruth Peters’s flat.

  Chertok was flabbergasted. It meant that the Gestapo had laid a trap for Trepper, who was scheduled to meet with Kowalski, a key leader of the Jewish resistance. “No one should budge” was an impossible demand. Kowalski was on his way to the meeting, and his arrest would be catastrophic. Chertok and Lederman set out for Bourg-la-Reine, hoping to intercept Kowalski in time. Finally Chertok spied him on a street ahead. He quickened his pace to catch up with him and hissed, “Fous le camp, Édouard, fous le camp!” (“Get the fuck out of here!”)24

  Claude met Trepper on the evening of October 21 at La Trinité, both men visibly trembling with fear. Trepper was weak and exhausted from sleeping rough. After they parted, he hailed a bicycle taxi and convinced the elderly cyclist to give him shelter for the night. The next morning, he telephoned the Spaaks’ apartment at the Palais Royal. A woman answered, claiming to be Claude’s secretary. Trepper knew that Claude didn’t have a secretary. The Gestapo had arrived, and Claude, who was staying at Ruth’s, didn’t know.

  Claude’s birthday fell on October 22, and he was feeling cheerful. He and Ruth were planning to dine with his brother Charles and his wife, and he was in the mood for a good bottle of wine. Claude told Ruth that he was going back to the Palais Royal to fetch one, but, concerned, she persuaded him to call ahead.

  Claude had set up a code with the maid; if she addressed him as “Cher Monsieur,” all was well, but if she called him just “Monsieur,” there was trouble.

  He telephoned. “All is well, Monsieur,” she blurted. “Certainement, Monsieur, oui, Monsieur.” Then he heard her ask someone, “C’est tout?” followed by the sound of a blow. The line went dead.

  Claude later learned that the maid had spoken from his living room surrounded by a squad of armed Gestapo agents.

  * * *

  I. Bureau Central de Reseignements et d’Action (Central Bureau of Intelligence and Action).

  14

  all saints’ day

  | OCTOBER 1943–AUGUST 1944 |

  Suzanne and her children arrived in Brussels on the evening of October 19 and went straight to her family. It no longer felt like her city. The Germans had taken over her mother’s mansion for the use of their female military personnel (known as the “little gray mice”). Her sisters and their husbands were treading carefully, doing business with the Germans when necessary, helping the Belgian resistance when they could.

  Suzanne decided it would be wise to split up; no one had room for all three of them. She stayed with Claude’s mother, her beloved role model, and sent Bazou to Limal with Bunny and Pilette to the home of Claude’s sister Pichenette. Suzanne took minimal precautions; she even attended a public concert at the Palais des Beaux-Arts with her sister-in-law Marguerite, Paul-Henri’s wife. Suzanne told Pilette that they were being overly careful; the Gestapo would never look for her in Brussels. She seemed to have a magical belief in her own invulnerability.

  On Sunday, October 24, Suzanne and Pilette went to lunch at the home of Suzanne’s sister and brother-in-law, the Fontaines, on the outskirts of Brussels. Halfway through the meal, they heard a knock at the door and the conversation came to an abrupt halt. An elderly neighbor of Suzanne’s mother-in-law arrived with chilling news: That afternoon, the Gestapo had arrived at Madame Spaak’s house asking for Suzanne. She had played dumb, and they had left. She had dispatched her friend by streetcar to warn her daughter-in-law.

  Suzanne and her relations went into intense deliberation. The security of the entire family was at stake, and Suzanne must disappear. The question was how.

  One of the dinner guests, a blond young man in the Belgian resistance, offered to help. He had arrived on his motorcycle and had a studio apartment in central Brussels. He volunteered to hide Suzanne and Pilette until the family decided what to do.

  It was nearing curfew, and the three rushed out of the house to the motorbike parked outside. The young man helped them climb astride, Suzanne in front and Pilette in back, then took off for his studio. A few days later Suzanne told Pilette, “You’re a big girl, you can go on your own,” and sent her to stay in Limal with Bazou.

  Suzanne’s quandary was more difficult, and it fell to her sister’s husband, Maurice Fontaine, to address it. He owned a hunting estate in the depths of the Ardennes Forest that included a gamekeeper’s cottage. Suzanne was conveyed to the remote outpost, where she waited nervously as the Gestapo investigation swept up her friends and relations.

  Suzanne was wrong about the limits of the Gestapo’s reach. Pannwitz had been busy in Paris, filling his detention centers with Leopold Trepper’s acquaintances, whether or not they had any knowledge of his espionage. He had the full cooperation of the Brussels Gestapo.I The danger extended beyond the Spaaks. The Gestapo had posted surveillance outside the Palais Royal, and the members of Suzanne’s rescue network were in their sights. When Oratoire’s deacon Maurice-William Girardot came by to drop off donations for the Jewish children, the police pounced. He would spend three months in prison.

  The Gestapo also came for Odette and Fernand Béchard. Odette had been the first Oratoire parishioner to join Entr’aide. Now Suzanne’s connection to Trepper set up a chain reaction that led to her door. “The Germans came to arrest us,” Odette wrote later. “I had left the evening before, having been warned. My husband barely escaped and our children were dispersed. That that’s how, with great regret, I had to discontinue my [rescue] activity.”1

  With Girardot’s arrest, the Jewish children lost access to the Oratoire’s financial support. With the flight of the Béchards, they lost both donors and an active escort. If Léon Chertok and Charles Lederman hadn’t been so quick to act, Trepper would have compromised the entire Jewish resistance.

  Claude Spaak took precautions on his own behalf. He and Ruth packed up her studio and found separate hiding places. Claude eventually got in touch with a playwright friend who contacted his surgeon brother, who lent the couple the maid’s room in his house in Saint-Cloud—the same one Claude and Suzanne had shared when they first moved to Paris. Saint-Cloud was quiet and out of the way, and their friends there helped them keep out of sight.

  Suzanne’s family expected the Gestapo to interrogate her children. Bazou was only twelve. His uncle Milo Happé, never dreaming of Suzanne’s practices in Paris, instructed him to simply answer their questions. This instruction, faithfully followed, would have fatal consequences.

  Pilette presented more of a problem. She had disappeared with Suzanne and needed a cover story. Suzanne’s sister and sister-in-law spent hours on the phone concocting a tale: “I was supposed to say that I had been given the maid’s room in the attic. I had sneaked out and gone to the movies, and I was afraid of being punished so I stayed out all night.” Pilette found her cover story absurd. “Remember, it was the cold, rainy, dark end of October! I remember the two of them talking at length about which film I could have seen and where.” Her aunt Bunny coached her on the plot of the film until she had it memorized.

  Pilette was unenthusiastic about the ruse—“I must have been playing a half wit!”—as well as alarmed. “I knew they would be coming to pick me up, but I couldn’t run away without harming my brother and grandmother.” Pilette wasn’t afraid of just the Gestapo; she had heard horror stories about juvenile detention and was terrified by what could happen at the hands of the “mauvais enfants.”2

  Pilette’s aunts called the Gestapo and told them their wayward niece
had returned from her unlikely adventure and was going to be punished. Before they arrived, Pilette put on her favorite blouse that her mother had sewn for her, decorated with white rickrack on the collar. Then Bunny took the girl to her dressing room and applied rouge around her eyes to make her look as though she’d been crying.

  Suzanne’s sisters had reasons to be fearful. One was the complication of a downed British flyer the Happés had been sheltering. Over the course of the Gestapo’s first visit, he had hidden for eight hours in a large bread oven. Milo Happé’s nerves were already raw. He was an anxious man who spent his evenings scanning the nighttime sky for bombers. He walked a delicate line; his cigarette sales to the Germans were rewarded with permission to keep a car and purchase the gasoline to run it, but he also donated money and cigarettes to a nearby monastery that helped resistance fighters.

  The Gestapo made the rounds, arresting Claude’s sister, Pichenette, her husband, Jean Masson, and their nineteen-year-old son, Paul, as well as Paul-Henri’s wife, Marguerite.

  Late in the morning of November 1, All Saints’ Day, the Gestapo came to Limal. They surveyed the family and singled out Pilette. They asked her some initial questions, then told her to pack her bag. She used Mira Sokol’s good leather suitcase she had brought from Paris. The agents promised the family they would take her to her grandmother Spaak’s.

  Pilette recalled:

  I came down with my suitcase packed. Everyone was waiting by the front door, even the maids. I said good-bye to all of them, but Bazou was nowhere. I looked for him and found him all alone and crying in the bathroom. At that very moment our fate was sealed; I really fell in love with my brother, and nothing will ever separate us.

  The fact that I had my suitcase with me with everything I owned made the departure very definite. I felt that I had “gone,” with no one to know where I would be. No one talked. It was cold. I was seated in the back of a car between two men. I remember arriving in Brussels; the night was wet, and the leaves on the ground sparkled when the tram went over them. It was sinister.