Suzanne's Children

by Anne Nelson

  17. Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution, 190–91.

  18. Cédric Gruat and Cécile Leblanc, Amis des Juifs: Les résistants aux étoiles (Paris: Éditions Tirésias, 2005), 45, quoted in Ronald Rosbottom, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light under German Occuption, 1940–1944 (New York: Little, Brown, 2014), chapter 7.

  | CHAPTER 5 | monsieur henri

  1. Perrault, The Red Orchestra, 130.

  2. Guillaume Bourgeois, L’Orchestre rouge (Paris: Nouveau Monde Éditions, 2015), 136.

  3. W. F. Flicke, Rote Kapelle: Spionage und Widerstand (Augsburg, Germany: Weltbild Verlag, 1990), 161–62.

  4. Harry’s brother Jacques, a Communist architect based in Brussels, was also arrested on suspicion of involvement in his brother’s activities. Jacques survived the war. See Central Intelligence Agency, The Rote Kapelle, 356.

  5. Betty Depelsenaire, Symphony Fraternelle (Brussels: Lumen, 1942).

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid., 22.

  8. V. E. Tarrant, The Red Orchestra: The Soviet Spy Network Inside Nazi Europe (London: Arms & Armour Press, 1995), 39–41. See also Leopold Trepper, The Great Game: Memoirs of the Spy Hitler Couldn’t Silence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977), and Flicke, Rote Kapelle.

  9. Leopold Trepper, with Patrick Rotman, Le Grand Jeu (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1975), 240.

  10. Trepper, The Great Game, 164.

  | CHAPTER 6 | spring wind, winter stadium

  1. Hélène Berr, Journal, trans. David Bello (New York: Weinstein Books, 2008), 51.

  2. Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II, 250.

  3. Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution, 159.

  4. Claudie Bassi-Lederman and Roland Wlos, “La rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv, ou le ‘sombre jeudi,’ ” L’Humanité, July 6, 2012. See also Rayski, The Choice of the Jews under Vichy, 86.

  5. Rayski, Nos illusions perdues, 128.

  6. Carmen Callil, Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2008), 265.

  7. Rayski, The Choice of the Jews under Vichy, 86.

  8. Michel Laffitte, “The Velodrome d’Hiver Round-up: July 16 and 17, 1942,” SciencesPo, http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/va-lodrome-da-hiver-round-july-16-and-17-1942.

  9. Israel Gutman, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, volume 2 (New York: Macmillan Library Reference, 1995), 1079.

  10. US diplomat Tyler Thompson, August 1942, cited in Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 228.

  11. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 225.

  12. De Brinon was executed at the end of the war as a collaborator. His wife lived another forty years before she died in a nursing home in Montmorency.

  13. Laffitte, “The Velodrome d’Hiver Round-up.”

  14. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 241–42.

  15. Serge Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial, trans. Glorianne Depondt and Howard M. Epstein (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 35.

  16. Berr, Journal, 85–87.

  17. Ibid., 93.

  18. Memorandum reproduced in Giles Perrault, Paris under the Occupation, trans. Allison Carter and Maximilian Vos (New York: Vendome Press, 1987), 177.

  19. Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, 37.

  20. Ibid., 40.

  21. There is disagreement as to the total number of police deployed over the two days. Susan Zucotti uses the figure 4,500 in The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 104.

  22. Sarah Litmanovitch, “Juillet 1942, la rafle des juifs dans le 18e, témoignages,” Dixhuitinfo.com, March 10, 2010, www.dixhuitinfo.com/societe/histoire/article/juillet-1942-la-rafle-des-juifs.

  23. Zucotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 107.

  24. Rayski, Nos illusions perdues, 99–100.

  25. Chertok, Memoires, 84.

  26. Zucotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 107.

  27. Chertok, Memoires, 85.

  28. Ibid. See also Adam Rayski, 16 et 17 juillet 1942: La rafle du Vélodrome d’Hiver (Paris: Mairie de Paris, 2012), 29.

  29. Alain Pierret, “La Rafle, le film: Le vrai capitaine Pierret raconté par son fils Alain,” Dixhuitinfo.com, March 10, 2010, www.dixhuitinfo.com/culture/cinema/article/la-rafle-le-film-le-vrai-capitaine.

  30. David Lees, “Remembering the Vel d’hiv Roundup,” University of Warwick Knowledge Centre, July 2012, www2.warwick.ac.uk/knowledge/arts/roundups.

  31. Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, 42.

  32. Josephs, Swastika over Paris, 64. See also Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, 68.

  33. Fred and Denise Milhaud, L’Entraide temporaire: sauvetage d’enfants juifs sous l’occupation (Paris: Alliance Israelite Universelle, 1984), http://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/09305/C67A0AF1D7E0EB7CC4A923753431A15BEEADBFB6.html.

  | CHAPTER 7 | the ragged network

  1. Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, xxi and 119. See also “Plus qu-un nom dans une liste: Israël Knaster,” Jewish Traces, http://jewishtraces.org/israelknaster/.

  2. Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, 119–25.

  3. Ibid., 43.

  4. See Lucien Lazare, Rescue as Resistance: How Jewish Organizations Fought the Holocaust in France, trans. Jeffrey M. Green (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 76.

  5. Author’s interview with Oriane de la Bourdonnaye Guéna, Paris, June 2015.

  6. Robert Debré, L’Honneur de vivre (Paris: Hermann et Stock, 1974), 333–40.

  7. “Activité du Groupe Medical du Mouvement National Contre le Racisme,” tract, MNCR Archives, Paris, http://archives.mrap.fr/index.php/Accueil.

  8. “Aronson,” “Suzanne Spaak, sauveteur d’enfants Juifs.”

  9. “Activité du Groupe Medical du Mouvement National Contre le Racisme.”

  10. Quoted in Serge Klarsfeld, Le calendrier de la persécution des Juifs de France, Septembre 1942–Août 1944 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 575.

  11. See Michael Curtis, Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2015), chapter 13, “The Churches and Anti-Semitism.”

  12. Lederman, unpublished memoirs.

  13. Ibid. See also Nancy Levenfeld, “Unarmed Combat: Jewish Humanitarian Resistance in France during the Shoah,” in Patrick Henry, ed., Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 112.

  14. “Lettre pastorale de Monseigneur Saliège du 23 Août 1942,” Musée de la Résistance en ligne, http://museedelaresistanceenligne.org/media6523-Lettre-pastorale-de-Monseigneur-SaliA. See also Yad Vashem, http://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/saliege.

  15. Lederman, unpublished memoirs, 133.

  16. Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, 46.

  17. Ibid., 52.

  18. Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II, 265.

  19. Quoted in Jean-Pierre Levy, Mémoires d’un franc-tireur: Itinéraire d’un résistant (1940–1944) (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 2000), 157.

  20. “Hommes de coeur,” tract, MNCR archives, Paris, http://archives.mrap.fr/images/b/b4/MNCR_tract_1opt.pdf.

  21. “Madame, Monsieur,” tract, MNCR archives, http://archives.mrap.fr/images/4/40/MNCR_tract_2.pdf.

  22. Défense de la France, July 30, 1942. Quoted in Cobb, The Resistance, 137.

  23. Lazare, Rescue as Resistance, 176.

  24. Ibid., 177.

  25. List-Pakin, “Testimony,” 2.

  | CHAPTER 8 | suzanne and sophie

  1. Lederman, unpublished memoirs, 148.

  2. “Enregistrement de Sophie Micnik [Schwartz], lors de son séjour à Munich en mars 1985,” unpublished interview conducted by Larissa Gruszow, March 1985, 29.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2011).

  5. See 16 rue Lamarck, 1938, Paris, Framepool, http://fo
otage.framepool.com/fr/shot/943433765-16-rue-lamarck-hostel-montmartre-entrer.

  6. Annette Muller, La petite fille du Vel d’Hiv (Paris: Hachette Livre, 2012).

  7. “Enregistrement de Sophie Micnik,” 27.

  8. René Goldman, Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle passé: Sophie Schwartz-Micnik (Paris: AGP, 2006), 21.

  9. Rayski, The Choice of the Jews under Vichy, 94–95.

  10. “Enregistrement de Sophie Micnik,” 23.

  11. Goldman, Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle passé, 29.

  12. Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II, 308.

  13. Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution, 201.

  14. Zucotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 157–59.

  15. Ibid., 162.

  16. Goldman, Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle passé, 26.

  17. Ibid., 29.

  18. David Diamant, 250 combattents de la Résistance témoignant (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 1991), 86–88.

  | CHAPTER 9 | the unimaginable

  1. Rayski, Nos illusions perdues, 125.

  2. J’Accuse, October 10, 1942, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k874090h/f2.item.zoom.

  3. J’Accuse, October 20, 1942, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k874091w/f1.item.zoom.

  4. Anne Nelson, “Nur seinem Gewissen verpflichtet: Rudolf von Scheliha,” in Widerstand und Auswärtiges Amt: Diplomaten gegen Hitler, edited by Jan Erik Schulte and Michael Wala (Munich: Seidler, 2013).

  5. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 348.

  6. Marcelle Guillemot, “Testimony,” in “Témoignage de Melle [sic] GUILLEMOT, assistant sociale et Directrice de l’Oeuvre du Temple l’Oratoire du Louvre—La Clairière, 60 ru Greneta, recueilli par Mme GAUDELETTE le 22 février 1946,” Archives du Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, Paris, Document CDLXVIII-17.

  7. See Céline Marrot-Fellag Ariouet, “Les enfants cachés pendant la seconde guerre mondiale aux sources d’une histoire clandestine,” http://lamaisondesevres.org/cel/cel3.html.

  8. Milhaud and Milhaud, L’Entraide temporaire, 18.

  9. Bourgeois, L’Orchestre rouge, 85.

  10. Ibid., 475.

  11. Cobb, The Resistance, 117–18.

  12. Heinz Pannwitz, “CARETINA’s History of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle,” EGMA-44213/42334/43172, 20.

  13. Henri Calet, Les Murs de Fresnes (Paris: Éditions Viviane Haly, 1993), 99.

  | CHAPTER 10 | la clairière

  1. Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution, 208.

  2. These institutions included the centrist Amelot Committee, which received funding from both the UGIF and the American Joint Distribution Committee (the “Joint”), a US-based Jewish charity that aided many European Jews during the war. The Amelot Committee shared its funding with Solidarité and cooperated with Entr’aide Temporaire. See Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution, 208.

  3. Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, 67.

  4. Ibid., 69.

  5. Some categories were exempted, including Jews of Turkish, Anglo-Saxon, and a few other nationalities; foreign Jews with non-Jewish spouses; those with a UGIF pass; ill, blind, or paralyzed “untransportable” persons; and mothers of children under two and the children themselves. See Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, 67.

  6. Ibid., 70.

  7. The testimonies of Simone and Armand Boruchowicz, quoted in Sami Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 2002), 96; see also Dassa’s speech at Rue Guy-Patin, February 10, 2013, in J. Laloum, “Les maisons d’enfants de l’UGIF: Le centre de Saint-Mandé,” Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah 1555 (September–December 1995): 89–90.

  8. Quoted in Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur, 98, and speech of February 10, 2013, at Rue Guy-Patin.

  9. As of 1944, Thérèse Cahen was directing the UGIF home in Saint-Mandé. She was deported with the girls from the home in July 1944 on Convoy 77, a month before liberation. She was selected to work, but chose to go to the gas chamber with her charges. See “Thérèse Cahen,” Anonymes, Justes et Persécutés durant la période Nazie dans les communes de France (AJPN), http://www.ajpn.org/personne-Therese-Cahen-8532.html.

  10. Rayski, The Choice of the Jews under Vichy, 243.

  11. The five detailed accounts are from Marcelle Guillemot, recorded in a 1946 interview in the Archives du Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine; the testimony of Marguerite Camplan, recorded in the Renouveau pamphlet and reproduced in Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur; the recollections of Fred and Denise Milhaud, L’Entraide Temporaire, recorded in the 1980s and also found in the Archives du Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine; the recollections of Sophie Schwartz, published by Goldman in Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle passé; and the memories of Pilette Spaak, recorded by Anne Nelson in various interviews.

  12. Goldman, Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle passé, 31.

  13. “Aronson,” “Suzanne Spaak, sauveteur d’enfants Juifs.”

  14. Interview, Michèle Meunier, Paris, June 22, 2015.

  15. Camplan, Renouveau, document, quoted in Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur, 116.

  16. Goldman, Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle passé, 31.

  17. Interview, Sami Dassa, Paris, September 30, 2014.

  18. Camplan, Renouveau, in Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur, 116.

  19. Ibid., 117.

  20. Guillemot, “Testimony,” 2.

  21. Ibid., 3.

  22. Camplan, Renouveau, in Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur, 117.

  23. See Perrault, The Red Orchestra, 391.

  24. Guillemot, “Testimony.”

  25. Meunier interview.

  26. Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur, 96.

  27. Interview, Oriane de la Bourdonnaye Guéna, Paris, June 23, 2015. There were some attempts to convert the hidden children to Christianity by certain individuals and institutions (but there is no suggestion that the Bourdonnayes were among them). In most cases, if Jewish children were instructed to learn the catechism, it was in support of their cover stories.

  28. Camplan, Renouveau, quoted in Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur, 119.

  29. Milhaud and Milhaud, L’Entraide Temporaire.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Patrick Cabanel, “La tentation d’une église confessante?” in Philippe Braunstein, ed., L’Oratoire du Louvre et les Protestants Parisiens (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2011), 251–52. “Nosley” makes an appearance in Hélène Berr’s diary in August 1942.

  32. This figure is cited by both Jeanne List-Pakin and Marcelle Guillemot. See List-Pakin, “Testimony,” 3, and Guillemot, “Testimony,” 3.

  33. List-Pakin, “Testimony,” 2.

  | CHAPTER 11 | le grand livre

  1. Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur, 152.

  2. Pilette Spaak interview.

  3. Camplan, Renouveau, quoted in Dassa, Vivre, aimer avec Auschwitz au cœur, 121.

  4. Lederman, unpublished memoirs, 152.

  5. Goldman, Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle passé, 27.

  6. Interview, Larissa Gruszow, Brussels, December 2, 2014, and e-mails, Richard Bruston, 2015–16.

  7. Patrick Cabanel, Histoire des Justes de France (Paris: Armand Colin, 2012), 295.

  8. Trocmé and his deputy, pastor Éduoard Theis, were arrested by French police on February 13, 1943, the same week as the rescue at La Clairière. After a month they were released, and they returned to their rescue work until the end of the year, when they went into hiding. Trocmé’s wife, Magda, oversaw the rescue efforts in their absence.

  9. Debré, L’Honneur de vivre, 342.

  10. “Fradin Noémie,” Comité Français pour Yad Vashem, https://yadvashem-france.org/les-justes-parmi-les-nations/les-justes-de-france/dossier-3238/.

  11. Debré, L’Honneur de vivre, 355
.

  12. Ibid., 357.

  13. Camplan, Renouveau.

  14. “Aronson,” “Suzanne Spaak, sauveteur d’enfants Juifs.”

  15. Rayski, Nos illusions perdues, 127.

  16. Rayski’s memoirs state that “Jouvenel, the husband of Colette, was half-Jewish.” But Colette had been divorced from Henry de Jouvenel (who was not Jewish) since 1924. Her Jewish husband in hiding was Maurice Goudeket. According to Colette’s biographer, Judith Thurman, Goudeket spent most of the eighteen months following December 1942 in hiding at the Palais Royal. See Thurman, Secrets of the Flesh, 460.

  17. Ibid., 457.

  18. Jean-Louis Debré, Les Femmes qui ont reveillé La France (Paris: Fayard, 2013), 264.

  19. Schloesing was shot down and killed August 26, 1944—the day after the liberation of Paris—having completed eighty-five combat missions. See Pierre Mergier, Itineraire d’un français libre (Paris: Librairie Harmattan, 2010).

  20. Gildea, Fighters in the Shadows, 123.

  21. “Hugues Limonti,” Musée de l’Ordre de la Libération, http://www.ordredelaliberation.fr/fr/les-compagnons/598/hugues-limonti.

  22. Goldman, Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle passé, 39.

  | CHAPTER 12 | the unraveling

  1. See Rita Kramer, Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France (New York: Penguin, 2011).

  2. SOE officer F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas believed that some of his colleagues’ execrable French might have contributed to their arrest.

  3. Guillemot, “Testimony,” 6.

  4. Hugues Limonti was arrested on December 24, 1943, and interrogated in the prison at Fresnes. He was deported on January 24 and imprisoned in the concentration camps at Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, and Drutte. He was awarded the Legion of Honor, among other decorations, and lived until 1988. See “Hugues Limonti,” Musée de L’Ordre de la Libération.