The General's Niece

by Paige Bowers

  The reporter covering the trial wrote “all of the accused had short memories.”

  On December 5, 1944, Bonny admitted to a packed courtroom that he did hand the general’s niece over to the Gestapo, but he said that she had a false ID with the name Garnier on it. He testified that he had been asked to monitor Défense de la France and that they paid a young medical student to infiltrate the group and find out who was involved with it so the Gestapo could make arrests. Bonny discovered that the Défense de la France members made their drops at a bookstore on the rue Bonaparte. Bonny got hired as a salesman there, he admitted, and arrested Geneviève on his second day of work. He told the courtroom that he took her to a building on the Place des États-Unis where she was questioned and punched in the jaw. She refused to speak, he told the courtroom.

  “You struck a young girl?” the judge asked, horrified.

  The audience hissed in disgust.

  By December 28 both Bonny and Lafont had faced the firing squad.

  France was punishing the worst of its collaborators, and General Charles de Gaulle assured the French that their country was about to emerge “stronger and more glorious than before.” He had been assured Allied aid and planned to recruit, train, and arm a large number of units that could play a part in “this decisive phase of the war.”

  France, he said, was “a country confident of herself, master of herself, wounded, but on her feet.” It had been welcomed into the United Nations and would become an eminent country once again, “that of a power without whom nothing can be decided, neither victory, nor order in the world, nor peace.”

  The general said that few were guilty of collaboration but acknowledged that some took the “wrong road.” Already some Parisians had been publicly shaving the heads of French women who were suspected of sleeping with German officers. Some suspected male collaborators were shot in secret, but other vengeful acts were more brazen. In one southern French town, fifty armed men stormed a prison after disconnecting its telephones. The gunmen ordered the wardens to release three Vichy militiamen being held so they could lead them out and shoot the militiamen in the jail’s courtyard. In another town collaborators were shot after receiving a pardon from General de Gaulle. In each case the shooters claimed to be acting on behalf of the resistance because collaborator trials were proceeding too slowly. The newspaper Le Monde decried the killings, saying that the shooters were “assassins and agents of anarchy” who hid behind the resistance and compromised the country’s progress. The National Council of Resistance apologized for the slayings, and others within the movement disavowed the groups behind them.

  Other paybacks were said to be fueled by people who were jealous that their neighbors ended the war in better financial shape. Or they were based on denunciations from collaborators who were eager to direct attention away from themselves. General de Gaulle argued that it was too easy to find fault, “for who is exempt from error.” But it was time to set aside these internal quarrels in the name of unity. After all, the country had a lot of work ahead of it between rebuilding and welcoming home its prisoners of war.

  One of France’s most famous prisoners of war was Geneviève de Gaulle, and at the beginning of 1945, the twenty-four-year-old was struggling with her health in the dank confines of the Ravensbrück bunker. After spending one night shaking with cold and fever, Geneviève struggled to get up for roll call the next day. A guard looked in her cell and asked her if she was feeling well. She could barely reply that she wasn’t. A few hours later an SS doctor stood in the doorway and asked her about her symptoms. Geneviève told him she was feverish, with terrible pain in her right lung. For the next two days, the doctor gave her pills and let her stay in bed. The fever went down, and her pain subsided.

  As her health improved Geneviève was allowed to go on two walks a day. She left for one of her walks and saw soldiers moving furniture into the upstairs cell across the corridor from hers. The guards brought in a uniformed man without SS insignia and Geneviève could tell that he was receiving more than the typical camp rations. When she returned from her walk, she noticed the soldier’s cell was closed. As she entered her own cell, the guard handed her a letter. It was from her father, which meant he was alive and he knew where she was. Her hands shook as she opened the note, which was written in succinct German. In it he let her know how everyone in the family was doing, including her brother, Roger, who was fighting with the Free French forces.

  She celebrated her first letter from the outside world by trying to eat some of her soup to build up her strength. She fell asleep and dreamed of lying on her stomach in a flat-bottomed boat that drifted through dark water. The stream was narrow, surrounded on both sides by steep black rocks that descended sharply to the edge of the water. She sailed toward a seemingly endless tunnel, then saw a faint light at the end of it. She woke up feeling hopeful and sang some Franz Schubert songs that her father had taught her in German: “The Trout,” “The Linden Tree,” and “The King of Aulnes.”

  As she sang a female guard entered her cell and gave her some calcium tablets and three boxes of vitamin C. Anna brought her some mending work and a pair of scissors. She cut tiny playing cards out of the cardboard box that held her medicines, using her pencil to mark them with their numbers and suits. It might be fun to play a game of solitaire every now and then, she thought.

  Outside in the corridor Geneviève heard movement. She looked through her cell door and saw her upstairs neighbor being led from his cell by two SS guards. He had a resigned look on his face, and Geneviève had the feeling that he wouldn’t be coming back. Later in the day one of the guards came to Geneviève’s cell and told her to gather her things because she was being transferred to another cell. When the female guard returned for Geneviève, she looked down at one of Geneviève’s cockroaches and crushed him with the heel of her shoe. She led Geneviève upstairs to the cell of the soldier who had been led out just a few hours before. The window of her cell looked out onto the crematorium ovens, and the smell filled the room. She noticed a piece of paper sticking out of the cell window and climbed up onto the stool to fish it out. The paper was hastily addressed to “General von.” Geneviève realized she would never learn this person’s full name, his reasons for being incarcerated in a women’s concentration camp, or his fate.

  Once Geneviève settled into her new room, she was taken outside for the third time that day to have a walk in the courtyard. The sky was blue and the air was cold, but Geneviève felt stronger and more eager to survive this ordeal. She wanted to see her loved ones again and wanted to experience another spring with all the trees in bloom. She could think of Paris, with its watercolor skies and the gardens of the Tuileries in full color. She imagined herself walking along the gravel pathways, past the fountains and the flower beds, until she reached the Orangerie. She envisioned Monet’s water lilies surrounding her in the circular rooms of the gallery, and she felt awash in their pastels. By forcing herself to think about their cloudy petals floating across the soft blue pond, she could fill her dreams with them. The blooms covered silent lakes and filled her reverie with light. These visions would keep her going until she could get back to Paris and see the lilies for real, with her own eyes.

  9

  Release

  Fritz Suhren threw open the door to Geneviève’s cell and announced that they would be joined by two men who would like to ask her some questions.

  “You should answer accurately and candidly,” he told her, as a young soldier and an elegantly attired civilian with well-polished shoes appeared in the doorway. The men motioned for Geneviève to sit down on her bed and began asking her about her arrest, her interrogation by the Gestapo, and her treatment in Fresnes Prison. Suhren sat in the corner listening as Geneviève said that she was never tortured but was knocked to the ground, kicked, and beaten. The soldier taking notes paused and looked up at her, a look of shock written all over his face. Geneviève continued, telling them about the cattle cars, her arrival at the camp,
and her distress at being stripped naked and inspected. She told them about the dogs, the beatings, the constant fear, the near destruction of her dignity, and the theft of her most basic rights.

  “We [prisoners] are Stücke,” she told them. “Pieces. Even our fellow inmates—some of whom have positions as guards, policewomen, barracks chiefs—can with impunity insult and revile us, beat us, trample us, kill us. As far as anyone in the camp hierarchy is concerned, it’s good riddance: one less vermin to deal with. I have seen, I have experienced this willful oppression, this grinding down of a fellow human being who is in such a state of exhaustion she can barely move. Hunger, cold, forced labor—all are ordeals we have to endure, but they are far from the worst.”

  The visitors listened intently, occasionally stopping her to ask follow-up questions about the beatings she suffered. Suhren remained quiet in the corner.

  “Perhaps Suhren realizes that this inmate is still capable of testifying and even of passing judgment,” Geneviève later wrote. “If Nazi Germany is defeated, many among those in charge will doubtless be held accountable.”

  That is, unless they killed everyone who might be able to testify.

  When the men finished their questioning, they brought Geneviève to the infirmary. The soldier asked the camp’s doctor for Geneviève’s medical records so he could conduct his own medical examination. Leafing through her file, the soldier discovered untreated pleurisy and scurvy. Looking at her, he could see that her body had withered away from starvation and overwork. The air-raid siren sounded in the middle of the exam, and guards rushed Geneviève back to her cell until the soldier could finish his work after the all clear. Then she was taken to another interrogation by a high-ranking Gestapo member who began his questioning by telling Geneviève how much he had enjoyed his time in Paris. With this polite formality out of the way, he launched into a description of Geneviève’s resistance activities. She downplayed her involvement and refused to name any of her cohorts. A secretary efficiently typed Geneviève’s answers, then handed the typed page to her and asked her to verify it with her signature. The Gestapo officer walked out of the office with the deposition, leaving Geneviève alone with the secretary, who began speaking to her in French. The secretary told Geneviève she loved Paris too and asked her to write something in French in her notebook in remembrance of their meeting.

  “The lyrics of a Lucienne Boyer song would be perfect,” she urged. “I am a fan of her music.”

  Geneviève took the pen and book and wrote: “‘Parlez-moi d’amour, dites-moi des choses tendres. . . .’ ‘Speak to me of love, whisper me sweet nothings’—Lucienne Boyer.” She signed her name. The Gestapo officer returned and asked Geneviève to sign one more document before escorting her back to her cell.

  Smoke poured from the crematorium smokestacks. Snowflakes fell outside. Geneviève kept busy by arranging her Christmas presents, pouch of sewing needles, playing cards, and other personal effects. The next day a guard opened her cell, switched on the light, and yelled “On your feet! Get yourself dressed! And be quick about it!” The guard handed her a navy-blue dress with white stripes, white linen sandals, and the overcoat her friends had sent her in Fresnes Prison. She wrapped herself in the woolen shawl her friends had given her for Christmas before putting on her coat and loading her pockets with her belongings. Geneviève looked around at the cell and felt like she had lived several lifetimes within its walls. She turned to see Anna standing in the corridor, inconspicuously waving farewell with the handkerchief Geneviève had given her for Christmas.

  Geneviève was brought to the bunker office, where two SS officers, a young female guard, and an emaciated woman named Virginia d’Albert-Lake waited. Virginia, thirty, was an American who had married a Frenchman and joined the French resistance to help Allied fighter pilots who had been shot down in occupied territory. Her head was shaven, except for a few sparse tufts of hair that had begun to grow back. She listened intently as one of the guards recounted how Auschwitz had just been evacuated in advance of the incoming Russian troops.

  “We had to take to the roads,” the guard said. “For two whole days, we marched without food. Terrible people, the Russians. If only it were the Americans who were advancing in this direction! I’m afraid of the Russians. The Americans are kind, but the Russians are murderers,” the guard added, drawing her finger across her throat to emphasize her point. She shook her fist at the portrait of Hitler hanging over her desk and said, “To think that that man is responsible for all this!”

  Virginia said nothing. She looked up to see Geneviève standing there and was thrilled to know that they would be traveling together. Although she had seen the general’s niece around the camp before, she did not know her personally. She heard that she was a beloved figure because of her charm, kindness, and courage. Geneviève’s easy smile spread across her face, and then she reached out for Virginia’s hand to help her as they exited the bunker before passing through the camp gate with the SS officers and female guard. Snow still fell, and the wind sliced through their layers of clothing. As Geneviève looked back through the gates, she saw the silhouettes of several hunched-over women carrying vats of coffee just as dawn broke. It was the same sorrowful image she had seen when she entered Ravensbrück more than a year before and a bittersweet sight as she left it for an unknown destination.

  Virginia and Geneviève trudged through the snow to the Fürstenberg train station with their guards. Virginia struggled to keep up, stumbling and falling during the two-mile walk. Frustrated by the delays it caused, the female guard grabbed Virginia and pulled her along until they reached the train for Berlin. After arriving in the German capital, the SS didn’t know their way around, so they kept retracing their steps, forcing Virginia and Geneviève up and down the steps in the city’s metro. An air-raid siren sounded, signaling the first Allied bombings of the city, and crowds rushed into bomb shelters. In her exhaustion Virginia struggled to navigate the stairs, so by the time the quintet reached the shelters, there was not enough room. The group stumbled over wood and plaster and ran past falling timbers. Rain fell through the holes in the ceiling, leaving muddy puddles for them to wade through.

  They waited by the tracks for the raid to end before boarding another train for Munich. As they maneuvered through the train to their seats, Geneviève heard passengers say they believed the war was ending. There was reason for hope, she believed, as they settled into a first-class cabin. A young German aviator joined their retinue, and Geneviève struck up a conversation with him, shocking the SS officers by telling him what she thought of the concentration camp system. The airman told her that despite the way things may have looked to her at that moment, Germany had won the war. After all hadn’t they been victorious in all of Europe’s capitals? Geneviève reminded him that the Nazis had yet to conquer London. Besides, it seemed to her like the Allies were about to take Berlin. Although the pilot was clearly uncomfortable with the exchange, Virginia could tell that Geneviève’s ability to speak German endeared her to their entourage. They shared their bread, margarine, and sausage rations with each other during the ride, and Geneviève offered up some of the items from the personal food parcels she had been allowed to receive before leaving Ravensbrück.

  After midnight on their second day of travel, the train stopped at a station six miles outside of Munich. The city had been bombed. Geneviève, Virginia, and their guards boarded a crowded trolley car that took them halfway into town, but they had to get out and walk to reach the central business section. It was a clear night, and the moon shone down on bombed-out buildings, whose remains looked like gnarled, black fingers grasping for the sky. They walked for a half hour through debris piled two stories high until they reached a tall building that had been pitted by exploding shells. They entered it, climbing the stairs to the mezzanine where tired Nazi soldiers sat at tables drinking beer in a brightly lit room. There were no empty tables, so they hurriedly drank a glass of beer and left.

  They were l
ooking for the Munich Gestapo, and when they found it, Geneviève and Virginia were interrogated again, but they asked not to give their identities. The head of the prison asked them to complete a questionnaire, but Geneviève refused and told him who she was. The surveillance chief was stunned. He disappeared for a few moments and then returned to tell her, “You were right to not want to give me your identity. Act like I’ve heard nothing.”

  Geneviève and Virginia spent the evening in a locked cell, sharing a small cot. Early the next morning a uniformed woman woke them up and ordered them to dress quickly because they would be departing on a train for Ulm in thirty minutes.

  They boarded the train after 7:00 AM. When it stopped in a prairie, passengers whispered that there must be an air raid coming. Soon the rumble of bomber engines could be heard overhead. The crowded train remained quiet and calm, certain that Ulm was being bombed and that they were not the target. After a two-hour wait the SS officers grew restless and decided they should get out of the train and walk. They followed the tracks to the next station and asked about trains. The agent said, “Ulm has been severely bombed. There will probably not be any trains before tomorrow.”

  The guards discussed the delay before deciding they would spend the night in the nearby town. It was a charming locale, with neat dirt paths separating clusters of frame houses, a smattering of pastel-hued barns, and a small local inn known for its crisp white curtains and sparkling dining room. The inn had no guests that day, and the SS officers inquired about a room for the night. A grandmother sat and darned socks while her daughter welcomed the new arrivals. A little boy and his sister sat near the old woman, munching apples as they stared at the new boarders, who were offered glass mugs of cold beer. The radio was turned on and orchestral music began to play, causing Virginia to weep. She had not heard music in months, and she had not felt as at home as she did at that moment. Even the female guard began to relax, showing everyone funny pictures of her relatives. Geneviève and Virginia talked about leaving the camp and mentioned that they were glad to be done with Dorothea Binz and her punishment. The female guard stopped smiling and said, “I understand why you wouldn’t like Frau Binz. She is severe. But I think she is fair.”