The General's Niece

by Paige Bowers

  It was 6:00 PM when she headed back toward Jules Ferry Street to catch her bus. Cries and laughter of children echoed throughout the camp as she left. A dog howled. Darkness surrounded her until she approached her bus stop. When the bus arrived she climbed the steps, paid her fare, and settled in for a ride back to her world. She thought about how the postwar years had brought rapid economic growth and unprecedented wealth to France as it rebuilt and modernized. Although the government had hoped to make social services for the poor part of its rebuilding plan, that assistance was slow to come, and her afternoon in Noisy had only proven that. Some of the capital’s newspapers claimed that the problems existed solely among migrant workers who came to France with their families looking for work, but Geneviève met plenty of French families that afternoon who were struggling and anxious about their future.

  When she reached her Métro stop, she walked to her house, where her children greeted her at the door, excited to see her after her long day away. She tucked each of them in for the night, kissing their foreheads and listening attentively to last-minute stories that kept her at their sides for just that little bit longer. As they drifted off, one by one, she closed the bedroom door and told Bernard about her afternoon.

  “I never imagined such distress,” she told him. “Hundreds of men and women living crammed together in the mud, yes, in the mud. These are families like ours, with children. I was shaken by what I saw because I experienced it myself.”

  She knew what it was like to wake up in a place where you were cold, where you slept poorly, where you didn’t know if you could get a hot cup of coffee.

  “You cannot possibly imagine what that is like,” she told Bernard. “But me, I know it. I know what it’s like to get up every morning with the same fight before you. I know what it’s like to have nothing, not even a bar of soap to wash with.”

  The people’s faces were on her mind as she fell asleep, and they lingered there for days. “I’m not sure when I became so lucky,” she thought. “My children are going to school and we have everything we need to raise them. They have a future and we are happy. I don’t want to destroy that happiness, but I passionately want others to experience what we have too, this joy and this future where anything is possible.” The question for her was where and how to begin.

  Not everyone saw the camp the way Geneviève and Father Joseph did. Local authorities looked around and saw nothing but blight. Abbé Pierre could not guarantee Father Joseph any additional aid. The solution, at least from the government’s perspective, was to tear down the igloos, a move that would leave thousands more people homeless in the capital region. The government was noncommittal about finding new housing for the displaced after that.

  Father Joseph asked Geneviève how she could help. She called Pierre Sudreau, minister of housing, to see if he could come to their aid. Pierre was a deportee like Geneviève, and she was able to get an appointment with him fairly easily. He told her that housing was a widespread problem, and not just for the poor. She then pressed him to consider supporting Father Joseph’s idea of an empowering community for the indigent that would keep them with their families, make them a part of the surrounding neighborhood, and provide them with the services they needed to move into ordinary housing. But at that moment it was difficult for her to get others to see the priest in a positive light. They wrongly viewed him as a slum lord.

  “If you raze these slums it will be catastrophic,” she cautioned. “There is a real chance here, with the dynamic projects that are en route that you won’t have to do this. But if you tear these slums down and disperse these people throughout France, you won’t see the problem as much as you do now, but it will always exist.”

  Although Sudreau made no commitments, he did keep the bulldozers at bay for a few months. Geneviève continued to meet with other high functionaries about the slum, letting them know that these weren’t havens for dangerous criminals or lazy people who didn’t want to work, as many believed.

  “Few outsiders come to the camp,” she explained, time and time again. “Ambulances are afraid to go there, because of what they might find. But I can tell you that sort of behavior is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of these families and how they live.”

  The more meetings she had and the more she pressed her case, the more she realized how difficult it would be to continue her advocacy for residents of Noisy unless she quit working for Malraux. As much as she feared Malraux’s legendary temper, she understood that the missions of ADIR and Noisy-le-Grand fit together like neat little puzzle pieces that were rooted in her experience at Ravensbrück. It would be against her principles to turn away from something in which she believed so fervently. Besides, Malraux was surrounded by legions of people who were helping him establish his new ministry and had plenty of political support. Father Joseph had a small group, but a big fight ahead, one that spoke to Geneviève in a profound way.

  She steeled herself and went to meet with Malraux. As expected he was angry and resented her departure as a desertion at the beginning of a difficult mission entrusted to him by her very own uncle. How could she do this to him? She struggled to explain herself. Later she would recall, “I could only tell him that I wanted to help an association of poor families.”

  After resigning her position with Malraux, Geneviève returned to the slums and saw that they took a toll on women and children. Children were often unable to attend school, in part because of their living circumstances but also because they became ill frequently. Mothers struggled to keep up with the day to day, juggling the welfare of their little ones with the laundry they could manage to clean and the scant food they could serve. Fathers were gone most of the time, working or looking for work. When they returned home they sat in the darkness, defeated by the reality of their day. Many drank and fought each other, sometimes breaking what few possessions they had in their homes. Geneviève knew this because of the rapport she had begun to build with some of the women at the camp; they were the ones raising the children, so the future was literally and figuratively in their hands. Father Joseph hoped to build a large women’s center to help them. The center would house a laundromat, a salon, a modern kitchen, and a television room. Geneviève contacted Elle magazine, inviting them to the camp for a story about how women could solve poverty in one of Paris’s worst slums. The article introduced readers to a harsh world of broken families eager to put the pieces of their lives back together. Marlyse Schaeffer wrote that it might be too late for the adults in the camp to overcome their fear and shame in order to truly change their lives for the better. But she had great hopes for the children there, who were immune to playground taunts and dreamed of caring for their parents in a house that was not strange and round.

  “Someday I won’t have a house like this,” said Marc, a seven-year-old resident. “It will be a normal house, a square house.”

  Until then there would be a struggle for the essentials: food, heat, electricity, a way to stay clean. The yet-to-be-completed women’s center would be a crucial component of that quest, and the Elle readership was so moved by the story that they donated money toward the building’s completion. It was inaugurated by the end of 1959, and Geneviève attended the event with some of her friends and other local notables such as the mayor and chief of police. In front of this crowd, Father Joseph declared: “Here, we will be able to rediscover our dignity. Mothers, who are the focal point of the family, can come here and their family can follow. This has been built in their honor.”

  The building was decorated with lithographs signed by Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Georges Braque, and Henri Matisse. The works were donated by gallery owners and friends of the artists who had become interested in helping the camp after reading the story in Elle.

  Volunteer Francine de la Gorce recalled: “The first woman who dared come to the beauty shop was given a black eye by her husband that same night. But two months later, she returned with a bouquet of flowers for her beautician, who she said had changed he
r life on that day she made her beautiful. She wanted to hang drapes in her home, and go to her children’s school to meet their teacher, and all the sort of things you do if you have pride in yourself. It was this sort of thing that could cause a turnaround in the entire life of the slum.”

  Although Geneviève did not pay daily visits to the camp at first, she made an impression on the women she befriended. One tenant, Mathilde Apparicio, recalled: “She had a way of hugging us, then listening to us and smiling as we talked. She became a real friend. She was one of us. We knew she was someone important, but she was never haughty around us and always found a kind word to say to us all.”

  * * *

  Noisy-le-Grand’s igloos had small wood or coal stoves that were used for basic cooking and heat. Many families found that they could never get warm enough in winter, so they insulated their homes with newspapers they pasted onto the walls. One morning a mother left her three youngest children behind as she took the two oldest off to school. While she was away a spark from the stove lit the newspaper covering the inside of the home, and within minutes the igloo was in flames. The firemen were too late, neighbors whispered. When the flames were finally extinguished, two girls were dead and a third was seriously burned.

  The entire camp was in shock. Geneviève journeyed out to Noisy for the children’s funeral. She entered the camp’s makeshift chapel, which was as somber and cold as the igloos. In the semidarkness she pressed in with the crowd who had come to mourn. Two small coffins covered in white cloth sat between two candles whose flames trembled, seemingly in tandem with the swell of sobbing people.

  One of the bereaved cried, “It’s one thing after another around here.”

  Others whispered, “All of us here will die like rats. No one gives a shit about us. We’ll die of hunger, of cold, from fire, but no one will care. We’re all in danger and have to get out of here as soon as possible. How could the Lord let this happen?”

  As Father Joseph approached the altar, everyone became silent, except for those who quietly wept. The priest struggled to compose himself before he began the funeral service. For Geneviève the moment solidified her determination to fight for this community.

  Later she recalled: “I could have fled this so I could let go of all the horrific memories I had of Ravensbrück: the children that were drowned or shot or simply starved. But as we sat there—the camp’s families and the volunteers—waiting for Father Joseph to reassure us, I was brought back to those moments in the concentration camp that were hard and that tested my faith. When you become marked by something like that, situations like the deaths of these children and the living conditions of these people become impossible to accept. Without question, on that day, I knew my commitment to them would be a long, sustained one. I could not take my mind off of those girls.”

  The chapel emptied, and mourners followed the two small coffins to the nearby cemetery. Many families shouted and cried out in despair about the misery that had led to these deaths. Francine de la Gorce looked around her at the unfolding protest and decided to continue working at the camp instead of moving to India to help the poor there. Francine’s mother, like Geneviève, had survived Ravensbrück.

  “When my mother came to see me at the Noisy camp, she could not bear to stay more than an hour because it reminded her too much of the deprivation, humiliation and suffering she went through,” de la Gorce recalled. “But Geneviève’s reaction that day really impressed me. She felt very mobilized that day and this was not a woman who needed to engage with us in order to fill her life. Her life was already so full. But she could not turn a blind eye to this.”

  A few days later they met in Father Joseph’s office to discuss what to do next. He tried to reassure Geneviève that what he was doing was no different from the rebuilding project her uncle undertook when he tried to forge a strong, new France from the one that had been so beaten and humiliated after the war. He had volunteers just as her uncle had résistants. And he was speaking to that part of people’s minds and hearts that understood how wrong it was to ignore injustices, especially if they were being perpetrated in one’s own backyard. Rebuilding took time, and he could not allow these slums to be destroyed without making sure these people had somewhere to go.

  Couldn’t she help him explain that to local officials? He knew that tragedies like the fire and stories about fighting on the grounds didn’t help his case, but he wanted to stress that real solidarity was being created among people here and that it was essential to helping them bear the hard living conditions.

  “I could not help but think of our camaraderie in the concentration camp,” Geneviève said. “Love flowed there through gestures and looks. Here, in these igloos that were already overcrowded, families hosted other families, women helped each other by washing their clothes, people waited in lines for their neighbors to get them some water.”

  Geneviève knew there had been terrible times in the two years she had been visiting Noisy-le-Grand, but these trials were shared by all, and after the hard times there were celebrations and moments of true happiness. And Father Joseph had put a network of goodwill in place. There was volunteers who came to the camp either to donate used clothes or sew new ones. There were deliveries of well-ripened bananas that women figured out how to prepare in a multitude of ways, delighting their families and neighbors until the last crates were empty. There was a growing number of volunteers from all walks of life and from all over the world, people who had jobs or who gave up their weekends in an effort to be helpful. Society women delivered books for the children. College students read to toddlers or walked the grounds picking up trash. With their words and deeds and time, these volunteers were slowly showing these residents that their world was not confined to this camp, that people had not forgotten about them and did care.

  “If you wanted to destroy such misery, you had to listen to what these people were saying about what they wanted and needed to live,” Geneviève said. “If you had no sense of their deepest aspirations, then you probably weren’t getting close enough to listen to what they had to say.”

  The camp prepared for Christmas. Geneviève walked around the grounds to see the simple but heartfelt decorations on display. In one igloo a family erected a small tree and had begun to embellish it with silvery garlands and cutout paper stars. The mother was pregnant and exhausted as she watched her four children decorate the tree.

  “Maybe the child will be born at Christmas,” the mother said wistfully. “But it would be so nice if it did not have to come into this.”

  Her husband was working, and she hoped they could leave Noisy behind soon. Geneviève wished them well and then went to find Father Joseph so she could tell him good-bye for the day.

  “I wanted to go back to my house which was clean and warm, where each child had a bed and toys in the corner, where the eldest had desks with their notebooks and books to read,” Geneviève said. “With all my strength, I wanted them to be happy. My mother died when I was young, but we all got gifts in our shoes and my father always lit the Christmas tree. I needed to get back to my family so that I could do the same. I could not celebrate Christmas there. I could not leave behind my own life to join those on the other side of the social barrier.”

  As it stood her uncle Pierre was in a hospital, fighting for his life. On December 21 he had passed out during a visit with his brother Charles, who was now the French president, at the Élysée Palace. There was no doctor or nurse present, so Charles called an ambulance and then tried to revive his brother by patting his temples with a cologne-infused handkerchief. He was unsuccessful. The ambulance arrived and took Pierre to the hospital, where they would operate. So far his condition remained unchanged.

  Geneviève did not share this with Father Joseph, but as she bid him farewell, he hugged her in gratitude.

  On Christmas Day, he wrote her:

  Despite the work we have submerged ourselves in this holiday season, I could not let this year end without thanking the Lord t
hat you have become one of our friends. You cannot imagine how your love and devotion have warmed our hearts, especially during the hard times. We know we can always count on you.

  The following day Geneviève learned that her uncle Pierre de Gaulle died of an aneurysm, just like her father, Xavier, had. Her aunt Madeleine not only grieved the loss of her husband but also faced another hard reality: she had no money. At age fifty-one the woman was not about to dwell on her circumstances; she immediately went out looking for employment, finding work in a mailroom and then the capital’s tourism office. Once again she set a bold example for her niece Geneviève by showing her that when it came to hard times and circumstances, you had to put up a good fight.

  14

  A Voice for the Voiceless

  One evening after Geneviève tucked her children in for the night, she sat down with Bernard to reminisce about their years in the resistance. When they joined that fight in 1940, they did it because they refused to accept Nazi oppression. Geneviève wondered what good their efforts were if there were people in France almost twenty years later who were still oppressed, only this time by indigence they could not shake. She asked Bernard whether they should consider themselves former combatants whose defining war had been fought and won or recognize that there were still injustices that they needed to resolve.