The General's Niece

by Paige Bowers

  The couple spoke late into the night about the opposition they had been a part of in their youth and which had defined the contours of their life ever since. Under André Malraux in the Ministry of Culture, Bernard was working to increase children’s access to art, because he believed that they had as much of a right to paintings, theater, and cinema as they did to learning the alphabet. In Noisy-le-Grand Geneviève was seeing that poverty could be a barrier even to learning the alphabet. She had been going into the slums for six years by then, and she told Bernard of a little boy she met who could not read or do his homework because there was no light in his igloo. His was not the only family that lacked the resources to participate in activities that were available to most people. This dearth and isolation made it difficult, if not impossible, for residents to improve their quality of life or be heard by the people who could help them. Father Joseph called this “social exclusion,” she told Bernard, and he believed that it was a violation of basic human rights.

  Already local authorities were going into the slums to take children away from their families without warning or consultation. While these powers believed what they were doing was in the children’s best interests, Geneviève knew that their actions were often more detrimental, not just to the youth but to their families as a whole, and she had been working to raise awareness about the issue. Although her efforts had provoked sympathy for these struggling families, Geneviève wanted more than that: she wanted solutions. The question was how to achieve them, especially when she and Father Joseph had floated one such proposal—a township that could not only empower the poor but also strengthen the surrounding community—and the mayor of Noisy-le-Grand refused to take part. How strong and how persistent did one have to be to fight and win a battle of this sort? Geneviève did not know, but she suspected she would be helping Father Joseph for at least the foreseeable future.

  She invited him to dinner one evening to talk about the slum, and he showed up at her residence early. Geneviève’s four children greeted him with their tales of meeting the Russian artist Marc Chagall, who was painting a vibrant, twenty-six-hundred-square-foot ceiling around the great chandelier in the Paris Opéra. Although the French public was scandalized that a foreign-born modernist would be allowed to alter their beloved neobaroque opera hall, young Michel, François-Marie, Isabelle, and Philippe Anthonioz were in awe of the bold, beautiful dreamscape he was creating for it. The summer night fell softly on the city as the children chatted with the priest about their exciting day. When Bernard came home from work, they ate dinner together before getting the children ready for bed so they could talk to Father Joseph.

  A woman had come to his office and insulted him for hours, Father Joseph told Geneviève and Bernard. What could he do other than listen? He had no idea where volunteers found the strength to return to these circumstances and no idea why someone would step away from his or her normal life to help. As passionate as he was about helping the poor, there were days when he felt like it was killing him. It did not help that the president of their group, which had become known as Aide à Toute Détresse Quart Monde (ATD Quart Monde), had tendered his resignation that day, citing professional and family responsibilities. Father Joseph turned to Geneviève and asked her if she’d become ATD’s new chief. She told him she had to think about it. As he left in the clear moonlight, Geneviève thought of the families she had come to know since her first visit to Noisy-le-Grand in the autumn of 1958. She wanted to help not only them but also Father Joseph, a well-intentioned man who struggled to navigate the corridors of power. She called the priest and accepted the job, understanding that her interest in the work was tied to her experience as a deportee.

  “I had tried since my return to bury it within me, to live my life as a beloved wife and young mother, but all of it returned to the surface,” she later wrote. “The link with the families . . . was real and strong, just as it was with the volunteers that I so admired, even if I was far from sharing their lives in the midst of poverty.”

  Shortly after Geneviève became president of ATD in 1964, Father Joseph purchased an old post office in a northwestern suburb of Paris and turned it into the group’s official headquarters. After inaugurating the building, reiterating the group’s commitment to the rights of the indigent, and pledging to launch a research institute that would study the problems that all poor people faced, Father Joseph and Geneviève showed that they were serious about their goals. However, they both knew they needed the government’s support in order to achieve them, and Geneviève began meeting with government ministers to convince them that there were no real rights unless everyone had them. She shared her convictions with her uncle Charles, citing a speech he gave in 1941 as the expression of her mission:

  “Nothing will guarantee peace, nothing will save the world order, if the party of liberation . . . cannot build an order where liberty, security and the dignity of each person are exalted and guaranteed.”

  Geneviève asked her uncle how to ensure that the poor had rights too. She had seen their hardships and wanted to know that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was more than some vain words. “Who, better than you, could engage our country in this way?” she asked him. “Isn’t it the job of France to set a universal example?” The war in Algeria had ended, and wasn’t it time, she asked him, to lay the foundation for a more just society? “Since we are, thank God, a democracy, isn’t it time to take the fight against misery onto the political terrain?” she asked.

  Her uncle told her that he approved of her engagement with Father Joseph and had not forgotten about her experience as a deportee. “The understanding of the value and dignity of each person . . . has never ceased to inspire my action and we have taken some steps,” he told her. “There are others, of course, and everything always begins again. But I hope to carry through some projects. . . . Come back and talk to me about all this.”

  Geneviève got up to leave. Before her uncle kissed her good-bye, he said, “You know, I’ve had about ten years too much.” Looking at her uncle in the dim light of his office, Geneviève could see that the pressures of political life had gotten to him. He was tired, there had been at least thirty attempts to assassinate him since he had returned to power, and Geneviève wasn’t sure how much more he could take. His top aide, prime minister Georges Pompidou, had already begun to position himself as a suitable replacement should the old general decide to step down.

  Geneviève recalled the moment as one of the biggest in her life. Perhaps she, and not her uncle, would have to be the one who would engage the country and set the example. In the meantime her uncle would face more political tests. In May 1968 strikes and demonstrations brought the country to a standstill. The unrest began when students started protesting against capitalism, consumerism, and traditional institutions. They also railed against values and order. Their protests gave way to strikes that involved more than eleven million workers, and the government tried to respond by sending out police to calm the disorder. This only made matters worse. Street battles broke out in the Latin Quarter. Women approached Yvonne de Gaulle in the supermarket and sneered, “That’s enough. Leave. We’ve seen enough of you.” Anti–de Gaulle sentiment ran high, and Frenchmen began shouting nasty chants about Charles de Gaulle that upset Geneviève. Her children Isabelle and Michel had taken to the streets in protest, causing their worried parents to stay up until 3:00 AM to be sure they returned home safely. Despite the nerve-racking wait, Geneviève realized her children saw this as their version of the resistance. After returning home Michel told her, “You should be proud of us for following in your footsteps.”

  One day Geneviève left her house, which was heavily guarded to keep protesters from getting in. The complex had valuable tapestries inside that the guards also wanted to protect, and as the weavers let her outside, they asked, “Mme Anthonioz, are you about to take a little tour of the Latin Quarter? Beware of the tear gas!” Mountains of trash were piling up in the streets, but that did no
t make it difficult for her to reach the Sorbonne.

  When she reached the university, she found Father Joseph in the midst of the crowds. He showed her a leaflet that invited students to share their knowledge in the street. But he was also challenging people he encountered that day, telling them about the poor’s sufferings and calling on them to achieve progress without consumerism. There were some attentive faces around him but also a lot of noise and shoving. Someone shouted, “It’s only because of those who don’t have hope that hope is given to us.” And another person said, “Do I have to come see you?” Geneviève encouraged Father Joseph to come back to the house with her so he could rest and get a car back to the camp.

  When they got inside Father Joseph told Geneviève that they should circulate modern-day cahiers de doléances, a nod to the lists of grievances drawn up before the French Revolution in 1789. The poor could express their humiliations, talk about the injustices they endured, and discuss the rights that they did not have. “Without their words, the changes that the students and the unionists want will only benefit the wealthy,” he said. They walked past a workshop in the compound in which one of Geneviève’s neighbors was working on a large tapestry. In two or three years, that neighbor would be finished with her work. Geneviève wondered how long it would take her and Father Joseph to finish theirs.

  Her uncle Charles, in the meantime, his support declining, called for a constitutional referendum that would decentralize the government and restructure the Senate so that it represented economic and social interest groups. There was no real need for either change, and the country knew it. When voters went to the polls on April 28, 1969, the majority voted against his proposals, and he took it as a sign that it was time for him to step down and retire once more to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. He tendered his resignation shortly after midnight. His prime minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, said it was “an event the gravity of which will very quickly appear to all people in France and in the world.” This resignation was to be Charles’s last.

  He resolved to live as a hermit. In October 1969 he did not even attend the wedding of Geneviève’s oldest son, Michel Anthonioz. Charles’s sister, Marie-Agnès, reported back to him that Michel’s young American bride was “nice” and that the ceremony was “lovely.” Above all Charles was happy for Geneviève, who would soon become a grandmother. His main objective was to finish the final volume of his memoirs. Yvonne passed the time knitting and writing to family members, telling them “now that we’re free, we can have little family visits.”

  On November 9, 1970, Charles de Gaulle died at his home in Colombey. He was seventy-nine. Geneviève received his final letter, postmarked the day of his death, after learning that he had passed away. He wrote, “You must know that I think of you often in our current solitude . . . we would be very happy to see you and Bernard again . . . here, everything is calm.”

  ADIR celebrated his life with a special issue of Voix et Visages. The general had entered into history by putting an end to their anxiety in 1940 and changing the world they had come to know. Charles de Gaulle gave them the chance to fight for something grand and the opportunity to understand what it meant to pay the price for such an effort. It was a period of time that, for them, was a big adventure. His passing brought forth their nostalgia and their pride in having helped to liberate France.

  “Who among us, at this moment, isn’t proud of having fought at the side of this giant for the liberation of our country?” read an editorial in Voix et Visages.

  Charles de Gaulle issued simple instructions for his funeral: he wanted it to take place at Colombey, and he wanted to be buried next to his daughter Anne in an unpretentious grave. He wanted things to be simple, he stressed, and he wanted no state funeral. He wanted no speeches, no music, no parliamentary orations, no posthumous decorations, and no reserved places, except for family, members of the Order of the Liberation, and Colombey officials.

  “The men and women of France and of other countries of the world may, if they wish, do my memory the honor of accompanying my body to its last resting place, but it is in silence that I wish it to be conducted,” he wrote.

  Two hundred members of ADIR were present for the solemn service. The general had meant a lot to them, and they wanted to support Geneviève and her family in their time of grief. A local carpenter custom built the basic six-foot-eight-inch oak coffin that was lowered into the plot next to his daughter. Several thousand people crowded the village that day, and television crews were set up in the town’s little church and twenty feet from the burial plot. Clad in black, Yvonne de Gaulle received visitors and held herself together with dignity.

  It was the end of an era.

  * * *

  One afternoon in May 1987, Geneviève lay in bed, trying to piece together her memories. She could see the tender, worried faces of her husband and children. Where was she? The sixty-six-year-old was in a cardiology ward in Lyon, where she had been rushed after testifying in the Klaus Barbie trial. Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon, had been extradited back to France to stand trial for the torture and murder of resisters such as Jean Moulin. Geneviève had never encountered Barbie, but she was asked to describe the horrible crimes committed in the concentration camps. It was hoped that her testimony would shed light on the Nazi mind-set. Geneviève had spoken in public about the camps before without any issue. Perhaps she was overcome from having to describe the crimes again.

  As she sat in the witness stand, she had looked out to see the young, serious faces before her. She grew anxious. She grew weak. She continued to answer questions, both from the attorneys and the journalists who approached her after her testimony.

  She collapsed.

  It was a heart attack, and she believed it was caused by extreme tension. After her hospital stay she had to recover and couldn’t do anything else. She couldn’t write, read, speak too much, or answer the telephone. Flowers surrounded her in her bedroom. People brought her records, among them Bach, Brahms sonatas for piano, and Mozart quartets. In front of her was a large tapestry by Matisse, full of fish and birds. She was frustrated that she could not help Father Joseph, who believed that everyone was capable of transforming himself. But as she reflected on the dehumanized poor, she thought this was no different from the crimes against humanity she spoke about in Lyon.

  After Geneviève regained her strength, Father Joseph grew seriously ill, and by the beginning of 1988, he needed a heart operation. Doctors told him that most of the operations were successful, but the priest told Geneviève that he didn’t feel very lucky. He had a smile on his face when he said it, she recalled, and as sick as he was, he continued to write and meet with people in his office until it was time for him to have surgery.

  Geneviève visited Father Joseph at the hospital before his operation. He was calmer than she had seen him in some time. He asked her about Bernard, who had recently suffered a serious heart attack. Then he asked about her children and grandchildren before shifting the conversation back to ATD’s momentum and how to keep it going. They now had a seat on the country’s Economic and Social Council (CES) and had presented a groundbreaking report to the council about the living conditions of the poor in France. He wanted to take that report and get it turned into antipoverty legislation that could ensure the indigent not only had rights but also weren’t excluded from society. By now he and Geneviève had been working together to help the poor for the past thirty years, and while they had made some inroads, it was time to solidify those gains in a law. Geneviève agreed. Then the priest asked her to attend mass with him in the hospital. Ten people surrounded him as he explained that the Eucharist was to share the pain that Jesus took on for those who suffered. This is what they did every day as ATD volunteers.

  Father Joseph was eventually wheeled away for his operation, and when it was done, the doctors thought it had gone well. Soon the priest slid into a coma, and visitors stood around him, praying in silence. Geneviève had to return home at the end of the day to
Bernard and her children. When she walked through the front door, the phone rang and it was one of the ATD volunteers. Father Joseph had died.

  Geneviève and Bernard left as soon as possible for the hospital. Geneviève remained at Father Joseph’s side for a while. He had accomplished what he had set out to do, and each of their meetings had taken Geneviève down an unknown road but one that was familiar to him. Now she knew she had to keep going without him. It was as evident to her then as entering the resistance had been on June 18, 1940.

  “When the door opened, I rose like a new knight that had just begun to arm himself,” she wrote.

  The service for Father Joseph was held at Notre Dame Cathedral, which was crowded with volunteers and people the priest had helped. One woman told Geneviève that it was because of him that she and her siblings were saved from public assistance. One CES member said, “You have won, Father Joseph. Nothing will ever be the same.”

  A few weeks after the funeral, Geneviève met with some of ATD’s longest-standing volunteers. In 1980 Father Joseph had given an interview in which he said he hoped that 1988 would be a big moment for a law against poverty and social exclusion. He wanted something on the books that would restore the poor’s sense of dignity and independence. Ideally the law would help people in extreme poverty have access to basic rights that most people took for granted, such as work and shelter. A law had been proposed in the Economic and Social Council, but it had been met with opposition. After assuming Father Joseph’s seat on the council, Geneviève would continue to present his case to them in hopes of achieving his goal.

  Geneviève discovered that the effort would take a lot of energy. As she and her aide-de-camp, Geneviève Tardieu, met with people in the council, they learned that as hard as Father Joseph had worked, his message was poorly understood. Most of his colleagues felt he had accomplished his goal because the government had passed a new minimum wage law. Both of the women stressed that Joseph had wanted something bigger than that; he wanted a law that granted the poor all fundamental rights.