For people in the neighbourhood generally things had hardly changed. For the time being, the ‘Occupation’ did not make much difference to them in their normal activities; they began to regard it, too, as normal.
A few people preserved their dignity to the extent of keeping apart from the Germans–of ignoring them. Most were concerned to get on good terms with them, and above all to do business with them. Thétieu is only a small village of about 300 inhabitants; it is nonetheless a characteristic example.
There was in the village a female butcher, Madame Irène, who had no time for the Germans. Not only did they not buy from her, but her husband had been captured and was a prisoner of war. There was also, in the same village–just opposite our house–a publican, Madame Rose, an enormously energetic woman, and to most people an absolute dragon. At the mere sight of a German uniform, however, she was transformed into the sweetest hostess imaginable. One day the two got into an argument. I could hear the words of the publican, as she shouted threateningly at the other: ‘You should watch out, and you should shut up. And if you want to know–yes, I like the Germans. Ces messieurs are proper gentlemen. And they pay me thirty francs for a bottle of Mousseux; your husband never even paid me ten.’
Every afternoon at Madame Rose’s a number of the villagers would gather around one German soldier who spoke very good French. He would sit with them on the terrace, offer them all an apéritif, and lecture them, in a booming voice, on the blessings of the Third Reich. In Germany there was no poverty, no distinction of class, and above all the Führer had got rid of the Jews, just as the Jews must be got rid of everywhere. Because the Jews… the Jews were to blame for everything, to blame for the fact that France had forced war upon the peace-loving Germans. France was the victim of the Jews, etc., etc.… The good fellows listened to him with open mouths.
At the same time, in the press and on the radio, there began a spiteful, poisonous anti-Semitic propaganda campaign. And at the same time, too–in Thétieu itself, at the town hall–a large poster was displayed. In Bordeaux, it alleged, ‘the Polish Jew Mendel Langer’ had raised his stick as a military band went by. He had been sentenced to death for ‘threatening the German army’ and executed.
One day, at the beginning of September, the mayor of Thétieu, Monsieur Laborde, issued a request for me to come and see him at the town hall. I did not have a good feeling about it.
The mayor showed me a piece of paper he had received from military headquarters at Mont-de-Marsan. It contained the following question: of what nationality are the refugees…? (and here followed our names). And then, underlined in red: Aryan or non-Aryan? ‘What does that mean, Aryan?’ asked the good Monsieur Laborde.
We realised that we could remain in Thétieu no longer. We must get out as soon as possible. But… where to?
We finally decided to return to Paris. If we were already caught in the net–if all that we could do was wait for events to take their course–then at least we could do that in our own home.
Escape, Exodus–all for nothing. They had caught up with us. They had us.
10
Paris under the German boot
PARIS IN THE LAST DAYS before the Exodus had been the fantasy image of a bewitched city–and at the same time a Brueghel picture of hell. The Paris that I returned to in September 1940 was an inexpressibly sad, ghostly travesty.
What had happened to the city’s magnificence, the grandiose pride of her traditions? Her vitality, her effervescent spirit, her love of life? A trace of it was discernible here and there; rather like a smear of make-up left on a neglected face, it only served to make the present state of dilapidation all the more shocking.
I thought back to Vienna. Here, as there, the imprint of the German boot had altered the city fundamentally. Here, too, the city’s physiognomy had been trampled overnight. The external contours remained; but a kind of bleak desolation seemed to ooze from every pore. The city had let itself go, just like a person who has been humiliated or degraded.
The only cars on the streets were those of the occupying power. A few cyclists; remarkably few pedestrians. The crowds of people that used to throng the pavements of Paris, like actors on a particularly bright and ever-changing stage, had shrunk to a thin line of individuals hurrying on their way, each seeming only concerned to get back home as quickly as possible.
There were, however–even at that time–endless queues in front of any shop that sold food. People queued for hours, often without even knowing what was actually available in the shop. Just as long as it was something edible. For ‘ces messieurs’, of course, there was no queueing: they just walked in, ordered, and had to be served immediately.
Crude wooden posts sprung up everywhere with a veritable forest of branches indicating the direction of this or that office, service or institution, all written in that barbaric abbreviated German which was such a speciality of Nazi culture. The Swastika was everywhere. They had stamped it on the very face of Paris, positioning it in all the most sensitive places–anywhere, in fact, where there was anything which might put one in mind of the great past of the city, of the glory of France.
And then, of course, the Germans themselves. They were everywhere–absolutely everywhere. These ape-like creatures–these Teutonic monsters, with their bulging necks and mammoth bottoms; they were constantly in your head, the sound of their boots the new theme tune of Parisian life. You could hear them, feel them–you actually seemed to detect their scent even when they were not actually in front of your eyes.
And what of these ‘victors’? Their attitude towards the ‘negroid’ French8 smacked rather of that of certain white colonialists towards the natives. They were the all-powerful planters. Even if, occasionally, they tried to be companionable.
There were daily displays of their military might, too, especially in the centre of the city and in the Champs-Élysées. The squadrons sang as they marched. Then, suddenly, a bellowed command, at which the mechanism of the goosestep would be instantaneously activated. And with every goosestep, it seemed as if the Master Race wanted to give even the air a kicking. The French, however–who never lose their sense of the ridiculous–found these barbaric, robotic manifestations of lifeless German obedience comical rather than frightening.
It was in this Paris, then, that the Master Race took its pleasure. They saw it as a brothel, whose fabled debauchery they had often secretly dreamed of, but could now actually enjoy to their hearts’ content. Back home, among his ‘Comrades of the People’, the German man had to produce a statistically precise return from his marriage, in accordance with figures laid down by Hitler. Here, on the other hand–well!–here he could let his hair down. And not just in secret, not in some disreputable dive, having to look over his shoulder to check if he was being watched. Quite the contrary: here the Noble German could throw himself into every pleasure of Parisian vice, grunting contentedly and without the slightest qualm, exactly as the Führer had promised him. Hitler had, indeed, himself made it clear that he wished to make Paris the brothel of the Third Reich, the mire in which his men would wallow in the pursuit of ‘power-through-pleasure’.
And all for next to nothing: the exchange rate imposed was twenty francs to one mark. It was practically a gift.
Ces messieurs were thus able to conduct a total Blitzkrieg against all the city’s supplies, too. Warehouses, small or large, were soon emptied. Ordinary soldiers were to be seen making off with dozens of pairs of silk stockings, incredible numbers of luxury shoes, silk wares, perfumes, etc. There were soon no more of these items to be had.
Only in the realm of nightclubs and places of resort–in short, in every branch, offshoot and ramification of the sex industry–was there an unmitigated boom. Here there was no shortage of raw materials or manpower; here the stocks could be perpetually replenished. The Drôle de Guerre had already brought great prosperity to this industry–a prosperity which, however, bore absolutely no comparison with that visited on it by the mass consumption of the G
ermans, with their famous moral purity.
Even as they piled up their booty, ces messieurs concerned themselves at the same time with the organisation of the black market. In this realm, too, their cynicism was surpassed only by their hypocrisy.
In all official statements of the press and the radio, you had the whole lying rhetoric–translated verbatim from the Nazi phraseology–against the plague of black marketeering. Yet it was common knowledge that all major branches of the marché noir were controlled by the Germans. Already the undisputed masters of legalised robbery, they now built up the black market, too, to the level of a well-organised business yielding fantastic profits to everyone from the general right down to the humblest pen-pusher.
I had an acquaintance at the time who, as director of a publishing house, had frequent contact with Germans. Every time I met him he had a story of yet another officer who had offered him cigarettes, sugar, coffee or chocolate in enormous quantities. And at a comparatively reasonable price.
‘Yes,’ he mused fondly on one occasion, ‘anyone who had just a little capital, right now–just a few thousand francs…’ But he immediately added, with an expression of outrage fuelled by the full patriotic force of his lack of capital: ‘Autorités occupantes? Autorités trafiquantes!’ Occupying authorities? Racketeering authorities!
11
The French… and the French
WHAT WAS THE PARISIAN REACTION to the Occupation at this time?
There were many who felt the deepest pain and sorrow over this whole episode of the humiliation of the Fatherland; who did not simply accept the défaite as a fact of life; and who, even at this stage, pinned their hopes on de Gaulle* as on the coming Messiah. There were many who reacted to the travesty of Occupied Paris by keeping themselves to themselves and avoiding contact with the Germans as much as possible.
There were many whose high principles even led them to serious material sacrifice: poor clerks or workers who turned down well-paid positions in businesses that were working for the Germans. Civil servants who quit their jobs, because they did not want to continue their service in offices which were now under German command.
There was, too, that select band of individuals who, right from the beginning, sought other ways and means to turn their abhorrence and their anger into action. Open conflict would at that time have been pointless; it would have been an act of senseless folly. They therefore took up arms–tenaciously, fearlessly–in the hardest battle of all, that waged underground and in secret.
These were the people who formed the initial core of the movement which would gradually develop into the secret army–and, later, the open army–of the Resistance. They were the heroes who founded the civilian and military ‘Maquis’.
But in those days… in those days each and every one of them had to be entirely self-reliant; to guess who his comrades were. They had to recognise and ‘contact’ each other; to feel their way forward in the dark with the greatest possible caution, to find their path; to work together; to organise. Steadfast in the face of mortal danger; watched over with suspicion; surrounded by spies, traitors and agents provocateurs.
Such were the circumstances in which these great, yet unsung, heroes had first to learn the basic techniques of that form of active and passive resistance known as sabotage. In this process they often had to improvise with lightning speed, whether it was a case of doing something that put a spanner in the works of the German terror machine, or of failing to do something that that machine demanded.
Nor was it long before the first of them would fall. The execution squads went about their bloodthirsty business, and massacred ‘guilty’ and innocent alike. For the great German civilisation had reserved to itself the right to employ that gruesome measure of repression known as ‘otages’–hostages. The murder of hostages would, indeed, merit its own chapter in the Bible of Bestiality that constitutes the ‘Heil-Hitler’ Doctrine of Salvation.
Soon the first of an endless series of red posters would appear on the walls, informing the people, in both the German and the French language, which individuals had been executed on the order of the then ‘Military Commander in France’, General Schaumburg.* The name was followed by age and nationality. If the victim happened to be a Jew, this most serious of all crimes did not, of course, go unmentioned.
They were like veritable lakes of blood, these lists of the murdered. Twenty or thirty, on a good day; but then it might be fifty, seventy, even a hundred. No age group was excluded. General Schaumburg,* and after him his successor, Stülpnagel,* were sticklers for symmetry. If you had a boy of seventeen you should also have an old man of seventy. And how very neatly the general signed his lists, delivered his death sentences.
These death sentences, though, were actually the last stage of a path that started with imprisonment; from there led in most cases to the torture chamber; and only after that brought one to the place of execution. One speaks simply of ‘execution’, but the German delight in persecution was such that it had perfected the technique of drawing out a human being’s final agony to the utmost degree.
At Vincennes, on Mont Valérien, and in the Bois de Boulogne, the execution squads carried out their task with machine guns. This meant that only those particularly blessed by good fortune received an injury that resulted in immediate death. Others lay with, for example, stomach or lung injuries, often for as long as thirty-six hours before their suffering was over; before yet another life was turned into a line of print on a red poster.
Among those who died in this way was an acquaintance of mine–married with two small children, Jewish. He had failed to comply with the order compelling Jews to hand in their radios; had been arrested following a denunciation, and sentenced to three months in prison. On the day preceding his scheduled release, he was taken out and shot as a hostage.
I have spoken of those French who wished to stand out against the defeat. On the other side of the coin there were others… people who reacted to the disaster in quite different ways.
To begin with there were the Indifferent: that amorphous mass of humanity that, in their heart of hearts, were just glad to have the whole thing behind them (as they thought). Their response to the défaite was that of the conventional mourner, who attends a funeral with sad demeanour, but leaves with a sense of inner relief. What cannot be changed has to be accepted; so the most sensible thing is not to waste any more time thinking about it.
Ces messieurs were in charge, after all. Their job was to command, and everyone else’s job was to obey.
The next level of response was that of the Sympathisers. Without openly confessing allegiance to the Germans, this group would express the opinion that the Nazi methods had their positive side, too. There was no point skulking in a corner; rather, one should observe the Germans, and learn from them.
Besides, there was a danger that the Germans might end up with a very distorted picture of France. It was actually one’s patriotic duty to maintain contact with them and show them the better side of France–to entertain them properly.
These Sympathisers did not go so far as to preach open collaboration. They did not actually lick the Nazi boot; they merely polished it clean. Without being out-and-out idolisers of Hitler, they had to admit that the Nazi Overlord was someone you could do business with, and very good business at that. They were happy not to ask too many questions about where the money that they pocketed came from. And if a tiny scruple did ever penetrate the consciousness of such a Sympathiser, he was ready with one irrefutable argument which silenced any such qualm: ‘If I don’t put my hand in, there are thousands of others out there, just waiting to do exactly that. So I will put my hand in.’
Nor did these Sympathisers fawn over the misdeeds of the Germans with the same frenzied servility as the Collaborators; their attitude was rather one of feigned ignorance. They saw nothing; heard nothing; talked with great interest about something else altogether. On the Day of Judgement, these fellows would be sure to have an alibi.
And then there was the third level: that of the Collaborators.
The fact that France had suffered a terrible defeat was a catastrophe, certainly, but no cause for shame; it was a humiliation, but not in itself a dreadful self-humiliation. The fact, too, that a large proportion of the people bent under the Nazi yoke was understandable. Even the fact that so many sought to make an accommodation with the Germans, and carried out every order without comment, was in a sense also understandable. When you come to the feeding trough, you don’t find many heroes. What happened, however, under the general heading of ‘Collaboration’–the degree of spiritual prostitution, treachery, worm-like crawling, and sheer abject debasement–was beyond all imagining; it is, indeed, a blot of shame far worse than any défaite.
At every level there were the lackeys; the fellow travellers, fellow-spivs and -thugs of the Master Race of Criminals; at every level the traffickers in the black market of malice; at every level the supporters of the Révolution nationale9 (which was in reality the Prostitution nationale); at every level individuals who were prepared to sell themselves. And there was no depth to which these individuals would not stoop; nothing that they were not prepared to do, in every area of public and private life, in every ramification of the national, social–the National-Socialist–hierarchy.
Not least ‘Le Maréchal’, the venerable Philippe Pétain, the illustrious hero of Verdun, who not only accepted–but also signed his name to–every one of the Germans’ lies and deceptions, every one of their outrages; who, having sent Pierre Laval* away in disgrace as if he were some pickpocket who had been caught in the act, at Hitler’s command immediately clasped him to his breast again and assured him of his absolute confidence. And all this simply so as to be able to play, and carry on playing, the pitiable puppet role of ‘Chef d’État’ in the gilded cage of Vichy.
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