Suddenly two of the Sisters came over–two who were particularly attached to us, Soeur de l’Annonciation and Soeur Marie-Bernard. They smiled as they gestured to my wife, and then disappeared with her across the courtyard. It was a while before the three of them returned. Now my wife was smiling, too. She beckoned to us to follow; and we all set off.
On the other side of the courtyard, in a wing of the convent, is the chapel. Behind the chapel is a door leading to a small, narrow room: the morgue, the room for the dead. The furniture consists of a bed on which the body rests, and next to it a small table with a candlestick. The wall at the head of the bed is covered with a black cloth which reaches all the way to the ground. Above the bed is a great crucifix.
If the bed is pulled to one side and the lower part of the wallcovering is lifted, a hole becomes visible in the wall–a semi-circular opening whose existence no one would guess, just wide enough to crawl through on all fours. On the other side you find yourself in a kind of cave, large enough for several people to remain, bent over and pressed up together, for a few hours if necessary. Any longer than that, and there would be a risk of asphyxiation, since the only ventilation is from that opening into the morgue, which is in any case covered with the black cloth.
We were absolutely delighted with the good Sisters’ discovery. The hiding place within the hiding place had been found. Now at least we knew what we had to do. And we organised a sort of dress rehearsal, there and then, which met with general approval.
What we and the Sisters agreed was as follows: in the case of immediate danger, we disappear into our cave. The Sisters put the cloth back as it was, push the bed back in front of the opening and then lock the morgue from the outside. Even if the Germans were to demand that the morgue be opened, and were to proceed to search it, they might perhaps, with luck, still not find our hiding place. Perhaps. But at least, now, there was a perhaps.
Rather than get bogged down in tedious details, let me rather proceed to the result–the provisional result.
We have been lucky. Up to the present day–6th July 1944–we have had to go into the cave behind the morgue twice. On both occasions the Germans turned back at the last moment. Will we continue to be lucky? The question persists, now as before. But in the meantime the débarquement has at last–at last–taken place. The Allies are in France. And they are moving inexorably forward.
They are still a long way away from us here. We are still not out of danger. The Germans continue to commit outrage upon outrage. Still… it now seems a little easier for us to ‘hold out, keep our spirits up’.
Whether we will ourselves live to see it, or whether we will perish before then: the liberators are approaching from all sides; the Brown Beast–One People, One Empire, One Führer–will, in the foreseeable future, be destroyed. That will be the end of Hitler’s thousand-year-long Third Reich. It will have lasted not much more than a decade–barely a fleeting, transitory moment in world history. And yet, the Monster’s words were true. For, measured in misdeeds, in misery–measured in evil–this fleeting, transitory moment will weigh heavier than a thousand years.
33
The morning of June 6th 1944
WHEN WE MOVED TO THE BEDROOM, we naturally also removed the radio from our room. It lay, wrapped in a blanket, in a corner of the convent’s medicine room. We were now dependent on the news and rumours that reached us in various ways from outside.
At about 9 a.m. on 6th June 1944 I was alone in our bedroom. My wife and Sláva were working in the vegetable garden. Gabriel Rispal, who could still not risk returning to Belvès, was also outside. I stood by the open window. One of the Sisters, the phlegmatic Soeur Emmanuel, walked by below. After a remark on the rainy weather, she called something else to me as she went by: ‘They say that there are American warships in the Seine estuary.’ With that she went on her way.
American ships… Seine estuary… Impossible! But could it be that the débarquement had really, finally, taken place? I rushed downstairs like a man possessed, determined to get the radio out of the medicine room. I think that even if there had been Germans approaching the house, at that moment it would not have stopped me: I had to know. The débarquement! The débarquement! Nothing else was of any significance.
I got hold of the radio and took it up to the bedroom. Then, while I was busy trying to make it work, I suddenly heard a cry from outside. Two cries, to be exact: a female voice, letting out one cry and then another.
I instinctively stopped what I was doing. To hear people cry out is not such an unusual experience, in a madhouse. But these two cries were something different. This was the sort of cry that stays with you forever. It seemed to burst forth from the very depths of the soul. A tremendous release of pressure. A cry–an eruption–of relief. Years of pent-up agony and one great stream of joy–like a stream of blood, red, hot and steaming. A lament for the dead and a cry of resurrection.
I was shaken to the core; I had to get out; I had to see who had let out these two cries.
In the doorway I met my wife and Sláva. Behind them was Gabriel Rispal. I didn’t even have to ask: his face transformed, all he was able to do was repeat the same phrase over and over again: ‘Ça y est, ça y est.’ It’s happened. It’s happened. All four of us had tears streaming down our faces.
We then listened to the first communiqués–Churchill’s declaration, Eisenhower’s manifesto. We listened to them in all the languages–in languages that we understood and in languages that we didn’t understand. We knew them by heart by now, but we wanted to hear them over and over again. We were like men dying of thirst, who want to drink a river dry.
On this day my wife wanted to see only happy faces around her. She still had left one large jar of fruit conserve, which was now brought down from the attic and shared out among the enfants. They, of course, had no idea what the occasion was for this delectable treat. The word ‘débarquement’ would have been no more than a meaningless noise to any of them. Which did not, of course, make their enjoyment any the less: the ‘weak-minded’ are wise enough to enjoy their feasts whenever they come.
While my wife was preoccupied with the fair distribution of the jam, our dear friend Soeur de l’Annonciation arrived. She had been in the street outside. ‘I didn’t know anything,’ she said, ‘but I realised just from the faces of the passers-by that something big had happened.’
The telephone was out of order now: the Germans had immediately severed all the connections. So Hélène Rispal sent us a letter via a messenger. It consisted of one sentence: ‘I embrace you with all the hope that this day brings with it.’
Our beloved friend had chosen her words well. This 6th June 1944 was not just the day of the Great Event, the realisation of which we had waited for so long and so fervently. Most important of all was the total sense of hope that shone through that day. In the hearts of millions upon millions of human beings.
We needed this sense of hope, so as to be able to hold out a little longer, so as not to go under at the last moment…
34
Summer
ONCE UPON A TIME… the sound of a fairy-tale–blown to the winds, long forgotten.
Once upon a time it was summer, and in those days even the word ‘summer’, as you said it, was alive with warmth and fragrance; it tasted like a ripe, juicy fruit. Summer meant relaxation, holidays, mountains, sea. It meant enjoying yourself–taking it easy. It meant living like a ‘God in France’.
That ‘God in France’–the one who, not long before the War, was held in such high esteem by the likes of Friedrich Sieburg* in his perfidious book. Only the good old French people didn’t notice anything. Or those that did notice it did not wish to notice what purpose was being served by this sort of declaration of love on the part of ‘friends’ like Sieburg. They took everything in return for cash; felt tremendously flattered and took Herr Sieburg–and after him Herr Abetz, and the whole Fifth Column, those friends of the Nazis who visited upon the land of the French the mentali
ty of Hitler–to their hearts, with feelings of warmth and gratitude.
They were laughing behind their hands, this whole jolly crew. Really, these gullible, ‘negroid’ French had fallen for it hook, line and sinker. Their naïveté exceeded even the highest expectations.
Summer 1944. The débarquement has come. And yet…
Over the whole land, as far as Normandy, where the inexorable advance of the Allies was putting a stop to his activities, this Swastika-God in France was scattering the blessings from his cornucopia ever more extravagantly: Wehrmacht, Gestapo, torture, deportation, murder, arson, looting…
Since the success of the landings it seems that the Germans are not just seeking revenge for every inch of soil that they are forced to abandon. It is as if they want to wallow, like animals, for one last time in the mud of evil; it is an orgy, a paroxysm of bestial cruelty before the Monster breathes its last.
The events of this summer–which is surely the last summer of the War–will be dealt with by countless historians. But there is another history, which should at least be mentioned, an inner history, if you like, which allows one to glimpse the desolation and devastation that were perpetrated on people’s spirits. To glimpse the extraordinary distortions and derangements that took root in–if I may use this term–our mental perspective. (And we may reach a worse state yet, if this sixth summer of war extends also into a sixth winter with the Germans.)
Here we are, in the open air, enjoying God’s own country, in the glorious summer of 1944. And it is not that we are indifferent to the natural world, as some might be tempted to believe; on the contrary, it arouses very strong and varied responses in us. It is just that these responses are of a very strange kind.
Here, for example, is a wood–a deep, silent forest. Our reaction to it now is not: how delightful it would be to revel in the solitude, the shade, the silence of this forest. Today, in the summer of 1944, our first thought is rather: would this forest be thick enough, dark enough, impenetrable enough to function as a hiding place in the case of pursuit?
Or again: here is a magical clearing, a true elfin meadow. Involuntarily you find yourself measuring it mentally: would this stretch of land give English planes enough space for a night-time parachutage–a parachute drop of weapons and ammunition for a maquis? In this connection our dreams take another bizarre turn, too: in Belvès after one recent parachutage some parachutes were cut up and the bits shared out. We were given a piece to look at. What wonderful material! Pure silk–an excellent, imperishable fabric, which can be made into the most beautiful shirts, blouses, etc.
Or again: here is a garden full of roses, jasmine and gladioli. It creates a delightful interplay of sensual experiences, of scent and colour. Now, though, the predominant reaction is one of indignation at the frivolity of having planted all this useless, inedible stuff instead of cabbage and beans!
Or: a fabulous moonlit night in July, wrapped in an unearthly shimmer of mystery. And the ultimate expression of ecstasy aroused by this midsummer night’s dream of 1944 is: ‘Wonderful visibility tonight for the Royal Air Force!’
Books. You find yourself reading through them at random, purely mechanically, while your thoughts are far, far away. Or you throw the book aside after a few pages. Provocative twaddle. The worries and problems of happy, high-spirited individuals, who have no idea what a real worry or problem is.
Radio. You listen to the communiqués, the purely factual reports: concrete facts–facts that speak for themselves–are all you are interested in. The rest is empty words–propaganda. Only what can be followed on a map is of any importance. And so too with the news that one receives by word of mouth. Nothing has the power to surprise any more. We are blunted, deadened.
Well, occasionally some new event still has the capacity to provoke anger, to make the blood boil. When, for example, you learn that, by way of ‘reprisal’ in a village, the Germans have crucified a baby on the church gate; that in Castelnau they poured ten litres of water into their victim through a funnel and then trampled on the swollen stomach with their boots.
You hear of these heroic deeds and you shake with powerless rage. But after a while you fall back into a kind of paralysis. What else can you do? At the end of the day, this catatonic condition is the final resort of self-defence; a sort of insulating layer. Otherwise you would simply die of despair, of disgust. If you had tears left, you would be crying for the rest of your life.
And, with the exception of the few people that we can place our absolute trust in, what, now, does our relationship with the world around us come to? Something incredibly ugly, sad and shameful.
All the time that a person is hidden and shut away in a clandestine location, he must also always be on the lookout, on the defensive. Every face that he encounters may conceal an enemy. Every chance event may lead to danger, against which he must be on his guard, must take precautions. Every stranger–and even every acquaintance–with whom he has even the most superficial contact provokes the silent question inside his head: might this person have the capacity to destroy me?
And so he weighs every word with the utmost caution, takes great care to evade every question, senses the threat of disaster behind every utterance, however harmless, becomes distrustful, suspicious, imagines the worst of everyone. All human contact is poisoned in advance.
And with every day that passes you become poorer within; the internal frost becomes sharper, the heart hardens. Yes, you are alive. But in order to stay alive–in order to have at least a chance of surviving–you allow yourself to die, bit by bit.
The radio in London reports that the old king of Sweden, Gustav, has attempted to intervene with Hitler on behalf of the Hungarian Jews, in an effort at least to save them from the gas chambers, the ovens and the other German ‘Jew–perish!’ policies. This gesture from the worthy monarch will certainly have had no effect, other than that of provoking the mocking laughter of the slaughterers. But the fact that at last one neutral head of state has at least made an attempt to raise his voice ‘in the name of humanity’–in spite of the fact that it is only Jews that are at stake–this fact is something remarkable in itself, and must fill us with endless wonder and gratitude. A king, who takes a stand on behalf of innocent people who have been condemned to a gruesome death through the arbitrary acts of a raging monster: this is something that appears, not as the conscientious duty of any powerful person whose word might have some influence; not as an appalling sin of omission on the part of all those who–when there was still time–looked on in silence and indifference: no. One feels with the action of the Swedish king that one is in the presence of a miracle.
That is the extent to which we have come to take our own suffering for granted.
But, for all that, we here must still be considered the favourites of Destiny. The liberators are in France; every day brings them nearer. Will they get to us in time?
The Allies are advancing, constantly advancing. But if we here are anxiously asking ourselves ‘Will they get here in time?’ what of those who will necessarily have a much longer wait, in their fear, than we? What of those who may still be alive in the many death camps, the repositories of torture, in Germany itself… How many will still be alive, when the liberators finally open the gates?
I may perhaps be forgiven, if at this point I present a small, provisional account on the domestic front: the account of one family among innumerable others. My wife has so far learned that, of those of her relatives who remained in Czechoslovakia, one brother, one brother-in-law and one sister-in-law have perished in Terezín Concentration Camp. There is no word of her other siblings, nephews, nieces–young women and small children among them. We are still in the dark about their fate.
In the dark? How I fear the day when that dark will be made light.
35
The first step into freedom
23RD AUGUST. MIDDAY. The liberation of Paris is announced on the radio. And at the same time we also learn that the Germans have retreated from
our département, the Dordogne.
Everywhere around, from Belvès to the last abandoned hamlet, the bells begin to sound the hymn of liberation. Our own modest chapel bell must not be left out, and its bright, delicate sound joins eagerly in the general sound of jubilation. Even those of the patients who were sitting motionless and apathetic in the courtyard now feel that something extraordinary has happened; they jump up and start rushing this way and that. They are left in peace. The Sisters in charge of them are themselves too excited.
Among these ‘poor in spirit’ is one who has occasional lucid moments. She rushes up to me and asks: ‘Is it really true that we aren’t Germans any more?’ When I confirm this, she turns to her companions and shouts happily: ‘Today we’re definitely getting a dessert!’ It is the first immediate consequence of the great event.
It is not over yet. There will be more horror to come. But Paris is liberated and the Dordogne is liberated. The last Germans have left Périgueux and they had to do so very quickly indeed. They nonetheless found time, at the very last moment, to slaughter about a hundred ‘political prisoners’ in Place Francheville, and to throw their bodies into a pit along with the bodies of horses, dogs and cats.
No: it is not over yet. There will be a lot more German atrocities yet. But Paris is liberated, and we here in the Dordogne are liberated. Is it possible? Is it really true? How are we to take it in, to translate the facts into their immediate and further consequences; how are we to grasp everything, make sense of it, reflect on it, control the tide of thoughts and feelings that sweeps over us from all sides? There are moments when happiness can be as impossible to assess in all its consequences as sorrow; moments when one may be numbed by joy just as much as by pain; moments when the heart understands before the intellect has comprehended. A hope which we sometimes did not even dare to believe in had become reality. A trial which so often threatened to crush us has been overcome. But it is only gradually, bit by bit, that we can take it on board, that we can come to terms with it.
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