Brave Genius

by Sean B. Carroll

The timing of the trial was unfortunate. After the cycles of killings and reprisals that had taken place in recent months, the Germans had no inclination to show any mercy. The prosecutor got the convictions he sought, and ten members of the group were sentenced to death. On February 23, 1942, Nordmann, Boris Vildé, and five other members of the network were lined up in front of a firing squad at Fort Mont-Valérien outside Paris and shot.

  In spite of the increasing violence in the capital, the worsening shortages, the difficulty in travel, Parisians had to find ways to continue some kind of normal family life. The Monod twins, Philippe and Olivier, born just a month before the invasion of Poland, were already two and a half years old but had still not met their paternal grandparents in Cannes. Odette could not cross the demarcation line legally, and Jacques would not risk having her cross on foot or by night. If the twins were going to make a visit south, their father would have to take them.

  As Easter 1942 approached, Odette made all of the preparations for the boys’ journey and stay while Jacques secured a pass (laissez-passer). It was an exhausting twenty-six-hour trip, with a change of trains in Marseille. Jacques got no sleep while he kept an eye on the two boys, who behaved perfectly throughout the long night and morning. Jacques’s mother, Sharlie, was thrilled to see her son coming up the terrace steps of their home, a rucksack on his back, dirty with dust and grime, and “half-dead with fatigue” but so “happy and proud” to be carrying one clean, fresh rosy-cheeked boy in each arm, dressed in little American overalls.

  Charlotte kissed the boys, who, not at all shy, kissed their grandmother’s hand and said, “Bonjour, grandmaman” as though they knew her. Jacques set the boys down, and they quickly discovered and befriended a pet cat.

  During the twelve-day stay, Charlotte was relieved to find that Jacques was “the same vivid, energetic creature he always was.” She felt that his determination and hard work must be an inspiration to Odette and to his friends. Jacques said that he was resolved to bringing the boys back during the summer, along with their mother. But that plan, and daily life for Odette, was about to get more problematic.

  THE SS TAKES CHARGE

  As military commandant for all of France, von Stülpnagel was primarily concerned with the security of the troops stationed there, and with maximizing French economic cooperation in order to support the larger German war effort. Up until December 1941, he had not done anything to advance Nazi racial policies. He did not support the confiscation of Jewish property, for example, as he believed such activities dishonored the military, alienated the population, and diverted the military’s attention from more important industrial objectives. The persecution of the Jews was primarily a matter for (1) the agents of the security service—the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) of the Schutzstaffel (SS)—who were under the overall command of Heinrich Himmler, and (2) the Vichy government, which had acted on its own accord in imposing increasingly repressive measures. Through 1941, the SD had been limited by a shortage of manpower and a lack of executive authority of the kind vested in von Stülpnagel.

  But following an attack in early December, and the issuance of the Night-and-Fog Decree, a new twist was added to the reprisal order: the mass execution and deportation of Jews, a job that would be handed over to the SD. While he did not object to deportations, von Stülpnagel was convinced that mass shootings were unwise and wrote as much to his superiors in Berlin:

  I intend to order only a limited number of executions and will adjust the number to suit the circumstance.

  At least under the present circumstances, I can no longer arrange mass shootings and answer to history with a clear conscience because of my knowledge of the entire situation, the consequences that such hard measures could have on the entire population, and on our relationship with France.

  Berlin replied by insisting upon adherence to Hitler’s policy of mass reprisals. Von Stülpnagel then tendered his resignation, explaining that without the trust of his superiors to use his own judgment “the position of the MBF in the occupied area becomes more difficult, leads to weighty conflicts of conscience, and undermines my self-confidence, energy, and determination … I can withdraw to private life with clear conscience, confident in the knowledge that I served my people, country, and opponents with complete unselfishness and fulfilled my duties to the best of my ability.”

  The timing of von Stülpnagel’s departure coincided with larger developments unfolding on both of Germany’s extended war fronts. Two months earlier—after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—the United States had entered the war. While the Americans were preoccupied with Japan in the Pacific, it was just a matter of time before U.S. involvement became a factor in Europe and North Africa. More significantly, a Soviet counteroffensive drove the Germans back from Moscow. The prospect of a much more protracted war demanded greater war production in Germany and the occupied territories, and more manpower. It also heightened the sense of urgency surrounding the Nazi campaign against the Jews. The latter required men who would not question policies emanating from Berlin, those who were more in step with Nazi ideology than professional soldiers like von Stülpnagel.

  Command in France was therefore reorganized. While a new MBF replaced Otto von Stülpnagel (his cousin Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel), responsibility for the security of German forces was transferred from the Army to the SS, which then had authority over all German and French police and was thus given free rein to pursue Nazi racial policies. On June 1, 1942, Hitler appointed SS Brigadeführer Carl Oberg, a member of the Nazi Party since 1931 and one of Himmler’s men, as senior SS and police leader. Oberg, who spoke little or no French, had earned a reputation for savage repression while serving in Poland. He was given the direct authority to carry out the Nazi campaign against Jews, Communists, and resisters. Under Oberg’s command, genocide came to France.

  THE YELLOW STAR

  Oberg’s assumption of command coincided with the introduction of the eighth ordinance governing Jews in the occupied zone. The law, to take effect on June 7, 1942, stated, in part:

  1. A DISTINCTIVE SIGN FOR THE JEWS

  1. Jews over the age of six are prohibited from appearing in public without wearing the yellow star.

  2. The Jewish star is a star with six points having the dimensions of the palm of a hand with a black border. It is made of yellow fabric bearing the inscription “Juif” in black letters. It must be worn visibly on the left side of the chest, attached firmly to clothing.

  2. PENALTIES

  Infractions of the ordinance will be punished by imprisonment and/or a fine. Police measures, such as the internment in a Jewish camp, can be added or substituted for these penalties.

  The law greatly satisfied the most ardently anti-Semitic collaborationist newspapers. On the day after the law took effect, Le Matin declared that the sight of the yellow star provoked Parisians to think, “Never would one have thought that there are so many Jews in Paris.” The newspaper remarked: “Another surprise was awaiting Parisians in the afternoon, in finding an important number of Jews who were walking about, talking in the cafés, meddling in the lines in front of theaters and cinemas, or else simply taking the Métro. And that was only the part of the Jewish population that was outside! One must not forget that there were, in 1941, 1,200,000 Jews in France, of which more than 350,000 were in Paris and its suburbs.”

  The number of Jews in all of France was actually only about 310,000, with about half that number in the greater Paris region. Nonetheless, the anti-Semites would not suffer the sight of Jews in public places for very long. Jews were already subject to an eight p.m. to six a.m. curfew imposed in February 1942, and yet another ordinance in early July barred them altogether from parks, cinemas, cafés, restaurants, libraries, or theaters. They could shop for food only from eleven a.m. to noon, and for other goods from three to four p.m., and they were to ride only in the last train car on the Métro.

  The yellow star made the spotting of violators easy for the police. Those
who dared to try to circumvent the law and not display the insignia risked being arrested or being denounced by Nazi sympathizers. Nevertheless, Odette and Jacques decided that she would not wear the yellow star.

  With all of the restrictions, it was difficult for Jews to live in Paris and not to be in violation of some ordinance. Just to get a glass of water from any establishment on a hot summer day or to walk through the Luxembourg Gardens was grounds for arrest.

  But even such extreme prohibitions paled in comparison to what unfolded the week after Jews had been banished from public venues.

  ROUNDUPS

  At four in the morning on Thursday, July 16, 1942, about 4,500 French policemen fanned out across Paris and its suburbs and began knocking on doors. Working in pairs, each carried a handful of index cards bearing the names of 27,388 Jews who were to be arrested that day. All of those targeted were foreign-born men and women between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five. They were told to bring their identification and ration cards, food for at least two days, and a number of personal items including one pair of shoes, two pairs of socks, a sweater, two shirts, sheets and blankets, eating utensils, a drinking glass, and toiletry items. Children were to accompany parents unless an older grandparent remained at the home. Otherwise, the police were to make sure that the household utilities were shut off when they left.

  Over the course of two days, 12,884 people were arrested, almost one-third of whom were children. Accompanied by policemen, entire families walked in broad daylight through the streets carrying suitcases to assembly points in each arrondissement or suburb. Those who did not have children under sixteen were then bused to the Drancy internment camp northeast of Paris; those with children were taken to the Vélodrome d’hiver (Vel d’hiv), a sports stadium near the Eiffel Tower in the fifteenth arrondissement. Onlookers who saw the green-and-beige city buses with their windows closed and guarded by policemen understood that something dramatic was happening.

  But neither those arrested nor their fellow Parisians knew what fate awaited them.

  For the nearly five thousand taken to Drancy, they found a filthy, overcrowded nightmare with insufficient water or toilets. The conditions at the Vel d’hiv were even worse, for the glass-covered stadium was poorly ventilated and unbearably hot in July. There was no place to wash and little to drink, there were no mattresses to sleep upon, and the bathrooms had been closed to prevent escape. The authorities had made no preparations, as the prisoners were not expected to stay at either facility for long.

  Indeed, just three days after the beginning of the roundup, about one thousand prisoners were bused from Drancy to Le Bourget train station and put on a train bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Upon their arrival two days later, 375 men were separated from the other prisoners and gassed. Four more trains left Le Bourget with four thousand more deportees from Drancy on July 22, 24, 25, and 29.

  The prisoners at the Vel d’hiv were taken to the Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande camps in the Loiret. Then, on July 31 and August 3, 5, and 7, more than four thousand parents and older children were loaded onto four trains, also bound for Auschwitz. Almost half were gassed upon arrival. Fewer than forty would survive the next three years.

  THERE HAD BEEN roundups before, but not on this scale, not in this manner, and not with the direct purpose of extermination. Previous roundups were largely a matter of Vichy demonstrating its commitment to Nazi racial policies. But the July 16–17 roundup had been ordered by the Germans, who were seeking 100,000 French Jews in 1942 as a first stage of the “Final Solution” in France. Laval and Secretary-General of Police René Bousquet negotiated with Oberg and representatives of Himmler and Adolf Eichmann to pare the figure down to 32,000. The raids were carried out by the French police, both as a matter of needed manpower and so as to avoid inciting anti-German feelings. But unlike previous roundups, these included women and children—entire families. And within just three weeks, more than nine thousand had been sent to Auschwitz.

  Terror reverberated throughout both the immigrant and native French Jewish communities. Lise Bruhl, Odette Monod’s sister and also fully Jewish under the law, was very fearful that she would be arrested. Lise was married to Georges Teissier, a biologist and colleague of Jacques who, like Jacques, was both a Protestant and active in the Resistance. The couple and their three daughters also lived in the fifth arrondissement, near the Val-de-Grâce Hospital. During the first two years of the Occupation, the families saw a lot of each other. Françoise, their middle daughter who turned fifteen in 1942, often took the twins to the park while Odette and Lise shared addresses where they could get hard-to-find vegetables and other foods.

  At the time of the July roundups, Lise had stopped sleeping at home. While the girls were technically not Jewish, and even had fake baptism certificates, Lise had decided that if the children were arrested, she would turn herself in to the authorities in exchange for them. Françoise was, in turn, terrified that her mother was going to be arrested. Every knock or noise in their apartment building put her on edge.

  After the roundups, the Bruhl sisters decided to get out of Paris. Lise left with her youngest daughter in order to live in the countryside with a sister-in-law, using the cover story that the girl was so thin that she could not bear the restrictions in the capital. Odette and the twins went to Cannes (in the nonoccupied zone) to live with Jacques’s parents. To do so, she had to cross the demarcation line into the non-occupied zone, which was forbidden for Jews to do. In order to pass as non-Jewish, Odette obtained a false identity card, using the last name Brulle instead of Bruhl.

  Odette Monod’s false identification card. Odette changed the spelling of her maiden name, Bruhl, to “Brulle” to conceal her Jewish identity. (Courtesy of Olivier Monod)

  GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY, many French sought to live in the non-occupied zone. Restrictions were fewer. For example, Jews were not required to wear the yellow star. Food was also more available. And German soldiers were rarely encountered.

  That, however, was soon to change.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE PLAGUE

  All were separated from the rest of the world, from those they loved or from their routine. And in that withdrawal they were obliged, those who could, to meditate, and the others to live the life of hunted animals.

  —ALBERT CAMUS, Notebook IV

  CAMUS ALSO SOUGHT REFUGE IN THE NONOCCUPIED ZONE IN 1942, but for different reasons from most. In January, while in Oran, he suffered a relapse of his tuberculosis. He thought he had been cured, but he was suddenly coughing up blood, sweating, and feeling weak. Francine raced out of the apartment to find Albert’s doctor. After a rough night, Camus told Francine’s sister, “I thought it was all over for me this time.”

  The disease was in his left lung for the first time. The standard care for TB included extended bed rest and pneumothorax therapy in which the lung was deliberately collapsed by the injection of air. The painful procedure enabled lesions to heal, but the lung would reinflate, so the treatment had to be repeated every two to three weeks. Camus’s doctor started the periodic treatments, but then his office was closed by the Vichy authorities’ enforcement of a quota on Jewish physicians. Camus’s injections continued from a colleague’s office.

  Another recommendation to aid Camus’s recovery was that he seek a change in climate, specifically France’s mountain air. Fortunately for the impoverished couple, Francine’s aunt’s mother ran a boardinghouse in the tiny village of Le Panelier, just outside the town of Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Massif Central. Francine and her sister spent summers there as children. The Camuses applied for a travel pass that would allow them to go after Francine finished up her teaching in Oran in July. They arrived at Le Panelier in August.

  As the fresh air and somewhat more plentiful food were helping him regain his strength, Camus saved what energy he had for writing. He had been working, on and off, for more than a year on a novel that was to be part of a new cycle on the theme of revolt. Just a
s The Stranger was to illustrate the theme of the absurd, Camus’s intent with The Plague was to portray the choices humans faced when confronted with evil. Under a header entitled “Beginning,” Camus wrote in his notebook on October 23: “The Plague has a social meaning and a metaphysical meaning. It’s exactly the same. Such ambiguity is in The Stranger too.”

  The novel was to be an allegory for the Nazi occupation of France and the response of the French to it. Camus reminded himself: “The first thing for a writer to learn is the art of transposing what he feels into what he wants to make others feel.” To convey his feelings, Camus chose to set his story in Oran during an outbreak of the bubonic plague. The Nazis had long been referred to in France as la peste brune (the brown plague) on account of their brown shirts, and the Occupation itself had acquired the same name.

  Camus summarized his overall purpose in his notebook: “I want to express by means of the plague the stifling air from which we all suffered and the atmosphere of threat and exile in which we lived. I want at the same time to extend that interpretation to the notion of existence in general. The plague will give the image of those who in this war were limited to reflection, to silence—and to moral anguish.”

  His form was to be that of a “chronicle” of the plague, as reported by a narrator-witness. Camus had been researching all he could learn about past plagues, and about how the disease was manifested. He learned of at least one striking similarity between major plagues in history and the current blight in France. He jotted in his notebook:

  1342—The Black Death in Europe. The Jews are murdered.

  1481—The plague ravages the South of Spain. The Inquisition says: The Jews.

  Oran itself had, in fact, been stricken several times with outbreaks of the plague, and had also experienced a typhus epidemic in 1941 while Camus was living there. Camus drew upon his knowledge of the town in developing the story’s setting, a town that Camus wrote, “let us admit, is ugly … How to conjure up a picture, for instance, of a town without pigeons, without any trees or gardens, where you never hear the beat of wings or the rustle of leaves—a thoroughly negative place, in short?” It was a town where “everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.” A town so ordinary, Camus explained, that “it will be easily understood that our fellow citizens had not the faintest reason to apprehend the incidents that took place in the spring of the year in question [Camus stated that it was 194–] and were (as we subsequently realized) premonitory signs of the grave events we are to chronicle.”