by Matthew Cobb
Over at Pantin, far from the gilded chandeliers of the Hôtel Matignon, the convoy was eventually completed. Among the prisoners were 168 Allied airmen – American, British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealanders who had been arrested in France.56 Like the Resistance prisoners, they were classed as ‘terrorists’, not prisoners of war, because they had been caught trying to escape to Britain. Many of them had been captured in Gestapo stings – they thought they were involved with members of a Resistance escape line, but discovered too late that their contacts were German agents.57 Also on the train was Alix d’Unienville, a 26-year-old French SOE agent who had been working with Parodi and had been arrested in Paris on D-Day.58 She had feigned mental illness but the Germans were not fooled and she was sent to Romainville prison. One of her SOE comrades, Eileen Nearne, SPIRITUALIST’s radio operator, was also on the train. Other prisoners loaded onto the convoy included Philip Keun, the founder of the JADE-AMICOL intelligence circuit, who would be murdered in Buchenwald in September, and 22-year-old Paul Aribaud, a BCRA radio operator, who had been arrested in Paris in July, and would die in Ellrich concentration camp in January 1945.59 It is not known how many prisoners were on the convoy, nor how many died in deportation, but at best only one third of those on the train lived to return home.60
Some prisoners did not even reach the death camps, as at the last minute the Germans changed their mind over what was to happen to them. André Rondenay, the Free French Military Delegate for the northern zone, had been arrested on 27 July together with his comrade Alain de Beaufort. Thirty-year-old Rondenay had been responsible for organising the campaign of Resistance sabotage that accompanied D-Day; had he evaded capture, he would no doubt have played a vital role in the liberation of Paris. But he had been arrested, tortured and then thrown into the cells at Fresnes.61 Along with other inmates, Rondenay was herded onto the convoy; then, at the last minute, the Gestapo either worked out who he was or decided they had other plans for him. Rondenay, de Beaufort and three of their comrades were taken out of their wagon and driven off to the north of Paris where, in a small clearing in the forest at Domont, they were murdered by a Gestapo gang led by SS Count Alexander de Kreutz, along with Herbert-Martin Hagen, the Secretary-General of the Paris SS police, and Ernst Heinrichsohn, who normally haunted the Drancy prison camp. After the murders, they returned to Gestapo headquarters on the rue des Saussaies and quaffed champagne in what they proudly called ‘an executioners’ banquet’.62
At some point in the evening, prisoners in the wagons at Pantin heard shouting and the sound of machine-gun fire: a dozen prisoners had managed to escape. But that escape came at a price: one escapee was shot by a guard, while the next day, in a brutal reprisal, the SS took a number of men out of the train, made them dig their own graves and then shot them.63
Shortly before midnight, the train lurched and clanged and began to move off. One of the prisoners, the 74-year-old priest Abbé Hénocque, recalled the scene three years later:
It was completely dark and the heat was suffocating. Our chests were heaving. Air came in only through two tiny openings covered with a grill. What a sad human cargo, reduced to the level of parcels. Torn from our country, taken by the enemy to dens of torture, we understood the full horror of our destiny. Despair froze our hearts. But it takes more than that to crush the French soul. Suddenly, the ‘Marseillaise’ rang out, vibrant, irresistible, full of hope, a beautiful challenge that was transmitted from wagon to wagon, all down the convoy.64
There were some rays of light among the horror. Nineteen-year-old Resistance fighter Madeleine Riffaud had been imprisoned for shooting a German officer in broad daylight three weeks earlier. She had already been sentenced to death, and should have been executed on 5 August, but the Gestapo wanted to torture her some more. Two weeks after the intended date of her execution, Riffaud wrote a poem to convey her experience:
At rue des Saussaies I heard the sound –
I swear – of someone playing Bach,
Accompanied, occasionally drowned,
By the screams of torture.65
As Riffaud stood in the baking-hot wagon at Pantin, word got round that the Red Cross were to be allowed to remove any women who were pregnant, ill or wounded and take them to hospital.66 To Riffaud’s amazement, the other prisoners began helping her and ‘Anne-Marie’, a 50-year-old Intelligence Service agent, to change their appearance. Clothes were exchanged, hairstyles were altered and then, in a daze, the two women were pushed out onto the platform. Riffaud later said it was like being reborn. Huddled on the platform with over 200 other lucky women, Riffaud and her new comrade eventually saw the train pull away into the darkness in a cloud of steam and smoke, taking with it the women who had saved their lives. As the SS guards were processing the women, who were now in the custody of the Red Cross, Riffaud and Anne-Marie were recognised and were eventually taken back to Fresnes, where they were put back on death row. But at least they were still alive, and not on the train.67
*
Earlier in the day the city had felt idyllic, even in the midst of growing military activity. Gabrielle Bonnet, a 37-year-old amateur painter, set up an awning on her balcony and sat in the summer heat, watching the German vehicles in the street below: ‘There is an endless stream of cars and lorries, camouflaged with leafy branches, some of them keeping under the shade of the trees to make sure they are hidden. They are moving everything out. Lorries drive by jam-packed with soldiers, coming from the Front no doubt. The soldiers look frightening, their rifles and their machine guns are pointing at the windows in the buildings. The weather is marvellous.’68 Elsewhere, the ubiquitous parade of bicycles was even more striking than usual. Galtier-Boissière saw an old white-haired lady in a black silk dress, perched on the front pannier of a bicycle, whizzing round the place de la Concorde,69 while Odette Lainville brewed a whole cultural theory out of the phenomenon:
Generally, Madame rides behind, side-saddle; sometimes she is jauntily astride the saddle. Some ladies hold tightly onto their man. Others seem remarkably at ease, and powder their noses or do their hair, for all the world as though they were sitting in a chair. And then there are those who are seated on the rack that goes over the front wheel. They look a bit silly, like a big baby being carted about. Finally, there is the ‘sit on the crossbar’ brigade, literally in the arms of their happy chauffeur, who is pedalling away with his nose in blonde or brunette hair that is flowing in the wind.70
For Robert Brasillach, the fascist author whose pre-war fame had been enhanced by his infamous collaborationist writings, this urban beauty was elegiac, promising the collapse of his world: ‘You could feel that everything was at an end. You could measure the catastrophe inch by inch, and yet the weather was marvellous, the women were delicious, and you caught your breath at the most magical sights – the Seine, the Louvre, Notre Dame – the whole while wondering what would become of it all.’71
As dusk fell, 37-year-old administrator Roger Trentesaux heard the sound of gunfire. He wrote in his diary that night:
20:00: boulevard Brune, shots fired towards the Porte d’Orleans; I went to look; gunfire everywhere, German patrols firing all over the place, I hurried home; when I’d calmed down, I went out to the waste ground, then the Huns started firing again; 100 m away, on rue Ernst Reyer, a man fell to the ground; I ran home. The shooting got worse, firing at the windows, a German fired at the concierge, Monsieur Jaussaud, to get him to go inside . . . Loads of passers-by have taken refuge here, the women are frightened because the Huns keep on firing into the air in our courtyard.72
The man Trentesaux saw being shot dead was off-duty policeman Louis Brelivet. A good-looking young man of twenty-seven, with a broad, strong jaw, Brelivet was in his apartment when German troops entered the building to arrest a Jewish family. He tried to stop the Germans, and killed two of them. They responded by machine-gunning him in the face.73 A 13-year-old boy was also killed in the incident.74
As a welcome thunderstorm drenched the
city, easing the oppressive heat, Odette Lainville closed her diary on a high note, focusing on what was to come: ‘Night falls. Another day has passed, a day that brings us closer to that marvellous liberty, which is already sweeping towards us along our French roads.’75
5
Wednesday 16 August: Crimes
André Gillois, the Free French spokesman, broadcasts on the BBC: ‘Today the hour of revenge has sounded. Tomorrow it will be the hour of pitiless punishment – punishment for the Gestapo war criminals, punishment for the SS war criminals. We know your names. You are at the top of our list . . . Punishment for those Wehrmacht officers who seek to blame the SS or the Gestapo for things for which they are responsible. For example, is General von Choltitz the military governor of Paris, the absolute master of the city, or is he not? He must have signed the order for the political prisoners to be handed over and murdered. His staff officers are also responsible for this massacre, because they are associated with the order. The leaders of the Wehrmacht, who gave him their authority and thus authorised these crimes, are also war criminals. We have sworn to punish all these criminals, to exact revenge for all crimes, to mete out unforgiving justice. This oath will be upheld.’1
Early in the morning, after a slow journey from Pantin, Convoy I-264 came to a halt in a long tunnel about sixty kilometres to the east of Paris. The deportees could see nothing; outside in the darkness there was the sound of jackboots on gravel, accompanied by shouting in German. Even at a standstill, smoke oozed from the engine and soon the fetid air in the wagons mingled with acrid locomotive fumes.2 The train had stopped in a long tunnel under a hilly ridge near the station of Nanteuil-Saâcy. Word quickly spread down the train that the Resistance had mounted an attack and that everyone would be freed. Sadly for the prisoners, this was not the case. The train had stopped because an Allied bombing raid had destroyed the bridge over the Marne and it was impossible to go any further. After some time there was more clanking and hissing and lurching and the convoy backed out of the tunnel and stopped near a pasture. Over 2000 deportees were ordered out of the stinking wagons and made to stand in the field while the Germans decided what to do next. After an hour or so, the SS guards lined up the men and women, five abreast, and marched them upriver to the next bridge then on to the station at Nanteuil-Saâcy, where another train was to be brought in to take them away. As well as their own meagre affairs, some of the prisoners were given German booty to carry – paintings, cases of wine and champagne – which had been looted from Paris.3
As the prisoners were marched through the villages, the inhabitants watched, helpless. Two years later, Virginia d’Albert-Lake recalled the scene: ‘Some smiled – tender, sympathetic smiles; others stood immobile with tears in their eyes. We called out to them: “Bon courage, à bientôt! Vive la France!” I, too, was blinded by tears. At one place an earnest-looking young fellow suddenly broke from a group of people to take a heavy suitcase from the hand of a weary woman who had not wished to abandon the few things she possessed. The Germans permitted him to stride along beside us.’4 When the prisoners passed through the village of Méry-sur-Marne, they broke ranks and ran to a water fountain, desperate to slake their thirst. The soldiers blocked their way and hit them with rifle butts. In the confusion, two women prisoners seized their chance and ran. Nicole de Witasse darted into a farmyard and hid in a haystack, but she was dragged out by German guards, who repeatedly smashed her in the face and then took her away. She eventually starved to death in a concentration camp.5 SOE radio operator Alix d’Unienville was luckier – she ran into a courtyard and disappeared into the shadow of a doorway. Suddenly the door opened and she almost fell into a kitchen; she whirled around and saw a man and a woman sitting there, peeling potatoes. ‘Save me!’ she said, and grabbed an apron and a peeling knife so she would look like a member of the family. Luckily, the Germans did not come searching for her, and over the next two weeks Alix was passed from house to house until the Americans arrived.6
As the stream of prisoners moved down the road, a woman turned up on a bicycle, panting for breath. She was Resistance leader Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux, whose husband was one of the deportees. In Paris she had heard that the train would have to stop at Nanteuil-Saâcy because of the bombed bridge, so in a scene worthy of fiction, she had managed to get a lift to Meaux where she had borrowed a bicycle; she had finally pedalled thirty kilometres to where the prisoners were gathered. After running up and down the shuffling column of men and women, she eventually found her husband, only to be hit in the face with a truncheon by an SS guard. Undeterred, she walked alongside the prisoners for the next few kilometres until a halt was ordered, and another guard allowed her to talk to her husband for a few minutes. Then the march began again and the prisoners moved off to the station.
Marie-Hélène was joined by 23-year-old Claire Girard, who was looking for her brother; together the two women found a hotel room in Saâcy. In the early hours of the next morning, they heard the sound of the re-assembled convoy leaving Nanteuil-Saâcy station, heading eastwards once more.7 Conditions on the new train were even worse – there were fewer wagons so the prisoners were packed in even more tightly. André Rougeyron recalled: ‘Any man who squatted or even bent over slightly was sure to be trampled immediately. We had to remain standing, always standing. Tempers flared, and arguments became frequent, often violent. We were crushing each other; our thirst was unbearable, and some prisoners licked the iron parts of the car to get a sensation of coolness.’8 As the train progressed relentlessly eastwards, it was tracked by Marie-Hélène and Claire, who had resolved to follow their loved ones as long as they could and, if possible, to free them.
The departure of the convoy from Paris galvanised Raoul Nordling. Diplomacy had failed to prevent the Germans from carrying out their threat to deport thousands of political prisoners, so he decided to take the initiative.9 In the afternoon, in a bar behind the Opéra, Nordling met Parodi for the first time. Nordling explained his plan to put the prisons in the Paris region under the control of the Red Cross; in return, Parodi, speaking in the name of the Algiers government, said he would allow the remaining German prison guards free passage out of the capital.10 This included the guards in the Drancy transit camp who had been directly involved in deporting tens of thousands of Jews.
While these negotiations were taking place, the Germans continued to visit their killing ground in the forest at Domont. The day before it had been used to murder Resistance leader André Rondenay and his four comrades; on 16 August the SS, with the support of the Milice, arrested and shot thirteen Resistance fighters from Domont. One of the murdered men was Pierre Alviset, who had joined the Resistance on D-Day.11 On his twentieth birthday, less than two months before his death, Pierre had written in his diary: ‘I am 20 years old. It is a happy age. I want to become a man and an honourable Frenchman.’12
*
The Allies continued their movement eastwards, capturing Orleans and Dreux and reaching the centre of Chartres with the help of the local Resistance, allowing a triumphant General Patton to survey the scene, although the city was not yet completely secure.13 The Allies were now less than 100 km from Paris. To the west, where they were gradually closing the mouth of the Falaise pocket, the very notion of a front line began to dissolve. At one point, two petrol supply columns, one Allied and the other German, swept past each other on a country road, going in opposite directions. In the early hours of the morning, US journalist Thomas Treanor was having a well-earned doze in a French village that was allegedly in Allied hands when a group of German tanks rumbled up and clanked to a halt; Treanor heard a young German soldier calling out: ‘I want to sleep!’ But after much shouting and squabbling about which way the column should go, the vehicles rumbled off into the night. The next day Treanor found the wreckage of two of the tanks, smoke rising from the blackened hulks.14
Meanwhile, General Leclerc was twiddling his thumbs at Argentan. Frustrated at the lack of action, he again pestered Patton, wr
iting a letter reporting that there was no fighting in his sector, and asking whether he could begin gathering his forces for the advance on Paris. Patton reassured Leclerc that he understood the role that the French troops were to have in the liberation of the capital, but that it was not yet the moment; privately Patton wondered whether Leclerc could be relied on to follow orders.15
Allied command was well aware of the situation in Paris. In the morning, Jean Sainteny (‘Dragon’) of the ALLIANCE spy circuit had ridden through the German lines on the back of a motorcycle driven by his comrade, Bernard de Billy; both were disguised as telephone engineers. MI6 headquarters in London wanted to exfiltrate Sainteny from France, so the leader of ALLIANCE, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, had spent the previous few days gathering documents for Sainteny to take to the Allies. Sainteny and de Billy arrived at Patton’s headquarters near Le Mans in the late afternoon. They passed on the material assembled by Fourcade, together with their own precious observations on the state of German defences, and gave the address of a safe letter-box they had set up behind enemy lines, where material could be picked up by the Allies as they advanced.16 That evening, de Billy made the return journey, taking back with him ‘Lieutenant P’, a French spy who worked for the US military intelligence, who had orders to contact the FFI, in order to make a link between the Allies and the Resistance fighters.17