No Place to Lay One's Head

by Francoise Frenkel

  In halting sentences, the girls were saying how they had followed the guide to the level crossing, their group had suddenly found themselves face to face with two gendarmes and they had just enough time to see Julot taking off at full speed.

  We tried to focus on our plight. But all we could say to each other was so pointless and gloomy that we ended up silent. The boy, who had been brought back after our search, had been asleep since dinner.

  Fatigue soon got the better of the two girls: they fell asleep too, their sleep interrupted by sobs. The boy called out: ‘Mama!’ and then his breathing grew regular once again, keeping time with the pacing of the German guard outside the customs house.

  I tried to put my thoughts in some sort of order and to think what last-ditch attempt might save me. The future appeared to offer little hope.

  With my eyes fixed on the window bars, I listened to the muffled moaning of the wind.

  As the miserly light of day started to break through, I was still awake, plunged deep in my miserable thoughts.

  At eight o’clock in the morning, the two gendarmes from the first team reappeared. It was Sunday, and they were in an excellent mood. It was as if they were telling us: ‘Now we’ve dealt with all the tedious issues you’ve caused us, we’ve nothing against you anymore.’

  Doubtless they were unaware of the exhaustion and suffering they had just inflicted upon us during their interminable interrogations, with no regard for our distress.

  They did not appear to have any accurate understanding of the dreadful consequences that would follow our arrest. Turning cheerfully to one of the girls, one man said:

  ‘Well, mademoiselle, it’s not such a catastrophe to have to go to Germany to work! They pay well and they eat better than we do here.’

  Seeing my depressed state, another said to me:

  ‘Come on, they won’t force you to do any work that’s too difficult. You’re not twenty anymore! So, enough of that miserable face! Come on, come on!’

  ‘They’re all scared of working, these people we’ve been arresting for weeks,’ the first one resumed. ‘Do you think in Switzerland you get to eat without having to work?’

  The girl with the intelligent expression tried to explain to him that, in our situation, the frightening problem was not working, but surviving: the Chancellor had vowed quite simply to exterminate the Jewish race.

  I asked if either of them had been to a concentration camp for Jewish refugees. One gendarme related that, in fact, he had accompanied a convoy of one hundred fugitives and that on that occasion, he had had to spend a few hours at Gurs.

  ‘And what did you see?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Oh, I saw some things, I did,’ he replied. ‘It’s appalling the things that go on there! People go down like flies; old people, women and children. Yes, I’ll give you that! It’s terrible, but they must have committed crimes or some sort of fraud in Germany. It seems they turned the country upside down before the war of 1914, and after 1918 they ruined Germany, taking all the wealth, all the gold, all the currency back to their Palestine, and to North and South America and a fair bit to Switzerland. So, you see! Now they’re paying for it. A German Gauleiter officer “esplained” it all to me (he said “esplained”). And the Boches who come through here, they “esplain” it too. We’re not fond of them, the Germans, of course, ’cause what the hell are they doing here in our country, but well, as for the Jews, well they’ve given the Boches a hard time, too. So you get it, don’t you? We’re just doing our duty, it comes from Vichy, from our government, these orders,’ he concluded with conviction.

  The third, who had listened to this apposite explanation, added:

  ‘As for me, I’d never seen any Jews before now. They’re just people like anybody else. But the ones who come through here want to cross the border without even asking for a visa! So we pack them back off to where they come from. And they come back again. They’re stubborn as mules. So we arrest them and put them in prison. It’s given us all sorts of trouble for months. We’ve never had so much to do around here. You see, the Jews, who gives a damn … but they should stay where they are. The way they come to the border, they’re keeping the whole police force busy, night and day. No offence, ladies, it’s got nothing to do with you.’

  Such ignorance defied belief. I did not even try to set out the facts for them. I would have been just wasting my breath. ‘So, these men will continue to arrest hundreds of fugitives,’ I thought, ‘without ever understanding their role in the bigger picture, unless of course they just want to give themselves a moral alibi to assuage their consciences.’

  One gendarme, who had not participated in the conversation until then, appeared to have a better understanding of the issue, for he said sententiously:

  ‘Be quiet, don’t you realise we run the risk of being dismissed on the spot, or worse, if they hear us debating their decisions?’

  And he gestured with his head in the direction of the German guard who was also carrying out ‘an order’ as he trampled French soil.

  At ten o’clock the boy was taken away to be sent back to the département of Creuse from whence he had come. A little later, a vehicle pulled up in front of the customs office. Some gendarmes ‘invited’ us to collect our bags and climb in. And so we made the same journey back by car that we had made on foot the night before under Julot’s disastrous guidance.

  Passing by the ravine to which I had so strangely been drawn the previous night, and into which I had been ready to descend just moments before my arrest, I saw in the daylight that the strands of barbed wire were looser there. One of them was damaged, probably from a recent escape. I had been just a couple of steps from a possible way through! It would not have been too difficult to slip between the separated strands of wire. I was plunged into glum despair at this realisation …

  We arrived at the Saint-Julien gendarmerie, where the police, having given our names to their colleagues and handed them our files, left us under their watch.

  We were led into a provisional cell which had a small window in its door. It was a former garage, divided into two sections. The first, near the entrance, was a sort of antechamber. The second was itself divided into two cells of equal size, each of which was able to be separately locked from the outside. On that day, the two cells were empty. In the corridor, an enamelled container gave off a pestilential stench. Next to it, on a stone, stood a water jug.

  Each cell had a pallet, mattresses stuffed with straw that had turned to dust, and military-issue blankets rolled into a bolster.

  A girl accompanied by a gendarme brought us our midday meal and while she was waiting to take away the basket and dishes, all three of us remained standing, not daring to sit down to eat on the revolting pallet.

  Once we had finished, we asked permission to shake out our blankets in the courtyard and to sweep our prison cell.

  The man replied that it was Sunday. But the girl, who had watched us eat with some pity, intervened on our behalf.

  So, while the gendarme was chatting with her, we quickly set to work.

  Under the same watch, we were permitted to wash at the end of a long corridor where there was running water from a fountain. Only when we were locked up again did we dare sit down on the little beds.

  I begged our guard to be so merciful as to allow me to take a few steps outside. Feeling unwell and feverish, I was struggling to breathe. The young women followed me into the courtyard. After doing a few rounds under the pitying or indifferent looks of residents at their windows, we were taken back to our cell, which was double-locked by the gendarme.

  We remained in darkness, utterly spent; the cold was biting. Finally we lay down on the filthy pallet. A little later, the door opened and the gendarme reappeared in the light of a lantern. He approached us and held out to me a parcel wrapped in newspapers.

  ‘It’s a hot brick,’ he said.

  The parcel was burning hot. Touched by his thoughtfulness, we thanked him and held each other close, o
ne against the other, sharing a bit of our warmth.

  Broken by exhaustion and shock, I fell into a leaden sleep. When I awoke, an ashen-coloured light was seeping through the little window. At my feet, the brick that had been so gratefully received was cold.

  The door opened with a crash and our names were called. We were led over to a truck and made to climb in. We each received a ration of bread for the journey.

  The vehicle was packed with fugitives who had been arrested in various places along the border and who, like us, were being transferred to Annecy.

  XI

  Annecy

  After several hours travelling through spectacular mountains cloaked in their winter finery, the bus came to a town, crossed over several streets and stopped outside some high walls. A gendarme rang at a large iron gate, a lock creaked, a grille opened and through we went to a yard inside the lockup.

  We were in prison.

  We were made to line up in a long corridor leading from the porch to several offices. The glacial wind swept through in all directions between the open doors. We were brought, one after another, before an officer who filled in our arrest warrants and made us complete and sign a questionnaire. Another officer took our fingerprints, carried out the usual measurements and took our heights. We stood there, apathetic, holding our ink-blackened fingers apart, waiting patiently for these formalities to end.

  The male detainees were then led to their section at the back of a large courtyard: there were twenty-eight of them. There were eleven of us women, including one with two small children. She was immediately transferred to the infirmary. Another had a six-year-old boy, who was entrusted to the care of an orphanage. The little one left without saying a word. He was exhausted, much like the adults.

  At the officer’s order, we followed a matronly woman who led us into another equally freezing room. There, she searched us meticulously, removing scissors, needles and laces, and from me she confiscated a bottle of cough syrup. She couldn’t know for certain what its contents were, she said. Once the bags had been put into storage, the warder went over to a closed door that had a peephole and bore the inscription: Workshop, behind which could be heard a great humming of voices. She opened it and gestured to us to go in. The voices fell silent and all I saw at first, as if in a nightmare, were the pale faces of women turning towards us.

  I remained for a moment near the doorway, leaning against the wall. My head was heavy and empty all at once. I examined the room. Two barred windows illuminated the white walls. The room was furnished with benches and three large tables. Opposite the door, another, smaller one was labelled in pencil: Toilets.

  As soon as the gaoler had disappeared, the female prisoners all stood up and crowded around us, assailing us with questions. What news of the war? Had the persecutions increased or diminished in severity? Where had we come from? How had we been arrested? Where had it happened? And so on and so forth …

  Lunchtime had long passed; as a result of our journey and the formalities of our registration, we had quite simply ‘skipped’ it; the prisoners gathered together some provisions for us.

  I sat down on a bench; I listened to the tales of escapes and arrests, all the while responding as best I could to the thousand questions prompted by my companions’ anxiety. Every thought in that room revolved around these four issues: war, escape, arrest, deportation. This last word was uttered in a particular tone, the voice lowered a little, with a suppressed shiver and an expression of horror.

  At six o’clock, the door opened and cast-iron receptacles containing vegetable soup, potatoes and noodles were deposited on the tables.

  ‘You new lot!’ called out the gaoler.

  We presented ourselves before her, and we each received a mug and spoon. Knives and forks, possible instruments of suicide, were prohibited.

  Half an hour later, censored letters and cards were distributed, followed by parcels, the contents of which were monitored. Most of the detainees’ relatives had already been deported, so parcels were a windfall for a privileged few. The recipients recognised this and shared their offerings around.

  At seven o’clock, the gaoler reappeared to call out:

  ‘Everybody to the dormitories!’

  Then:

  ‘You new lot!’

  She handed us a sheet and a dark-grey towel. The lack of soap made doing the laundry impossible, so the prison simply had the linen boiled.

  I followed the crowd of my companions in misfortune.

  ‘Come and look,’ said one of them to me, ‘so you know what happens when your turn comes around.’

  In the corridor stood some galvanised metal containers. We carried them to the dormitories. We also brought with us a mug filled with water for the night. It took me several days of practice to become sufficiently skilled at this complicated carting to and fro.

  The large dormitories each had twenty to thirty straw mattresses; the small ones three or four … I was put into one of the latter which I shared with two detainees. We introduced ourselves.

  One of my roommates was the mother of a famous singer in America. Her husband was incarcerated in the men’s section. The couple were allowed to exchange two letters per week, and that poor woman lived for those scraps of paper, those so-called letters she was meant to write in French and which she received in the same language. It wasn’t easy, as the couple were Dutch and knew scarcely any French. We helped her as best we could with her correspondence.

  The other woman, German, lively and very pretty, was the wife of a one-time millionaire manufacturer who had managed to get part of his fortune out of Germany in 1935. The family had settled near Lyon. Her husband’s professional contacts had quickly led to the establishment of a small but dedicated French clientele. In 1940, the law targeting German Jews led to their being sent to a concentration camp with their two daughters, after they were accused of being members of the Nazi Fifth Column in France. After months of effort, and thanks to the intervention in Vichy of a well-respected Lyonnais lawyer, the whole family was released.

  When the Germans arrived in Lyon, facing the imminent threat of deportation, they were forced to flee to the Swiss border, from where they had been turned back to the Annecy prison.

  Even though these two couples had availed themselves of the services of ‘first-class’ smugglers, they had encountered the same fate I had, resulting in their imprisonment.

  These two fugitives had set out in fur coats and elegant dresses with jewellery and a few small bags containing undergarments. They had not wanted to arrive in Switzerland in rags, for, at the time, they were convinced of the likely success of their attempt.

  I had employed the reverse technique with the same result.

  What a peculiar spectacle they were, those two ladies, well-groomed and elegant, sitting on their little iron bed in that cold, bare gaol!

  My two companions informed me that we had been remanded in pre-trial detention. We would later have to undergo a formal trial. Its outcome would determine whether we would be released or transferred to one of the camps in France, from where we could probably expect to be deported. As a general rule, those under sixty who had committed the offence of travelling without a permit and with forged documents were interned. I had to find myself a good lawyer as a matter of urgency. They had already done so.

  I spent an uneasy, troubled night considering all these necessities. Much to my distress, I could not stop coughing. Of course, the dormitory was not heated and I had caught a chill walking towards Switzerland without any shoes.

  Six o’clock in the morning saw us making our ‘beds’, for the gaoler opened our doors at six-thirty to take us to the notorious ‘workshop’.

  There, two by two, we washed at the sink, which was served by two taps. The water was bitingly cold, but once we had washed, we were able to put on our coats and gloves once more and somehow we managed to warm ourselves up again. To this end, the women of German origin would do exercises.

  The gaoler reappeared, f
ollowed by two inmates who were serving sentences of two and three years, and announced:

  ‘Attention you lot! Coffee!’

  We lined up, mugs in hand, and while one of the prisoners distributed the daily ration of bread, another poured us a beverage of sorts. Then we remained in that same room, writing, reading and trying to anticipate the future, all crowded in, one on top of the other. A broken pane of glass served as an open window.

  Once a week, at around ten o’clock, the gaoler announced:

  ‘Attention you lot! It’s shopping time, ladies!’

  We would then be allowed to write a list of the various authorised items we wanted brought in: writing paper, ink, penholders and pens (which specialised in losing their nib on their first use), soap made of sand and clay, and sucrettes, black lollies made of grape sugar, which were probably allowed to sweeten the bitterness of our days. And indeed, we did consume rather a lot of them.

  Nobody here had any meal tickets. Ration cards found on fugitives were all confiscated, some belonging to French people and others forged. Friends who had been informed of an arrest would often send cards to the prisoners. Members of the general public and French charities also brought cards to the prison management for our use.

  The ‘workshop’ was only a workshop in name. It was impossible to do any handiwork there for the simple reason that needles and scissors were prohibited. We idled our time away, interrupted every now and again by angry fights, for, in addition to the thirty-five criminals of our kind ‘who had wanted to make a run for it without a permit’, our company also included two professional thieves, convicted on three occasions, a fence, an accomplice to a forger of fake ration cards and a girl of loose morals who had taken advantage of her ‘visit’ to a hotel to make off with some clothes.

  Relations between these women were far from harmonious, as they hurled the most colourful insults at each other. It was just as you’d imagine the ‘underworld’ to be. I thought I was in a Carco novel …