Among the fugitives were a doctor from Alsace, a Polish pianist, two Belgian students, the wife of a rabbi from Anvers, the wife of a diamond merchant from the same town, five Polish women with their children, a Russian woman from Baku, a Dutch woman and numerous German and Austrian women.
Young or old, beautiful or ugly, fresh-featured or faded, young women or mothers, everybody had fled the prospect of deportation.
A smuggler volunteering her services – a young French woman who had led fugitives to the border – had been arrested and incarcerated with them. Kind and patient, she offered consolation to the weak. Her generous nature worked its influence on all the detainees who were continually asking her for advice and information.
Mademoiselle Adrienne was the only one of us who was always even-tempered.
When our gaoler, whom we were supposed to call ‘la patronne’ or ‘boss’, came one morning to take several prisoners to the visiting room, I approached her and asked her to return my bottle of cough syrup.
She shouted:
‘You’ve been told: no syrup!’
I tried to persuade her:
‘I’m coughing and I’m keeping my roommates from sleeping.’
At which she exploded:
‘Is it me or you who’s in charge here? How am I supposed to know what’s in your bottle of syrup? Maybe you want to poison yourself! We’ve seen it all here! If you bring it up again, you’ll be spending the night in the “workshop”. Watch it, if I get angry, there’ll be no letters and no parcels this evening for the lot of you,’ she growled as she left.
I was so intimidated by this attack that I went to hide behind my companions.
In an attempt to console myself, I wrote to the Mariuses, who would probably have heard about my misadventure from Monsieur Jean Letellier.
I soon realised our gaoler was not so bad. Used to maintaining strict discipline among her customary inmates, our presence had thrown her into confusion. Disoriented, she concealed the discomfort we were causing her behind a clamorous, gruff severity.
Whenever we would turn to her and start with a:
‘May I ask …’
She would interrupt immediately:
‘There’s nothing to ask. My job is to give orders. Obey them!’
We wouldn’t dare then follow up with:
‘… for permission to close the window above the bed? We’re being soaked by the rain.’
Which wouldn’t stop her from shouting the next day:
‘How lazy can you be, leaving a window open so the rain pisses down on you!’
If, however, one dared to close a window without permission, she would exclaim in a voice to give you goosebumps:
‘Which one of you closed the window? Is it me who gives the orders here or you lot?’
We locked ourselves away in anxious silence.
‘The boss has a mouth on her,’ said the fence. ‘She shouts so loud it’s enough to give you a stomach-ache.’
These scenes should have entertained us, but we were too rattled by the shocks we’d suffered. On the other hand, every day we would learn that some of our companions, upon leaving the prison, had been sent to Gurs. Tormented by the prospect of deportation, we were extremely nervous and took all of these daily incidents very seriously.
One Saturday evening, Mademoiselle Adrienne told us that the following day, Mass would be held at the prison chapel.
‘How about we all go and pray? God is there for everybody, regardless of any difference in religion,’ came the suggestion from one detainee.
Most of us agreed.
Before we were taken back to the dormitories, la patronne announced:
‘Attention you lot! It’s Mass tomorrow! Which of you are coming?’
About twenty of us responded.
Taking great offence, she protested:
‘If all the Jews who end up here these days turn up at the chapel, there won’t be any room for decent Christian folk.’
Gently, Mademoiselle Adrienne replied:
‘Come now, Madame, why stop these wretched souls from turning to God? Is that in the spirit of Our Lord?’
The reasoning confounded her. Words failed her. This time, she didn’t even resort to her usual method of shrieking at the top of her voice! It was, I think, quite a memorable moment in her life.
But the next day she found her revenge. When the detainees came to enter the little chapel, up under the eaves of the prison building, she suddenly roared:
‘Christians first!’
Perhaps this point of discrimination was made less out of authority than out of conviction. It was her individual way of demonstrating her Christian faith. It was clear our patronne did not have a dark soul, but was quite simply infatuated with the importance of her role as head gaoler in the prison.
I mock our gaoler now (whom we dared to call ‘Madame Attention-You-Lot …’ in private) without any resentment and even with a hint of sympathy. Considering the unlimited power she wielded over us, it must be said she could have been still more totalitarian.
Our tormented, reclusive existence brought with it its moments of diversion. One Sunday, a beautiful Viennese woman, blonde-haired, green-eyed and elegant notwithstanding her advanced pregnancy, received a visit from her little son, who had been sent to an orphanage. The boy was accompanied by one of the nuns.
The sister told us that the gendarme charged with accompanying the child had asked him his name on the way there, in order to make sure he was delivered to the institution in an orderly fashion.
‘What is your name?’
‘François Besson,’ the child had replied, as he had been told to do by his parents (for the whole family had fake papers, as was customary).
‘Yes, but what’s your real name?’
‘My name is François Besson,’ the lad had confirmed, adamantly.
When the gendarme tried to insist, the child, in no way put out, had ended up saying:
‘Listen, if you don’t believe me, ask Mama if it’s true. I know my name is François Besson.’
The gendarme was completely dumbfounded. What he didn’t realise was that the moral resistance of this young son of Israel had been forged over dozens of centuries.
The nun then shared this story with us: the sister who looked after the children in the orphanage had asked the little boy:
‘Is it your papa or mama who died?’
‘I still have a papa and a mama, they’re in prison, but you know, Madame, they didn’t steal anything. It’s just because they’re Jewish!’
And the good sisters were both stunned and moved to pity.
Feeling emboldened by his success, the boy told us in his delightful chatter that he had been given toys and that he was having fun with his little playmates.
‘You know, Mama, they’re not Jewish, but they’re still nice. They don’t beat me up.’
The mother, proud as punch, told the women gathered around how her little boy had already stood up to the gendarmes when they were arrested. The young fellow interrupted her:
‘I told them just what you taught me to, Mama.’
He was a rosy-cheeked, fair-haired boy with a dimpled face, just like his mother. Both his words and his attitude were unusually mature and considered. ‘One day,’ I thought, watching him, ‘he’ll be one of those Jews who won’t arouse any sympathy. People will think he’s too shrewd, very knowing and unbearably quick. After the education this life has handed him! Six years old! The poor little thing!’
The door to the ‘workshop’ opened and la patronne announced:
‘Attention you lot! Time for soup!’
Receptacles filled with chickpea and noodle soup in honour of it being Sunday appeared on the tables.
Visiting time was over …
The gentle-natured nun from the orphanage and the pink-faced child left.
XII
Saint-Julien
At the end of a week, a group of prisoners was to be brought before the courts in Saint
-Julien. Some to be questioned by the investigating judge, others to appear before the Court of Assizes. I was among the first group.
At six in the morning, we were summonsed by the traditional ‘Attention you lot!’ followed this time by an: ‘Off to court!’ Then the patronne did the roll call, which she did her best to massacre; any attempt to correct her was met with:
‘Sure, but what’s the story with all these Turkish names? … I don’t speak Latin.’
And we laughed, and the patronne did too, proud and pleased with the pithiness of her own remarks.
We took our seats in the makeshift paddy wagon.
The trip to court provided us with a real diversion. It allowed us to leave the gaolhouse for a few hours, to admire the sun, the forest, the fields, the Alps with their snowy peaks … winter in all its splendour.
This journey brought us into contact with more recent fugitives bearing news.
We travelled with other inmates: swindlers, vagrants, drunkards, burglars and fences. The most significant character was a murderer, handcuffed and flanked by two gendarmes. He was sitting next to a beautiful brunette, who was accused of having danced in a public place. She called us as witnesses to the injustice inflicted upon her:
‘Dancing! Is that a crime now?’
The men present expressed their outrage to make her happy.
Nobody mentioned that the only crime weighing on the conscience of most of the criminals in the wagon was having wanted to avoid deportation.
On arrival in Saint-Julien, we, the ‘new lot’, had to appear in a little chamber before the investigating judge. He asked the usual questions and we set out the sole grounds that had forced us to risk escape. As we had not yet had any contact with a lawyer, ‘our case’ was stood over for a week.
We were then brought into the large courtroom; we were allowed to follow the proceedings.
First some criminal cases were heard.
To a man who had stolen ten chickens, the judge said:
‘Granted, you wished to have a chicken to celebrate Christmas, but the other nine, why did you slit their throats, too?’
‘It’s just that, well, they came along all of their own accord, so to speak, so I thought of my mates. It’s always nice to have a little chicken for Christmas.’
He was perfectly serious. The witnesses testified to the fact that he had indeed shared the chickens around. The poultry exterminator was given a one-month suspended sentence.
Immediately thereafter came the day’s most important matter: the murder trial. Experts gave lengthy evidence; witnesses were called. Then the accused, a tall, extremely pale man, rose.
Originally from Bremen, a German national, and Jewish, the murderer had sought refuge in France with his wife. They had initially led a peaceful existence in Paris, relying on funds sent by a Swiss relative. Then came the order to arrest all German Jews, collectively accused of being members of the Fifth Column. The couple found themselves separated: she was sent to Gurs, he to fortress detention. Six months later, the wife, suffering ill health, exhausted, her nerves completely shattered, was released. A month later, the husband was released pursuant to the amended law relating to German and Austrian Jews. They received a compulsory residence permit to live in a little village in the Alpes-Maritimes, where they resumed their everyday life.
However, the wife was unable to chase away the memory of the months spent in the Gurs camp, during which she believed her husband had been deported to the east. She made him swear to kill her if ever they found themselves again in similar circumstances. For a long time, the husband refused.
She suffered insomnia; one night, she swallowed the contents of a tube of sleeping tablets. They were able to revive her. But she immediately declared her intention to try again at the first opportunity. She was unable, she said, to continue living with the constant threat of deportation. In an attempt to reassure her, and not believing that the persecutions would resume, the husband had finally sworn to kill her and to follow her to her grave. From that moment onwards, she grew calm, almost serene. A nurse by profession, she started caring for the children and elderly of the village with such compassion and devotion that everybody showered the couple with sympathy and gratitude, as one witness testified.
The racist laws, first implemented in France in 1942, were now justifying increasingly violent persecutions. Like so many others, the couple resolved to make an ultimate attempt to escape to Switzerland.
Carrying only meagre luggage, in which was hidden a large steel razor, they headed for the border with some other fugitives, led by a smuggler.
They were arrested just as they were about to cross the barbed wire. In a flash, while the gendarmes were busy with their companions, the woman pulled the razor out of her bag and, handing it to her husband, ordered him:
‘Hans, you swore you would!’
Panicking too at their sudden arrest, the husband seized the murderous weapon and, as if hypnotised by the will of his wife, slashed her throat. The gendarmes dashed towards him. He then made two deep cuts to himself with the razor and fell down, bleeding, at his wife’s side. His last movement, as reported by one of the customs officers, a witness to the scene, was to take the dying woman in his arms. This account was confirmed by another witness:
‘I was there. That’s exactly what happened!’
The doctor at the scene pronounced the woman dead and confirmed the desperate state of the man. He dressed the dying man’s wounds and ordered his immediate transfer to the nearest hospital. The couple was brought to Z–, she to the morgue, he to an operating theatre.
‘How the murderer survived this injury is beyond me,’ the doctor reported to the bar. ‘I can testify, in all conscience, that it is a matter of pure chance and might even be viewed as a miracle if one recognises the Divine at work here. What’s more, one has only to look at the murderer’s two dreadful scars to appreciate the extraordinary nature of the circumstances.’
The doctor giving expert evidence then turned the prisoner’s head and a shudder ran through the courtroom. The two large wounds, scarcely healed, were indeed visible, criss-crossed at the middle of his neck.
The doctor concluded:
‘Having come to, the desperate man took advantage of a guard’s momentary absence to tear off the bandage and was again found in a pool of blood. The hospital was thrown into confusion. Once more, one could say it was only the man’s extraordinarily robust constitution that explains how he pulled through, against his will, for after this second attempt he had to be tied down.’
The court was deeply moved.
It was then the prosecutor’s turn to speak:
‘Regardless of the tragic nature of this case, the fact remains: the wife was murdered; the husband is before you – alive. I ask for the usual sentence taking into account the mitigating circumstances.’
He resumed his seat and one sensed he had carried out his professional duty only very reluctantly.
The defendant’s lawyer then set out the life story of the persecuted husband and wife, with its periods of hope, each time dashed by surrounding events. He pleaded his case and closed with these words:
‘Gentlemen of the jury, when the doctor here before you ordered the transfer of the dying man, who required an urgent operation, the ambulance went to the hospital in the nearest town, that of Z–. The mayor, who had been informed by telephone of the arrival of the vehicle’s tragic cargo, made a decision which shall remain inscribed in shame: “It’s a Jew, I don’t want any trouble with the Germans in my municipality, take him to Saint-Julien!” The convoy had to travel several kilometres further before being able to set down the dying man and the dead woman.’
There was a shuffle of indignation among the jurors, which grew into a murmur of general condemnation.
‘And that, gentlemen of the jury, is what happened in France in 1942! In order to put this abominable action to rights, I ask that this man, a man who cannot and must not be found guilty of murder, be release
d immediately, his only crime having been to have honoured a sacred promise for which he’d intended to pay with his own life, there and then!’
An hour later, the defendant left the court room. Physically and emotionally exhausted, he was being supported by two charitable souls. He had been acquitted.
The court was supposed to sit again in the afternoon and, as the inmates had to be taken back together, we were taken away until the end of proceedings to the ‘lockup’, a place with which I was already familiar, having spent the night there prior to our incarceration in the gaol.
This time, there were twenty-one of us all crammed in, sitting and lying on the two pallets or standing in the corridor. Two pretty local Savoie girls brought us our meals from the neighbouring farm. Cramped and falling over each other, but starving, we ate.
The odysseys of these captives, told over the hours spent waiting, were poignant: parents whose children had been taken away; mothers with no husband; a father with two young daughters of six and eight, the wife and mother having been torn away during a round-up at a market in Marseille. She had left to do the shopping and had not returned. A lawyer from Brussels, an industrialist from Mulhouse, a priest from Prague, dressed in peasant’s garb; two German writers, a female doctor of psychoanalysis, also German, an Austrian opera singer, a rabbi from Anvers whose family – seven of them – had been deported while he was leading a service, a pastor, a woman with her newborn, et cetera, et cetera. Each new ‘case’ seemed more tragic than the last. A crescendo of suffering, deportations, disappearances!
Of all of us, the poultry-yard exterminator cut a figure as one of the chosen ones. He was very pleased with the outcome of his trial and was enjoying our company. People shared their cigarettes and food with him; the poor chap appeared hardly to have eaten his fill since the famous Christmas Eve chicken feast.
Talking with those more recently arrested, we learned that the German authorities had replaced the Italian occupying troops with soldiers from the Reich throughout much of France; the Germans were winning everywhere, the political mood was with them, their diplomatic efforts were crowned with success and the occupied countries were straining under their increasingly heavy yoke.
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