June 1943 – Françoise Frenkel crosses the Franco–Swiss border unlawfully. That same year, she starts work on No Place to Lay One’s Head (Rien où poser sa tête).
September 1945 – Rien où poser sa tête is published by Éditions Jeheber (Geneva).
End 1945 – Likely return of Françoise Frenkel to Nice.
1958 – Françoise Frenkel lodges a claim for compensation for the confiscation of her trunk by the Gestapo.
18 January 1975 – Françoise Frenkel dies in Nice.
DOSSIER
La Maison du Livre
‘… increasing customer numbers forced me to consider expanding and the bookshop opened in the capital’s fashionable quarter.’
Number 39a Passauer Strasse, where the bookstore La Maison du Livre used to be, no longer exists. It was located to the left of the white art-nouveau building pictured. In its place stand the buildings of the KaDeWe department store, which were bombed in 1943 and rebuilt and expanded in 1950.
La Maison du Livre is the first French bookstore in Berlin. It opens in 1921 and is managed by Françoise Frenkel and her husband, Simon Raichenstein. Like Frenkel herself, he too studied in Paris prior to World War I, first at the École Supérieure d’Aeronautique in 1913, then at the École Spéciale de Mécanique et d’Électricité.
From its first location at 13 Kleiststrasse, the bookstore moves to 27 Passauer Strasse and then to number 39a in the same street, where the Charlottenburg, Schöneberg and Wilmersdorf districts meet, and where it becomes an almost obligatory landmark for French writers of the interwar period who are passing through Berlin. Jules Chancel recounts that ‘Madame Raichenstein […] wanted her bookstore to be a centre for French thought.’4
In 1933, in a document emanating from the Department of French Works Abroad (Service des oeuvres françaises à l’étranger, or SOFE), we learn that in that same year, the French Embassy rejects ‘an application for an extraordinary grant’ for La Maison du Livre, which is under threat of bankruptcy ‘as a result of developments’.5 A letter from Henri Jourdan of the Institut Français reports, however, that if the ‘lady’ from the bookstore has been ‘boycotted’, it is not because ‘she is Jewish’ but rather because ‘she is being criticised for propagating French culture’.6 On 10 May 1933, Simon Raichenstein obtains a Nansen passport.7 He leaves Berlin for Paris for the last time on 9 November.
Françoise Frenkel runs La Maison du Livre for another five years. In the summer of 1939, she abandons her bookshop and her apartment ‘as they are’8 and goes into exile in Paris.
Paris, Colisée Storage Repository
‘Yet now that trunk, which had so miraculously survived, had been confiscated by the Germans in Paris on grounds of race. I had just discovered as much upon my return to Avignon on a postcard received from the storage repository.’
Receipt for Françoise Frenkel’s trunk from the Colisée et Champs-Élysées storage repository, dated 27 May 1940. Subsequent stamp noting confiscation by the German army affixed in 1942.
This receipt appears among the documents contained in the compensation claim filed by Françoise Frenkel after the war.
Nice, La Roseraie Hotel
‘The hotel, La Roseraie, should have been called Noah’s Ark.
It was home to survivors from the most diverse group of nationalities and social classes. They were a disparate lot indeed, united by their shared waiting for peace.’
La Roseraie as it is today, located at 10 Avenue Depoilly in Nice, a cul-de-sac lined with Belle Epoque villas. Françoise Frenkel lived here from February 1941 to 26 August 1942.
Marius, Hairdressing Salon
‘I scanned the avenue, the little laneways, the houses, shops and villas, searching instinctively for somewhere to take cover.
My eyes fell on a shop window: Marius – Hairdressing Salon’.
Official telephone directory of the Alpes-Maritimes département, 1941 edition, containing the following entry: Marius, hairdressing salon, 12 Rue Saint-Philippe, tel. 856.76.
Original edition, 1945
Title page of original edition of Rien où poser sa tête, 1945.
Dedication, Nice, 1945
Françoise Frenkel’s handwritten dedication to Father Noir in a copy of Rien où poser sa tête.
‘To Reverend Father Pierre Noir, with my deepest gratitude, respectfully yours, The Author.
I would be so grateful for your prayers – I seek inner peace: I am grieving for so many and know not where my family have been laid to rest. How great is my suffering. Nice. December 1945.’ (Lyon Municipal Library, classification: SJ B755/61.)
The inscription suggests that Françoise Frenkel returned to Nice to live from the end of 1945.
An article
Article published in Le Mouvement féministe: organe officiel des publications de l’Alliance nationale des sociétés féminines suisses in 1946.
The only known review of the book.
Translated text:
Publications received
Françoise FRENKEL: Rien où poser sa tête [No Place to Lay One’s Head]. Publishers: J.-H. Jeheber S. A. Geneva.
Narratives set in the context of war share a tragic parentage. Which is why, when reading ‘No Place to Lay One’s Head’, one is reminded of ‘Je suis une vraie Norvégienne’ [‘I am a true Norwegian Woman’], despite differences in characters and circumstances.
Françoise Frenkel, a woman of Polish origin, was running a French bookstore in Berlin when the events of 1939 forced her to flee. Unable to return to her homeland, she took refuge in France – Paris – where she had studied. But the exodus soon forced her south to the Midi. From that moment onwards, the twists and turns of Fate follow one after the other, grievously endured ‘with no place to lay one’s head …’ Yet rays of light illuminate the images of misery, and for that we must be grateful to the author. There are no complaints, just facts, reported with a sense of decency and in a measured but most lively fashion. Is Françoise Frenkel not one of our ‘unsung heroines’?
R.G.
Compensation claim
‘My great trunk, salvaged from Berlin, was entrusted to a Parisian storage repository.’
Form for Françoise Frenkel’s compensation claim dated 1958.
Translated text:
Nationality: French
Profession: formerly bookseller, currently author
Address: 1 Avenue de Bellet, Nice
Address at the time of events in question: 19 Rue du Colonel-Moll, Paris, 17th arrondissement
Subject of the claim: loss of items of luggage (see attached list)
Grounds of claim: Seizure by the Gestapo.
Inventory of contents of trunk
Inventory and estimated value of contents of Françoise Frenkel’s trunk, annexed to compensation claim form dated 1958.
Translated text:
Annexure to the Claim for Compensation brought against the German Reich on behalf of the widow, Frau F. FRENKEL née FRENKEL, domiciled in NICE/France, currently residing in Berlin.
* * *
DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS
of the Mädler trunk confiscated by the GESTAPO in PARIS on 14 November 1942 (on the grounds of race), as confirmed by the Colisée storage repository business in Paris, at 45 Rue du Colisée (Warehouse).
Statutory declaration dated 1959
In July 1959, Françoise Frenkel returns to Berlin to settle her claim for compensation. She makes a statutory declaration in the presence of a notary public, which is reproduced here. In 1960, she obtains compensation in the sum of 3500 deutschmarks from the Federal Republic of Germany.
Translated text:
First certified copy
Notarised
In Berlin
on 3 July 1959
Before the undersigned Notary Public
Jochen Klaus Schaefer
7 Waitztrasse, Berlin-Charlottenburg 4
Appearing today – and known to the Notary Public:
Frau Frymeta Françoise Fren
kel, née Frenkel, domiciled at 1 Avenue de Bellet, Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) / France, currently residing at Pension Florian, 11 Giesebrechtstrasse, Berlin-Charlottenburg, has indicated that she wishes to file a statutory declaration with the Department of Reparation – Berlin in her proceedings pursuant to the federal law relating to compensation and in support of claim no. 62 WGA 1280/57.
The notary public has explained to the declarant the significance of a statutory declaration and noted that any false claim contained in such statement, whether intentionally or negligently made, shall be punishable according to the laws of the declarant’s country of residence and country of origin.
Whereupon the declarant has made the following declaration:
In July 1939, I had to leave Berlin due to racial persecution and move abroad. At the time, I had Polish citizenship and was, in any event, at risk of forced deportation as a result of my Jewish background. I would have been exposed to measures targeting Polish Jews. I received a warning to this effect from the French Consulate in light of the fact that I was running a French bookshop by the name of La Maison du Livre. I abandoned my bookstore as well as my apartment, as they were, and limited myself to taking with me only what was strictly necessary, namely a trunk packed with my personal effects. I have set out the contents of this Mädler trunk in a separate list. The trunk therefore constituted all I took with me by way of personal possessions.
With the assistance of my work colleague, Herr Roland Weimar, I was able to arrange for the trunk to be sent to Paris, where I recovered it at the railway station upon my arrival. I arrived in Paris in the first half of July 1939. There I lived with friends at whose home I stored the trunk.
When German troops threatened Paris in the war between France and Germany, and the Commander of Paris told all women and children to leave the city, I too felt obliged to comply with this demand. Despite having in the meantime acquired French citizenship, I was nonetheless fearful of the German troops due to my Jewish origins and previous Polish nationality. Thus, I departed Paris on 28 May 1940, having left my trunk the previous day, namely 27 May 1940, at the Colisée storage repository located at 45 Rue du Colisée, 75008, Paris. I then left for the south of France.
In the autumn of 1942, in November, I received correspondence in Nice from the storage repository, sent on to me by my French friends in Paris, in which I was informed of the imminent seizure of Jewish property by the German occupying forces. I was asked to prove, if I was so able, that I was ‘Aryan’, in order to prevent my property from being seized. I did not respond to this letter as I am of Jewish origin, and thus had no prospect of preventing the seizure of my trunk. This action taken in Paris constituted part of a more general measure implemented by the National Socialist administration against Jewish property and I concluded that my belongings, along with those of other Jews, had been removed to the territory of the former German Reich.
I have not received any compensation for this loss from any State, and in particular neither from France nor from Poland. When I sought to declare this loss to French authorities as constituting war damage, I was refused compensation on the grounds that it did not constitute damage typically resulting from the Occupation or the war, but rather resulted from action taken specifically against Jews.
I hereby attest to the truthfulness of this statutory declaration. Having carefully re-read the matters contained herein, I am not aware of anything which contravenes the truthfulness of my declarations.
I hereby seek to have drawn up: one certified original equivalent for the Department of Reparation, one certified executed copy for the Senator for Finances, as well as one simple copy for myself.
This statement, together with any additions or amendments, has been read aloud in the presence of the notary public, and approved and signed by the declarant.
Signed: Frymeta Françoise FRENKEL née Frenkel
Signed: SCHAEFER, Notary Public
The above declaration, recorded in the register of notarised deeds for the year 1959 under number 90, is drawn up on behalf of Frau Frymeta Françoise FRENKEL née Frenkel, currently residing at 11 Giesebrechtstrasse, Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Berlin, 4 July 1959
Statement of Herr Weymar
Statement of Herr Weymar, executed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 30 July 1959 and annexed to the claim for compensation dated July 1959.
Translated text:
My mother, my wife and I were friends of Madame Françoise Frenkel. In 1939, facing the threat of deportation, she was compelled to flee Berlin for Paris. Madame Frenkel packed her personal belongings and typewriters into a ‘Mädler’ trunk. I took this trunk to the luggage dispatch office at Zoo station in Berlin. I then gave the dispatch docket to Madame Françoise Frenkel. I hereby attest to the truthfulness of these statements.
Roland Weymar.
Last address
The last address of Françoise Frenkel: Villa Tanit, 5 Rue Alexandre Dumas, Nice.
PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS
Here:
Corine Defrance
Here and Here:
Landesarchiv, Berlin
Here, Here and Here:
Éditions Gallimard
Here:
Bibliothèque historique des postes et des télécommunications, Paris.
Here:
Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon
Here:
Photography © Fonds d’archives de l’émiliE www.lemilie.org.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to all who contributed to the publication of this edition.
To Patrick Modiano for his interest in the project and for his Preface to the work.
To Frédéric Maria for bringing the book to our attention and for the previously unpublished and illuminating Dossier.
To Michel Francesconi, who found a copy of Rien où poser sa tête in a bric-à-brac sale in Nice and who was the first to read it and share it.
To Valérie Scigala who, through her blog, spread Françoise Frenkel’s name on the internet.
To Élisabeth Beyer, manager of the Bureau du Livre in Berlin for her constant, good-natured support.
To Sébastien Cadet at the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation/Commission pour l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations (CIVS) in Berlin for his research at the Berlin Landesarchiv (State Archive).
To Corine Defrance, who, in 2005, wrote what was then the only existing study on ‘La Maison du Livre’ bookstore, and who assisted with research.
To Anne Vijoux for her research in French libraries.
Finally, to Simon Srebrny, Irenka Taurek and Peter Wechsler, relatives of Françoise Frenkel, whose memories and personal archives were of immeasurable assistance.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Penguin Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
No Place to Lay One’s Head
ePub ISBN – 9780143784128
First published in France as Rien où poser sa tête by L’Arbalète Gallimard in 2015
First published in Australia by Vintage in 2017
Copyright © Editions GALLIMARD 2015 for the ‘Preface’ by Patrick Modiano and the ‘Dossier’ by Frédéric Maria
English translation copyright © Stephanie Smee 2017
The publisher has searched for the rightful claimants of Françoise Frenkel’s estate. Their rights and royalties have been reserved for them by Penguin Random House Australia.
A Vintage book
Published by Penguin
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry (ebook)
Creator: Frenkel, Françoise, author.
Title: No place to lay one’s head / Françoise Frenkel.
ISBN: 9780143784128 (ebook)
Subjects: Frenkel, Françoise.
Jewish women–Germany–Berlin–Biography.
Jewish women–France–Biography.
Jewish refugees–20th century–Biography.
World War, 1939-1945–Personal narratives, Jewish.
World War, 1939-1945–Jews–France.
Cover image © Richard Jenkins, www.rjenkins.co.uk
Cover design by Christabella Designs
Note to the 2015 French edition: This edition of Rien où poser sa tête conforms with the original edition from 1945. We have not undertaken any abridgement or amendment of the text. Only a few minor typographical mistakes and idiomatic errors have been corrected for the benefit of the reader. All footnotes are those of the author.
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