1 In June 1943, this freedom was restricted when the requirement to carry a safe-conduct pass was extended to French nationals.
2 French identity papers used to clash with the foreign accent of those holding them. In the event of an inspection, the subterfuge was blatant. Searches quickly revealed the fugitives’ real documents, retained in anticipation of what lay ahead.
3 In February 1944, friends wrote to tell me that one of these dear old ladies, after whom I regularly enquired, had been arrested by the Gestapo and transferred to the camp at Drancy.
1 See Corine Defrance, La ‘Maison du Livre français’ à Berlin (1923–1933) et la politique française du livre en Allemagne in Hans-Manfred Bock, Gilbert Krebs, Échanges culturels et relations diplomatiques: Presences culturelles à Berlin au temps de la République de Weimar, Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 2005.
2 When she files her claim for compensation in 1959, she dates her arrival as at ‘the first half of July, 1939’. See the annexed document in the Dossier. In the book, Françoise Frenkel gives another date: 27 August 1939.
3 Inscribed on the Wall of Names in the Shoah Memorial in Paris.
4 See Jules Chancel, Dix ans après: un mark = six francs, Fayard, 1928, pp. 166–7.
5 SOFE (Service des oeuvres françaises à l’étranger), vol. 269, handwritten note marked ‘Raichenstein’, undated. MAE [Ministère des Affaires Étrangers]/La Courneuve.
6 Archives of the Ministère des Postes, French Embassy in Berlin 1915/1939, Series B, vol. 463, note of the Institut français in Berlin dated 15 April 1933 on the current state of ‘oeuvres françaises’ [French businesses] in Berlin. MAE/Nantes. Correspondence cited by Corine Defrance, op. cit.
7 Named after its originator, Fridtjof Nansen, High Commissioner for Refugees for the League of Nations. Created in July 1922, the Nansen passport was an identification and travel document intended for refugees and stateless persons.
8 See the ‘Statutory declaration dated 1959’.
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