Mussolini’s fall, on 25 July, brought excitement and optimism to the camp, and Armand reported the prisoners’ faces as ‘shining with hope . . . that this might herald the End’. On the 26th he wrote on a scrap of torn paper, saying that he had run out of everything else except lavatory paper. ‘I am persuaded that, within ten, or fifteen days at most, we will be free . . .’ But then, three days later, came a sudden order for Armand and André to join the next convoi, ‘probably, let us not fool ourselves, to the east, destination unknown’. Whatever happened, they would ‘obey our destiny, as it is ordained; our morale, despite everything, remains strong’. For a moment it looked as if André, a much-decorated war hero, might be spared; but it was not to be. Since they were likely to stop at Metz, they hoped to find Simon and Marthe. ‘Every night,’ Armand wrote on the 30th, ‘I recite each of the children’s names to place them under divine protection . . . I worry about you all, and if I felt reassured that you would be safe, I would leave with a lighter heart . . . Do not expect a letter any time soon. I embrace you all very tightly.’
This was the last letter to reach Bella. On 31 July, Armand and André were among 541 men, 486 women and 95 children deported to Auschwitz. Armand was gassed on 5 August. André was sent to a work battalion. Simon and Marthe were already dead, gassed in Sobibor.
Bella and the children knew nothing of this. At the end of the summer, Gilbert, Robert and Henri moved to le Chambon, to attend the Ecole Nouvelle Cévenole and live with Georgette and Gabrielle Barraud, sharing the house with all the other hidden Jews, living under false names provided for them by Curtet and Simone Mairesse, and coming home at weekends. Bella, Mireille and Marthonne remained in hiding in Fay, waiting for news of Armand and André, which never came. The Exbrayats, Curtet, the baker M Robert and the Chazot family did everything they could to help them, and the policeman Glaizon, asked by his superiors to report on them, sent a glowing testimonial saying that their ‘morality’ was impeccable, their behaviour ‘excellent’ and their attitude towards France and Vichy unfailingly good.
Precisely why the Germans decided to raid the Maison des Roches on the morning of 29 June 1943 is a mystery. It may have been because its new young director, Daniel Trocmé, had been making a nuisance of himself with Vichy over his students; or that responsibility for the hostel had just passed from the Ministry for Labour to that of the Interior and it was therefore under closer scrutiny by the Gestapo; or that there had been complaints from the convalescent soldiers in le Chambon about the disrespectful attitude towards them of some of the villagers; or that two young men had been caught painting a Croix de Lorraine on the walls; or, quite simply, that the constant failure to catch Jews or dissidents on the plateau, either by Vichy or by the occupiers, had not gone unnoticed. Whatever its cause, the raid became one of the defining events of the plateau’s war.
The house itself, an old farmhouse on the outskirts of the village, with the dense forest behind and a terrace in front with views over the valley of the Lignon, had opened its 30 rooms to summer guests at the turn of the century. In 1941, a retired local pastor, Noël Poivre, had a meeting with the Fonds Européen de Secours aux Etudiants and put to them the idea of renting the place as a pension for some of the anti-Nazi, Spanish republican and Jewish students being held in the internment camps. Its first directors, both refugees themselves, M and Mme Pantel, were elderly and found the task of caring for 30 troubled, penniless and often agitated young men too strenuous. In March 1943, they were replaced by Daniel Trocmé, cousin to André, a thoughtful, philanthropic young man of 31, with thick glossy brown hair, a full mouth and little round spectacles. Daniel had grown up confident and willing, someone who fought doggedly in defence of his friends. He was a man with a mission.
His father, Henri, Pastor Trocmé’s first cousin, was the headmaster of L’Ecole des Roches, an affluent and intellectually rigorous boarding school run on the English system in Normandy – the similarity in names was coincidental – and the father of eight children; a ninth was adopted after he returned from the Great War, in gratitude for not having been killed. Daniel, who was clever, adventurous and a good linguist, taught mathematics, chemistry and physics in lycées in Beirut and Rome, from where, in the late spring of 1940, he wrote to his parents that he was sure that they had joined the underground Resistance, and that he felt proud of them. ‘I believe,’ he wrote, ‘that you have brought up children who will know how to be worthy of you.’ Like Daniel, both Henri and his wife Eve felt strongly about loyalty.
After the Ecole des Roches migrated south during the exodus, Daniel briefly joined the staff, but found the comfort and exclusivity irksome. Knowing something of the work being done in le Chambon, he wrote to André to ask whether there was something useful he could do. His letter came just as a new influx of children was reaching the plateau, and Trocmé invited him to become head of the Quaker-supported Les Grillons, home to 25 children between the ages of 10 and 18, most of them with parents in the camps. Daniel was a loving and considerate house father, boiling up great vats of soup and lugging them down into the village so that his pupils attending Darcissac’s classes could have a hot lunch, and working late into the night trying to repair their shoes with bits of rubber. He worried constantly about where he might get hold of gloves and galoshes, and was anxious when the temperature dropped to many degrees below zero and he had trouble finding extra clothes. He reported a disastrous evening when, having put them to dry too close to the fire, he was obliged to watch two brand-new cloaks, a coat, a pair of trousers, two berets, two mufflers and a chair go up in flames.
To his parents, he wrote that he saw his job as a ‘contribution to the reconstruction of our world . . . Perhaps also as an affirmation, a vocation, an inner conviction, of an almost religious nature . . . I chose it, not because it is an adventure, but because this way I will not have any reason to feel ashamed of myself.’ When Christmas came, he decided to stay with his charges, rather than join his family. He was, he said, very happy, regarding himself not only as their father, but as their ‘advocate and protector’, though only the future would say whether he had been ‘equal to the task’. His health was, he told his mother, ‘excellent’. Jean-Pierre, André and Magda’s 13-year-old son, had come to stay with him, and there was much joking and laughter.
Then, in March 1943, the Pantets left, and Trocmé asked him to take over the directorship of La Maison des Roches; Daniel accepted and said that he would combine it with his work at Les Grillons, spending his nights with his younger charges. He had become very fond of his group of little orphans.
The Maison des Roches was a very different proposition. Its 30 inhabitants, aged between 20 and 30, with a few teenagers and a couple of older people, all unmarried men, came from across the whole of occupied Europe. At least half were Jewish, three of them orthodox Jews, but there were also Catholic Spanish republicans and a few Protestants. Most had already been in exile and on the run for several years and nearly all had been through the French internment camps. Though no formal classes had actually been planned for them – Poivre’s idea had simply been to get them out of the camps – the fact that so many among them were students in law, medicine and engineering, or talented musicians and painters, meant that there was a considerable thirst for knowledge.
La Maison des Roches
Soon, classes were being set up with the distinguished refugee professors sitting out the war in le Chambon. Miss Maber took English, Jacqueline Decourdemanche typing and shorthand, a Sorbonne professor philosophy, a leading pre-war Viennese artist art history. In the evenings, the students congregated on the terrace to talk and play musical instruments. There were heated debates. The Fonds Européen de Secours sent chess sets, collections of books in various languages, boxing gloves and inner tubes for bicycles.
Even had Inspector Praly not been ordered by Bach to keep a close eye on the young men, their identities and origins were no secret: Daniel was a meticulous keeper of records, and his ledgers listed
all their particulars, including their religions. The more security-minded Pastor Poivre concealed their ration books behind the books in his library and the accounts for the Maison des Roches inside the pages of the complete works of Calvin.
Many of the young men had reached the farmhouse severely malnourished, and Madeleine Barot and Cimade, brought in to help, scrounged, begged and borrowed blankets, coats and shoes to make them more comfortable, though there was never quite enough to eat.
It is possible that Daniel should have taken more heed when, in May 1943, two men from the Feldgendarmerie suddenly arrived to arrest a 45-year-old German called Martin Ferber. Ferber was considered ‘uncommunicative and somewhat Prussian looking’, and no one was very close to him; he was not Jewish, but had let it be known that he had been an anti-Nazi before the war. He went off with them unprotesting and was not seen again. Daniel did not evidently pay much attention either when, at different times, both Miss Maber and Mme Decourdemanche noted that the Maison des Roches was ‘in the sights of the authorities and becoming dangerous’ – though this warning, according to Miss Maber, had been transmitted by Praly. Certainly, some of the young residents were fearful of capture, and chose to spend their nights in the forests. But there was something stubborn about Daniel. He not only apologised to the Prefect about the seemingly random comings and goings of the young men, but forbade them to leave the premises for any length of time without written permission.
Daniel clearly felt safe. The warnings, such as they were, were ignored.
At 6.40 on the morning of 29 June, the household woke to shouts, bangs and German commands. Fourteen Germans, in civilian clothes, armed with revolvers and machine guns, surrounded the building. There was no time for anyone to hide. In their pyjamas, with blankets around their shoulders, the students were hustled into the dining room, then taken away, one by one, to be interrogated against a list of ‘wanted terrorists’. When they emerged, many had bruised faces.
At 7.30, having discovered that Daniel Trocmé slept at Les Grillons, someone sent a car to collect him. At this point, he could still have escaped, gone to hide in the woods; but he insisted on hugging each child before being led away. Poivre and Le Forestier, alerted by the villagers, arrived but were denied entry; Magda, still in her apron, inveigled herself into the kitchen by pretending to be one of the cooks. As the boys filed past her on their way back from being interrogated, they whispered requests to her to contact their parents, and instructions about what do with their belongings.
Daniel managed to remind her that one of the students, Luis Gausachs, had saved the life of one of the German convalescents when he fell into the river, and she hastened away to the Hôtel du Lignon in search of someone who could provide a testimonial. She bullied and cajoled her way past the guards, found some of the older patients and managed to persuade two officers to accompany her back to La Maison des Roches. On the way, she commandeered bicycles from two passing girls so that they could get there quicker. Luis Gausachs was duly hauled out of the line and sent upstairs to join a very ill boy, who could not be moved, and a couple of others who were clearly not Jewish. One 19-year-old Dutch orthodox Jew was severely beaten with his own phylacteries, the small leather boxes containing Hebrew texts worn by Jews, while the Germans shouted, ‘Schwein Jude! Schwein Jude!’ – Jewish pig.
When, at midday, the three lorries and two black cars drove off, they took with them 18 students and Daniel. From the doorway opposite the Maison des Roches in which she was sheltering, 14-year-old Genie Schloss from Roanne watched in horror as the boys were led out, one by one, in silence, carrying suitcases. Jean-Pierre Trocmé was there with his mother, and Daniel said to them: ‘Tell my parents that I was very happy here. It was the best time of my life. Tell them that. And that I’m going with my friends.’ From the windows on the first floor, the boys who had been freed looked on in silence.
The prisoners were taken to the top floor of a chateau at Moulins, which had once belonged to the dukes of Bourbon. They were given very little to eat, and, since there was nothing to do, Daniel got hold of a German newspaper and read it aloud, translating as he went. Five of the young men were eventually released; the rest were sent to Drancy, from where a couple more managed to get freed. On 18 July five are known to have been put on Convoi 58 for Auschwitz, where they were gassed. The youngest was a 16-year-old Belgian student called Alexandre Stern. Another was Lipschutz, one of the young men who had gone to Curtet in Fay to say that he felt that Daniel was being too careless, but who had returned to spend that night at La Maison des Roches. Six others vanished from the records, but it is highly likely that they died too.
As for Daniel, he was held in Moulins until the end of August. His parents went everywhere, visited Vichy, called in favours. Though not allowed to see their son, they stood outside the chateau hoping to hear his voice. Daniel was given their letters, and wrote to say that his morale was good and that he was hoping to see them very soon. He wished his mother and his sister Suzie happy birthday. He was transferred to Compiègne, the main station from which the trains left for Poland, where he met several old pupils from his father’s school. He also wrote a touching and tender letter to his charges at Les Grillons, promising them that he would never abandon them; and he told his family how moved he was to hear that his brother’s new baby was to be called Danielle. Being neither Jewish nor a wanted resister, he managed to resist deportation for several months. Then came a formal, typed card. ‘I am being transferred to another camp,’ it said. ‘Do not send any more parcels. Wait for my new address.’ After which there was silence.
In Le Puy, Bach, who claimed to have known nothing about the planned raid, sent a formal telegram of protest to Vichy, but received no answer and no explanation. What made the whole episode peculiar was that it appeared to have been not about rounding up Jews, but about the ‘Germanophobic’ spirit of the Maison des Roches and its ‘detestable inhabitants’. This theory gained credence when it became clear that the captives had been held not by Barbie, in charge of anti-Jewish operations in Lyons, but by the Wehrmacht, who in theory dealt with deserters and anti-Nazis. Finding the Jews had simply been a bonus.
People now were very frightened. ‘We are living,’ noted André Trocmé, ‘on a volcano, whose muffled rumbles we can hear, some far off, some close to.’
One night early in August, three men came to dine at the Pension des Acacias in le Chambon. Having eaten, they paid their bill, then went out to sit on the terrace. At nine, Inspector Praly came out of the dining room. One of the men got up and shot him. A little girl standing nearby narrowly avoided the bullet. The men fled on bicycles, but when the chain on one of them snapped, they ran off into the forest.
Dr Le Forestier was called, but there was nothing he could do, because the dumdum bullet had exploded in Praly’s stomach. In considerable agony, the young inspector was put into a car and driven to a hospital in Le Puy. He died soon afterwards. Later, there would be claims that Praly had in fact often acted to save Jews, but for the plateau, he became the symbol of collaboration.
At first there were thoughts that Praly’s assassination might have had something to do with the raid on La Maison des Roches. But quickly it became clear that it had been ordered by the Maquis, now assembling in ever greater number on the plateau and afraid that Praly might have been discovering too much. The killer was identified as a 19-year-old butcher’s assistant, Jean Brugière. Four brigades of police arrived on the plateau and scoured the villages and the forests, but in vain.
On 9 August, Praly was buried in le Chambon. Trocmé officiated at the funeral, which displeased some of his congregation. But Praly had been one of his parishioners and it was his duty as a pastor, he said, to bury him. Bach, whose stance remained as ambiguous as ever, gave the address. The killing had been, he declared, an act of terrorism.
For a while, local people felt angry, lest there might be reprisals, or that a larger police presence might be sent up from the plains. Nothing happened
, however; no one came to replace Praly.
But the sense of inviolability that had hovered over the villages for the past three years, the feeling that they were somehow different, a terre d’asile, a place of sanctuary, had gone; and it would not return. As the summer continued, as the fields were covered in scarlet pimpernels, buttercups and blue campanula, and André and Magda Trocmé took their children to picnic in the forest, while seven-year-old Madeleine Sèches, who watched the Germans taking the sun on the terrace outside her bedroom window every day, went swimming in the Lignon, so a stronger sense of secrecy, a need for ever-greater vigilance, settled over the inhabitants of the plateau. To reach the end of the war unharmed, there would have to be silence, of the most total kind.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Whatever else we do, we must save the children
It was now the fifth autumn of the war, and the second of the German occupation of the south and of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon. The French were exhausted, resentful, demoralised. In July, the Allies had landed in Sicily and were preparing to liberate Corsica; the Soviets, after their victory at Stalingrad, were advancing. An Allied landing on the coast of the Midi was perceived as imminent. In Vichy’s pastel-coloured palaces of neo-baroque splendour, grown a little shabby, Pétain’s army of civil servants continued to carry out his bidding, but the Germans had grown wary of the French police, many of whom had become plainly hostile, and the Gestapo had set up a special section to keep them under observation. Darnand’s Milice, on the other hand, were proving far more biddable in the hunt for ‘all Jews, either hidden or not’, whether French or foreign, adult or child. And they were not averse to doing a little hunting of their own, as the Nizards’ capture had shown.
In a country that had lost its rights, everything had become suspect. Posters listing rewards for denunciations – of ‘hidden or camouflé’ Jews, of caches of weapons, of Gaullists and resisters – were everywhere, but even without them, the denunciations poured in, most often signed ‘un bon Français’. In the case of a Jew, the informer was to be paid on the spot, with money taken from his victim.
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