On 6 June spy number VM200 sent the following report to German intelligence, the SD:
Re: Denaturalisation of Jews in France.
Source: Commissioner for Jewish Affairs in France, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix.
According to information from de Pellepoix, he is currently in the midst of a fierce disagreement with Laval, whom he refers to as the “Auvergne bumpkin.” According to de Pellepoix, Laval has always tried to hinder his anti-Jewish activities. Now these two gentlemen have starkly different views concerning the planned denaturalisation of Jews in France. Laval wants to shape the law so that it is retroactive to 1932 while de Pellepoix wants to fix this date at 1927. These two dates illustrate a fundamental problem given that around 90% of naturalised Jews obtained French nationality between 1927 and 1932 … As de Pellepoix says, the law according to Laval's concept would hardly be worth the paper it was written on … 7
Five days later Darquier sent a long, poisonous letter to Laval, listing the flaws in the law that had been produced without him, notably its exclusion of women and children and Jewish prisoners of war. Nor did Bousquet's version ban all Jews from ever taking French nationality again. Darquier reported everything to Röthke, Röthke reported everything to Oberg, Oberg reported to Himmler. Himmler was furious; diktats were issued, and on 20 June Laval was forced to sign Darquier's bill, removing citizenship from all Jews naturalised since 10 August 1927, though women and children were still excluded.
Darquier had devoted ten years to this goal, the peak of his career as a professional anti-Semite. For everyone else, the summer of 1943 was a bitter time. On 21 June Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie captured Jean Moulin and other leading résistants at Caluire near Lyon. Within a fortnight Moulin, beaten to a living pulp of broken bone and flesh by Barbie and his Gestapo, died, having revealed nothing, on the Paris-Berlin train taking what was left of him to concentration camp. With his personal army, Aloïs Brunner began to cut a lethal swath through the Jews of France, and on 1 July he took over control of Drancy concentration camp from the French police.
By this time—as though in fury over the murder of Moulin—that other France was rising everywhere, in the hills and mountains, in villages and towns. In Algeria, de Gaulle outmanoeuvred Roosevelt and Churchill to control the Resistance and the French government to come. And all over France grew the network of French and international charities and relief agencies, working over- and underground in a massive effort to hide—to save—the children. There were Quakers, the Protestant community in the Cévennes, the YMCA, Jewish rescue organisations and the French people themselves, thousands of whom took in Jewish children. Some Catholic institutions hid Jews, as did some nuns and priests.
Most to be pitied was UGIF, which, being Vichy's Jewish agency and part of the CGQ J, had to appear, at least, to do its work in public. The implacable Antignac was its chief tormentor. UGIF was supposed to be financed from the proceeds of Aryanisation, but was always at the very bottom of the receiving end of its own money. Whatever UGIF disgorged it was impossible to satisfy Darquier, for he continually fretted about some hidden pot of Jewish gold and about clandestine UGIF activities, particularly the “shielding” of Jewish children. Antignac and Darquier and their SEC, working closely with the Gestapo, kept a close eye on
Louis kept the SS constantly informed. 11 June 1943 (© Archives du CDJC, Mémorial de la Shoah)
every UGIF office throughout France. Informers were inserted into their offices; UGIF staffs were anyway constantly decimated by arrests, internments and deportations. Vichy was bombarded with proposals for tighter controls, new bills, additional suggestions for extracting money, to which Vichy's response was always negative.
When Laval signed his 1927 naturalisation bill, Darquier's intense gratification lasted barely more than a week. By the end of June an order came through that the bill was not to be published in the Journal officiel. This was the point at which the embassy, well connected to Laval and his office, closed down Darquier's Institute of Anthropo-Sociology and his IEQ JER, and took him off the radio.
If Stalingrad was the turning point of the war, the Allied landing in Sicily on 9 July 1943 tolled a final bell for Vichy. In Paris Knochen, Röthke and Brunner were making preparations for massive round-ups of the newly stateless Jews, to begin as soon as Darquier's bill was promulgated. Darquier warned Knochen and Röthke of trouble ahead, and urged Röthke to hasten German authorisation of his bill—“I have no need to point out how important it is that this bill is published as rapidly as possible.”8
On 19 July the Allies bombed Rome, just as Darquier was digging himself deeper and deeper into his troubles with the embassy, fighting with Klassen and creating tremendous scenes with Delpeyroux and Prax. Klassen, banquets forgotten, began to assail Schleier again. On 19 July he begged him: now that the “more careful handling of Darquier” temporarily required by “the Schloss affair” was no longer necessary, could he please be sacked? Darquier was no better, in fact he was more useless than ever. It was a farce to have a Commissioner for Jewish Affairs who had made such a mess of everything.9 The 1927 bill still awaited promulgation: the round-ups were deferred until the end of July.
And so, Darquier's frustration and hatred fell upon UGIF: on André Baur, director of UGIF in the Northern Zone, and especially upon Raymond-Raoul Lambert, director in the Southern Zone, which ran its section more independently. Darquier saw to the end of both of them, though it was Antignac, as usual, who did the dirty work. On 21 July 1943 André Baur was arrested with his wife Odette and their four children. Lambert followed in August, with his wife Simone and their four children, Lionel (fourteen), Marc (eleven), Tony (four) and the youngest, Marie-France (eighteen months old); they were deported on 7 December. The Baur family—Pierre (ten), Myriam (nine), Antoine (six) and Francine (three)—followed on 17 December. None of them survived.
The Assembly of Catholic Bishops of France met four times in 1943, but the persecution of the Jews was never discussed. However, in August Monseigneur Chappoulie, possibly acting on behalf of the bishops, warned Laval and Pétain that it was “against natural law” to “snatch children from their parents.”10
Pétain fretted about his declining popularity. While Pétain was a dictator in the mould of Salazar and Franco—traditionalist, authoritarian, Catholic—for Laval and men of his ilk a populist and nationalist fascist such as Mussolini was more admired. On 25 July Mussolini was arrested and his government fell. Foolishly, Darquier had made a two-line amendment to his bill: “Nationality is also withdrawn from the Jewish wife of a Jew from whom French nationality is denied by the present decree, and from their children.”11 Darquier's “improvements” gave Laval the opportunity to withdraw his agreement. In explaining himself to Knochen, Laval accused Darquier of “incorrect presentation” which forced him “to bring the whole law back to the first text put forward by Bousquet.”12
This temporary victory for Bousquet coincided with Klassen's fusillade of complaints over Darquier's propaganda portfolio; but the embassy's fury was nothing to that of Oberg, Knochen and Röthke. In these circumstances, Darquier vanished. Different reports surface as to his whereabouts—“he had broken his leg,” “he was in hospital at the time,” he had “broken his ankle,” he was “in a clinic”—but we also know that he stayed with Jeanne Robin in Nice and summered with her at her villa, La Brise.13
Meanwhile the Germans descended upon Laval to force him to change his mind again. Over the next months a beleaguered Laval produced a flurry of excuses, but he had already turned his attention to the bargaining chip at his disposal in the vaults of the Banque de France in Limoges. Darquier had not forgotten about this either, and had put out feelers about bringing the treasures from the Château de Chambon to Paris on 2 July, in the brief interregnum between his victory and defeat by Bousquet and Laval.14
Darquier's disappearance—“then in hospital”15—gave Laval the opportunity he wanted; by 2 August Antignac had been briefed. He was to oversee the tr
ansport of the Schloss collection to Paris; Hitler was to have his paintings. The collection arrived at the place des Petits-Pères on 11 August, “minus several items that disappeared en route.”16 By this time it was valued at five hundred million francs, the next day, six hundred million. Antignac, afraid of an attack—the CGQ J had “received menaces”—arranged for police protection day and night. Fortunately the CGQ J, being the former Louis Dreyfus Bank, had a strongroom. From 13 to 23 August the collection was valued at the CGQ J. Everyone visited the basement vaults of place des Petits-Pères: the French police, Lefranc, representatives of the Louvre, Antignac, Bonnard, art experts, Lohse, the SEC, bailiffs, dealers. Their “meetings were surrounded by secrecy and finally the collection was dispersed for a derisory price.”17
In the meantime, a second contingent of Germans descended upon Laval and Bousquet at Vichy on 14 August. For this meeting, Antignac accompanied Röthke. Laval repeated one of his excuses: “his signature was not valid as a decree for denaturalisation had to be signed by the head of state.”18 French public opinion, a hovering Catholic Church, the enemy at the gate: all this gave Pétain and Laval pause, and both baulked at denaturalising fifty thousand Jews for instant deportation.
By 23 August the Schloss collection had been divided up. The gift made no difference: Laval had provided the Louvre with first choice, and this infuriated Hitler, who retaliated by forbidding Goering any part of the proceeds. The Louvre took forty-nine paintings, Hitler 262, Lefranc twenty-two for himself. In 1950 Laval's daughter Josée was found to have one of the Schloss paintings too. Hitler's minions paid fifty million francs for his paintings. The price set on the Louvre's paintings—18.9 million francs—was never paid, and the Louvre returned the paintings in 1945. Hitler's money went into Vichy's Aryanisation bank accounts; Lefranc was “given” his portion. Darquier's 25 percent was quite a thing of the past, but the CGQ J got 10 percent.
The next day, 24 August, Marshal Pétain, while accepting “the principle of actively reviewing the naturalisations,” finally refused to sign Darquier's bill. His letter of refusal stressed that he had “shown his willingness to work with Germany on countless other occasions.”19 He also expressed an “inability to understand the sending of Jews of French nationality while there were still so many other Jews in France.”20 Röthke had already warned Laval of what the result would be, for with Brunner in France it hardly mattered whether the bill was signed or not. “Following the Marshal's refusal, reprisals began to be taken against Jews, especially French, including the deportation of Aryan spouses.”21 War veterans, French Jews, any Jew went now.
Nice was the first city to suffer. When Italy surrendered on 8 September this meant death for the Jews in the Italian zone. Brunner and his men moved in immediately and sealed the frontier. With Bousquet and his French police, their files and lists out of the way, Brunner savaged the south. The manhunt of trapped Jews in Nice in September 1943 was as horrific, and became as notorious, as that of the Vel' d'Hiv' the year before. Brunner was a sadist, indiscriminate and thorough. His torture headquarters were in the Excelsior Hotel; he packed its leafy courtyard with trapped Jews. Every other dwelling in Nice was searched, every hospital, bus, train and car, day and night. Brunner arrested any Jew he could find, and anyone who, to him, looked Jewish. Checking penises was his method, which meant that many Jews escaped, and many circumcised Catholics and Moslems went to Auschwitz. Yet after all this, Brunner's tally was small—“only” 1,800 Jews went to Drancy from Nice.
One of them was the young Berlin artist Charlotte Salomon, who had painted nearly eight hundred pictures in her years of hiding on the Riviera. Brunner's men dragged her to the Excelsior on 24 September. Freighted out of Drancy on convoy number 60, she was probably killed on arrival—she was given no Auschwitz number, though her husband was. This could also mean that being young—she was twenty-six—and five months pregnant, she was used for experiments.22
Darquier, back in Paris in September, was voicing his despair all over the city, threatening to resign, hoping that the Germans would sack Laval and provide a new government. He had no need to resign: universal plans for his dismissal were under way, and all his propaganda institutes, associations and groups were firmly shut down by the Germans by the beginning of October.
In the interim of his brief success, Louis and Myrtle had moved to the five-star Hôtel Bristol in the Faubourg St.-Honoré, where “one ate so well.”23 This was “the Nazi hotel in Occupied Paris,” where visiting German dignitaries lived in style. It was also home to “important guests” upon whom the Nazis needed to keep an eye, together with a “nest of informers, collaborators and racketeers.” In her time there Myrtle could have encountered P. G. Wodehouse and his wife Ethel padding round the corridors—they were housed at the Bristol in September, after Wodehouse's unfortunate and jaunty broadcasts on Berlin Radio.24
Confined to the Bristol and protected by knowing too much, all that was left to Darquier was self-publicity. In an attempt to placate both the Germans and Vichy he indulged in an interview with the anti-Semitic news sheet France-révolution, subsidised by his own UFDR. Only a man who had been hounded by debt collectors in many countries could produce the bombast of “Fifteen Minutes with Darquier de Pellepoix”:
Darquier de Pellepoix—love him or hate him … he leaves no one indifferent. He has been criticised, pilloried and slandered—but he remains resolute …
“In my region, in Gascony,” said Darquier, adjusting his monocle “… half-Jews … I can hear the chorus of Jew-lovers: ‘Darquier de Pellepoix you will hang. and extracted large sums of mon I think I am more likely to die with a bullet in the head, but what does that matter!”
With this proud, forceful declaration, the Commissioner stood up. A solid handshake and a final loyal glance back up the firm language of a man who, while never losing his good humour, continues his perilous task to save the French race.25
A few days later, on 2 November, as the Schloss collection was handed over at the Jeu de Paume, Darquier put a brave face on things: “Lefranc kept the meeting lively with jokes. Darquier de Pellepoix exchanged pleasantries with Lohse.” After the festivities Lefranc was seen departing with another painting under his arm.26 Alfred Rosenberg inspected the loot two days later, “accompanied by his suite and seven automobiles.” Goering's agent Lohse managed to “remove three paintings from the collection, including a Rembrandt and a work by a student of Hals,” which he offered to Goering, who refused them.
Laval, hounded by so much else, nevertheless gave a moment of his time to punishing Darquier. As a man of the people, he liked to invite second-rank personnel to lunch; he found it an excellent way of discovering what was going on in the bowels of his ministries. Pétain was always summoned to give his blessing to these commissioners and secretary-generals. In November, Laval included Darquier in such a gathering at the Hôtel du Parc. “I know your importance to the state,” said the Marshal to the gathering, “and I follow your activities very closely. To prove how closely, I can tell you that one of you will be sacked within the next eight days.” Pétain pointed his finger at Darquier's bosom and added, “I'm talking about you.”27 In front of Laval and the eighteen other senior officials, this time Pétain did not call Darquier “the torturer,” but “un bourreau,” “a butcher.”28
After November Darquier moved his office to Paris completely, and did not return to Vichy. He made one of his last public speeches on 23 November when the Aryan Club, replete with bar, restaurant and meeting hall for the anti-Semitic soldiers of the pen, opened in Paris. Klassen had to listen patiently while Darquier elaborated on the successes of his Aryanisation of Jewish property. At this time the Schloss collection was still in Paris. It went to Munich four days later, and just over three weeks after that, on 20 December, the German order for Darquier's dismissal was sent to Vichy.
By the end of 1943 Pétain and Laval were rearranging their positions in light of the coming German defeat. Hitler would not let Pétain sack La
val. Pétain, self-pitying, duplicitous and self-deluded, was deeply offended when the Germans banned him from issuing his thoughts on the radio. In December they gave him a keeper, a German diplomat, Cecil von Renthe-Fink, who was placed in rooms in the Hôtel du Parc. Pétain emerged from his sulk to face the final months of his reign, and nicknamed his keeper “Rintintin.”
In Paris rumours flourished that everyone concerned with the fiasco over the denaturalisation law and the convolutions of the Schloss collection was to be sacked. Vichy buzzed with the names of the departing, Louis Darquier always among them. Darquier hoped to fend off the evil day by appointing Boué as secretary-general of the CGQ J in November. Meanwhile the raids of the SS and Brunner intensified, and neither Laval, Pétain nor Bousquet objected, nor were they consulted. On 2 December Darnand and his Milice murdered Bousquet's friend and patron Maurice Sarrault, the Radical newspaper editor of La Dépêche du Midi, and at the end of December came the German order that Bousquet should go. He was sacked on New Year's Eve. During his time as Vichy's police chief Bousquet had arrested and handed over sixty thousand Jews to the Germans; in 1943 alone, according to Abetz, forty thousand Gaullists, communists and anti-German persons were also arrested, many handed straight to the Gestapo.
But every murder of a communist or Gaullist, every deportation of every Jew, took place amidst the STO—the “deportation” of French men, and now women too, to forced labour. By the Liberation nearly 700,000 French workers had been put to work in the Third Reich, to add to those already there, and to the million and a half French prisoners of war, most of them now put to work too, in German factories and farms. In France, knowing this, watching thousands more go, many resented the fact that Jews were not required for forced labour in Germany. Why were they spared?
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