Village of Secrets Read online

  Maps

  France in 1942

  Dedication

  To Anne and Annie, companions on my travels

  Epigraph

  The memory of the world is not a bright, shining crystal, but a heap of broken fragments, a few fine flashes of light that break through the darkness.

  Herbert Butterfield

  In searching for an explanation of the motivations of the Righteous Among the Nations, are we not really saying: what was wrong with them? Are we not, in a deeper sense, implying that their behaviour was something other than normal? . . . Is acting benevolently and altruistically such an outlandish and unusual type of behaviour, supposedly at odds with man’s inherent character, as to justify a meticulous search for explanations? Or is it conceivable that such behaviour is as natural to our psychological constitution as the egoistic one we accept so matter-of-factly?

  Mordecai Paldiel

  Contents

  Maps

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Principal characters

  Chronology

  Foreword

  Part One: Escaping

  Chapter 1 Mea culpa

  Chapter 2 The camps of shame

  Chapter 3 Deportation fever

  Chapter 4 A national disgrace

  Part Two: Arriving

  Chapter 5 Walking near the Lord

  Chapter 6 A pure spirit

  Chapter 7 On Vichy’s map

  Chapter 8 Rats in a trap

  Chapter 9 An open pen of chickens

  Chapter 10 A lethal year

  Chapter 11 An unknown and unknowable oblivion

  Chapter 12 Crossing the border

  Chapter 13 Living on a volcano

  Chapter 14 Whatever else we do, we must save the children

  Chapter 15 Perfect Maquis country

  Chapter 16 Today, I have nothing to say

  Chapter 17 Memory wars

  Afterword

  List of Illustrations

  Bibliography

  Source notes

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .* About the author

  About the book

  Read on

  Praise

  Also by Caroline Moorehead

  Copyright

  Credits

  About the Publisher

  Principal characters

  The pastors

  André and Magda Trocmé and their children Nelly, Jean-Pierre, Jacques and Daniel in le Chambon

  Edouard and Mildred Theis in le Chambon

  Daniel Curtet in Fay-sur-Lignon

  Roland Leenhardt in Tence

  Marcel Jeannet in Mazet

  The rescuers

  Mireille Philip, who ran the network taking children to Switzerland

  Georgette and Gabrielle Barraud, owners of the Beau Soleil

  Dr Le Forestier, the doctor of le Chambon

  Miss Maber, an English teacher at the Ecole Nouvelle Cévenole

  Oscar Rosowsky, medical student and master forger

  Mme Déléage, placer of children for the OSE

  Mme Roussel, Catholic who concealed Jews in le Chambon

  Pierre Piton, boy scout who guided Jews to Switzerland

  Emile Sèches, proprietor of Tante Soly

  August Bohny, Swiss director of La Guespy, L’Abric and Faïdoli

  Daniel Trocmé, director of Maison des Roches

  Charles Guillon, mayor of le Chambon

  Roger Darcissac, teacher in le Chambon

  Marie Exbrayat, proprietor of an ironmonger’s shop in Fay

  Lulu Ruel, proprietor of a café in Mazet, and her daughter Lucienne

  Dorcas Robert, proprietor of a café in Yssingeaux

  Virginia Hall, SOE and OSS agent

  Léon Eyraud, organiser of the Maquis

  Jean, Eugenie, Roger and Germain May, proprietors of the Hôtel May

  Jean Deffaugt, Mayor of Annemasse

  The children

  Hanne Hirsch and Max Liebmann

  Simon and Jacques Liwerant

  Jacques and Marcel Stulmacher

  Genie, Liliane, Ruth and the girls from Roanne

  Pierre Bloch

  Gilbert Nizard and his brothers and sisters

  Madeleine Sèches of Tante Soly

  The Justes

  Abbé Glasberg, rescuer at Vénissieux

  Père Chaillet, of Amitié Chrétienne

  Madeleine Barot, general secretary of Cimade

  Joseph Bass, of the Service André

  The Jewish rescuers

  Madeleine Dreyfus, of the OSE

  Georges and Lily Garel, of the OSE’s Circuit B

  Liliane Klein-Liebert, social worker with the OSE

  Georges Loinger, conveyer of children to Switzerland

  Andrée Salomon, of the OSE

  Germans and collaborators

  Inspector Praly, policeman in le Chambon

  Major Schmähling, commander of German garrison in Le Puy

  Robert Bach, prefect of the Haute-Loire

  René Bousquet, Vichy chief of police

  Chronology

  1939

  1 September Germany invades Poland

  3 September Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia and France declare war on Germany

  26 September French government outlaws Communist Party

  1940

  29 February Ration cards introduced

  21 March Reynaud replaces Daladier as prime minister

  13 May German army crosses Meuse and enters France

  18 May Reynaud appoints 84-year-old Pétain deputy prime minister

  24 May British Expeditionary Force falls back on Dunkirk

  10 June French government leaves Paris. Italy declares war on France and Britain

  14 June Germans enter Paris

  16 June Reynaud is replaced by Pétain

  22 June Franco-German armistice signed at Rethondes

  23 June Hitler visits Paris. Laval becomes deputy prime minister

  1 July Pétain’s government moves to Vichy

  22 July Vichy government begins to review citizenship

  13 August Freemasons banned from many professions

  27 September Germany demands census of Jews in occupied zone

  3 October First Statut des Juifs, defining Jewishness and banning Jews from certain occupations

  22 October Jews in Baden and the Palatinate rounded up, deported to France and interned

  24 October Pétain meets Hitler at Montoire

  5 November Creation of Nîmes Committee

  1941

  March Vichy sets up the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (CGQJ) under Xavier Vallat

  14 May First rafle of Jews in Paris

  2 June Second Statut des Juifs

  22 July Vichy law authorises confiscation of Jewish property and enterprises

  29 November Vallat sets up the Union Générale des Israelites de France (UGIF), supposedly to let Jews manage their own affairs

  11 December Germany declares war on USA

  1942

  20 January Wannsee meeting commits Reich to Final Solution

  4 February Formation of the Service d’Ordre Légionnaire, predecessor to the Milice

  1 March Start of Allied bombing of France

  19 March Vallat sacked from CGQJ, replaced by Darquier de Pellepoix

  27 March First train of Jews leaves Drancy for Auschwitz

  29 May Jews over the age of six in occupied zone ordered to wear a yellow star

  30 June Eichmann arrives in Paris to implement Final Solution

  16–17 July Rafle of Jews in Paris, Opération Vent Printanier. 12,884 people arrested

  5 A
ugust Start of deportations of Jews from southern zone

  10 August Lamirand visits the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon

  13 August Switzerland closes its borders to Jewish refugees

  August Letters of protest from French prelates

  September Pastor Marc Boegner directs Protestants to save Jews

  8 November Allied landings in North Africa

  11 November Germans invade southern zone

  1943

  January Combat, Libération-Sud and the FTP join forces as the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR)

  18 January Siege of Leningrad lifted

  24 January Germans destroy Vieux Port of Marseilles

  31 January Milice founded, with Darnand as secretary general

  16 February Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO) introduced

  9 July Allies reach Sicily

  25 July Mussolini replaced by Badoglio

  8 September Germans take over Italian-occupied départements in southern France

  13 October Italy declares war on Germany

  1944

  22 January Allies land at Anzio

  6 June D-Day landings

  7–10 June German massacres at Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane

  15 August French and Allied troops land in Provence. Progressive liberation of France by Allies, French armies and Resistance begins

  17 August Last train of Jews leaves Drancy for Auschwitz

  24–25 August French forces enter Paris. Germans surrender

  1 September French troops reach le Chambon

  23 October Britain, USA and Canada officially recognise de Gaulle’s government

  Foreword

  In the spring of 1953, Peace News, a fortnightly magazine aimed at America’s pacifist community, carried an unusual story. It was about a half-French, half-German Protestant pastor called André Trocmé who, between the arrival of the Germans in Paris in May 1940 and the liberation of France in the summer of 1944, helped save some 5,000 hunted communists, Freemasons, resisters and Jews from deportation to the extermination camps of occupied Poland.

  Posted to the remote parish of le Chambon-sur-Lignon, high in the mountains of the Eastern Massif Central, Pastor Trocmé, as Peace News told it, so inspired his Protestant parishioners with his absolute faith in pacifism that, lit up by a ‘conspiracy of good’, they took in, hid, fed and smuggled to safety in Switzerland those whose names appeared on Nazi death lists. Many of those rescued were children.

  As the Cold War was beginning and fears of global conflict were spreading, here was proof that Gandhian non-violence could work. More than that, the story was a perfect weapon in the struggle to find meaning for the Vichy years, by minimising collaborators and celebrating resisters. In the same way that the plateau of Vercors, where the Maquis briefly established a free government, became a symbol of heroic resistance, le Chambon could become one of selfless morality. In this ‘pays de grand silence’, where generations of Huguenots had kept quiet when it was dangerous for those who were not Catholics to speak out, ‘non-violent resistance to the Hitler–Pétain system was born’. A complaisant regional prefect and a good German officer, along with a number of feisty but not always prudent local inhabitants, completed the cast of characters. It was not long before people began using the phrase ‘banality of good’ to describe the modesty and ordinariness of the Chambonais, in counterpoint to Hannah Arendt’s overused words about evil. In the wake of the Peace News story came eulogies, newspaper articles, memoirs, documentaries and films, and they have never stopped coming. In 1988, le Chambon became the only village in the world to be honoured by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. A myth was born.

  There is one problem: all was not quite as it seemed.

  Many Jews and resisters were indeed saved – but certainly not 5,000; and they had been saved not by non-violence but by a remarkable adventure in imagination and cooperation. It was not the only adventure of its kind, but the area’s very remoteness and the tacit support of almost every one of its inhabitants makes it stand out. There was a fairly decent prefect and a less than murderous German officer, but neither could be described as good. There was not just one village, le Chambon, but half a dozen others across the whole plateau of the Vivarais-Lignon, as well as many outlying hamlets, and not one Protestant pastor but 24, along with members of other Protestant faiths, like the Darbyists and the Ravenists, descendants of followers of the Plymouth Brethren, as well as Catholics and many who professed no religious faith at all. Doctors, teachers, university professors, students and a large number of boy and girl scouts all played key parts. And André Trocmé himself was a far subtler, more troubled and doubting man than the myth suggested. Hero to some, mythomane to others, Trocmé, who died in 1971, has become a figure of renown.

  As ever, the truth, inasmuch as it can be established 70 years after the event, is considerably more interesting. The myth has much diminished reality. It has also given rise to an unceasing flow of feuds, jealousies, backbiting, calumnies, hearsay, claims and counterclaims and prejudice, pitting Catholics against Protestants, armed resisters against pacifists, civilians against Maquisards, believers against agnostics, those who seek glory against those who wish to remain silent. To this day the topic is as heated as it was in the years in which it first turned into an explosive mixture of local politics and historical rivalry. Nor did it help when, in 2004, President Chirac called le Chambon ‘la conscience de notre pays’.

  What actually took place on the plateau of the Vivarais-Lignon during the grey and terrifying years of German occupation and Vichy rule is indeed about courage, faith and morality. But it is also about the fallibility of memory.

  Part One

  Escaping

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mea culpa

  When Aaron Liwerant brought Sara, his fiancée, to Paris from her parents’ house in Warsaw in the summer of 1926, France was a good place for refugees. The French government was welcoming, granting naturalisation to the many Poles, Russians, Galicians and Romanians who came to fill the jobs in industry and mining left vacant by the high number of French casualties in the Great War. The international bookshop on the Left Bank sold books and papers in Russian and Polish. The French proved welcoming too to the Germans, Austrians, Italians and Spaniards arriving in the wake of the rise to power of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, and some of the refugees went off to work in agriculture in the south.

  Aaron was a leatherworker, and Sara covered the clasps he brought home from the workshop with silk, and sometimes with leather. Their first child, Berthe, was born in April 1927; a son, Simon, followed in November 1928. Though Aaron and Sara occasionally talked of the day they would be able to go back to Poland, they naturalised the two children and made them French citizens.

  The Liwerants occupied two rooms, with no bathroom and a shared lavatory, in Belleville, which, along with the Marais and the 11th, 12th and 18th arrondissements, was home to most of the foreign immigrants in Paris, and particularly to the Jewish families like theirs working in fur and textiles. Aaron’s sister had also settled in France and she too had French citizenship, but neither she nor Aaron and Sara saw themselves as observant. To be Jewish in France in the 1920s and 1930s was to enjoy the legacy of the French Revolution, which had conferred equal rights on all the country’s religious minorities at a time when such tolerance was shared only by the new United States of America. The Liwerants thought of themselves as equals, loyal citizens of a strong, emancipated republican state.

  Aaron and Sara Liwerant, with their children

  Though the family spoke Yiddish at home, Berthe and Simon were bilingual in French. France was their home; neither had known any other, though they listened with interest to the stories of their grandparents in Poland and of the pogroms that had driven their mother and father into exile. After school, Simon helped his mother cover the clasps for Aaron’s leatherwork, and with the one-franc coins she gave him, he bought stamps, usually of aeroplanes.

  The electi
ons of 1936 had brought Léon Blum, a Jew and a socialist, to power with the Front Populaire, which welcomed immigrants and did much to improve conditions for French workers, but also sparked off strikes and violent confrontations. By now, France had a greater percentage of foreigners than any other country, including the United States. And when the world economic recession, which came relatively late to the country, brought high unemployment to French industry, workers began to feel hostility towards the very men and women they had so warmly welcomed not long before.

  Simon was 10 when Léon Blum’s government fell in 1938, amid much rhetoric about the perils of world Jewry and personal slander against the Jewish Blum, a Proustian figure with floppy straight dark hair, a neat moustache and spats, who was referred to by some as a parasite and a vagrant, a pervert and underminer of ‘healthy male virility’. Searching for culprits for the country’s ills, some of the French began to see in the three million foreigners, and especially the foreign Jews, the perfect scapegoats; the river of anti-Semitism and xenophobia that poured out in pamphlets, books and articles peddling rumours of secret societies, satanic rituals and fifth columnists, and which so many believed to have vanished for ever in the post-Dreyfus years, was suddenly turning out to have merely gone underground. The words of the elderly former prime minister Raymond Poincaré, ‘After the Dreyfus affair, anti-Semitism will no longer ever be possible again in France’, began to sound a little foolish.

  It was somehow more seductive, though alarming, to listen to the royalist intellectual Charles Maurras announce, in the right-wing, nationalist L’Action Française, that ‘One thing is dead: it is the spirit of semi-tolerance accorded to the Jews . . . a formidable à bas les Juifs is smouldering in every breast and will pour forth from every heart’, or to follow the spiteful attacks of his colleague, the scruffy, rodent-like Céline, the specialist in children’s diseases. Maurras himself was a short man, with a stutter and a neat goatee; his young activists, the Camelots du Roi, were thugs.

  France, the two men agreed, had for too long been exploited and betrayed by internal enemies, in numbers they likened to a tidal wave. Their undoubted verbal brilliance lent their ideas a certain legitimacy. When, in May 1939, Edouard Daladier’s new government spoke of ‘ferreting out, identifying and expelling’ the illegal foreigners, there were many happy to listen to him. A leading member of the radicals, Daladier had been moving steadily towards the right. Jewish immigration had reached ‘saturation point’. Ten thousand Jews should be sent ‘elsewhere’. In Belleville, the Liwerants and their Jewish neighbours lay low, hoping that such sentiments would pass, as they had done before. The declaration of war in September 1939 did not trouble them greatly, nor did the drôle de guerre, the phoney war, even if the Catholic writer Georges Bernanos observed, before emigrating to South America, that it really was not drôle at all, but mournful. Some 40,000 Jewish men had enlisted in the French army. In March, while the war seemed stalled, the government passed to a dapper barrister with a keen interest in sports called Paul Reynaud.