by Peter Grose
• • •
By late 1942, although the atmosphere on the Plateau was clearly getting tetchier, things could have been worse. The Quakers, the Cimade, the OSE and the Red Cross continued to win the release of children from the camps and transfer them to the Plateau.
Then, at the end of 1942, three closely related events changed everything. On 8 November, Allied forces, largely British and American, landed in the French territory of Algeria in North Africa as part of ‘Operation Torch’. The Vichy French resisted, but their hearts weren’t in it, and the Allied forces, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, soon established total control. A large Allied force was now hovering over southern Europe, and an Allied invasion of mainland Europe, probably via France, looked imminent.
Operation Torch also showed the Germans that the Vichy French weren’t exactly snarling rottweilers when it came to resisting Allied invasions. What if the Allies mounted an attack on the Unoccupied Zone of France? Would the Vichy French be able to throw them back into the sea? The omens weren’t good. So Hitler decided that if southern France was to be defended against Allied attack from North Africa, the only way to do it was with German troops. He ended the sham of the ‘Unoccupied Zone’ and took over the rest of France. On 11 November, German troops raced south, meeting no resistance. Within days, the whole of France was in German hands, with the exception of a small chunk in the southeast corner, which was occupied by the Italians. There was no longer an Unoccupied Zone. This was naturally unpopular with the French people, and had the effect of turning the whole of France into hostile territory for the Germans, while making de Gaulle and his Free French Army, in the eyes of the French population, seem like a more useful bet than the marshal.
The third development was that the Russians started to push the Germans back on the Eastern Front. Over a year earlier, on 22 June 1941, Hitler had invaded Russia. The German Army initially rolled over Russian opposition, and began to close in on Moscow and Stalingrad. But, like Napoleon before him, Hitler never quite managed to deliver the fatal blow, and the battle dragged on through the bitter winter of 1941-42, then through the spring and into the summer of 1942. The Russians consolidated, and by the middle of 1942 they were holding their ground. As early as May 1942, Marshal Zhukov, field commander of the Red Army, was beginning to claim the odd victory over German forces. By the end of 1942, the badly mauled Germans were on the back foot. The Russians were pushing them out.
In other words, around the end of 1942, Hitler started losing the war. And that made him desperate.
Part III
• • •
OCCUPATION
7
Fresh blood
It is impossible to overstate the importance of the changes that took place in France at the end of 1942. Quite simply, the occupation of the whole country,27 instead of the northern three-fifths, changed everything.
Let’s start with Pétain. As we have seen, in the beginning he enjoyed widespread acceptance, at times adoration, as ‘the man who saved France’. Although France had been soundly defeated, Pétain had managed to negotiate a deal with Hitler whereby he hung onto some control of two-fifths of the country, and was nominally in charge of all of it: even the occupied Northern Zone was theoretically under the control of the Vichy government, though in practice Germany wrote the rules there and made sure they were obeyed.
But now that the whole country was occupied, Pétain’s claim to be the saviour of the nation no longer had any real basis. Meanwhile, de Gaulle’s Free French Army took control of a succession of French colonies. With the Allied capture of Algeria in Operation Torch, it was clear to the French population that the Allied side increasingly looked like the winners. Pétain’s authority and popularity did not evaporate overnight, but by the end of 1943 they were in terminal decline.
With this decline came some real uncertainty on the part of the Vichy officials, in the gendarmerie and in the various departmental bureaucracies. Very early in the war, the left-wing deputy André Philip—who had voted against Pétain and the Armistice and moved his family to Le Chambon, before joining de Gaulle in London—said in a speech at a wedding that after the eventual liberation of France those who supported Pétain would be shot as traitors. At the time it seemed completely mad. Who in 1940 could imagine that the all-conquering Germans would be kicked out of France in a little over four years, and that with their departure Pétain’s Vichy regime would be consigned to the dustbin of history? But now, in late 1942 and early 1943, with the Germans on the back foot, it was a different story. The least that could be said was that this one could go either way. So the French police, the gendarmerie and the bureaucrats quietly concluded, not collectively but individually, that it might be prudent to take things a bit easy.28
Last but not least, it was increasingly clear that there was no French government in France to be loyal to. Up until the occupation of the Southern Zone, there was a good case to be made that the Vichy administration was the only legal government of France, and that any Frenchman who sought their overthrow was at best misguided and at worst a traitor. But after the Occupation, did that still hold good? De Gaulle had set up a government in exile in London (with André Philip as his Minister for the Interior). Maybe that was the legitimate government? In which case, anyone clinging ostentatiously to the side of the Vichy government had better watch out!
In particular, the occupation of the whole of France gave a different complexion to the idea of armed resistance. Up until the end of 1942, with the World War I hero Pétain leading a French government, taking up arms against the authorities looked positively treasonous, not to mention dangerous. But with the fading power of the French government, and the rising sense that the German enemy could be beaten, armed resistance looked like a much more attractive option.
This last eventuality was one of the great fears held by André Trocmé and Edouard Theis, the two leading pacifist pastors of the Plateau. They had preached non-violent resistance. As Trocmé said in his ‘weapons of the spirit’ sermon: ‘To love, to forgive, to show kindness to our enemies, that is our duty.’ There was no ambiguity: violence against the Germans was as much to be condemned as violence against the Jews.
Robert Bach, prefect of the Haute-Loire, was one of the first to sense fresh trouble ahead in the wake of the extended Occupation. On 23 November 1942, twelve days after the German push south, he sent a formal note to the head of the gendarmerie of the department of the Haute-Loire.
The events of recent days have provoked population movements that cannot fail to attract more foreigners and Frenchmen into the department, particularly Jews. It is vital that I am given very full and accurate information about these arrivals so that, if this happens, I can take all effective steps to limit their numbers so that they dont exceed our ability to provide accommodation and food. I’m sorry to have to say that among the people leaving their homes for reasons to do with the present circumstances, there will be some suspicious and even dangerous elements, and that their presence in the Haute-Loire could lead to trouble.
He was right about that.
• • •
Pierre Fayol had lived most of his life in Marseille. He was born there in 1905, and he rejoined his wife and son there after his demobilisation from the French Army on 30 July 1940, five weeks after Pétain signed the Armistice. Marseille was in the Unoccupied Zone so, as a French-born Jew rather than a foreigner, Fayol was in less danger than the many Jews who had fled to Marseille from Germany, Austria and other Nazi-ruled countries of Eastern Europe. However, the Fayol family was well known in Marseille, and Pierre Fayol had stepped forward to do what he could to help Jewish and other refugees. If things got tough, he was a marked man.
This was brought home sharply on 9 June 1942 when a provisional administrator, a Monsieur Foulon, came to take stock of the Fayols’ possessions, including their flat and its furniture. The writing was on the wall. Fayol already had a plan. He had heard about a Protestant pastor in a remote mountain vil
lage of the Haute-Loire who was urging his congregation to defy the Vichy government by sheltering refugees, including Jews. Fayol’s cousins, the Coblentz family, confirmed the story. Originally from Strasbourg in eastern France, the Coblentzes had been evacuated south in the early days of the war. They now lived on a farm in Le Crouzet, just outside Le Chambon, and they recommended the Plateau. The clincher came when they mentioned the New Cévenole School: that sounded ideal for the Fayols’ thirteen-year-old son. So in August 1942, at about the time Georges Lamirand was making his ill-fated visit to the Plateau, Pierre Fayol decided to take a look for himself. He went to Le Chambon with his family for a visit.
They stayed in a farmhouse called Panelier, which looked a bit like a small fortress. They were not the only guests. A promising young French-Algerian writer named Albert Camus had just moved into Panelier with his wife, Francine. Fayol and Camus struck up a friendship that continued for the rest of the war. Camus had moved to the Plateau for the mountain air, which was reputed to be good for tuberculosis, from which he suffered. He spent his time at Panelier working on a novel, which he called La Peste (The Plague).29 Published in 1947, it was a towering allegory set in the small Algerian town of Oran. Bubonic plague strikes, but the people of the town are frozen in disbelief. The disease becomes a metaphor for the plague of Nazism sweeping Europe. It was mostly written on the Plateau, and in his book We Only Know Men the philosopher and historian Patrick Henry says he can hear echoes of André Trocmé in the sermons of Camus’s fictional priest.
On the Plateau, the Fayols also met up with the Coblentz family, Pierre’s cousins, who had already begun to search for somewhere for the Fayols to hide if things got too dangerous down south. All in all, the Plateau looked like the answer. The Fayols returned to Marseille to await developments, their escape plan in place. On 11 November, as the Germans began their sweep south into the Unoccupied Zone (reaching Marseille on 22 November), Fayol knew the time had come to move. Time to get out, and go underground.
As we have seen, there was little or no armed resistance in France before the end of 1942. However, in August 1940, in Lyon, Henri Frenay, a former captain in the French Army, and his remarkable female co-conspirator Berty Albrecht had set up the Mouvement de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Movement), or MLN, which later came to be known as Combat. It operated mostly in the Unoccupied Zone and had six regional networks: Lyon, Marseille, Montpelier, Toulouse, Limoges and Clermont-Ferrand. Pierre Fayol was already in loose touch with the Marseille branch. Now he turned to them for help obtaining false papers. Pierre Chaix-Bryant, who later distinguished himself in the liberation of Marseille, was able to oblige. Fayol became ‘Simon Lehay’.
The Fayols had planned to move in January 1943, but Fayol’s wife, Marianne, wanted to get out straight away, in November. She was proved right. Gestapo raids began on the platforms of Saint-Charles, the main railway station in Marseille, the day after the Fayols left.
The Strasbourg cousins had found accommodation for them on a farm at La Celle, about three kilometres north of Le Chambon. The ‘Lehay’ family occupied the first floor of the house, while an old farmer and his nephew lived on the ground floor. It was not exactly five-star comfort. There was no running water, so they had to fetch whatever water they needed from a spring. On the other hand, their accommodation included a sink with a plug, a rare luxury. They chopped their own wood to feed the stove, which also provided the only heat. For Pierre Fayol, one of the big attractions of the house was its layout. The house was built on a forested hillside, with the main door at the back of the building. The raised and doorless front of the house had a clear view of the lane that led from the main road. It would be hard to be taken by surprise, and easy to do something about it.
Fayol had agreed to stay in touch with the Combat organisation. He was highly motivated and a trained soldier, just the sort of man a guerrilla army needs most. The radical pacifist pastors continued to set the mood of the Plateau, preaching love for their enemies. They remained adamantly opposed to armed resistance; among other things, it would put the rescue operation in jeopardy, and their mission was too important for that. Nevertheless, the changed mood in France after Operation Torch and total occupation meant that across the country armed resistance was looking both more inviting and more possible.
The arrival of Pierre Fayol meant that the Plateau had its Secret Army30 leader-in-waiting.
• • •
Lyon was just south of the Demarcation Line that had separated Occupied and Unoccupied France, so it was one of the first cities occupied by the Germans in November 1942. In the process,.it acquired one of the most unpleasant Gestapo chieftains in the whole of Europe, the notorious Klaus Barbie, nicknamed ‘the Butcher of Lyon’.
Virginia Hall, still working as an SOE agent under her cover as a journalist for the New York Post, realised that it was time to get out. By now there were well-established escape routes to neutral Spain, used mostly by Allied airmen shot down over France. The escape routes were well known to Hall through her SOE work. She had a choice of two ‘pipelines’ out of France—the Pat Line and the VIC—and she chose the VIC, because she knew it was less busy at the time.
Details of her journey are hard to come by. However, most of these pipelines involved a mixture of train, bicycle and foot journeys, and being handed on from farmer to villager to town dweller along the way. For someone with a wooden leg, it must have been the purest hell. The last part of the journey was on foot across the Pyrenees, involving a climb to 3000 metres in deep snow. At one point she telegrammed London to report progress, adding: ‘Cuthbert [her wooden leg] is being tiresome, but I can cope.’ Whoever received the telegram was clearly not familiar with her story, but showed a nice line in ruthlessness. ‘If Cuthbert tiresome,’ he replied, ‘have him eliminated.’
Virginia was travelling with two companions, one French and one Belgian. To guide the party to the Spanish border, she appears to have paid a Spanish passeur (a French word for ferryman or boatman, but which in this context means ‘people smuggler’—I have occasionally translated it simply as ‘guide’). At the border, they did not have the necessary entry permits, and were promptly arrested and imprisoned at Figueres in Spain, about 30 kilometres from the border, near the Mediterranean coast. She shared a cell with a Spanish prostitute, who was due to be released very soon. Her cellmate agreed to post a letter to the American consul in Barcelona. The consul pulled the necessary strings, and by the beginning of 1943, Hall was back in England awaiting fresh orders.
• • •
Oscar Rosowsky, the forger we first met in the Prologue, arrived on the Plateau at about the same time as Pierre Fayol, in late November 1942. On 17 November, after her release from Rivesaltes internment camp using forged papers supplied by Oscar, Mira Rosowsky returned to the family apartment in Nice. The two Rosowskys discussed their next move. Miras husband, Reuben, had been arrested, and neither mother nor son knew where he was. They clearly could not stay in Nice—it was too dangerous. So what next?
Of all the possibilities—try again for Switzerland, try for Spain, try for a safer part of France—the stories of Le Chambon as a shelter for Jews made it sound like the best prospect. The two agreed that Oscar should go there and take a look around. He travelled alone as Jean-Claude Pluntz, using his friend’s borrowed papers. He liked what he saw, and went back to Nice to collect his mother. They travelled together by train. When they arrived in Le Chambon, they went straight to the apartment of Marcelle Hanne, the mother of Oscar’s friends Charles and Georgette Hanne from Nice.
Madame Hanne wrote popular novels. Her best-known book carried the rather unpromising title Coeur de vache (Heart of a Cow) and was the story of an Alsatian cattle dealer. It was quite a popular success, and reprinted four times. Her others, Des princes quand même … (roughly Princes Despite Everything…), Bourrasques (Squalls) and Les cahiers de Simone (Simone’s Notebooks), seem to have done rather less well. Oscar describes her as having wild h
air that stuck out at the sides. She lived alone in a small apartment on the fourth floor of a new apartment block on the Rue Neuve in Le Chambon village, across the road from the Salvation Army headquarters.
Oscar remembers well the first meal Madame Hanne produced at the apartment.
To feed us, she went off to the butcher and came back with a lot of beef offal She put it all in an enormous pot, which she cooked for hours. There was the liver, the lungs and the heart. It made an incredible soup, delicious. Then she cooked some potatoes in the coals of the wood stove … We spent four stunning days there.
As described in the Prologue, Oscar and Mira Rosowsky couldn’t stay in Marcelle Hanne’s tiny apartment for any length of time. They needed to find somewhere with a bit more space, and ideally not together so no one would guess they were mother and son (and therefore using false identities). There is no record of who found Mira her new lodgings, but all the descriptions point to Simone Mairesse. Mira Rosowsky, now the middle-aged Turkish Russian spinster ‘Mademoiselle Grabowska’, according to her forged papers, had a great stroke of luck: Simone (if indeed it was her) placed her with the very new pastor in Fay-sur-Lignon, Daniel Curtet.
Curtet was only 25 years old, and unmarried. He arrived at his new parish on 22 October 1942, a month ahead of the Fayols and the Rosowskys. He was one of six Swiss pastors now established on the Plateau: Marcel Jeannet (Le Mazet), Henri Estoppey (Intres), Georges Grüner (Mars), André Bettex (Le Riou) and Daniel Besson (Montbuzat). The Swiss link became vital to the whole rescue operation from early 1943 onwards. The Plateau had a loyal and well-connected ally already established in Geneva in the form of Charles Guillon. Each of the Swiss pastors also had his own network of friends and contacts in Switzerland. They would need every single one of them before much time had passed.
