Asylum

by Moriz Scheyer

  The injustice and violence that these three saw happening all around them did not, as in the case of so many others, have the effect of deadening their feelings; rather, they provoked in them an even stronger sympathy and desire to resist. As for their reaction to anti-Semitism, the whole propaganda of the persecution had only served to turn them into committed anti-anti-Semites. We would ourselves, one day, receive the most overwhelming proof of this fact.

  After our first visit, which was to be followed by only one more, I could only regret that we had met this family so late–although at this stage I could not know how soon our separation was to be.

  The case against us was heard at the court in Ribérac in January, and the result was a fine of 2,460 francs per person.

  Our request for permission to reside in the Isère had not yet been considered; we learned that it had simply been filed away, and were quite happy about that. Except for the fact of having arrived in France after 1936, and the Sword of Damocles that therefore hung over our heads in the form of a concentration camp, we felt relatively at ease in Belvès, and desired nothing more than to be allowed to stay there.

  But then, one day just before Easter of 1942, we received an invitation to the Commissariat Spécial in Périgueux. With no positive expectations, we made our way there.

  In Périgueux we were met by Monsieur Mincker, the same gentleman who had made his antipathy to us so clear on our first arrival in the zone libre. He pulled out a document and asked us curtly if we still intended to go to Voiron.

  The question seemed to me to imply that a choice might still be open to us. I therefore replied: ‘If it were possible, we would prefer to stay in Belvès.’

  We knew Monsieur Mincker already, of course; still, we could hardly have expected what now followed. He leapt to his feet with clenched fists, threatening. ‘J’en ai marre de vous youpins,’ he screamed: I’m sick of you yids, sick of your youpineries. ‘Youpins, youpineries’–the words went on ringing in our ears. He ended with the words: ‘You will hear from me again!’

  We went to the Prefecture, to see if we might there obtain some clear information, rather than simply a stream of vulgar insults. There we spoke to a very polite lady official, from whom we learned that our request, submitted more than five months previously, had been granted by the Prefecture of Isère. This meant that we now had to leave Belvès: we had no choice in the matter. She also communicated to us that, as foreign Jews who had entered the country after 1936, we had only been spared ‘internment’ as an extraordinary act of leniency. We should not, in fact, have been at liberty at all. She showed us a piece of paper. ‘All I would have to do is present this to the prefect for signature…’

  There was, then, no question of our remaining in Belvès or in the Dordogne. But we were given four weeks’ grace before our departure.

  And so, on 25th April, we were on the road again: we would travel via Lyon to Voiron. Yet another farewell.

  Shortly before our departure Gabriel Rispal,* the father of my young friend, came to us in the hotel and brought with him a bottle of vintage Burgundy, something which even in those days was a valuable rarity.

  ‘Why do you rob yourself like this?’ I said to him, in an attempt to hide my true feelings. He stood there, in his white painter’s smock, with tears in his eyes. I had previously spoken with the man twice–three times at the most.

  He took my hand and replied: ‘You can’t rob yourself, for a friend.’

  The words had an especially strong effect; for I still had Monsieur Mincker’s ‘youpins, youpineries’ in my ears.

  18

  Voiron

  EMIL KOFLER HAD NOT SUCCEEDED in finding us a place to live in Voiron. He therefore offered us hospitality in Criel, a small place in the country outside Voiron, in the house where he lived with his wife, son and stepdaughter.

  The only positive side of this arrangement was the company of our old friends; Voiron, a dull industrial town of some 16,000 inhabitants, was not a place where we could feel at home; it seemed too fundamentally different from ‘our’ Belvès.

  Physically, the Isère region with its Alpine scenery is undeniably very attractive; but it is a kind of scenery that grabs the eye without warming the heart. Here are dramatic effects of nature which provoke admiration, certainly, but not affection.

  The type of person one meets here is different, too–a fact which is even reflected in certain of the region’s traditional sayings. One quip has it, ‘If you want to drink a good bottle of wine with a good friend in the Isère, make sure you bring the good bottle and the good friend with you.’ There is, perhaps, some truth in that.

  Even though we had no home anywhere, we felt a sort of homesickness for Belvès. There we had begun to feel a little bit ‘at home’; here we felt constantly the status of the résidence forcée–the compulsory residence. Indeed, just in case we forgot that status, we had to report to the police every Saturday. And this applied even to Miss Kolářová, whose Aryan credentials were now suspect as a result of her association with us Jews–a suspicion, indeed, which was to have very serious consequences for her, in spite of her ‘innocence’.

  After about three weeks we finally had the good fortune to find an empty house in Criel, not far from the Koflers’; and my wife and Sláva, using a bare minimum of furniture–borrowed or rented from one place or another–succeeded in turning our little billet into a liveable home.

  The cottage even had a small bit of land attached to it. The two women set to work on it with incredible gusto, transforming the bare ground into a model miniature vegetable garden which provoked the admiration of all our neighbours.

  In the midst of all these wonderful arrangements, though, I found myself beset by anxiety, especially on Saturdays, when we had to report to the police. In our dossier, which the official brought out at each visit, the first word that appeared–in large letters of red ink, and doubly underlined–was: JUIFS. Jews.

  In the middle of July we were surprised by the appearance one day of Mrs Mila Friedezky, the wife of my fellow inmate and hut chief in the concentration camp. Her demeanour as she entered our house was superficially calm–too calm. It was that frozen calm which is more disturbing than the most violent expression of despair.

  What had happened?

  In answer she handed us a letter–a letter of farewell from her husband. It was one of the most shattering human documents that the cursed Age of Hitler ever gave rise to. What human nobility in this letter, what love, what suppressed agony. And what a silent indictment.

  After fourteen months of incarceration in Beaune my fellow inmates had been awoken one day at first light by the whistles of the gardes. ‘Within one hour,’ was the command, ‘everything packed and ready to decamp.’

  To decamp–into freedom, at last?

  No. Packed and ready for deportation to one of those living hells in Germany or Poland which were designated, with typical German matter-of-factness, as ‘Extermination Camps’.

  Lublin or Dachau; Auschwitz or Buchenwald; it made no difference. It was equivalent to a death sentence–a death sentence which is carried out in tiny stages, in instalments. Death divided into a hundred deaths; extinction prolonged into a hundred agonies.

  ‘Within one hour, packed and ready to decamp.’ Within this hour, Friedezky had somehow found the strength to write his last words of comfort to his wife.

  Let us try for just one moment to imagine that actual experience: the husband, as he rushes desperately to get down on paper his testament of love; the wife, as she takes that letter in her hand.

  Mrs Friedezky had not been able to remain in Paris any longer. The round-ups had begun again–this time over a very wide area, and without distinction of age or sex. The German police had now joined in the activity with the French, who apparently had not been sufficiently meticulous.

  When the thugs entered their flats, some mothers had thrown their small children from windows, before jumping themselves. And yet the broken bodies on th
e pavements had as little effect on the Germans as a pile of rubbish; there would be another lot along soon. Terminally ill patients, as well as those who had just had operations, were thrown out of the hospitals. When my friend, the wonderful Dr Elbim, who was chief surgeon in one hospital, had dared to protest, the reply he received from the heroes of the Wehrmacht was a terrible blow in the face with a rubber truncheon.

  In front of the dwellings of Jews who had been captured in this way, furniture vans would appear punctually, on the same day. Everything that was not actually nailed down was loaded up in a trice, in a highly expert criminal operation, and then taken to special warehouses. The admirable efficiency, and attention to detail, of the German theft machine were undeniable.

  Mrs Friedezky had spent the last days before her flight hiding in a friend’s house. Three times the Germans had arrived at her apartment looking for her. At last the moment came when the passeur who was to take her over the Line (along with several others in a similar situation) gave them the signal for departure. This public benefactor contented himself with 30,000 francs per head. The Germans had further tightened security along the Line. They were now even using aeroplanes to assist in the hunt for Jewish game.

  It was, on the other hand, an open secret that one could obtain official permission to cross for 60,000 francs through helpful suppliers at the Commissariat Juif. The ‘normal’ cost for such a document was ten francs. And for half a million you could even get an absolutely watertight Aryan passport. The noble French fakers shared the booty with the Germans: the blond people of the north and the ‘negroid’ French found a shared interest here.

  It was remarkable that Mrs Friedezky had been given permission, just a few days after her arrival in the zone libre, to travel to the Isère. What seemed even more striking, though, was something recounted by an acquaintance of hers, who had escaped from Paris shortly after her, and also come to Voiron.

  (There were now twelve of us in all–twelve foreign Jews in Voiron. I mention this incidentally, only because the mayor of Voiron had made a statement to the effect that the huge influx of foreign Jews into the town was responsible for the shortage of food: they were eating the indigenous population out of house and home.)

  But let us return to Mrs Friedezky’s acquaintance. This person had had a quite extraordinary encounter with the French police: he had been allowed to travel directly to Voiron, from the ‘Line of Demarcation’, without any provisional stay anywhere else.

  But… but the police commissioner had explained to him: ‘As far as I’m concerned, travel where you wish. It is all the same to me where you are picked up.’

  What did this mean? Nothing good, certainly.

  We now had a ‘home’. And the wife of our neighbour, Madame Pellat, even persuaded my wife to lay in a small supply of fruit and vegetable conserves for the coming winter. Madame Pellat, of course, was in the fortunate position of being able to plan for the coming winter as for any other new season, without any other complications…

  19

  Nine gendarmes versus five Jews

  MEANWHILE, EVEN IN THE ‘FREE ZONE’, the anti-Semitic fervour of both press and radio had been growing by the day. There could be no doubt of it: if the Germans decided that they wanted to act against the Jews in the zone libre too, their Vichy lackeys, with the Maréchal at their head, would happily do their bidding.

  In a speech at the beginning of August 1942 Hitler had once more heralded the eradication of all Jews in the lands occupied by him. In this context, at least, his word could be relied upon. It could also be relied upon that no one would attempt to stop him from carrying out his programme.

  We were compelled to report weekly to the police station; but evidently that was not enough. One day–it was 25th August–I went into town in the afternoon, for a consultation with Dr Ferrier in connection with my heart condition. Dr Ferrier gave me strict instructions to avoid any kind of excitement. (I unfortunately neglected to ask him exactly how I was to follow this régime.)

  On my return I learned that two gendarmes had paid a visit during my absence. They had been friendly enough; they had explicitly assured us that the visit had no particular aim in view. They had just dropped in; they happened to be passing. No doubt they were anxious to find out how we were getting on. Purely as an afterthought, they had asked about me; they had then quite politely taken their leave.

  In the evening we went as usual to Kofler’s house. There we heard the French transmission of the BBC from London. Among other things, the announcer read out an urgent warning addressed to all foreign Jews resident in Lyon. According to reliable sources, a preliminary number of 600 would be arrested that night, and handed over to the Germans for deportation.

  At that moment Emil Kofler returned from Grenoble–a journey he had made at our request in the attempt to get some kind of reliable information as to what measures were being planned. He spoke to an acquaintance of his who enjoyed good relations with the Prefecture there. The acquaintance was not able to give him any concrete information, but he did tell him this: ‘All foreign Jews now would be best advised to hide.’

  To hide… where?

  We set off for home. ‘See you tomorrow,’ I said to our friends, ‘if we are not taken before then.’

  Back at home, we looked at each other helplessly. Rosa Ornstein, who lived with us, was extremely agitated. She was adamant that she should pack her things. We dissuaded her–more out of superstition than anything else. Besides, perhaps our fears were exaggerated. So far the English radio station had only spoken of Jews in Lyon, and then only of 600; so this could not be any kind of general policy. We did our best to pretend, both to each other and ourselves.

  We said goodnight and went to bed. There was, of course, no question of sleep. Each of us lay there awake, silent, the same thoughts going round, endlessly, in all our minds. Whatever we had said to each other had just been putting a brave face on it. And so we stayed silent–heartbeat after heartbeat, hour after hour. From time to time we looked at the clock. If only this night would end…

  Around four in the morning we heard a dog bark. My wife and I both leapt out of bed instantly and rushed to the window. In the pale light just before dawn, we could see a number of figures moving slowly, gingerly towards our door. Gendarmes. Seven of them, walking one behind the other, like Indians on the warpath, and with shouldered rifles. At their head was the brigadier himself.

  A contingent of seven heavily armed men, against three women and myself.

  A few moments later the bell rang. I pulled back my wife, who was already at the door, and hustled her into the room. I then opened the door. Two men remained in front of the door, presumably to prevent any attempt at escape; the others entered.

  The brigadier followed me into our bedroom, accompanied by two of his men. The two others (the same two who had ‘visited’ us the day before) knocked on the bedroom doors of Sláva and of Rosa Ornstein.

  ‘Get dressed,’ ordered the brigadier, ‘and pack some clothes and linen. But quickly, quickly! We haven’t got any time: we still have other Jews to pick up.’

  At this point my wife fainted; and it took several minutes for her to regain consciousness. As soon as she opened her eyes again the brigadier snapped at her roughly: ‘No more playacting, now! It won’t help you.’

  We had no way of defending ourselves; but this brutality was too much for me. ‘Can’t you at least be silent?’ I shouted at the man. ‘This is a job you should be ashamed of.’

  An unpleasant smile spread over the brigadier’s face. ‘Calm yourself, monsieur. I am a gentleman: no one can take that away from me. I’ve even arranged for a nice, comfortable bus to take you to Grenoble. I do my best for the ladies.’

  I now knew what was in store for us: deportation.

  My poor wife was desperate to try to save me, at least. She begged them to phone Dr Ferrier. ‘My husband saw him only yesterday,’ she said. ‘Dr Ferrier will certify that my husband is not fit to travel. Our neigh
bour, Pellat, has a telephone.’

  One of the gendarmes stepped forward and asked if he should make the call.

  ‘Don’t interfere!’ hissed the brigadier to his subordinates. ‘My task is to send these Jews to Grenoble, and that is what I am going to do. Nothing else concerns me.’

  ‘You have that noble task,’ I said, ‘to arrest these Jews and send them to Grenoble. But what business have you with Miss Kolářová? You know very well that she is not Jewish.’

  ‘She may not be Jewish,’ was the reply; ‘but in any case she has crossed the Demarcation Line with a group of Jews. That is sufficient. She goes with you.’

  Miss Kolářová had by now joined us in the room and had heard everything. Normally, the woman was shyness itself; now she turned on the brigadier with blazing eyes. ‘Of course I will go with them,’ she shouted at the wretch, ‘and I would go with them even if you wanted to leave me behind. I would rather stay with Jews, a thousand times, than with Christians of your sort!’

  We exchanged no further words after that, apart from my asking the brigadier to inform Emil Kofler, which he graciously agreed to do. He refused, however, to leave the room–he and his men–while my wife got dressed.

  And so we got dressed. We packed our bags. What to take with us, what to leave behind? Everything seemed so necessary to take–and at the same time so pointless. Poor Rosa could not pick anything up without dropping it. She could do little more than sob silently. One of the gendarmes helped her.

  By now Emil Kofler had arrived. We said our farewells. Then the gendarmes escorted us out and we left ‘our’ house, which was then immediately sealed by the brigadier.

  In the Pellats’ house, everyone was asleep. Our neighbour opposite, on the other hand, Madame Regnier, was already in her garden. Seeing us sandwiched between the gendarmes, she began to cry. ‘How awful,’ she sobbed. ‘How awful!’