The Resistance

by Peter Steiner

  Liberation..….….….….…… August 28, 1941. Issue 7

  Frenchmen, Frenchwomen, when things start going badly for the Third Reich, they find scapegoats to punish for the evil they have brought upon themselves. They point their fingers at the Jews and the communists and the Gypsies and the Freemasons and have now set about organizing their annihilation. Mass executions of Jews using poison gas have begun in Germany and Poland. Hitler intends the extermination of all Jews. He is constructing concentration camps to accomplish this. He has begun his evil work elsewhere, but do not doubt for a moment that preparations are under way to do the same thing in France to French citizens.

  It does not seem possible that such a thing could happen in France. And yet the vicious “Jewish Statute” of June 2, 1941 has excluded all Jews from French public service and public life. In Tours and Le Mans, Jewish businesses have been damaged or closed. On July 10 in Tours an old man wearing the required yellow badge was set upon and kicked and beaten, not by Germans, but by a group of Frenchmen and -women. On the night of August 5 the Patisserie Blumenfeld was firebombed by Frenchmen doing the business of Nazis. The French police did nothing to investigate the crime or to arrest the perpetrators. If the French police stand by while such crimes are committed against French citizens, who will protect us?

  Camille Aron, a farmer, vintner, and benefactor to his community, has been the mayor and conseiller-général of Le Boulay since 1913. That constitutes twenty-eight years of loyal public service. Many of you know Camille. Now he has been forced to resign, for no other reason than that he is Jewish. Robespierre Hénault, the mayor of Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, was removed from office two years ago and replaced by a Nazi stooge. Now Monsieur Hénault has been imprisoned. The reason? He is a member of the Communist Party.

  This cruel and inhuman persecution could not happen if the Germans had to act on their own. But unfortunately there are men and women who call themselves Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who are more than happy to do the Germans’ bidding. These attack dogs should beware of their masters. The German appetite for cruelty and brutality is insatiable, and someday they will turn on their French accomplices and collaborators. They have already begun devouring their own.

  Colonel Helmut Büchner was once in charge of the German occupation in Saint-Léon. He put in place the oppression of all our citizens and oversaw the arrest of our citizens, including our schoolmaster and two children who have since disappeared into prison. We must not honor or celebrate this man, Büchner, and we do not mourn his death. But still it is worth noting that he has himself been killed by the brutal Nazi regime he served. He was executed by the Third Reich for doing one honorable thing and joining a plot to kill the abominable Adolf Hitler.

  Citizens of Saint-Léon, citizens of France, the Third Reich seems indomitable. They have conquered most of Europe, and now they are marching through Russia. They seem unstoppable. But they can be stopped if we choose to stop them. THEY MUST BE STOPPED. THEY WILL BE STOPPED.

  Vive la Libération! Vive la France!

  XII.

  THE GESTAPO LIEUTENANT STOOD with his hands clasped behind his back. From the window all he could see was red-white-and-black flags everywhere. Berlin was awash with them. He turned around. “Your hands,” said the Gestapo lieutenant. “Look at them.”

  Franzl Weinmann did as he was told. He turned his hands over, trying to see what the lieutenant saw.

  “They’re soft,” said the lieutenant. “You see? They’re smooth. Those aren’t the hands of a carpenter.”

  “But I…” said Franzl. “I never said—”

  “You did not have to say anything,” said the lieutenant. “Your hands spoke for you.” Did he actually believe that Franzl’s hands showed that he was someone he wasn’t? The lieutenant stood up and walked back around the desk. He walked slowly, measuring each step. He looked down at Franzl and shook his head like a disappointed uncle.

  “I don’t know what you want with me,” said Franzl. He tried to keep his voice firm, but it wavered.

  “Well, we must be mistaken then, isn’t that right? Yes, the Berlin police must be mistaken, the Third Reich must be mistaken, Herr…”—the lieutenant looked at the dossier—“Herr Weinmann. A mistake. Just as you say: You are not Franz Weinmann, the Berlin University philosophy student and communist organizer. You are Franz Weinmann, an innocent carpenter, isn’t that correct?

  “Except for the hands, Herr Weinmann. You see? That is my only problem. The hands. They do not lie.” The lieutenant seemed to consider things for a moment. “But, it must be, as you say, a case of mistaken identity. I’m sure it can be sorted out.”

  The lieutenant walked back around the desk and sat down. He looked at Franzl again; he looked at Franzl’s identification card on the desk in front of him. He stood up again slowly, as though he had all the time in the world. “I think I can clear this up, and then you can be on your way. How does that sound?” He smiled at Franzl, picked up the identity card, slid it into his pocket, and left the office. Franzl heard the lock turn in the door.

  What was it exactly that made Franzl certain this would end badly? It was everything, actually: that business about a carpenter’s hands; then the lieutenant’s exaggerated politeness and accommodation; then that smile and the locked door. Franzl wasn’t the Franz Weinmann they were looking for. But he was still a Franz Weinmann and still a Jew. Even if they let him go today, even if they weren’t looking for him today, they would be tomorrow.

  Before he quite knew what he was doing, Franzl leapt from the chair and jammed it against the door. He kicked out the window and was out onto the roof in an instant. He ran along the edge of the roof, watching for a way down. He dropped onto a balcony on the floor below, and from the balcony into the courtyard. He sprinted across the concrete and scrambled over the wall and jumped down onto Wartburgstrasse. He breathlessly excused himself to the woman he almost landed on. She stared at him as though he were an apparition. “Um Gottes Willen!” she exclaimed, clutching both hands to her breast. Franzl made for a passing trolley, no longer an apparition, but once again just another Berliner hurrying home from work.

  Franzl Weinmann had just turned eighteen the week before. He had never been political. And of course he had never been a fugitive. But in the few seconds it had taken him to escape the Gestapo, he had become both. And in those brief seconds he discovered that his greatest ability, a precious gift really, in these times, lay not in carpentry but in being a fugitive.

  Franzl no longer had an identity card. His home, Berlin, was no longer his home. The red-white-and-black flags everywhere, which had meant nothing to him before the summons earlier that week, suddenly meant danger. He had never kicked out a window before, never scampered along a roof, never vaulted a wall, and yet he had just done all these things as though they were second nature.

  Franzl felt not fear, but rather an extreme form of liberty, like evaporation or death. He felt the elation one might feel on discovering he could disappear at will. Franzl could not have explained it to anyone, not even to himself, but he felt happy.

  Now five years had passed since that afternoon, and during those five years Franzl had moved through a dozen countries and a hundred identities. He really had evaporated. He lived nowhere and everywhere. He had no name, he knew no one, he loved no one.

  His father, mother, sister, aunts had all been taken to camps and killed in the meantime, and he was wanted by the Germans for a long list of crimes. And yet here he sat, at a table in the low October sun in front of the Hôtel de France, drinking a beer and watching the comings and goings on the square in Saint-Léon-sur-Dême, a village he had never heard of before yesterday.

  He was thinner now. He had a wispy beard. He had a cap pulled low over his eyes. He was called Simon, although that name was on none of the identification cards he carried. His hands were no longer smooth.

  Simon smoked a cigarette and drank and watched. He did not pretend to read a newspaper. He looked about openly, ta
king it all in, almost as though he wanted to be noticed. He watched the German colonel arrive on foot: very proper and erect, not young, a veteran of the Great War, undoubtedly. His career had probably been a satisfactory one, judging by his confident step. Then came the lieutenant. He looked like SS to Simon. Something about his carriage. A lieutenant with a secret. Then a sergeant left the building carrying files. Another sergeant arrived.

  Yves Renard, the village gendarme, arrived and unlocked his office. Unimpressive. Not in uniform. My God, he looked young. Across the way, some women waited in line by the bakery. A man passed in front of him. The man tried to look at Simon without looking, before going into the mechanic’s shop.

  Yves had his back to the door when he heard it open. By the time he turned around, the man was already seated on the chair facing Yves’s desk. The man sat casually and yet lightly, like a cat that could scamper away in an instant. He kept his cap on.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” said Yves, “how may I help you?”

  Simon smiled slightly. He did not rise or offer his hand or even speak right away. Yves began to repeat himself. “Monsieur…”

  “Are you the gendarme, Yves Renard?” said Simon. He had a strong German accent.

  “I am, monsieur,” said Yves. “How may I help you?”

  “I have come about this,” said Simon, and unfolded a copy of Liberation on the policeman’s desk.

  Yves looked at the paper. “That is from May, monsieur. This is October. I’m afraid there have been more of these … tracts since then. We have tried unsuccessfully to discover…” Yves stopped speaking and watched the stranger watching him. “May I ask, monsieur, why this is of interest to you?”

  “Let’s just say, Monsieur Renard, that I am a Paris subscriber. I have come from Paris because … let’s just say the paper interests me.”

  “Are you here in an official capacity, monsieur?”

  “I suppose I am, Monsieur Renard. Let’s just say that I am.”

  The stranger was not in uniform. But these days more and more Nazi officials traveled incognito.

  “May I ask you for some identification, monsieur?” said Yves. He wanted to know whether he should be prepared to arrest the man or to be arrested himself. Simon reached inside his jacket and withdrew an identification card. Yves studied the card. The picture was of the man sitting across from him. He was identified on the card as Major Gerhard Hohenwald of the Waffen-SS. Yves passed the card back across the table.

  “So, monsieur,” said Yves yet again, “please tell me how I can help you.”

  “This ‘tract,’ as you call it—I gather you have no idea who is producing it?”

  “As I said, monsieur, I have been trying since the day it first appeared to discover who is producing it. The Gestapo in Tours has tried as well. Lieutenant Essart’s efforts—the Gestapo man in Tours, as you surely know—he has turned up no one. He arrested one man for publishing it. The man was not the culprit. We have had no success.”

  “And yet, Monsieur Renard, this is a small town, is it not? Someone must know something. You must be well connected in town. I am astonished you are unable to discover the author. Unless you are ineffectual, monsieur. I suppose incompetence is always a possibility, is it not?”

  “Yes, monsieur,” Yves said without hesitation and without irony, “incompetence is certainly a possibility. In fact, that must be it. Incompetence. What other reason could there be?”

  Simon reached into his pocket and withdrew a different identification card.

  He looked at it and then slid it across the table to Yves. The policeman looked puzzled. “Look at it, Monsieur Renard.”

  Yves picked it up. This card was French and identified the man in front of him as Jacques Duclos. Yves studied the identification card more carefully than he had the first. The paper felt right, the stamps seemed correct, the photo was properly embossed.

  “Monsieur,” he said finally, “you are carrying false identification. One or the other. If the first one is false, then you have committed a crime that carries the death penalty.…”

  “Both,” said Simon.

  “What?” said Yves.

  “I said both. Both identifications are false.”

  “May I please see—”

  “I do not have a legitimate identification card, Monsieur Renard. I am a Jew from Berlin, and I left my card behind when I fled.”

  “Traveling without any identification, monsieur, is also a crime.”

  The stranger said nothing.

  “What do you want from me?” said Yves.

  “You still do not know, Monsieur Renard?”

  “What I know, monsieur…”

  “Simon.”

  “What I know, Monsieur Simon, I may not know. You leave me little choice, monsieur. It is my duty to place you under arrest.”

  “Let me try to dissuade you from that course of action, Renard. And let me be so explicit that your ridiculous pretend-ignorance will no longer be possible. First of all, as to identification…” Simon stood up and unbuckled his belt. Before Yves could protest, he had opened his pants and presented his circumcised penis. “Identification,” he said. “Irrefutable.” He buckled his pants and sat back down.

  “Now: I want you to present me to someone local, someone you trust who is resisting the Germans in some serious fashion. It doesn’t matter who it is.”

  It was finally impossible for Yves to contain his astonishment. “What makes you think—”

  “This,” said Simon, and laid a gigantic silver pistol on the desk in front of him. “Do not be coy with me, Renard. I am the real thing. And I have been directed to you, because someone believes that you are the real thing too.”

  “Who…?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I will give you a while to think about it. Then I will see you again.” Simon rose, stuck the pistol in his belt, and left the office. Yves watched in astonishment as Simon paused outside the door. He looked around the square, buttoned his jacket, looked around again as though he had all day, and finally sauntered off in the direction of the Hôtel de France.

  * * *

  “You know the guy you saw drinking beer at the hotel?” said Onesime.

  “Yes?” said Jean.

  “I wonder if this thing with the count has anything to do with him?”

  “Exactly what did the count say?” Jean wanted to know.

  “He said to go to the cave after midnight.”

  “He said you’re going to meet someone?”

  “Not exactly. But something he said made me think someone else is involved.”

  Midnight came. A thin drizzle was falling. Onesime carried his bicycle away from the house. He rode down the center of the road. He passed through town. The Trout was closed and dark. At L’Homme he turned toward the vineyards.

  The entry door to the count’s cave was shut. No cars were in sight. Onesime pulled at the door. It was open. Inside it was pitch black.

  “Bring your bicycle inside.” That was the count’s voice. Onesime did as he was told. Once he had closed the door, a light came on. But it was not like before, where a string of bulbs had led through the darkness into the depth of the cave. Now there was one weak bulb dimly illuminating the front of the cave. Everything else was in darkness.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “Of course, monsieur. Has something happened?”

  “Nothing has happened, Onesime.”

  “Monsieur?”

  “When something happens, it will be because we cause it to happen.”

  “What might that be, monsieur?”

  “That depends on you.” This voice came from the darkness. Simon stepped forward into the dim light.

  “Who is this, monsieur?” said Onesime. He turned to the man. “Were you in town? Are you the one who visited Renard?”

  “I am Simon,” said the man. “I am from Paris. Now, make up a name for yourself, and whisper it in my ear so he cannot hear.”

  “A name?” Onesime tho
ught for a moment. “Van Gogh,” he whispered.

  “Are you an artist?” said Simon. Onesime nodded yes. “Then think up a different name, not an artist.”

  “Da Gama,” said Onesime. It was the first thing that came to mind. He did not know why. Maybe because he was thinking of maps. Onesime wished he had thought of something more clever. “Don’t tell that name to anyone who knows your real name,” said Simon. “Even if you trust them. And don’t tell your real name to anyone who knows you by your new name. It’s for your protection and theirs. That’s the first thing. And now,” said Simon, “it is time to prepare to attack.”

  * * *

  Jean had been waiting at the window for the last three hours. He woke up when he heard his bedroom door creak open. He showered Onesime with questions. “Attack? What attack? Why you? Who is he?”

  “He is called Simon. It’s not his real name. And it’s not just me or us he’s working with. He’s working with others.”

  “Who?”

  “He wouldn’t say. The less we know about each other the better.”

  “What kind of attack?”

  “We’re to come up with sabotage ideas and then report back.”

  “How?”

  “He said he will be in touch.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s German.”

  “German? How do we know it’s not a trap? Drawing maps and keeping records is one thing, but blowing something up is a different story.”

  “He says he’s a Jew. I don’t know how we know it’s not a trap. I guess we just have to trust him. The count seems to trust him. Are you thinking we should blow something up?”

  “That just came to mind. I mean, we know where there’s lots of ammunition and fuel. So…”

  Jean and Onesime pored over their notes and came up with three ideas:

  1. Blow up Grandfather’s cave.

  2. Blow up police department or Cheval Blanc.

  3. Blow up railroad bridge south of town (Tours).

  Walking home from work the next day, Jean was overtaken by a man on a bicycle. Jean recognized him as the man he had seen drinking beer on the hotel terrace. Jean called after him: “Bonjour, Simon.”