Codename Suzette

by Anne Nelson

  After the war the MNCR emerged as a legal organization, and Pastor Vergara and Marcelle Guillemot joined its board. The group’s leaders took an active role in aiding France’s shell-shocked Jewish population.

  Charles Lederman

  The Communist lawyer became a prominent politician in the postwar era, benefiting from the prestige the Communist Party had won with its resistance efforts. He served for many years as a senator and judge on the High Court of Justice (Haute cour de justice).

  Adam Rayski

  Like many of his counterparts, Rayski returned to Poland after the war to help build a new Communist Poland. But he soon ran afoul of the Communist Party and returned to France, where he was implicated in a Polish espionage case. He later became a leading historian of the Jewish resistance. He called his 1985 memoir Our Lost Illusions. Rayski died in 2008 at the age of eighty-five. His son, Benoît, the hidden child, became a noted author and critic who published a controversial 2012 article describing himself as an “Islamophobe.”

  Léon Chertok

  The handsome psychiatrist moved to New York in 1947 and worked at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he became an early advocate of the use of hypnosis in American psychiatry. Then he returned to France and developed a reputation as a renegade theorist. Chertok died in 1991 at the age of eighty. His son Grégoire became a managing partner at a Rothschild merchant bank.

  Sophie Schwartz

  Sophie Schwartz, Peggy Camplan, and the Milhauds devoted years of their lives to caring for the Jewish orphans. Sophie took many of them under her wing, and remained especially close to Larissa Gruszow. Sophie died in 1999 at the age of ninety-five.*

  Hélène Berr

  Hélène and her parents, Raymond and Antoinette, were arrested on March 7, 1944, held in Drancy for two weeks, then deported to Auschwitz. Antoinette was gassed on April 30, 1944, and Raymond was murdered in September. Hélène was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus in April 1945, a few weeks after Anne Frank died of the same cause in the same camp, and a few days before the camp’s liberation.

  Larissa Gruszow

  Larissa’s father returned from his POW camp after the war and took her to Poland with his second wife, but she was unhappy there. She received an engineering degree and returned to Belgium, where she lived with her husband and two children. She and Pilette and Bazou Spaak remain close friends.

  The Children

  After the war, Peggy Camplan told her charges at Renouveau that the master list of rescued children had been buried under a tree at Suzanne’s country house in Choisel. That list has not been found. The available evidence suggests that all of the children rescued by the network survived the occupation.

  Righteous Among the Nations

  The Yad Vashem memorial in Israel is charged with identifying non-Jews who risked their safety or their freedom to save Jewish lives from the Holocaust, with no expectation of personal gain. The process requires rigorous documentation. Suzanne Spaak was designated Righteous Among the Nations in 1985. Since then, at least fourteen members of her network have been so honored. Others include: Fernand and Odette Béchard (Oratoire parishioners); Marguerite Camplan (MNCR); Louis and Hélène Cardon (sheltered Larissa Gruszow); Simone and Adrien Chaye (sheltered children from the La Clairière rescue); Lucie Chevalley-Sabatier (founder of Entr’aide Temporaire); Noémie Fradin (sheltered Benoît Rayski and others); Marcelle Guillemot (social worker at La Clairière); Marie Marteau (ran the Hotel Stella, used as a way station for the network); and Paul and Marcelle Vergara (pastor of the Oratoire and his wife).

  ____________

  * The US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s online archives contain a video interview with her under the name of “Sophie Micnik.”

  Suzanne Lorge was the oldest daughter of a wealthy Belgian financier from a Catholic family. The romantic fourteen-year-old fell in love with fifteen-year-old Claude Spaak, and the two secretly became engaged.

  Claude Spaak, shown here with Suzanne and Pilette in 1928, was a member of Belgium’s leading political family. A talented writer and connoisseur of the arts, Claude proved to be a moody, difficult husband.

  The third party in the Spaak marriage was Suzanne’s school friend Ruth Peters. The tall, ungainly Canadian became Claude’s mistress while remaining Suzanne’s close friend and becoming an “aunt” to the children.

  Bazou, born in 1931, was a sunny, affectionate child who adored his parents and sister.

  When surrealist René Magritte went broke, Claude and Suzanne provided him with a monthly stipend from her inheritance, and Claude shared a steady stream of ideas for his paintings.

  Magritte worked from this photograph for his portrait of Suzanne. She looks puzzled and sad.

  In 1937–38, Suzanne led relief efforts for victims of the Spanish Civil War, taking the children to French villages to collect contributions. She stands to the left; Pilette sits at her feet, and Bazou stands to the right, both wearing their dance costumes.

  Claude’s brother Paul-Henri Spaak became Belgium’s prime minister in May 1938 at the age of thirty-nine. The following month he accompanied King Leopold III to a screening at the Palais des Beaux-Arts (shown here). Two years later, Spaak begged the king not to submit to the Nazi invaders.

  Pilette was a shy but spirited girl. She helped her mother with her humanitarian efforts at the same time she learned cooking and needlework.

  In 1938, Mira and Hersch Sokol, penniless Jewish refugees, arrived on Suzanne’s doorstep in France. Mira, a gentle intellectual, became her best friend.

  The Sokols were recruited by Soviet intelligence. In early 1942 they began operating a radio transmitter for Leopold Trepper, but they were arrested by the Gestapo four months later. These photos were taken in Gestapo custody.

  The Sokols’ torture sessions in Fort Breendonk were overseen by SS officer Philipp Schmitt, assisted by his dog, Lump.

  One of Suzanne’s counterparts at the MNCR was Adam Rayski, a fiery young journalist. He helped to organize the Jewish Communist armed resistance during the occupation, but he reproached the party for its passive response to the Jewish crisis.

  Léon Chertok, a handsome Jewish physician from Vilnius, acquired false identity papers through his female admirers. He worked closely with Suzanne in the children’s rescue efforts. He is shown here with a rescued child in the village of Noirvault.

  Sophie Schwartz supported Jewish families through her efforts in the MNCR. Childless herself, she devoted her life to promoting the welfare of Jewish immigrant children.

  Charles Lederman was a Warsaw-born Jewish lawyer and a founder of the MNCR. His blond hair and flawless French accent helped him avoid detection by the authorities.

  Suzanne’s work with the Jewish underground bolstered her confidence and prompted a makeover that included a stylish hat, burgundy suit, and ochre blouse.

  In July 1942, René Bousquet, the head of the French police, organized the Vel d’Hiv roundup in concert with the German SS. He personally extended the arrests to include children. This January 1943 photo shows him (in fur collar) in Marseilles with German officers preparing another roundup of Jews.

  The arrest and deportation of immigrant Jews mounted over 1942, leaving their families stranded. These children were consigned to the Lamarck orphanage in Montmartre, shown here in early 1943.

  Brussels-born siblings Sara and Simon Kejzman tried to escape to Switzerland but were turned back by the Swiss. The UGIF placed Simon in the Lamarck center and Sara in Guy Patin. They were among the children arrested at the centers on February 10 and deported (under the names of Marguerite and Simon Bogaert) on Convoy 47 on February 11. The February arrests inspired the rescue at La Clairière a few days later.

  Suzanne turned to Paul Vergara, the Protestant pastor of the Oratoire du Louvre. A longtime opponent of the Nazis, he quickly agreed to help with the children’s rescue operation.

  Vergara’s right-hand woman was the formidable Marcelle Guillemot, who ran the church s
oup kitchen at La Clairière. The pastor and the social worker offered it as a staging ground for le kidnapping. Guillemot would later make her own daring escape from the Gestapo.

  La Clairière had served the immigrant community in the Marais for decades. Marcelle Guillemot turned the church facility into a clandestine base for Jean Moulin’s Gaullist resistance.

  Larissa Gruszow was left at the Lamarck orphanage after her mother was deported to Auschwitz. Sophie Schwartz was desperate to help her friend’s forlorn daughter.

  With Suzanne’s and Vergara’s help, Larissa was placed with the Cardons, a prosperous Catholic family in Normandy. In this photo, she dances in a meadow on their estate with Vergara’s son, Sylvain. Vergara’s daughter, Éliane, dances with another child.

  Vergara’s son-in-law, Jacques Bruston, was an active member of the Gaullist resistance. Bruston and the pastor’s family paid a high price for their ideals.

  Suzanne’s famous neighbor Colette went down in history as an accommodationist, if not a collaborator. She was actually protecting her Jewish husband, Maurice Goudeket, shown here with her at their apartment in the Palais Royal. She also gave valuable support to Suzanne Spaak’s rescue network.

  Suzanne’s rescue network expanded to include Hélène Berr, a member of a prominent French Jewish family. She is shown here with Jewish children from the UGIF institutions.

  Dr. Robert Debré, an eminent Jewish pediatrician, shown here in 1935, used his privileged status to aid Suzanne’s rescue network. Along with the Countess de la Bourdonnaye, he supported the publication of the classic resistance novella Silence de la Mer and directed some of its profits to the children’s benefit.

  Debré’s partner was the dashing Countess de la Bourdonnaye, Elisabeth de la Panouse, known as “Dexia.” She left the count, a Vichy supporter, for her children’s pediatrician. Imprisoned as a member of the Musée de l’Homme group, she resumed her resistance work upon her release. She and Debré participated in a wide range of resistance activities throughout the occupation.

  In September 1943, Soviet agent Leopold Trepper escaped from German custody. The Vichy police put out a wanted poster describing him as “a foreigner who directs a group of foreign terrorists.”The Gestapo followed his trail to the Spaak residence.

  The head of the Rote Kapelle task force was Gestapo officer Heinz Pannwitz. He conducted the interrogations of Pilette, Bazou, and their relations.

  After Suzanne’s arrest, her funds were no longer available to support the hidden children. British SOE agent Dennis Barrett, a gentlemen’s tailor in peacetime, learned of the crisis and came to the rescue.

  Jacques Grou-Radenez, master printer of the resistance. He and his wife hid Jewish children for Suzanne, and his fate was her only regret.

  Abbé Franz Stock, the German chaplain, secretly aided members of the French Resistance imprisoned at Fresnes. He had helped the Countess de la Bourdonnaye in 1942, and consoled Suzanne two years later. He was posthumously honored by both the French government and Pope John XXIII.

  Suzanne spent eight months in a spartan cell in the women’s wing of the Fresnes prison, a “factory of despair” outside Paris.

  After the Liberation, the French government gave the MNCR a villa—previously a German military facility—to serve as a home for the hidden children who were left unclaimed. The children called it Renouveau (“Renewal”) and named a room after Suzanne Spaak.

  Pilette and Bazou Spaak in Paris in 2015.

  acknowledgments

  Some years ago, in the course of researching Red Orchestra, I came across a crudely retouched photo of Suzanne Spaak in the memoirs of Soviet agent Leopold Trepper. I was struck by her haunting gaze and tried to learn more about her, without success. I found an occasional sentence or paragraph in various histories of the Occupation, but no major articles or books, in French or English, that told her story.

  In 2009, I tracked down her daughter, Pilette, in suburban Maryland. She was glad to hear from me. “Everyone said Mama was a Soviet spy,” she told me. “I wouldn’t care if she was, but she was something completely different.” That conversation set off a series of three dozen interviews, conducted over seven years in Washington, DC’s Union Station, her Maryland living room, and finally her apartment outside Paris. The story revealed how principled individuals of many different nationalities and religious backgrounds worked together in the name of compassion and decency.

  Pilette was unfailingly generous in sharing her story with me. She introduced me to her brother, Paul-Louis (“Bazou”), who added to her recollections, and to members of the Lorge and Spaak clans, who offered their perspectives. My deepest thanks go to Pilette and Bazou, as well as to Tommy Happé, Anthony Palliser, and Antoinette Spaak. I also thank the “hidden children” who shared their memories and archival materials: Jacques Alexandre, Sami Dassa, and Larissa Gruszow. I could not have written this book without them. I am very grateful for the assistance of now-grown children of the rescue network: Claude Bassi-Lederman, Oriane de la Bourdonnaye Guéna, Richard Bruston, and Michèle Meunier. I thank Lillie Paquette for her artful and sensitive video recording of interviews with many of these individuals and the sites they inhabited.

  Two distinguished historians, my Columbia colleague Volker Berghahn and the late Allan Mitchell, read a long manuscript and helped me find the book within, and encouraged me when I most needed it.

  In Paris, I received assistance from the Mémorial de la Shoah and the Archives du Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, as well as from the Musée du Général Leclerc de Hautecloque et de la Libération de Paris–Musée Jean Moulin. I am grateful to the clergy and congregation of l’Oratoire du Louvre, in addition to the staffs of La Clairière and the Centre Israélite de Montmartre at 16 Rue Lamarck, both of which continue to serve immigrant communities. Guy Bourgeois shared his insights on the strange history of Leopold Trepper. In New York, I benefited from the unparalleled resources of the Butler Library at Columbia University and the Dorot Jewish Division of the New York Public Library, and in Washington, DC, from the archives of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. I offer my appreciation to the Bibliothèque nationale de France and its superb online resource Gallica, as well as Google Books, which was indespensable in tracing obscure sources in several languages.

  I thank my fine research assistant, Avery Curran, for her help in analyzing contemporary press accounts and the role of activists in Lyon. Kristen Frederickson did me a great favor in tracking down Magritte’s La ligne de la vie in London. David Armstrong also shared insights on research.

  Friends, including Lauren Belfer, Sharon Isbin, Tommy Kail, Jack Snyder, and Lauren Westbrook, have advised and cheered me along the way. The Twelfth Night Players have lifted my spirits, and D. F. Sharp has given me wise counsel. My parents, Ted and Gerada Nelson, sowed the seeds of my interest in this period. George Black and David Nelson Black have shared that interest, and Julia Nelson Black has lent her editorial perspective at critical junctures.

  The Salzmann Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University has given me the valuable opportunity to pursue my research as a fellow there. Some of this work was conceived during a Bellagio Fellowship, and I offer my warm appreciation to the Rockefeller Foundation and the other fellows. My 2005 Guggenheim fellowship nurtured this book as well as my last one.

  I thank my legendary editor, Alice Mayhew, at Simon & Schuster, for her enthusiasm for this book and for her keen editorial eye in guiding it to completion. Her assistant, Stuart Roberts, has provided ongoing support. My editor at Robert Laffont in Paris, Dorothée Cuneo, offered valuable research assistance. I am very lucky to have Ethan Bassoff as my agent. He has been a joy to work with every step of the way.

  appendix

  Suzanne Spaak sent these letters to her children from the prison at Fresnes two months before she was executed.

  Fresnes on 12 June 1944

  My darling little Pilette,

  Despite the purpose of my letter, I am still
very happy to be able to write to you, to be able to tell you, my little darling, how much I love you, how my thoughts are constantly with you all even at night, for it is then that I dream about you. I never felt as if I were completely alone, it seems to me that you all surround me, and your dear presence makes the hours fly quickly. Seven months are not much to think about everyone you love, to evoke all the good memories they have given you.

  Since I have permission to do so, I will tell you a lot about my life here and you will see that there is a way, even in prison, to say with Goethe: “Whatever is LIFE is a good thing.”

  Fresnes does not resemble Saint-Gilles at all, it is a “beautiful” prison, which is next to Antony, almost in the country, and a wonderful number of birds sing around me. I recognize the finch, the blackbird, the swallow, the robin, and a few times I heard a cuckoo. The cells are large, lit by a huge window (on the days when the weather is nice I have sun all afternoon). The bed doesn’t fold up and I have a good woolen mattress. A board fixed to the wall serves as a table. There’s a wooden floor and a real toilet.

  The disciplinary and food regime is really tolerable, and the two guards in charge of me are particularly kind. (For example, they let me lie on my bed during the day as long as I want, which is my favorite position.) I get up at 8am and make my bed, sweep, and do ten minutes of gymnastics. After my toilette I have lunch (coffee and bread, and I always have something to put on it). At noon we have a bowl of very good soup, so much that I always have some left for supper. At 4 o’clock coffee again—with the bread I get some butter and often cheese, and on Sunday a piece of meat.