Alex's Wake

by Martin Goldsmith

  So when the Statute on Jews of October 3, 1940, went into effect, and zealots such as René Bousquet began their campaign to separate undesirables from mainstream French society, the camp at Agde was fully prepared to take in this new population. The first of the Israélites étrangers—foreign Jews—arrived at the railroad siding in Agde in the last days of October. They were former citizens of Germany, Austria, Armenia, and Yugoslavia who had made their way to France thinking they had found a refuge from the Nazi plague that had infected their homelands. Alex and Helmut joined them on November 9, after having made the journey from Montauban in a boxcar designed for transporting cows and horses. I wonder if Alex, given his family’s history with horses, ever gave thought to the tragic irony of this manner of transportation.

  He and his son walked from the train station to the gates of the camp, carrying their meager luggage. Once they arrived, the travelers were divided into two groups: the women and children went in one direction, while men and boys fourteen years of age and older were sent in another. Husbands and wives were kept apart. Alex and Helmut were assigned to Barracks No. 13 in Agde Camp No. 3, which was separated from the other camps and from the outside world by a fifteen-foot fence topped with barbed wire. The barracks were each about one hundred feet long, made of heavy cardboard to which had been added a layer of tar. The floors were slabs of concrete, the windows made of screens coated with plastic. On warm days, it was stifling inside the barracks; on cold days, it was bone-chilling.

  A scene from the interior of one of the barracks of Camp d’Agde, showing the wooden benches that served as sleeping quarters. Conditions inside the barracks were either stifling or bone-chilling and there was nothing to do.

  (Services des Archives, Commune d’Agde)

  When Alex and Helmut entered Barracks No. 13 on November 9, they were each handed a sack about three feet long and told to fill their sacks with straw from a pile in the corner of the barracks. The result was a makeshift mattress that would rest atop the wooden bench that would serve as their sleeping quarters. Their only privacy from other families was provided by a blanket hung from the low ceiling. Outside the barracks, there were a few taps that provided water for drinking and washing, but no containers for transporting water into the barracks. Latrines were concrete structures with individual spaces for standing or squatting and large petrol drums below. The latrines naturally attracted vermin and clouds of flies.

  Each camp had its own kitchen where meals were served twice a day, usually a thin soup with potatoes, occasionally supplemented with brown bread. One night in late November, when Alex and Helmut had been in Agde nearly three weeks, a fire broke out in the kitchen of the women’s camp. Some of the men, realizing that a fire could easily consume the other tarred-cardboard barracks, attempted to cross into the women’s camp to douse the flames, but they were beaten back by the camp’s guards. The fire was extinguished before it spread, but soon thereafter the women’s kitchen was replaced by a brick structure.

  The guards of Camp Agde, the men (and a few women) who had prevented the prisoners from crossing into the women’s camp, were all French. There were no Germans barking orders in their clipped, angular language; everything was spoken in the smooth vowels and throaty consonants of the Gallic vernacular. There were no beatings, no physical intimidation, no overt violence.

  There was also nothing to do. The residents of Camp Agde aimlessly wandered the confines of their enclosures every day, “vegetating,” as one survivor described it. No one was killed; instead one rotted slowly.

  After nearly a month of this existence, Alex characteristically decided to take matters into his own hands. He found some writing materials, sat down on his bench in his barracks, and wrote a letter, in literate and rather elegant French, to the prefect of Hérault in Montpellier. The letter, which I discovered in the holdings of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., is dated 5 December 1940 and displays the return address Camp 3, Barracks 13, Agde.

  It is my honor to request your benevolence to help liberate myself and my son, Klaus Helmut, age 19, from the Camp in Agde.

  On May 13, 1939, we boarded the steamship St. Louis, headed for Cuba, but due to a change in government we were unable to disembark in Havana, and we, along with a number of the other passengers, had to disembark on June 20, 1939, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, where the French government kindly took us in.

  A portion of Alex’s letter to the prefect of Hérault, dated December 5, 1940. “It is my honor to request your benevolence to help liberate myself and my son . . . from the Camp in Agde.”

  (Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

  During the winter of 1939–1940, my son and I became gravely ill. I myself was hospitalized in Contrexéville (Vosges) at the Central Hospital, where I remained for four months. My son suffered from chronic throat infections and, at one point, from pleurisy, and the doctor ordered an operation for him (attached please find the medical certificate). [Alas, the medical certificate disappeared sometime in the last seven decades.]

  The American Joint Distribution Committee deposited $500 for each of us, thus a total of $1,000, so that we would not be a burden to the state. The Committee made this commitment to subsidize our needs until our departure oversees, which I hope is not far off.

  I beseech you once again to grant our freedom, as the state of our health will not enable us to spend a winter in the camp.

  In the hope that you will follow up my request, Monsieur le Prefet, I send my most respectful greetings.

  Alex Goldschmidt

  My grandfather’s letter did not go unnoticed. Apparently, the prefect looked into the matter and asked a lower official, the sous-préfet of the town of Béziers—about ten miles northwest of Agde—to make some inquiries. On December 16, eleven days after Alex wrote his letter, the sous-préfet sent a note to the prefect of Hérault on paper bearing the words État Français, meaning “French state,” the name the Vichy government had adopted. The note read:

  I have the honor to address herein the request made by Goldschmidt, Alex, who is currently interned at Camp Agde. He is soliciting the liberation of himself and his 19-year-old son Klaus.

  The following information has been collected regarding the person concerned: German, resident of Martigny-les-Bains (Vosges) since July, 1939. No resources. Claimed by the Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés in Marseille (48 Rue de la Paix). The committee certifies that the American Joint Distribution Committee has made available to him and his family all the relief necessary to meet and sustain their needs.

  Franz Kafka himself could not have written a more opaque, witless communiqué. Monsieur sous-préfet learns from the well-meaning people at CAR that the Joint has pledged some funds so that Alex and Helmut would not become, in Alex’s words, “a burden to the state,” and concludes that all their needs are being met. The fact that Alex and his son have “no resources” is apparently trumped by the unseen but overwhelming benevolence of the Americans. Alex’s request for liberation is mentioned but neither granted nor denied. Neither is the state of the two men’s health a matter for consideration, despite the undeniable fact that winter weather has descended upon Agde and its weakened internees. A letter has been received; the matter has been looked into; the bureaucracy’s wheels grind on; there is nothing to be done.

  A few days later, the life of Camp Agde was brightened briefly by a combined Christmas/Hannukah concert, for which a small group of local choristers entered the gates and sang carols and traditional songs. The menu of thin potato soup was supplemented by a portion of locally caught fish. For this one day, men and women were allowed to mingle, husbands and wives were reunited; for one precious day, the joy of the season was shared by the inmates of Agde.

  As the year came to a close, Captain Tassard, Camp Agde’s commandant, issued a status report. In a document dated 31 December 1940, the captain reported to the authorities in Vichy that the camp had 2,335 male internees, 1,520 women, 867 chil
dren, and 245 infants under three years old, for a grand total of 4,967 souls. Within a fortnight, that figure would be drastically reduced. Alex and Helmut and many hundreds of their fellow prisoners were once again loaded onto cattle cars and shipped to their next destination: a vast plain at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains and a camp called Rivesaltes.

  SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011. The morning air is fresh and sweet, with a playful breeze off the cobalt-blue billows of the Mediterranean gently tickling the red carnations on our balcony, perhaps wafting all the way from the legendary Happy Isles of Greek mythology. I awaken early and take a walk along the shell-strewn beach, trying to imagine the more than two millennia of human history these rocks and waves have witnessed. In this frame of mind, I am startled but not completely thunderstruck to behold Poseidon emerging from beneath the sea, his trident brandished aloft. It turns out to be only a local fisherman wearing a shiny black wetsuit, his spear gun clutched in one hand, a metal mesh basket full of his wriggling catch in the other.

  Later, after a breakfast of croissants, jam, honey, and tea, we drive back to Agde and find the office of the municipal archives, where we have an appointment with Madame Irene Dauphin. She kindly provides us with some old photographs of the camp, a few documents—including the memo regarding Alex from the sous-préfet—and her genuine sympathy for my story. She also points the way to the site of Camp Agde, less than a mile away. We set off on foot.

  In the small space created by the diverging Rue Paul Balmigère and the Avenue Jean Moulin, we discover a memorial to those interned at Agde. The circular floor of the memorial is paved with bricks. At the eastern side of the circle is a curved stone structure with six spaced tablets, all at roughly chest level. In the middle of the curve rises a chimney-shaped tower about fifteen feet tall, or about as high as the walls that enclosed Alex, Helmut, and the thousands of their fellow prisoners at Camp Agde.

  The six tablets honor each group of people interned at the camp between 1939 and 1943: the Spanish, the Czechs, the Belgians, foreigners in general, the Jews in particular, and the first refugees from Indochina. Though I have heard stories of rampant anti-Semitism in contemporary France, we are surprised and saddened to see that, of the six tablets, only the one naming the Jews has been defaced by graffiti. But a greater shock awaits us when we translate the words on the tower. “Here stood Camp Agde,” they proclaim to all who pass by. “Tens of thousands of men stayed here in their march toward freedom.”

  This is the legacy of Camp Agde in the minds of the local citizenry? A way station on the path to freedom?! Have these people not heard of the Final Solution, of the Six Million, of the goddamn Holocaust itself? I am beside myself with anger and sorrow.

  We walk on slowly in the gathering heat, under a blazing sun. A street called Rue du Camp d’Agde, prettily landscaped with crimson bougainvillea, leads us to the campus of René Cassin College. René Cassin was a French jurist and human rights activist who, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. His namesake college now stands on the land once occupied by Camp Agde, one of the world’s many travesties of justice that necessitated M. Cassin’s declaration.

  In a small clearing between a parking lot and an outdoor basketball court, we come upon two more memorials, each in the shape of a stone marker about six feet high. On one are the words, “In memory of 41 Jews deported from Camp Agde, transferred to Drancy in August, 1942, and then deported to Auschwitz on Convoy 25, August 28, 1942.” “Ah, so the news did filter down here after all,” I mutter to Amy.

  The memorial to Camp Agde. “Tens of thousands of men stayed here in their march toward freedom.”

  The adjacent marker is headlined “The Just of Agde.” It mentions the names of four local families who hid Jews during the early 1940s: M. Achille Bautes, M. et Mme. Joseph Joly, M. et Mme. Paul Carrausse, and M. Jean Pallares. Below these names are the familiar words of the Talmud: “Who Saves One Life Saves the Entire Universe.”

  I am sure that these were indeed good people. But somehow today it is not enough to mollify or impress me. “So they came up with four righteous families in Agde,” I say to Amy. “Bully for them!”

  We return to our car, drive into old Agde, find a café on the edge of the canal, and order a savory lunch of quiche and mineral water. The sky remains deep blue, the breeze caresses our hair, the sun sparkles on the surface of the water, the food is excellent, and we are alive and well. Yet I find that all I can think about are the desolate images of Camp Agde from Mme. Dauphin’s photo collection and the insultingly obtuse words on the memorial tower.

  Again I am beset by doubts concerning the journey that has brought us to this flavorful meal on this picturesque spot. Once more, I wonder whether my desire to follow in the footsteps of Alex and Helmut is not the tribute to them that I intended, but in fact a grotesque mime of a tribute, a six-week self-indulgent European tour, complete with fine food, lovely countryside, and now an extravagant sojourn by the sparkling Mediterranean. I am deeply unhappy, shaken by the day’s discoveries and mourning my lost family more than ever.

  We finish our meal in silence, and I add to my litany of sorrows a fear that Amy may be tiring of my doleful company. We return to our hotel, where Amy announces her desire to swim in the sea. I remain on our balcony, gazing at the scalloped waves, simultaneously enjoying the view and feeling guilty for my enjoyment. The sun slowly sets, Amy returns all aglow from her evening swim, and another soft Mediterranean night descends upon us. In my unhappy frame of mind, I go to bed and experience a memorable dream.

  I am watching a play. There are actors on a stage, and I am seated in the audience. In other words, I am an observer, outside, rather than part of, the “action.” The play involves an African-American family, and there is a decided civil rights component to the play’s theme. The family’s spiritual and moral center is embodied by the strong matriarch, a character reminiscent of Lena Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s outstanding play A Raisin in the Sun. But this is not Raisin or any play that I know.

  I have been watching the play for some time and feel invested in the action and in the characters. I am anxious, in other words, to see what happens next. As I lean forward in my seat, the Lena Younger character clearly says to another character on stage, “Your grandfather would be proud of you.” As she says these words, she reaches above her head and rests her hand on a rough piece of wood that in the play seems to be a judicial ruling spot of some kind. In other words, it was the place where judges rule, which in common parlance is a bench.

  In my dream, a moment or two or five or ten pass slowly before I realize the significance of those words and that gesture for me. In the context of the dream, it was “just” a line in the play’s script. But almost immediately after that line was spoken, I wake up and understand that the hard wooden bench suggests the benches that Alex and Helmut were forced to use as beds at Camp Agde, and that the words uttered by that woman have been meant for me.

  I have no idea why those reassuring words in the play were delivered by a black woman and not spoken directly to me by Amy or a friend or even my father or brother. But I do know that those words, which I can still hear in the ringing cadences of that kind matriarchal figure, have made me feel a good deal better. I slip quietly out of bed so as not to disturb my loving wife and pad out onto the balcony, there to bask in the cold bright light of the stars and to revel in the sound of the timeless sea breaking on the ancient rocky shore.

  I am sure that the blues will find me again soon enough, but for now I am deeply comforted by the thought that Alex would be proud of me for undertaking this journey. This is surely an example of the subconscious mind working in mysterious ways, but as I listen again to my black female inner voice I decide that my quest is not a sham, not a mere excuse for a grand European adventure, but indeed the result of my need to know, to witness, to reveal, and, if not to save my grandfather and uncle, perhaps to save myself.

&nbs
p; With a last look at the stars that have witnessed centuries of human drama on this weathered coastline, I return to bed. I lightly kiss Amy’s right ear, and she purrs in her sleep.

  In the months since Agde, I have thought often of the dream and its many potential meanings. I consider the possibility that somehow the Greek spirit of Agathe Tyche, Good Fortune, has lingered in that corner of its long-departed empire. Perhaps I was not in a modern theater with a proscenium and a thrust stage, but rather seated in the sloping curves of an amphitheater attending a play by one of the original fathers of drama. In Agamemnon, the playwright Aeschylus assures his audience, “In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”