Alex's Wake

by Martin Goldsmith

  Upward of ten thousand internees of Camp des Milles suffered from the overcrowded conditions, the lack of hygiene and decent food, and most of all from the crushing inactivity. They had no reason to get up every morning to greet another day of mindless, dull routine mixed with a constant low-level fear of what the far-off authorities in Paris had in store for them.

  Within the fenced and barbed-wire enclosure of the camp, prisoners had two options: they could be either inside or outside the immense factory building that dominated the space; neither option was particularly pleasant. Out in the dusty open, there was no shade to block the blazing Provençal sun or protection from rain or the frequent winds that whipped the dust into miniature cyclones. Inside the factory was near total darkness and, depending on the season, a clammy cold or an oppressive heat. There were no windows on the ground floor, the site of the kilns where the bricks had been formed. On the bright side, since brick making requires straw, there was a generous supply of the soft fiber on hand for use as bedding material. But the straw was the only amenity offered by the camp; there were no bunks, cots, or even mattresses, just clumps of straw and the occasional blanket that a fortunate internee had either brought from home or purchased on the camp’s thriving black market. The ground floor of the factory was eventually filled with the delicately negotiated and often fiercely defended sleeping quarters of hundreds of men who lay head to foot from one wall to the other. Brick dust lay everywhere and polluted the air that everyone breathed.

  Detainees walked up a rickety flight of wooden steps to reach the factory’s second floor. This space was more commodious, and one wall was almost entirely made of windows, which promised more light. But that promise was broken because of the authorities’ fear of air raids; some of the windows were boarded up and the rest were painted dark blue to inhibit detection of any interior light. The result was perpetual twilight during the day and pitch darkness during the interminable nights. A few feeble electric light bulbs and the occasional candle provided light, but candles were used sparingly in the presence of all that straw. There were no chairs, no tables, and no benches provided, only piles and piles of old bricks. The inmates would often attempt to use the bricks to construct furniture, but without mortar it invariably collapsed. The second floor, like the first, soon became crowded with men huddling in their own small nests of straw.

  Each morning the camp resounded with a bugler playing a wakeup reveille at 5:30. Twenty minutes later, the prisoners received the day’s meager ration of bread, along with a tin cup of weak coffee. Around 11 a.m., the midday meal was served, consisting usually of soup made of lentils or beans, sometimes with some stringy meat of indeterminate origin. The evening meal, served at 5 p.m., was generally less robust than lunch, with a bit of cheese accompanied by the occasional sausage or sardine. Once a week, typically on Saturday or Sunday, the fare would be augmented by eggs and wine from local farms and vineyards. At 9 p.m., the bugle would sound again, directing everyone outside to return to the factory’s interior. The large iron doors would slam shut behind the last man, and everyone shuffled to his wretched bed of straw. Thirty minutes later all lights were extinguished, and the prisoners faced another night in which their proximity to each other made sleep fitful at best. Inmate Harry Alexander recalled in an interview conducted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “I cried a lot, we all cried a lot, thirteen-year-old boys, old men, all of us huddling on our piles of straw in the utter darkness.”

  The courtyard of Camp des Milles, with the former brick factory in the background, circa 1941.

  (©ECPAD—Collections La documentation française–Raymond Brajou)

  Out in the yard, there were four latrines on one end of the enclosure and three on the other. They were essentially little outhouses made of wood, each with a single hole in a plank situated only a few yards above a foul morass of human waste, which was visited constantly by swarms of flies. At all hours of the day, lines of almost a hundred men stretched from each latrine into the center of the enclosure. At night, the prisoners were restricted to four indoor latrines that were declared off-limits during the day. A prisoner’s nocturnal trips to relieve himself were hindered by the darkness and the challenge of navigating among the thousands of men stretched out on the floor and then finding his way back to his own pile of straw. Thus, when the doors of the factory swung open each morning at 5:30, men would awkwardly race each other across the yard for the privilege of being first in line.

  But the three meager meals and the lines to use the latrines were welcome islands in a daily ocean of boredom. There was little to do. The guards would occasionally order groups to transport a pile of bricks from one corner to another or even to dig holes and then fill them up again, but for the most part—in keeping with the overall lack of cruelty or mistreatment—there was little interaction between guards and prisoners. So men filled their idle hours in conversation, often speculating about the unknown future, and in irregular dealings with what became a bustling black market.

  A prisoner needed hard currency to make transactions in the market, but if he had the money, nearly everything was for sale. Such items as clothing and blankets were available, as well as food supplies and newspapers obtained from outside the gates. A farmer came once a week to collect camp garbage such as potato peelings for his pigs, and he brought little portions of cooked pork wrapped in newspaper that he sold when the guards’ backs were turned. But prisoners could also buy or sell the camp’s own rations or cigarettes or a precious place in the latrine lines. Through these acts of getting and spending, the men of Camp des Milles not only improved their lot, but also managed to get through another day, twenty-four hours closer, they all hoped, to a resolution of their fates.

  For everyone who made his nightly manger bed of straw in the brick factory was in some sense a member of the elite—a small, favored slice of Europe’s Jewish population that was desperate to emigrate elsewhere, to escape the increasingly tangible menace threatened daily by the advance of Germany and National Socialism. In March 1941, HICEM—an international organization dedicated to helping European Jews emigrate to safety—set up an office at Camp des Milles, thus granting it the unique status of a transit camp. Camp des Milles was considered a gateway, populated only by those for whom others had spoken and obtained the necessary papers; affidavits had been signed abroad and emigration was an assumed conclusion once the final step—a visa—had been obtained. So every day passed in the crowded brickyard was, in the hopeful minds of the incarcerated, another step on the uncertain but deeply desired road to freedom.

  That road led to Marseille, the bustling Mediterranean seaport town only about thirty kilometers to the south. Most journeys abroad would likely leave from Marseille, and the city was also home to many foreign consulates. So, although Camp des Milles was a detainment camp, the authorities allowed for the occasional journey to Marseille if official business was to be transacted. In order to make the trip, a prisoner had to leave the camp precisely when the factory doors opened at 5:30 a.m. and to be on the Les Milles-to-Marseille streetcar by 6:00; according to the aforementioned Harry Alexander, Jews were not allowed to board the streetcar after six o’clock. Another former prisoner, Rudolf Adler, told a Holocaust Museum interviewer that he made several trips into Marseille to visit the Chinese consulate (he and his family successfully emigrated to Shanghai) but never attempted to escape, always returning to the camp at the end of spending a long day with Chinese officials. A well-brought-up German, he put his trust in what he believed was a well-ordered system and simply waited for the wheels of justice to grind slowly in his favor.

  Another aspect of life at Camp des Milles that made it markedly different from more severe work or concentration camps was the singular collection of artists and intellectuals who were housed there and their attempts to introduce a high level of artistic performance and scholarly pursuits to their fellow inmates. Among those imprisoned at the former brick factory were such figures as the surrealist pa
inter Max Ernst, the historian Golo Mann (the son of novelist Thomas Mann), the Nobel Prize–winning physician Otto Fritz Meyerhof, composer Franz Waxman (best known in later years for writing the scores for such Hollywood films as Sunset Boulevard and Rear Window), sculptor Peter Lipman-Wulf, and writer Lion Feuchtwanger, whose memoir, The Devil in France, remains the most arresting account of daily life in the camp.

  These and other enterprising inmates converted the factory’s main brick oven, a tunnel stretching more than a hundred yards, into a cabaret that they christened Die Katakombe, or The Catacombs, borrowing the name from a political nightclub in 1920s Berlin. Shrouded by the literal darkness of the stone oven and the figurative gloom of their uncertain incarceration, and lit only by guttering candles and their esthetic determination, the prisoners staged plays and operas, offered lectures on topics both whimsical and practical, and sang and danced their way through many an endless night. Max Ernst gave informal talks about painting and also offered demonstrations of his unusual technique. A former dancer with the Monte Carlo ballet, Theodor Schlicker, was a transvestite who performed in The Catacombs as Thea. Scholars and teachers lectured on Shakespeare and Tolstoy and offered courses ranging from home repair to bookbinding.

  Peter Lipman-Wulf wrote about his memories of those artistic and intellectual offerings: “The scenario in the flickering light, casting mysterious shadows of our bundled-up comrades, was highly dramatic, but also romantic and timeless. Every eye was hanging on the lips of the speakers and, in our enclave-like meeting grounds, one truly believed oneself to be transported back to the time of the Catacombs of ancient Rome.”

  But as welcome as these diversions were and as vital to the prisoners’ morale, the plays, lectures, and song recitals could only do so much to alleviate the overwhelming tedium of daily life in the camp. Feuchtwanger concluded, “What I found most difficult about the camp was the fact that one could never be alone, that constantly, day and night, every act, every physical function, eating, sleeping, voiding, was performed in the presence of hundreds of men, men who were talking, shouting, moaning, weeping, laughing, feeding, smacking their lips, wiping their mouths, sweating, smelling, snoring. We did everything in the most public view, and my greatest desire was to be rid of all that throng.”

  MY GRANDFATHER AND UNCLE were delivered into that throng in July 1941, thanks to the affidavits obtained by Max Markreich and to the fact that my father and mother had established residency in the United States. Like their fellow detainees, Alex and Helmut hoped that their stay in Camp des Milles would be brief and that they would soon be on a boat to join Günther and Rosemarie in America. But those hopes were quickly dimmed. The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 was restrictive from the beginning, and after war broke out in Europe in 1939, the law’s annual quotas for German and Austrian citizens were no longer met. There may have been several figures in the American government who contributed to this slowdown, but history has identified the chief culprit as Breckinridge Long, a longtime friend of President Roosevelt, who in January 1940 was appointed assistant secretary of state. He became convinced that Nazi agents were attempting to infiltrate the ranks of legitimate immigrants, so he began a policy of requiring longer and longer forms to be filled out both by those hoping to come to America and by those who hoped to welcome them here. In a memo circulated to other members of the State Department in June 1940, Long wrote, “We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devises which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of visas.”

  The factory, now a well-funded memorial museum, as seen from the railroad siding a quarter mile away.

  In July 1941, just as Alex and Helmut arrived in Camp des Milles, the number of refugees allowed to immigrate to the United States was cut to about 25 percent of the quotas established by the 1924 law. Contributing to this decline was something called the Relatives Rule, a State Department regulation that required any applicant with a parent, spouse, child, or sibling remaining in Germany, Italy, or Russia to pass an extremely strict security test to obtain a visa. Also in July, the State Department began requiring a security review of all immigration applications by committees representing a number of governmental agencies, among them the State Department’s Visa Division, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FBI, and Army and Navy Intelligence. Once that review process had been completed, the State Department sent out “advisory approvals” to its consuls abroad, who were then allowed to issue their precious visas. But by then, Long’s policy of “postpone and postpone and postpone” had had its dire effect.

  When they walked through the gates of Camp des Milles in July, Alex was sixty-two years old and Helmut was two months short of his twentieth birthday. They found spaces to sleep amid the straw-strewn comforts of the brick factory’s second floor and within a short time became habituated to the routine of daily life at the camp. Alex found work in the camp’s kitchen to earn money for such necessities as blankets and shoes, and Helmut eagerly partook of the camp’s intellectual offerings.

  On September 22, the day after Helmut turned twenty (and the day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year), Alex wrote to his older son and daughter-in-law. How luxurious Günther and Rosemarie’s lives in far-off New York City must have seemed to the unwilling captives of Camp des Milles. “Dear Children,” the letter began.

  I hope you haven’t been worried about us because you haven’t heard from us for some time now. But I work all day long cleaning vegetables in the kitchen and in the evening I’m dead tired and Helmut’s time is completely occupied with various courses. There is a meager amount of pay for the work we do; weekly it amounts to perhaps ¾ of the cost of shoe soles and heels, and in addition to that you get a second helping of food at noon and in the evening. If one gets up every morning at 6:00, by noon one isn’t in the mood for writing. On this New Year’s morning I’m sitting on my bed of straw, using my blanket as a desk.

  Thank you for everything that you’ve already done for us. Above all, for your assiduous efforts with the National Refugee Service. Surely it is the present circumstances that are responsible for everything taking so long, and unfortunately I have recently become very skeptical about anything working out in this regard. Here in Les Milles no visas have been handed out since the introduction of the recent American immigration regulations. There are about 1,300 people here, most of whom want to go to the U.S. There are repeated delaying tactics, and the moment the U.S. enters the war everything will come to a stop.

  You can imagine that we are facing our third winter in France with quite a bit of horror. The food here is probably better than it was in Rivesaltes, but it’s very unbalanced and contains little fat. Nevertheless, we have gained some weight. Helmut’s weight, which went from 127 pounds down to 94 pounds in Rivesaltes, is now at 113 pounds, and my weight, which went from 136 to 104 pounds, is now at 112.

  I think the worst of the horror is still to come, unless quite unexpected things were to happen. One must not think about it, and so work is the best medicine. I am deeply worried, though, in case we don’t get away from here before winter begins, about where we will get underwear and socks. CAR [the French committee on refugees] gave us a suit made of army material, which is warm, but no overcoats or underwear. I know that you and Uncle Max Markreich are doing everything possible to get us over there. Might personal appearances in Washington be possible?

  We went to Marseille on Helmut’s birthday to ask the Quakers to look into the baggage we checked at the time in Martigny-les-Bains. But probably it will all be in vain. We saw many well-dressed people on our little outing, and in honor of the day we went to eat in a simple decent restaurant. I gave Helmut some French stamps as a present. He would be very grateful to you for any stamps you can collect for him.

  I hope t
o hear from you shortly. Many good wishes and love, Yours, Father

  On the following day, September 23, Helmut wrote to his brother and sister-in-law.

  Dear Rosemarie, dear Günther,

  Many thanks for your perfectly beautiful and dear letters! We’re already waiting for your next one. You don’t know how thankful you should be to be on the other shore!! We’re so glad to have you over there because it’s the only way we can have a somewhat better prospect of getting there too. The bad thing is, however, that because of the new regulations no one here has received his visa. Indeed, even those who had been promised a visa by a certain date before the new decrees went into effect are still waiting for further confirmation. In addition, we’re afraid that open war will be declared between the U.S. and Germany—perhaps even as soon as today—and our last chance will become invalid. In spite of all your efforts we shall probably have to put up, for better or worse, with a third—and I hope our last—wartime winter.