Village of Secrets
Page 37
Last of all, I travelled around Israel to visit the Roanne girls, living in small apartments in Tel Aviv and on kibbutzes in the north. In the early nineties, they helped set up an Association of Hidden Children, and they meet to remind each other of the days tobogganing down the icy streets of le Chambon, and of the kindness of their hosts. I found Pierre Bloch in a kibbutz on the Lebanese border. He had changed his surname, his first name, his language and his nationality and had become Eli Ben Gal.
Pierre was one of the people who attended Arnoux’s colloquium in 1990. He came, he explained at the time, to thank Mme Roussel, in whose house he had lived, ‘for my happy childhood as a little Jew during the Holocaust’. He also wanted to apologise to all the villagers for intruding on their privacy, for seeming to suggest that their natural altruism and courage were things that they wished to be thanked for. But, said Pierre, thank them he must, for saving him and so many others, and for ‘reinventing’ day after day what it was to possess true human dignity. To me, almost a quarter of a century later, Pierre said something else. ‘We lived a very big adventure, an exceptional moment of time and place. It was something extraordinary to be young, engaged at a moment when France was so dark. There was something in the air, in the spirit of the people, that none of us ever forgot. All my life I have tried to live up to that moment.’
List of Illustrations
The maps were drawn by Bill Donohoe.
Aaron and Sara Liwerant, with their children
Jews arriving at Drancy, c.1942 (courtesy of DIZ Muenchen GMBH, Sueddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst)
Internees at Gurs, 1941 (courtesy of Ullstein Bild and AKG)
An OSE home (courtesy of Foundation pour la mémoire de la Shoah)
The cemetery at Gurs, 1952
Three of the 5,000 children interned in the camps (courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Friends Service Committee)
Hanne Hirsch, 1936, Max Liebmann, 1934
Rudy Appel (courtesy of Gérard Bollon and the archives of le Chambon)
Père Chaillet, 1941, and Abbé Glasberg
Le Tortillard, climbing the Plateau
André Philip
Auguste Bohny with children from Rivesaltes (courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Children collecting milk from a farm in le Chambon (courtesy of Memorial de la Shoah / Centre du Documentation Juive Contemporaine)
Morning exercises for the children of le Chambon
Darybist women in the woods outside le Chambon
The Trocmé family in the late 1930s (private collection)
Trocmé’s church
Dr Le Forestier with Danielle (courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
The staff of Ecole Nouvelle Cévenole, 1937
Miss Maber and her companion Jeanne Carillat
The children doing exercises at le Chambon (courtesy of Gérard Bollon and the archives of le Chambon)
Madeleine Barot’s escape plan (private collection)
Edouard and Mildred Theis
German soldiers in the Haute Loire (courtesy of the Ruel family archives)
Oscar Rowosky (private collection)
Emile and Solange Sèches and their class at Tante Soly, 1942 (courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
The main square in le Chambon (courtesy of Gérard Bollon and the archives of le Chambon)
Armand and Bella Nizard, with seven of their nine children, 1928
Daniel and Suzanne Curtet (private collection)
Genie and Liliane Schloss
Theis, Darcissac and Trocmé, in Saint-Paul-d’Eyjeaux
The Héritier family and Mlle Grabowska (courtesy of Oscar Rosowsky)
Oscar Rosowsky’s forged ID card (courtesy of Oscar Rosowsky)
Maquisards, with Pierre Brès, center, and Olivier Hatzfeld, right (courtesy of Gérard Bollon and the archives of le Chambon)
Children playing in the river Lignon (courtesy of Gérard Bollon and the archives of le Chambon)
Daniel Trocmé
La Maison des Roches
The Francs with three Jewish children and a shepherd boy. Pierre Cohn stands directly in front of Madame Franc (Private collection)
A group of children in the mountains behind le Chambon
Virginia Hall and her corps franc Diane
Liberation in le Chambon, 1945
Georges and Lily Garel in Switzerland after the war
Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders, and the publishers will be pleased to correct any omissions brought to their notice and the earliest opportunity.
Bibliography
Primary sources
The most important material for this book came from interviews – in France, Israel and the US – with people who spent time in hiding on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon during the German occupation, or who themselves helped in the rescue efforts. In some cases, I spoke to their children and relations. I was also fortunate enough to be given unpublished letters, journals and memoirs.
Invaluable documents on the Resistance in occupied France, on deportations and on the German occupiers are to be found in CARAN, the Archives Nationales in Paris (series 72AJ45; 72AJ69; 72AJ78; 72AJ142; F715000; AJ383575; AJ383618; AJ38258; F161–1038; F1c111/1162/1137). There is also a large archive on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon in the Archives Départementales de la Haute-Loire in Le Puy (Series R, Series 12W, Series 173W, Series 562W; Fonds Bonnissol AD120J; Cabinet de la Haute-Loire, Series 1115W, 12W, 173W, 562W; Rapports de Gendarmerie, Series R3 and R4; Rapports des Renseignements Généraux R6828; Rapports du Préfet 526W208/9/10; Fonds Piton AD168J; AD562W170). More papers are to be found in Cimade’s archives (Boîte No. 1, Boîte No. 2 and Papiers Violette Mouchon). Papers on individuals – rescued as well as rescuers – are to be found in the Société d’Histoire de la Montagne in Mazet, in the library of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, in the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) archive in Philadelphia, and in the libraries of Cimade and the OSE in Paris. The Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris has a certain amount of material on the plateau and its inhabitants (CCXV111–104; DLXX11–7; DLXX11–53; DLX1–103; DLX1– 104; CMXL1V; DCCCLX; DCCCLX1–55; DCCCLX1–37). André and Magda Trocmé’s papers are to be found in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
Secondary sources
The Second World War in German-occupied France, the deportations of Jews and resisters to the extermination and concentration camps in the east, and life inside the French internment camps have all been much written about in memoirs, journals, letters and academic papers. The following is a selection of those most consulted for this book.
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