Freshers’ Week 1940 at the Sorbonne was different from previous years. Being a student in 1940 would not be about working hard and having fun. France was at war. As the corridors of the university filled with youngsters registering for their chosen courses, conversations bubbled up about the German invasion of France and the Wehrmacht entry into Paris, and how they had been betrayed.
The atmosphere was one of bitterness and resentment as the students tried to come to terms with the speed of their country’s defeat. They felt let down by their army and by a group of politicians whose management of the political situation and handling of its armed forces had been so disastrous.
One new student at the Sorbonne in 1940 was Noël Le Clercq, a young twenty-year-old who had given up officer training at Saint-Cyr to enrol as a law student. His thick, wavy blond hair and blue eyes lent him a somewhat Nordic appearance and, being a little older than his fellow students, his confident and authoritative manner endeared him to many of his contemporaries. Noël gathered his new friends around him and rallied them to resist the occupation. It was not long before Alain was attending his impromptu lectures, followed by many hours of heavy drinking in the smoky atmosphere of the Café Harcourt (whose previous patrons included Oscar Wilde) on the boulevard Saint-Michel. The two students became firm friends and Alain’s plan for his underground news-sheet evolved into a joint venture.
With a heavily censored press and no broadcast media, news travelled very slowly. Listening to the BBC, a lifeline to the outside world, was forbidden and owning a radio could lead to immediate arrest; despite this, Edmond owned a radio, which he kept in the cellar but brought up regularly to listen to BBC broadcasts. In search of assistance, Alain asked his brother-in-law to introduce him to Henri Jeanson, the editor of Aujourd’hui – later to become one of France’s most prominent newspapers. Jeanson, now in his early forties, had become friendly with Steve Passeur back in the 1920s when working as a film critic. In December 1939, Jeanson had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for his published pacifist reports but was later released by the Minister of the Interior, Monsieur Campinchi. He had been appointed editor of Aujourd’hui in August 1940 and the first issue was released in September.* Alain and Noël were allowed to make regular visits to Jeanson’s office, listening out for any scraps of information that might be helpful in compiling La France. On one occasion, pushed for time, the pair met at the Café Harcourt to draft a forthcoming article. Just as they finished writing, a group of Nazi soldiers walked into the café and began a search of the customers, demanding to see their ID cards. Alain and Noël managed to move to the back of the café and escape through a window, but they vowed to be more cautious in future.*
By September 1940, Andrée had been working at Police Headquarters for just under a year. Efficient, hard-working and unassuming, she was popular among her colleagues, had made several friends and moved along the corridors of her office easily without attracting attention. Indeed, her discreet personality was one of her most important assets as a member of the Resistance.
As plans for the first edition of La France continued, Alain and Noël recruited two more students from the Sorbonne: Yves de Kermoal, a fun-loving, tall, fair aristocrat (whose father, a retired marine superintendent, would later record and pass on details of the German police watch along the ‘forbidden zone’ of Brittany’s coastline), and Pascal Arrighi, an intensely intellectual law student.†
The close friendship these four men developed would last well over sixty years and their respective skillsets created the basis on which Alain’s Resistance network could move forward. Eager to ensure the first edition was a success, Alain invited his sister out to dinner to discuss how best to go about printing and copying the paper in the quantities they needed. Walking into a restaurant near the Champs-Élysées, brother and sister sat down and Alain watched his sister look at the menu as he thought about the enormous risks he was about to ask her to undertake.
The restaurant owner, who knew Andrée and Alain’s family well, smiled sadly as he approached their table and began explaining the difficulties he had had since the occupation of Paris. Only yesterday several German officers in uniform had walked into his restaurant and asked for a table; their behaviour had been impeccable and they showed great appreciation for their meal, but as he took their order he saw with shock that the Bernsteins, some of his oldest Jewish clients and close friends of the Griotterays, had entered the restaurant and were waiting to be seated.
Alain sympathised with the restaurateur’s dilemma, while noting to himself the irony of planning to discuss his underground news-sheet in a place that German soldiers chose to frequent. Discreetly he outlined his plans to Andrée as they ate; as he suspected, she was keen to proceed as soon as the first bulletin was ready for typing, and to investigate the office’s printing arrangements.
The next day, Andrée arrived at work early. She knew there was a printing room with a Roneo duplicator machine on the same floor as her office, but had never been inside it as the machine was operated by the office orderly. Taking a deep breath, she walked confidently into the print-room, examined the machine, worked out how to operate it and checked the paper and ink supplies, which were stored in the cupboard. Her one concern was whether someone might notice the increase in the use of paper and ink, but this was unavoidable.
Alain gave her the copy for the first La France pamphlet in the Griotteray family flat at the beginning of September 1940. It contained censored news items and provocative statements encouraging the reader to defy the occupying forces in any way they thought plausible. Andrée took the material into work, typed it and made a few copies using the Roneo. She took the pages back to her office, put them carefully away in her satchel and delivered them to Noël’s flat during her lunch break. Everything went smoothly.
After that, she was given a new draft to type out each week and as the group became more confident and La France’s circulation increased, so did the number of copies she made. No one seemed to notice what she was doing in her office or in the Roneo machine room and if they did, no questions were asked.
Early one morning, while she was typing out the latest transcript of La France, there was a quiet knock at her door. Absorbed in her work, Andrée did not hear the knock over the sound of her typewriter, nor did she hear the German officer enter her office until he stood in front of her desk.
Starting, she stared up blankly before recognising him as a young officer she had crossed paths with several times in the corridor and with whom she had exchanged a couple of greetings. Pushing down her initial instinct to panic, she regained her composure, smiled and asked whether there was anything she could do to help. As the captain smiled back, she invited him to sit down and as she did so she slowly withdrew from the typewriter the paper on which she had just typed the first paragraph of that week’s copy of La France, placing it away from him on the left-hand side of her desk. Sitting down on the opposite side of her desk, he introduced himself as Captain Schurr from the Press and Information Department. Andrée wondered what he wanted, as she had nothing to do with his department, but she waited to see what would happen.
Schurr appeared simply to want to engage in polite conversation and began to tell her about a restaurant he had been to a few nights previously on the Champs-Élysées. He then asked whether he could pick up the five passports being prepared for his department head. Andrée thought it strange that he had not sent an orderly to pick them up, and was still trying to work out why he was in her office so early in the morning, but she stood up, found the passports on an adjoining table and handed them over. He began pacing up and down the room with an apprehensive look on his face.
Finally he came to the point and shyly asked, ‘Mademoiselle, I would very much like to invite you out to dinner.’
Trying to hide her total relief, Andrée politely responded, ‘How very kind of you. I would love to have dinner with you but it is simply not possible.’
Schurr was not t
o be so easily rejected. ‘Is it because I am a German officer that you are declining to accept my invitation?’
Andrée bore no ill-feeling towards a man she did not know but whom she found to be charming and yet whom she was desperately trying to get out of her office. ‘Oh no, Captain, it is most certainly not because you are a German officer that I feel it would be inappropriate for us to enjoy dinner together; it is because I am French.’
As she spoke, Andrée could hear Madame Chantebout walk into the adjoining office. In a rush of relief, she explained to the captain that it must be 8.30 a.m., that within minutes there would be several clients waiting outside for the renewal of their passports and that she must get on with her work. Schurr smiled and, holding the passports in his hand, walked towards the door saying, ‘Au revoir, Mademoiselle.’ Andrée leaned back and breathed deeply; only once he had left the room did she realise how shaken she felt.
As the morning progressed, Andrée found herself nervously trying to work out how she would be able to duplicate the copies of La France Noël needed after Schurr’s visit had wasted so much time. She decided to take the draft home at lunchtime and advise Noël overnight of the delay. She would then come in early to make the copies the following morning. It was risky – she might draw attention to herself and it was always possible that she might be the subject of an ad hoc search on the streets between Police Headquarters and home. Schurr had not done her any favours but, on the plus side, neither had he noticed what she had been working on.
For several weeks, Andrée typed up and made clandestine copies of La France. The extra paper and ink she used appeared to go unnoticed. Andrée’s natural confidence and fearlessness was the perfect cover. She had no idea whether her colleagues were members of the French Resistance, though it was probably reasonable to assume they were passive supporters, people who might turn a blind eye to what their friends, colleagues and acquaintances were doing to fight the enemy. But even so, it was dangerous to be printing and distributing anti-German material. As Armistice Day (11 November) approached, the most important edition of La France was about to appear.
* In 1978 Alain Griotteray co-founded Le Figaro magazine and went on to be the first foreign journalist to interview President Reagan in the Oval Office.
* In November 1940, after he refused to follow a German directive and take a public stand in the paper against the Jews and in support of France’s collaboration with Germany, Jeanson was forced to resign as editor and sentenced to imprisonment. He was released several months later.
After the war he became a regular writer on Le Canard Enchaîné, one of France’s most successful weekly political satirical newspapers today. The publication had been forced to suspend publication during the Second World War.
* After its closure in November 1940 by the Germans, the café became a German library.
† Both Yves and Pascal later received the Légion d’honneur. Pascal entered politics and further served his country as a Deputé (Member of the French Parliament).
7
A Life Lived Well
It is July 2000. Three elderly Resistance heroes stand respectfully in front of the tomb of the unknown soldier, observing the eternal flame under the Arc de Triomphe. The traffic circulating the monument has been brought to a standstill.
Alain Griotteray, leader of the Orion Resistance Group, is grey-haired, dignified and focused. Yves de Kermoal stands beside him, thoughtful but relaxed. Beside him is Jacques Sauvage, serious and intent on the day’s events. Representing Andrée Griotteray White is her daughter, proud but sad her mother is not in her rightful place.
The four stand to attention as the ‘Marseillaise’ is played and two soldiers lift the Tricolore. Watched by the crowd of dignitaries, Alain moves forward and places on the tomb a wreath of blue, white and red flowers.
‘À la mémoire de nos amis mort pour la France, signé Orion.’
In memory of our friends who died for France, Orion.
The Arc de Triomphe was intended to symbolise French military victory. It was commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 as a tribute to French soldiers who lost their lives fighting for their country in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Beneath it lies the tomb of the unknown soldier, interred on Armistice Day in 1920. The tomb’s eternal flame is dedicated to those who died without identification in the First and Second World Wars. The coffin bears the French inscription: ‘Here lies a French soldier who died for the motherland [‘mort pour la patrie’] 1914–1918.’
It was here that several thousand young Parisians, university and school students among them, demonstrated on 11 November 1940 against the German occupation of France.
Every year since 1918, the French had marked the legacy of the First World War by gathering at the Place de l’Étoile on Armistice Day. In his book The Resistance, Matthew Cobb records that more than a million and a half French people had lost their lives in that war, of which 300,000 were civilians, and 3.5 million soldiers had been injured in some way. In 1940 the German military commander of France, concerned at impending rumours about a possible anti-Nazi protest, announced that any such commemorations were forbidden.3
As 11 November approached, talk spread among the students in Paris that a demonstration was being planned for the afternoon of Armistice Day. Alain and Noël Le Clercq were keen to be involved and ultimately became some of the principal organisers of the event. Together they planned to get as many of their university friends, fellow students and acquaintances onto the streets of the Champs-Élysées as they possibly could. In the days leading up to the 11th, they carefully worked out the next edition of La France. It would be simple, along the lines of:
‘Resistez l’envahisseur
L’Étoile
vers 16 heures’*
It would also be potentially perilous; anyone caught inciting a demonstration or openly criticising the Wehrmacht could be arrested and instantly put before a firing squad.
As the date approached, and despite the danger, Alain and Noël became increasingly excited by the challenge of publicly resisting the occupation of France. Andrée had agreed to design and Roneo their latest news pamphlet using the ink, paper and machine available to her at Police Headquarters. She needed to be alone in her office to work on the leaflets safely, without anyone watching what she was doing. She knew her colleagues were less likely to be in very early in the day so, carrying her brown satchel, she walked into Police Headquarters one morning before 7.00 a.m., to the surprise of the main gate’s duty sergeant. Wasting no time, she checked the ink and paper supplies and started to work on the pamphlets. It was safer to have the finished leaflets in her bag rather than attempt to work on them later in the day when there were more people around.
That morning she copied a batch of leaflets, another the following morning and the same again over the next two days. No one noticed what she was doing, and no one searched her bag. But on the fourth day one of her colleagues asked why she was always so early at work and Andrée realised she needed to stop. She took her responsibilities seriously and if anyone at work happened to find one of the pamphlets, the demonstration would be jeopardised, not to mention her own safety.
Over the next four days Andrée took the leaflets out of Police Headquarters each day during her lunch break. Travelling by métro, she delivered them to prearranged addresses. The first batch went directly to Noël Le Clercq’s flat on the Left Bank, where Noël, known among his friends to be encouraging his fellow students to defy the occupation, did not invite Andrée in. It was vital that she leave quickly, given the high stakes. With her characteristic coolness she turned around and headed straight back to the métro and into a restaurant near Police Headquarters. Next she delivered copies to Alain in a fellow student’s flat near the Sorbonne. Alain started to hand out the leaflets to a number of friends with whom he had discussed his plans. He instructed everyone to drop copies in the letterboxes of student flats, into the pockets of overcoats (sometimes without the wearer being
aware this was being done) and at other times directly into people’s hands – anyone who looked patriotic and able to move quickly through the narrow streets of the Quartier Latin if someone might be watching them. Carrying or handling incriminating evidence was one of the most dangerous forms of resistance; the evidence was on the bearer and so they needed to pass it on as fast as they could – either to someone else or safely disposed of. The third and fourth batches were delivered to Jean Barbier and François Clerc, both young men working in central Paris near the Champs-Élysées, who distributed them among friends and acquaintances whom they knew would be eager to ‘resist’.
On the morning of the 11th, a small number of Parisians ignored the German directive and made their way to the Arc de Triomphe to pay tribute to their war dead. Others made their way to the statue of Clemenceau halfway up the Champs-Élysées. As Cobb has noted, ‘Clemenceau had been Prime Minister of France at the end of the First World War, and for many was a symbol of France’s victory over Germany.’ Edmond and Yvonne had both lost siblings in the war and the two rose early, dressed deliberately in English tweed and walked down from their flat to the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs-Élysées to pay their respects to Clemenceau, ignoring the German presence around them.
Andrée had been busy the previous day, searching for food:
Last night I went to Rochefort. Mother wanted me to go and get some food. Everyone there was delighted to see me. I brought back a chicken, some butter, some eggs and a Camembert. I was so pleased with myself because we cannot find anything to eat in Paris. I got home this morning and there was no one around.
Andrée's War Page 6
