by Alex Kershaw
“cede their property to Aryans”: Steven Lehrer, Wartime Sites in Paris (New York: SF Tafel Publishers, 2013), 36.
“the path of collaboration”: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 44.
as swiftly as possible: His immediate superior in Berlin was Adolf Eichmann, a chain-smoking thirty-four-year-old bureaucrat who would later be dubbed a “desk murderer” for his part in orchestrating the killing of more than six million Jews. That August, Eichmann had proposed that a million Jews per year for four years be moved to a special colony in Madagascar. Industrial genocide had not yet been agreed upon.
“Please advise the medical staff”: Archives, American Hospital of Paris.
Sumner was silent: Diary of Alice Barrelet, October 13, 1940.
singing “La Marseillaise”: Matthew Cobb, The Resistance (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 44.
Free French Forces in London: www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/le-11-novembre-1940.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: Les Chemins de la Memoire 210, November 2010, 8–9.
“But they are just children!”: Ibid., 46.
hop on a bicycle instead: Phillip Jackson, interview with author.
the marble oyster bar: There would eventually be so many of these roué European aristocrats sleeping with and working for the SS that they would be memorialized as “Les Comtesses de la Gestapo.” Among the more notable were the Russian countess Mara Tchernycheff, an erstwhile model and actress, who quickly became none other than Henri Lafont’s consort. One of Knochen’s first sources of unofficial income came courtesy of Tchernycheff. She had tipped off her fast-living lover about thirty cases of silverware belonging to the U.S. embassy hidden in cellars on the Rue des Saints-Pères. Lafont shared the cache with Knochen and other associates in the SS. Then there was the Greek princess Mourousi, a lesbian morphine addict who would feed her habits by selling seized Jewish furniture. Last but not least was the Austrian countess Ilde von Seckendorff, code-named Mercedes, who would discover her true métier as a spy and informer for Knochen. In exchange, she would be given a majestic home of her own at 41, Avenue Foch, directly opposite Knochen’s headquarters at number 72. Cyril Eder, Les Comtesses de la Gestapo (Paris: Grasset, 2006), 149.
private patients before the war: Phillip Jackson, interview with author.
Enghien to cut wood together: Ibid.
cats and dogs and horses: Gérard Walter, Paris Under the Occupation (New York: Orion Press, 1960), 79.
7: ON DOCTOR’S ORDERS
Pyrenées to neutral Spain: André Guillon, “Testimony of a French POW on His Time at the American Hospital of Paris,” American Hospital of Paris Archives.
“he was in London”: Ibid.
Sumner had to ensure: By early 1941, six months after the armistice, one floor of the hospital was still full of injured French soldiers like Guillon. They shared the floor with other Allied soldiers who had been brought from prison camps. On other floors were civilians, a third of them American. Many of the British patients had been brought to the hospital from the internment camps at Besançon, Saint-Denis, and Vittel.
“Portrait of an American”: Clemence Bock, unpublished memoir of Sumner Jackson.
occupied by German forces: New York Times, October 30, 1914.
his “right-hand woman”: Time, April 27, 1942.
“greediness of the Wehrmacht”: René de Chambrun, Pierre Laval, Traitor or Patriot (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984), 70.
Paris before the war: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 235. Although Abetz was not formally accredited as ambassador—there was no peace treaty between France and Nazi Germany, merely an armistice—he nevertheless acted as if he had the full powers of an ambassador. One of his frequent guests at the German embassy, the fascist writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, called Abetz “King Otto I”—France was referred to as “the Kingdom of Otto.” King Otto genuinely loved France, especially its women. His wife, Suzanne, was indeed French, but others, younger, more malleable, with firmer thighs, were those he now most desired. Before the war, Abetz had been obsessed with a truly enchanting nineteen-year-old actress, Corinne Luchaire, and although their affair had ended, she was still among a charmed circle to be found at most functions at the German embassy. Abetz had in fact recently asked Corinne, destined to die of tuberculosis at just twenty-eight, for a definition of “collaboration” that would not offend French patriots such as the de Chambruns. “It’s very simple, Your Excellency,” Corinne had replied. “ ‘Collaboration’ means basically ‘give me your watch and then I’ll tell you the time.’ ”
Hitler was particularly fond: Serge Jacquemard, La Bande Bonny-Lafont (Geneva: Scenes de Crimes), 2007, 85.
in a diplomatic pouch: William Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid (New York: Ballantine, 1976), 337.
“going to have malnutrition”: Kathleen Keating, “The American Hospital in Paris During the German Occupation,” American Hospital in Paris Archives, 1981.
“for the use of their army”: Ibid.
he told a colleague: Ibid.
Any male who would aid: Don Lasseter, Their Deeds of Valor (self-published book, 2002), 20.
hired French thugs: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 124.
to reach his prime: Allan Mitchell, Nazi Paris, 57.
“permitted to remain at liberty”: New York Times, December 24, 1941.
northeast of Paris in Compiègne: Ibid.
next Christmas France would be free: Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen (New York: Scribner’s, 1949), 175.
an escape line to sunny Spain: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris, 209.
help the Allied cause: On March 3, 1942, for the first time since France’s capitulation, Paris suddenly became a target of Allied air power. In Neuilly, Sumner heard nearby antiaircraft batteries open up. He and his staff were soon standing calmly on the hospital’s terrace, watching bombs explode a few miles to the south. Crowds formed on the Pont Neuf in the center of the city as if they were gazing up at a fireworks display on July 14, Bastille Day, which, like the tricolor, had been banned under occupation. It was the first great daytime raid on Paris, and its target was the Renault factory at Boulogne-Billancourt. The British and Americans badly wanted to destroy the factory: Monsieur Charles Renault was those days busy building tanks for the Germans, not cars for their autobahns. The bombing was far from accurate, however, and around five hundred Parisians were killed. The next morning a memorial to the dead was placed in the Place de la Concorde. Some 300,000 Parisians walked past. Louis Renault was of course outraged that the Allies had tried to destroy his factories. He was no collaborator. After all, he, too, was under duress, and had already been forced to hand over his home at 90, Avenue Foch, which now housed Nazi party officials. The Germans and Vichy officials exploited the bombing for all its propaganda value, using it to try to turn Parisians against the Allies. But this did not happen. Instead, like Sumner and his staff at the American Hospital, they responded with surprising nonchalance. They knew that many more losses would have to be borne if the Allies were to win and they were to be free again.
8: AVENUE BOCHE
Reinhard Heydrich to France: National Archives UK, KV2/1668.
Third Reich, including France: Ibid.
“the man with the iron heart”: Mario R. Dederichs, Heydrich: The Face of Evil (Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2005), 92.
replaced by his own cousin: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 125. “The [Nazi] party wanted to take executive power away from the military,” recalled Hans Speidel, a colonel on the General Staff in Paris at the time. “The crucial moment was the burning of the synagogues….It served to strengthen Knochen’s position. Knochen was elegant, very adroit, cultivated too, but this did not prevent him from being a party man.” Source: Ibid.
above the military: Allan Mitchell, Nazi Paris, 57.
seated at many tables: In the Imperial Suite, Goering had examined looted art, some o
f it taken from Jewish homes on Avenue Foch, as he reclined within reach of a crystal bowl full of morphine tablets that sat on a side table beside another full of precious gems—rubies, black pearls. The morbidly obese Reichsmarschall often liked to dance with the hotel’s waiters, then drift into reverie lying on a replica of Marie Antoinette’s four-poster bed.
rooms 266 and 268: Steven Lehrer, Wartime Sites in Paris, 41.
head of the French police: National Archives UK, KV2/1668.
control of the police: There was yet another meeting with select military officials, this time at the Hôtel Majestic, a short walk from Avenue Foch. Heydrich stressed that he did not plan to use “eastern methods” in France—the scorched-earth policies of repression and extermination that had been carried out in Poland in particular. He acknowledged the growing numbers in the French resistance and the threat to security they posed. But there was no need for desperate measures. The French police under Bousquet’s dynamic leadership, working closely with Knochen, would easily deal with the “terrorists”—the resistance—who were attacking German personnel with ever greater regularity. Source: Thomas J. Laub, After the Fall, 79.
have sufficient manpower: Ibid.
“prepare the future of Europe”: http://livreblanc.maurice-papon.net/interv-Helmut.htm.
Pommery champagne dynasty: Ibid.
“already on the drum”: Steven Lehrer, Wannsee House and the Holocaust (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000), 86.
“he succeeded perfectly”: Jacques Delarue, The Gestapo, 233.
assert his new power: National Archives UK, KV2/1668. Eventually, with the vital help of the French, 70,000 Jews in France were deported to their deaths on eighty-five convoys, among them 10,000 children. Chambrun knew Oberg on a “polite basis.” Source: Ibid.
Gestapo’s considerable resources: National Archives UK, KV2/2745.
“fighting espionage and terrorism”: Serge Jacquemard, La Bande Bonny-Lafont, 50–51.
vying to replace him: Ibid., 48
annihilate the Jews in France: Cécile Desprairies, Paris dans la Collaboration (Paris: Seuil, 2009), 469.
“this state one day”: National Archives UK, Nuremberg Trial Documents, TR.3-698, July 8, 1942.
an exasperated Knochen: Yaacov Lozowick, Hitler’s Bureaucrats (New York: Continuum, 2002), 199.
clear France of its vermin: Carmen Callil, Bad Faith (London: Vintage, 2007), 287.
be carrying out arrests: Ibid. There were other dictats. While Dannecker and Eichmann conspired with the French authorities at number 31, Karl Oberg at 72, Avenue Foch, upped the ante in the war on terrorists. If French families did not turn over known resistance members within ten days of a crime—attacking the German army, for example—the SS would from then on kill all siblings and cousins over the age of 18 in retaliation.
with their parents: Theodor Dannecker, report to RSHA office IV-B-4 (Eichmann), July 6, 1942, CDJC, XLIX-35. [Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, Paris.]
lists of registered Jews: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in The Third Reich, 142.
velodrome beside the Seine: www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005429.
“could the manhunt continue”: Jeremy Josephs, Swastika over Paris (London: Bloomsbury, 1989), 82.
headquartered on Avenue Foch: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 145.
“daily or ornamental use”: Ibid., 145.
they all had to go: Mordecai Paldiel, Churches and the Holocaust: Unholy Teaching, Good Samaritans, and Reconciliation (Jersey City, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 2006), 82.
to the deportation centers: Nicole Fouché, Le Mouvement Perpétuel (Paris: Ethiss, 1991), 66. A young Parisian called Annette Monod watched a batch of young children, who had been separated from their parents, as they were taken by French police from the City of Silence: “The gendarmes tried to have a roll call. But children and names did not correspond. Rosenthal, Biegelmann, Radetski—it all meant nothing to them. They did not understand what was wanted of them, and several even wandered away from the group. That was how a little boy approached a gendarme to play with the whistle hanging at his belt. A little girl made off to a small bank on which a few flowers were growing, and she picked some to make a bunch. The gendarmes did not know what to do. Then the order came to escort the children to the railway station nearby, without insisting on the roll call.”
healing and saving others: Hal Vaughan, Doctor to the Resistance, 62.
9: THE SHADOW GAME
They had come to arrest: Clemence Bock, unpublished memoir.
already packed a bag: Ibid.
bought a pipe cleaner: Ibid.
a rug on the floor: Ibid.
Sector C, run by the SS: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/frenchjews.html.
abducted by the resistance: Time, March 12, 1945.
“interests of the American Hospital”: René de Chambrun, Mission and Betrayal (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1993), 197.
German military command: Ibid. Already attacked in America for collaborating with the Germans and for being a pathetic “mouthpiece” for his father-in-law Laval, and his godfather, Pétain, René nonetheless was vital to the survival of the hospital. He had pull in the highest circles, both in Paris and in Vichy. He got things done. Crucially, he kept the Nazis out of the hospital that Sumner had been running so well until his arrest. “It would be too long to relate all the difficulties we met with,” he recalled, “time and time again, to prevent the requisition of the buildings, beds, sheets, bandages, medical supplies, etc.”
“released in France”: New York Times, October 3, 1942.
by the press coverage: Clemence Bock, unpublished memoir of Dr. Sumner Jackson.
“We need the money”: Ibid.
his wife Clara’s name: Ibid.
private war against the Nazis: Ibid.
Dirty Anglo-American Attack: Le Matin, November 9, 1942.
“the end of the beginning”: Churchill, Lord Mayor’s luncheon speech, November 10, 1942.
“occasion he made no comment”: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 255.
“the end of an epoch”: Yves Pourcher, Pierre Laval Vu par Sa Fille (Paris: La Cherche Midi, 2002), 270.
a price to pay: Pierre Abramovici, Un Rocher Bien Occupe, 72–82. René was in fact a wanted man. British intelligence had gathered information on him, no doubt in anticipation of a postwar trial. It was alleged that he had edited a secret news service for Pierre Laval in which he had justified Vichy’s role in the Holocaust. He had also acted, it was claimed, as a representative for American companies wanting to do business with Nazi Germany, even though the United States was at war. “René de Chambrun is organizing a series of Holding Companies in the Argentine in order to conceal transactions carried out on behalf of the Germans,” read one intelligence report, “the object of which is to place looted property in security. Pierre Laval, himself, is behind the scheme.” And he had that summer and fall attended several luncheons at the Ritz hotel, not just to protect the American Hospital, but also to bring together collaborators and Nazis who were interested, intelligence sources maintained, in “political, economic, and financial cooperation as part of Hitler’s European New Order.”
name of René de Chambrun: Carmen Callil, Bad Faith, 305.
going to be “assassinated”: “The Black List,” Life, August 24, 1942.
“general rejection of all things German”: Allan Mitchell, Nazi Paris, 94.
sign of “insufficient volition”: Helmut Knochen to RSHA, August 2, 1943, Bundesarchiv, Berlin, R 58/7742.
Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop: www.oocities.org/resistancehistory/caluire.html.
the French resistance: Ibid.
10: NUMBER 11
they sipped chilled champagne: Cyril Eder, Les Comtesses de la Gestapo, 243.
not happy about it: Clemence Bock, Memories of Dr. Jackson, unpublished me
moir.
in a 1914 yearbook: Yearbook, Jefferson Medical College, 1914.
it came to punishment: Ibid.
“ ‘Men are good’?”: Ibid. Clemence Bock, unpublished memoir.
made his nose bleed: Phillip Jackson, interview with author.
the side of some building: Ibid.
an act of resistance: Raymond Aubrac, The French Resistance (Paris: Hazan, 1997), 13.
also admonished Phillip: Phillip Jackson, interview with author.
used by Knochen’s men: Cécile Desprairies, Paris dans la Collaboration (Paris: Seuil, 2009), 480.
organization under Knochen’s watchful eye: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 43.
Knochen’s counterintelligence efforts: National Archives UK, WO 235/560.
given only to the very best: Shrabani Basu, Spy Princess, 156. Kieffer’s headquarters at Number 84 was an impressive building, high ceilinged with tall windows. A marble staircase connected five floors. On the first were extensive radio operations for counterespionage. On the fourth were Kieffer and his secretary Katya’s offices, decorated with Louis XV furniture. Katya was said to be Kieffer’s mistress. Kieffer also lived in the building, enjoying superb views of Avenue Foch. A narrow corridor led from his quarters to a wooden staircase that connected to the fifth floor. Seven small rooms on this top floor, built as maids’ quarters, housed captured enemy agents.
for those who talked: Kieffer had soon learned so much that he was able to pin up a detailed organizational chart of SOE’s F Section—the French sector of the Special Operations Executive, an outfit formed by Churchill in 1940 to “set Europe ablaze,” to carry out sabotage, espionage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe and to help local resistance movements.
