The Greatest Escape: How one French community saved thousands of lives from the Nazis - A Good Place to Hide

by Peter Grose

  The nurse prudently went into reverse, and she and Piton were both standing on the French side of the barbed wire when the Italians arrested them. Two soldiers with fixed bayonets guarded them on either side, and marched them to the guard post in Collonges-sous-Salève. There, two specialist interrogators bombarded them with questions, while a stenographer took notes. The German nurse’s fake papers said she was French, from northern France, but she spoke French very badly and with a heavy German accent, so that story didn’t convince anyone.

  The Italians then ordered them into a military transport. With the pair still guarded by two armed soldiers, the vehicle set off without anyone telling the two captives where they were going. As they drove, Piton tried to work out where they were heading. He recognised Annecy, and that was ominous. Could they be headed for Lyon, where the Italians would hand them over to the Gestapo? But they were lucky. Just outside Annecy the military transport turned left. They stopped briefly at Chambéry, then continued on. Finally they drove into the courtyard of a military barracks and were marched into an old armoury, where they found themselves locked up with about fifteen others, men and women.

  I warned the nurse not to talk to any of the others, in case there were spies planted among the prisoners. One of the prisoners told me he was a primary school teacher from Annemasse imprisoned for no reason. He started to ask me questions, and I restricted myself to telling him: me too—I’ve no idea why I’m here. Then I asked him where we were, and he told me Grenoble. The next day he was released!!??

  I still don’t know why, but neither the nurse nor I were interrogated. My one fear was that we would be handed over to the Germans. We were kept there for about three weeks, then released. A soldier with fixed bayonet marched us out to the guard post where, to my great surprise, two French gendarmes took charge of us. They asked us plenty of questions, all done very properly and politely. Then, I think on account of my age, they let us go. There we were, on the street, free.

  The question was: where to next? Piton decided that he couldn’t simply dump the nurse and leave her to fend for herself. He would have to try again to get her under the wire. He knocked on the first door he came to, and asked where he could find the local Protestant church. At the church they were taken in, given a bed for the night, fed well and given enough money to buy two rail tickets from Grenoble to Annecy. The Grenoble pastor telephoned Pastor Chapal in Annecy and, in heavily coded language, told him to expect two arrivals around noon the next day.

  The next morning they boarded the train to Annecy. As they approached Chambéry there was the usual inspection of papers. The gendarmes looked at the nurse’s papers then demanded to know if she knew Piton. Yes, said the nurse, breaking all the rules she was given before leaving Le Chambon, before adding: ‘I’m not Jewish, I’m Protestant, the young man will confirm it for you.’ The gendarmes clearly weren’t persuaded, and hung around in the corridor between Chambéry and Annecy, keeping an eye on them. Just before Annecy, they handcuffed them both, one to each gendarme. Piton knew that Pastor Chapal would be waiting for them at the station exit, so he stood as tall as he could, in order to be easily spotted. Chapal was quick-witted enough to size up the situation, and made no move towards Piton. Instead he called Abbé Folliet and told him what he had seen.

  Meanwhile, the gendarmes escorted their two prisoners to the gendarmerie, where the pair waited on a bench for about an hour. Finally they were led into the room of a senior officer, a captain or commander, who ordered the two escorting gendarmes to release the prisoners from their handcuffs. He then said he wanted to talk to the prisoners alone. ‘He was brief. “I don’t know what you’ve done that’s brought you in front of me. I congratulate you. I’m going to release you, but I’m also telling you never to come back here, and you must stop doing this kind of work.”’

  Once they had left the gendarmerie, Piton and the nurse went straight to Pastor Chapal. They agreed that Piton would remain just long enough to have something to eat, then he would catch the next train back to Le Chambon. The nurse would be handed over to Abbé Folliet, who would arrange her crossing using a different route and with a new guide.

  Back in Le Chambon, Piton went to Mireille Philip for the usual debriefing. They agreed that Pierre was now well and truly grillé and that he had better make that his last mission to the Swiss border. He could concentrate instead on setting up a network of safe houses for the young Frenchmen now arriving on the Plateau to dodge the STO forced labour laws. In this role, he would report to Pierre Brès, the scoutmaster.

  Piton appears to have accepted this new role with good grace. However, in one of his accounts, he adds a postscript. ‘It so happens,’ he wrote, ‘that later on I managed to do one or two trips with Jews for the Cimade and Madeleine Barot.’ You can’t keep a good smuggler down.

  • • •

  The young passeurs were sometimes pressed into service at the last minute. Catherine Cambessédès remembers the story of a friend from the New Cévenole School, Didier Moulin. ‘Theis arrived one night and said to him that Mireille Philip had been arrested. Could he take some people across to the border? A teenager! The school principal is asking him to do that! That’s how desperate things sometimes got.’ Didier agreed. And returned safely.

  12

  Germans

  The number of German soldiers arriving on the Plateau increased a little from the beginning of 1943 onwards. The convalescing veterans from the Eastern Front who took over the Hôtel du Lignon in December 1942 must have flourished, because the German Army now commandeered a further three of Le Chambon’s seven hotels: the Hôtel Central, the Hôtel du Commerce and the Hôtel du Midi. They didn’t use them much, or for long, but all were available to them. More importantly, they arranged to billet some soldiers in Tence. The highest-ranking officers reserved a chateau that boasted six bedrooms, two reception rooms and some storage space. They booked 80 beds in hotels for lower-ranking officers, and 90 beds in the schools for ordinary soldiers.

  As before, there was little or no contact between the German soldiers and the local population. They simply ignored each other. It was better that way. However, the presence of the Germans could not be dismissed entirely. The managers of the various children’s homes smelled trouble. At The Flowery Hill, the staff dusted off an old plan to find alternative shelter for their guests on farms in the immediate area, and asked André Trocmé and Édouard Theis to be on the lookout for suitable farms and willing farmers. It was not going to be easy: with the arrival of the German soldiers, the farmers were more cautious. After all, they were the ones being asked to run the greatest risk. In December 1942, Pastor Lhermet, from The Flowery Hill, wrote to Madeleine Barot of the Cimade: ‘In September [1942] the danger for the Jews was insignificant, but in the light of what the Germans have been doing lately, the storm could hit us any day.’

  Meanwhile, the German high command grew more and more restless. It was clear that young Frenchmen in significant numbers were going into hiding rather than agreeing to be packed off to German factories under the STO order. Many of them hid in the forests, maquis in the more literal sense of the word. They tended to link up with the maquis of the armed Resistance, who were now beginning to make their presence felt all over France (though not yet on the Plateau).

  To add to the German high command’s problems, their soldiers were deserting in worrying numbers. Among the Le Puy garrison, desertions were in part attributable to the bizarre method of recruitment of the troops themselves. Basically, the Germans had told large numbers of Russian prisoners of war that they faced a simple choice: either they joined the German Army and fought alongside the Wehrmacht, or the Germans would shoot them. Unsurprisingly, the Russians opted overwhelmingly to join the Wehrmacht. However, they were hardly dedicated Axis soldiers.

  The German garrison in Le Puy included large numbers of these Russian conscripts. Joseph Bass, leader of the resistance ‘Network André’, set about exploiting this weakness. Bass was a Jew from Ma
rseilles, who worked closely with a Catholic priest, Père Marie-Benoît, to move Jews in safety in less risky regions of France, including the Plateau. He later moved himself and his network to the Plateau. At great risk to everybody involved, Network André produced leaflets in Russian, which they posted in cafés and bars around Le Puy. A typical leaflet read:

  COMRADES

  Those who address themselves to you are your comrades who have been forced to wear the shameful German uniform. We have concluded that it is our duty to switch to supporting the French Partisans in order to continue the struggle for our country, for our families, for our children.

  So far, so straightforward, you might think. However, Bass’s men now issued a none-too-subtle threat.

  Don’t think that your country has forgotten you. The high command of the Red Army knows what has happened to every combatant. Our information service has been told of each prisoner who has been forced to join the ranks of the Fascist army, and what everybody has done.

  The time has come for you to recognise the great shame you have brought on yourself and on your family. Switch to the French Partisans, who are struggling against Hitler’s Germany and thereby supporting the Red Army.

  THE FRENCH PARTISANS DO NOT SHOOT THOSE FORMER SOVIET SOLDIERS WHO JOIN THEIR RANKS VOLUNTARILY.

  You can go to any French farmer for more information.

  WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU.

  YOUR COMRADES.

  No record of precise numbers exists, but there is general agreement that the Russian-language leaflets met with some success, particularly in 1944 when deserting Russian soldiers thoughtfully brought their German weapons with them.

  The first uncertain moves towards forming an armed resistance on the Plateau were taken at about the same time as the Germans began arriving in increasing numbers. There is little doubt that the village of Yssingeaux and Jean Bonnissol were the first to take active steps in this regard. Although comparatively young for a Resistance leader, the 30-year-old Bonnissol was a stalwart opponent of the Vichy government, and had consistently argued against defeatism. On 1 March 1943, he joined the departmental committee of the MUR (Mouvements Unis de la Résistance, or United Resistance Movements), which brought together the groups Combat, Franc-Tireur (roughly ‘French Gunman’) and Libération. He was quickly appointed head of the armed resistance for the whole of the Plateau. He took the name ‘Borel’, then ‘Dunbois’ and finally ‘Soumy’.

  Pierre Fayol, who had been in contact with Combat back in Marseille, now entered the fray. As we have seen, he had set up home with his wife and son in the tiny village of La Celle, not far from Le Chambon. A local farmer, Alexis Grand, put him in touch with Resistance leaders in Tence. He was not exactly snapped up. The Resistance had investigated him in advance, and found that he had been in the French armed forces. Could he be a spy from the Vichy government? They were not going to rush things. Eventually they accepted him, and sent him to Jean Bonnissol. Fayol, now variously known as ‘Simon’ (the name on his false papers), ‘Rivière’, ‘Vallin’ or ‘Roux’, became head of the armed resistance in Le Chambon. Léon Eyraud (‘Noël’42) remained in charge of civil resistance.

  The Secret Army leaders set themselves a recruiting target. By the end of 1943, they wanted 400 armed, trained and willing men on the Plateau, all ready to take on the Germans. Fayol began recruiting Secret Army cells, known as sizaines. These were groups of six soldiers, consisting of a leader and five men. It was vital that the groups were kept separate, and that men in one group knew nothing about any of the other groups.

  At first they had limited supplies. They had a few Sten submachine guns smuggled in from Britain, some maps and some compasses. The Sten gun was much beloved by commandos, and by partisans, throughout World War II. It was a simple, close-combat weapon firing 9-mm rounds from a 32-round magazine. The maquisards learned how to strip it and clean it, how to maintain it and how to fire it. Because the gun was simply made, it presented few opportunities to go wrong. Best of all, the Germans also used 9-mm ammunition, so it fired captured rounds beautifully.

  It may have been a handy weapon, but there were too few of them to go around. Proper training was a further problem. The early Sten guns made a dangerous racket when fired, loud enough to alert the gendarmes, the Germans and the neighbours. Ammunition was also scarce, so there was little opportunity to practise firing live rounds.

  Training took place at night, and consisted of finding the way in total silence around a triangular course with sides three kilometres long, in the dark, without a light, using only a compass. It was hardly adequate preparation for guerrilla warfare against a tough and ruthless enemy. Still, it was a start.

  • • •

  When researching this book, I put the same questions to everybody I talked to: Were there any informers on the Plateau? Were there denunciations? Did anybody from the Plateau spy for the Germans or the Vichy? The response was universal. No, no and no again. There was no fifth column. Nobody snitched. Nobody broke ranks. The Plateau stayed solid.

  The only mildly dissenting voice is that of the excellent Protestant historian François Boulet. In his book Histoire de la Montagne-refuge (History of the Mountain Refuge), he says that the chain of events that led to the most horrific episode in the whole story of the Plateau began with a French informer. Boulet is a painstaking and thorough researcher. He doesn’t name the informer or give any details, but I would happily bet that he knows what he is talking about.

  In his version, ‘somebody French from Le Chambon’ wrote to the German military police in Saint-Étienne to let them know that an Austrian named Kaller, who had deserted from the German Army, was hiding in a guesthouse in the village. On the morning of 23 April 1943, by coincidence Good Friday, two German military police from Saint-Étienne arrived in Le Chambon on their motorcycles and made a beeline for Inspector Praly’s office. They were looking for an Austrian deserter called Kaller, they told the policeman. Could the inspector lead them to him? The three men scoured Praly’s files, looking for a foreigner named Kaller aged between 30 and 35 years. No luck. Clearly Kaller was living under an assumed name, probably with false identity papers.

  The House of Rocks was unlike other shelters on the Plateau. As it had the status of a mini-university, it was generally for older students rather than the schoolchildren transferred from the camps. In fact, the ages ranged from seventeen to 35. The manager, Daniel Trocmé, was an earnest young man who saw the role as a test of his ability to do something worthwhile with his life. The House of Rocks could accommodate as many as 50 students in 32 rooms, and the students came from all over Europe. For the two military policemen, it sounded like a good place to start looking for their deserter with false papers.

  So the policemen hopped on their motorcycles and set off for the House of Rocks, which was on the edge of the village of Le Chambon. There they questioned all the students. Name? Place of birth? Date of birth? Okay, now let’s see your papers. There was no sign of the elusive Monsieur Kaller, but the policemen were visibly disturbed by what they had seen and heard. They were particularly suspicious of Daniel Trocmé. ‘You speak German too well to be French,’43 they told him. ‘You’re certainly using forged papers, and you’re definitely Jewish.’ They returned to the village on their motorcycles and had lunch at the Hôtel du Lignon. Then they headed out of Le Chambon towards Saint-Agrève, clearly very unhappy.

  Four days later, on 27 April, four German non-commissioned officers were taking an evening stroll outside the village of Le Chambon. It was about nine thirty at night. Around 500 metres from the village, on the Tence road, they came on two students from the New Cévenole School, Roger Debiève and Jacques Marchand, painting something on the road. It turned out to be a huge ‘V’—Churchill’s famous victory sign—and the forbidden double-barred Cross of Lorraine. They topped this off with a giant ‘1918’, the year of Germany’s defeat in World War I. The four German soldiers grabbed the two teenagers and marched them off to Inspector Pra
ly’s office. The little party arrived there at about ten o’clock at night.

  A German officer, a lieutenant, now joined them and demanded to know the captives’ names. Praly questioned them and, having established who they were, passed their names on to the German officer. The whole questioning process took about an hour. The officer left, after telling Praly without any explanation that he could let the two teenagers go. The next day, the lieutenant sought out Praly and told him: ‘Do nothing about this affair, because I’m going to let the German police know about it and they’ll arrange with me to come here.’

  Around the end of May 1943, two German military police went to the House of Rocks and arrested a young German called Ferber. The military police were usually on the lookout for deserters.

  The significance of all this is not so much the raids and arrests themselves as who carried them out. Up until now, French gendarmes had done all the raiding. But the gendarmes were deliberately sabotaging their own efforts (as testified by Madeleine Barot in Chapter 10), while others were ready to sabotage the raids for them (for example, there is good evidence that someone in Prefect Bach’s private office was tipping off those about to be raided by the Vichy forces). Faced with this, the Germans now brushed the gendarmes aside and took over the job of raiding and rounding up for themselves.

  Things were clearly getting a whole lot more dangerous. Oscar Rosowsky and his host Henri Héritier discussed the problem. Rosowsky’s forgery equipment was seriously incriminating: it needed a more secure hiding place than the little room in the barn. Héritier had an idea. He had fourteen beehives, but the bees had set up house in only twelve of them. What about using the two spare hives to store the forgery kit? It would take a Gestapo man of more than ordinary courage to stick his hand in there.

  On 8 June, three French con men dressed as policemen arrived in Fay-sur-Lignon. They were there with the connivance of the German authorities. The ‘policemen’ managed to swindle 110,000 francs from a rich Jewish father and son from Marseille, Armand and André Nizard. They then ‘arrested’ them both and handed them over to the Germans. The gendarmes in Fay-sur-Lignon refused to intervene. The normally sharp Daniel Curtet, pastor in the village, hesitated for several days before reporting the matter to Emile Romeuf, the head of Franco–German relations for the area. Curtet’s hesitation was probably recognition of a simple dilemma: if he explained the circumstances of the swindle, he might have to answer a whole lot of awkward questions about other Jewish refugees in the village.