Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation

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Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation Page 50

by Charles Glass


  p. 207 ‘After escaping from’ Sylvia Beach, ‘Inturned’, in Jackson Mathews and Maurice Saillet, Sylvia Beach (1887–1962), Paris: Mercure de France, 1963, p. 136.

  p. 207 ‘succeeded in stiring up’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, p. 175.

  p. 208 As soon as the United States David H. Stevens, Rockefeller Foundation, letter to Edward A. Sumner, 16 December 1941, American Library of Paris Archives, Box 9, File E.3, 1941.

  p. 208 ‘the Library is being … keep an open mind’ Edward A. Sumner, letter to the Rockefeller Foundation, 19 December 1941, American Library of Paris Archives, Box 9, File E.3, 1941.

  p. 208 ‘might become a tool’ Mary Niles Mack, ‘Between Two Worlds: The American Library in Paris during the War, Occupation and Liberation (1939–1945)’, University of California at Los Angeles Department of Information Studies, p. 24.

  p. 208 Clara was assisted Ibid., p. 25.

  p. 209 ‘The hospital feast’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 175.

  p. 209 ‘we encouraged one another’ Ibid., p. 166.

  PART FOUR: 1942

  Chapter Twenty-two: First Round-up

  p. 213 In mid-January, the Germans ‘Vichy Curbs Americans’, New York Times, 14 January 1942, p. 6.

  p. 213 ‘no women yet interned’ ‘AMERICAN INTERESTS, OCCUPIED FRANCE, RUSH’, Telegram from Huddle, US Embassy, Berne, to Secretary of State, 9 February 1942, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 389, Box 2141, Compiègne (2).

  p. 213 ‘should be considered’ Ibid.

  p. 213 ‘The German authorities’ ‘Nazis Ease Plight of Seized Americans’, United Press report, Vichy, New York Times, 29 January 1942, p. 6. There was only one American hospital in Paris, and enemy alien internees were not hostages under international law.

  p. 213 ‘consider this information … They are not allowed’ Enclosure No. 2 to Dispatch No. 749, 2 February 1942, Letter from S. Pinckney Tuck, Counsellor of Embassy, to the Secretary of State, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 389, Entry 460A, Box 2141, File: Addresses, France, American Prisoner of War Information Bureau Records Branch.

  p. 214 ‘At the same time’ Ibid.

  p. 214 The Vichy authorities ‘Three U.S. Banks Licensed in France’, New York Times, 31 January 1942, p. 25.

  p. 215 ‘Institutions such as the’ ‘200 Americans in Paris Said to Be Nazi Hostages’, New York Times, 29 January 1942, p. 1, continued on p. 8.

  p. 215 The American Chamber of Commerce ‘American Places to Reopen in Paris’, New York Times, 31 August 1944, p. 4.

  p. 215 ‘These patients were’ Otto Gresser interview in Kathleen Keating, ‘The American Hospital in Paris during the German Occupation’, 19 May 1981, 14-page typescript, p. 7, American Hospital of Paris Archives, File: German Occupation by Kathleen Keating and Various Other Histories, 1940–1944.

  p. 215 Many of the 340 men ‘American Freed in Paris’, New York Times, 9 February 1942, p. 4.

  p. 215 Dr Morris Sanders was ‘Nazis Free U.S. Doctor, Morris Sanders Back at Work at Paris Hospital’, New York Times, 2 May 1942, p. 2.

  p. 215 ‘no other interference’ Otto Gresser, ‘History of the American Hospital of Paris’, 14-page typescript, p. 6, American Hospital of Paris Archives, File: History by Otto Gresser.

  p. 216 A proposal came in January Max Wallace, The American Axis, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2003, p. 94.

  p 216 ‘should be humanely’ Quoted in Ibid., p. 98.

  p. 216 ‘It’s the Nazis’ Quoted in Ibid., p. 244.

  p. 216 ‘From this time on’ General Aldebert de Chambrun, Managing Governor, Letter to the Board of Directors of the American Hospital of Paris, 9 December 1944, pp. 2–3, American Hospital of Paris Archives, File: Report, 1940–1944.

  p. 217 ‘There were so few’ Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Company, London: Faber and Faber, 1960, p. 219.

  p. 217 ‘the Gestapo kept’ Interview with Sylvia Beach by Niall Sheridan, Self Portraits: Sylvia Beach, documentary film on Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), Dublin, 1962.

  p. 217 ‘Hardest to put up’ Adrienne Monnier, ‘A Letter to Friends in the Free Zone’, originally published in Le Figaro Littéraire, February 1942, in Adrienne Monnier, The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier: An Intimate Portrait of the Literary and Artistic Life in Paris between the Wars, translated with introduction and commentaries by Richard McDougall, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976, p. 404.

  p. 217 ‘I shared the strange’ Sylvia Beach, ‘Inturned’, in Jackson Mathews and Maurice Saillet, Sylvia Beach (1887–1962), Paris: Mercure de France, 1963, pp. 136–7.

  p. 217 ‘An average bottle’ ‘U.S. Films Appear in Paris Secretly’, New York Times, 27 April 1942, p. 6.

  p. 217 ‘Even the electricity’ Ninetta Jucker, Curfew in Paris: A Record of the German Occupation, London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, p. 175. p. 218 ‘No one who has’ Ibid.

  p. 219 In February 1942, Rittmeister Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism II’, The New Yorker, 6 October 1945, p. 45. Flanner wrote of Ledebur’s new posting, ‘That simplified everything.’

  p. 219 ‘I was therefore authorized’ Gaston Bedaux, La vie ardente de Charles Bedaux, privately published, Paris, 3 June 1959, p. 49.

  p. 219 ‘Charles told me’ Ibid., p. 104.

  p. 219 ‘In 1941 … he adopted’ Ibid., p. 79.

  p. 220 ‘This idea crystallized’ Ibid.

  p. 220 ‘One day, my brother’ Ibid., pp. 79–80.

  p. 221 ‘My dear Frederic … My friend returned to see me’ Enclosure, Foreign Travel Control, ‘Memorandum for Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation’, 10 January 1944, Federal Bureau of Investigation Archives, File provided under a Freedom of Information Act request and unnumbered. FOIPA No. 1088544-001. (Note: of 109 pages reviewed by the FBI, only 83 pages were declassified for release. Most of those released had long passages blocked out.) Bedaux’s letter was read by British Censorship, which gave a copy to the FBI. Mrs Waite received the letter and showed it to Ledebur.

  p. 221 Frederic, as Friedrich called Federal Bureau of Investigation, Form Number 1, NY File Number 66-6045, 14 October 1942, Federal Bureau of Investigation Archives, File provided under a Freedom of Information Act request and unnumbered. FOIPA No. 1088544-001.

  p. 222 ‘written on a typewriter’ Agent E. P. Coffey, ‘Memorandum for Mr. Tracy’, 26 August 1942, Federal Bureau of Investigation Archives, File provided under a Freedom of Information Act request and unnumbered. FOIPA No. 1088544-001.

  p. 222 ‘Our overwhelming superiority’ ‘France Bombed with U.S. Leaflets Giving Goals of War Production’, New York Times, 6 February 1942, p. 6. Vidkun Quisling was the Nazi-imposed prime minister of Norway.

  p. 223 ‘The U.S. is polite’ ‘U.S. Rejects Vichy’s Explanation of Its Working With the Nazis’, Life, 16 March 1942, p. 29.

  Chapter Twenty-three: The Vichy Web

  p. 224 ‘His father-in-law’ René de Chambrun, Pierre Laval: Traitor or Patriot?, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984, p. 71.

  p. 224 Monahan was on the board of governors ‘Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Board of Governors of the American Hospital of Paris Held on April 4th, 1941’, p. 2, in American Hospital of Paris Archives, File: Correspondence and Reports 1941, and Minutes, 19 September 1940 to 7 November 1941.

  p. 225 ‘Laval knew how’ Chambrun, Pierre Laval: Patriot or Traitor?, p. 72.

  p. 226 ‘My father-in-law and I’ Ibid., p. 73. Georges Féat, a naval captain in Pétain’s military cabinet, confirmed de Chambrun’s version of events in his testimony for the Hoover Institution Collection. See ‘Laval’s Return in 1942’, France During the German Occupation, 1940–1944: A Collection of 292 Statements on the Government of Maréchal Pétain and Pierre Laval, translated from the French by Philip W. Whitcomb, Palo Alto, CA: The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1957, vol. III, pp. 1564–5. However, in the Fren
ch edition of the same volume, La Vie de la France sous L’Occupation (1940–1944), Paris: Librarie Plon for Institut Hoover, 1957, pp. 1694–7, Féat stated that the impulse for the meeting came from Laval, who had met Marshal Hermann Goering in Paris in March 1942. Goering warned Laval, according to Féat, that Germany was going to take direct control of France.

  p. 226 ‘Ralph Heinzen, of the United Press’ Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on his Notes and Diaries Made at the Time, London: Victor Gollancz, 1950, p. 109.

  p. 226 On 1 April 1942, Josée From the diaries of Josée de Chambrun, in Yves Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fille d’après ses carnets intimes, Paris: Le Cherche-Midi, 2002, pp. 241–2. Josée’s dates conflict with those given by René in his Pierre Laval: Patriot or Traitor?, pp. 72–3. René wrote that he went to Vichy two days after 31 March, when Monahan contacted him. However, the date of the meeting between Pétain and Laval was 25 March, so it is more probable that Monahan contacted René some time before. Josée’s diary dates with the references to her birthday, their stay at Château de Candé and Easter in Biarritz were made at the time. René’s account was written forty years later.

  p. 227 In Paris, Josée From the diaries of Josée de Chambrun, Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fille d’après ses carnets intimes, p. 242.

  p. 227 A few days later Ibid., p. 243.

  p. 228 They went instead to Major-General Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation of France, 1940–1944, New York: Macmillan, 2002, p. 265.

  p. 228 Oberg was the protégé Maurice Larkin, France since the Popular Front: Government and People, 1936–1996, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, p. 98.

  p. 228 ‘They all must go’ H. R. Kenward, Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance, 1940–1944, Oxford: Blackwell, 1985, p. 63. See also Marcel Ophuls’s1971 documentary film, Le Chagrin et la pitié, in which Ophuls questioned René de Chambrun about Laval’s refusal to spare the children.

  p. 228 The Vélodrome d’Hiver was Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944, New York: W. W. Norton, 1972, pp. 181–2. On p. 183, Paxton wrote, ‘In the end, some 60,000–65,000 Jews were deported from France, mostly foreigners who had relied upon traditional French hospitality. Perhaps 6,000 French citizens also took that gruesome journey. Some 2,800 of the deportees got back.’

  p. 229 ‘One. All close male’ Gérard Walter, Paris under the Occupation, translated from the French by Tony White, New York: Orion Books, 1960, p. 188.

  p. 229 Oberg hunted down ‘Sparing the Butcher’s Life’, Time, 5 May 1958.

  p. 229 ‘let it be known’ Walter, Paris under the Occupation, p. 140.

  p. 229 The star had a practical purpose Ibid., p. 147. (Walter reproduced General Oberg’s list of seventeen types of public space forbidden to Jews.)

  p. 230 ‘as I went about’ Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Company, London: Faber and Faber, 1960, p. 219.

  p. 230 When Sylvia, Françoise and an American Noel Riley Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983, p. 402.

  p. 230 ‘“They dare …” he yelled’ Sylvia Beach, ‘French Literature Went Underground’, New York Herald Tribune, Paris edition, 4 January 1945, p. 2.

  p. 231 ‘Papa adores these’ Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, p. 403.

  p. 231 ‘The morale in the camp … From the hygienic’ ‘Camp for Interned Americans at Compiègne: Visited June 16, 1942, by Drs. Schirmer and J. de Morsier’, from the Special Division, Department of State to the War Department, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 389, Entry 460A, Box 2142, General Subject File, 1942–1946, Camp Reports: France.

  p. 231 ‘There are no air’ ‘Confidential, Report No. 1–Compiègne’, from Fred O. Auckenthaler and Dr Alfred Castelberg, from the Special Division of the Department of State to the War Department, Information Bureau, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 389, Box 2141, Compiègne (2).

  p. 231 ‘British planes last’ ‘Camp Reported Hit’, New York Times, 25 June 1942, p. 6.

  p. 232 ‘four Americans were’ ‘4 U.S. Internees Killed’, New York Times, 26 July 1942, p. 4.

  p. 232 ‘German planes, in reprisal’ ‘Paraphrase of Telegram Received, From: Bern; To: Secretary of State; Dated: August 4, 1942, 2 p.m.; Number 3586’, From the Special Division of the Department of State to the War Department (PMG), 19 August 1942, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 389, Box 2141, Compiègne (2).

  p. 232 ‘foreign airplane which … since that occurence’ Ibid.

  p. 232 ‘Some of the internees’ ‘Confidential, Date of Visit: July 25th, 1942’, From the Special Division of the Department of State to the War Department (Information Bureau), 3 September 1942, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 389, Box 2141, Compiègne (2).

  p. 233 Almost as soon as Laval Sarah Fishman, ‘Grand Delusions: The Unintended Consequences of Vichy France’s Prisoner of War Propaganda’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 26, no. 21, April 1991, p. 233. (Article is on pp. 229–54.)

  p. 233 In June, Laval Ibid., p. 239.

  p. 233 Laval reached an accord Ibid., p. 237.

  p. 234 On 24 August 1942 ‘Black List’, Life, 24 August 1942, p. 86.

  p. 234 ‘My estimate of Charles’ S. Pinckney Tuck, Vichy, to Secretary of State, ‘Subject: Conversation with Mr. Charles Bedaux’, 25 July 1942, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, File and box numbers unknown.

  p. 234 ‘Germany had been’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, p. 169.

  p. 235 ‘confronted by an officer … I guarantee that … I gave my word’ Ibid., p. 169–70.

  p. 235 ‘seated at a tiny’ Ibid., p. 105. The yellow star decree was issued on 1 June 1942. See Walter, Paris under the Occupation, p. 144.

  p. 235 ‘I met them walking’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 105.

  p. 235 The library staff still Gérard Walter wrote that of 200,000 Jews, about half of them French nationals, in Paris before the German invasion, many had not been able to return after the June 1940 exodus. (In Greater Paris, the total had been about 300,000, according to most sources.) The Germans deported 5,000 foreign Jews in May 1941. ‘In fact, the check made in November, 1941, established the number of Jews in Paris as 92,864 aged over fifteen, and 17,728 children between the ages of six and fifteen.’ Walter, Paris under the Occupation, p. 138.

  p. 236 ‘Without actually raising’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 170.

  p. 236 ‘which being a few blocks’ Ibid., p. 173.

  p. 236 ‘There was a deafening … What had happened’ Ibid.

  p. 237 The culprit, 21-year-old Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965, p. 279.

  p. 237 On 20 October 1941 Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time, London: Victor Gollancz, 1950, p. 65.

  p. 237 ‘Everyone on the platform’ ‘A Letter from Paris’, The Nation, 10 January 1942, p. 39.

  p. 237 After the killing Walter, Paris under the Occupation, p. 167.

  p. 237 ‘harder and harder’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 174.

  p. 237 ‘Général de Chambrun received’ Ibid.

  p. 238 In Princeton, New Jersey Sylvia Beach Notebook, Christmas presents, 1940–1945, Sylvia Beach Papers, Princeton University Library, CO108, Box 20, Unnumbered folder. The folder includes Holly’s letter to Secretary of State Cordell Hull stating her doubts about the letters, but there is no reply from Hull. The handwriting in the letter allegedly written by Françoise Bernheim bears some resemblance to authentic letters by Françoise, which may imply that she was forced by the Germans to write
the letter. Sylvia did not refer to the letters in her subsequent writing about the occupation.

  Chapter Twenty-four: The Second Round-up

  p. 239 ‘Before leaving … I was given’ Clemence Bock diary, quoted in Hal Vaughan, Doctor to the Resistance: The Heroic Story of an American Surgeon and His Family in Occupied France, Washington: Brassey’s, 2004, p. 54.

  p. 240 ‘and the English … That evening we were at’ Ibid.

  p. 240 While Dr Jackson Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism III’, The New Yorker, 13 October 1945, p. 34.

  p. 241 The French driver Jim Christy, The Price of Power: A Biography of Charles Eugene Bedaux, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1984, p. 252.

  p. 241 On 28 September, the French ‘Embassy in Vichy Gets Arrest Data’, New York Times, 29 September 1942, p. 7.

  p. 241 ‘On the grounds of’ ‘Paraphrase of Telegram Received, From: (Paris) Vichy; To: Secretary of State, Washington, D.C.’, 28 September 1942, Re: Arrests of Americans in Paris, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 389, Entry 460A, Box 2142, General Subject File, 1942–1946, Camp Reports: France.

  p. 242 ‘circular letters urging’ ‘Embassy in Vichy Gets Arrest Data’, New York Times, 29 September 1942, p. 7.

  p. 242 ‘The new arrivals’ Donald A. Lowrie, Enclosure No. 1 to No. 3721, dated 3 November 1942, from the American Legation, Berne, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 389, Box 2141, Compiègne (2).

  p. 242 ‘that there was a fine … The kitchen was’ ‘Report on Visit by Messrs. Auguste Senaud and Hemming Andermo to the American Internment Camp at Compiègne, October 16, 1942’, Enclosure No. 1 to Despatch No. 3822 dated 16 November 1942, from American Legation, Berne, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 389, Box 2141, Compiègne (2).

  p. 243 ‘The visit was passionate’ Gaston Bedaux, La vie ardente de Charles Bedaux, Paris: privately published, 3 June 1959, p. 74.

 

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