Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation (36 page)

‘Since that occurrence,’ the Red Cross concluded, ‘the morale of the internees has fallen a great deal and several dozens now announce that they will imitate the Americans mentioned above who will be able to leave the camp to go back to America by way of Lisbon.’ Until the bombing, many of the American internees had been reluctant to leave their families, homes and businesses in France. Bombardment by their own side changed their minds. A Red Cross visit of 25 July found, ‘Some of the internees are living in fear of a new bombing of Compiègne … The German authorities offered to transfer the whole Camp to some other place, but the internees declared that they preferred to stay here near Paris where they can see their friends and relatives.’ The inspector added, ‘The general impression of this Camp is still a good one.’

Although conditions at the Compiègne camp were superior to the usual run of German prisons, its resources were about to be stretched to breaking point. Seven barracks might comfortably accommodate 249 inmates, but they would not easily provide beds for another one thousand American men. But, in September 1942, the camp’s commanders were ordered to find space for new arrivals.

To American diplomats in Vichy, the iron grille in the Hôtel du Parc between the offices of Maréchal Pétain and his new prime minister, Pierre Laval, symbolized their mutual distrust. René de Chambrun carried messages between them when their own aides would not suffice. Almost as soon as Laval was sworn in, René asked his father-in-law to appoint a new representative to the
Commissariat Général des Prisonniers de Guerre Rapatriés
(General Commission for Repatriated Prisoners of War). His nominee was André Masson, whom René trusted to convince freed prisoners to support collaboration with the Germans. Prisoners were coming home and condemning their German captors for mistreatment and using them as slave labourers. Although their comments were not published in the collaborationist press, word spread. If more returning prisoners supported collaboration, René reasoned, the Germans would set more free. In June, Laval appointed Masson.

René’s concern for French prisoners dated to the capture of his Maginot Line comrades in June 1940. His 1940 book,
I Saw France Fall
, whose royalties went to a prisoners’ charity, had been dedicated to three prisoner friends. The continued absence of 1.58 million able-bodied men was crippling France, whose wives were without husbands, children without fathers and land without farmers. One in every seven adult males was in a German prison camp. In seeking to ameliorate the suffering of prisoners and their families, René mired himself more deeply in Vichy’s politics of intrigue and collaboration.

Laval reached an accord with the Germans that went into effect in June 1942 as the
relève
, or relief, scheme that sent three Frenchmen to work in Germany for each French prisoner freed. As so often with instances of German–French collaboration, Germany was the real beneficiary. The three to one ratio of workers to freed prisoners was in Germany’s favour. Sending French workers, who were more skilled than east European slave labour, to Germany was a boon to German industry. What was more, releasing French prisoners or converting them into voluntary workers relieved German soldiers for front-line duty. When 221,000 French prisoners became voluntary workers under the
relève
, 30,000 German guards were transferred to combat units. But thousands of young Frenchmen went into hiding to avoid the forced labour or, with little to lose, joined the Resistance.

Life
magazine, owned by René de Chambrun’s friend Henry Luce, launched the first salvo of an American press campaign against French collaborators. On 24 August 1942,
Life
published a ‘Black List’ of ‘the Frenchmen condemned by the underground for collaborating with the Germans’. Not surprisingly, prominent pro-Nazi propagandists like Jacques Doriot and Marcel Déat made
Life
’s roll of shame, as did Maréchal Pétain and Pierre Laval. The list included actors Sacha Guitry and Maurice Chevalier and comedienne Mistinguett. Unexpectedly, one alleged collaborator was ‘René de Chambrun, son-in-law of Laval’. The Luce–Chambrun friendship ended.

A regular visitor to Vichy that summer was Charles Bedaux, who called frequently at the American Embassy in the Villa Ica. In a five-page memorandum to the secretary of state sent on 25 July 1942, S. Pinckney Tuck relayed Bedaux’s analysis of the power struggle between the German army and the SS. Bedaux recommended Pierre Laval as a mediator between the United States and anti-Nazi Germans seeking a compromise peace. ‘Kippy’ Tuck’s final paragraph analysed Bedaux’s character:

‘Germany had been at war with the United States for six whole months before I first received a visit from Nazi authority,’ Clara de Chambrun wrote. ‘I was working in my office when a voice with strong Teutonic accent inquired over the telephone whether the directress was there. On answering affirmatively, I was informed that Dr Fuchs would call in twenty minutes.’ It was June 1942. Dr Hermann Fuchs was the
Bibliotheksschütz
or ‘protector’ of libraries in German-occupied Europe, who had established a modus vivendi with Dorothy Reeder in 1940. True to his word, he arrived at the American Library twenty minutes after his call to Clara. Clara found herself ‘confronted by an officer with the stiffest back and most piercing spectacles I ever remember to have encountered’. Dr Fuchs was looking for Dorothy Reeder. When Clara explained that Miss Reeder had left Paris, Dr Fuchs confessed his disappointment: ‘I guaranteed that Miss Reeder should never be molested come what might; therefore, she ought to have remained at her post.’ This was followed by ‘a very full interrogation’ of Clara, whose answers and credentials satisfied him. The interview concluded with his promise to Clara to deal with any difficulties she might have with other occupation agencies, indicating that Germany’s different bureaus were not always in agreement. She was to call him immediately if there were problems. He said, ‘I gave my word that this Library should be maintained open during the war. I am glad that you feel able to assume its responsibilities. You have but to continue in the same way as your predecessor and subscribe to the same rules.’ The rules were that the library was forbidden to sell any of its books or furniture, to raise the salaries of its staff and, though Dr Fuchs neglected to restate it, to admit Jews. By the time he reassured Clara that the library would remain ‘quite independent’, however, Jews were so restricted in Paris that they could go to few public places at all.

Just after the Nazis ordered Jews in the Occupied Zone to wear the yellow star sewn conspicuously onto their outer clothing, Clara recognized a man and a woman whom, on her June 1940 flight from Paris, she had seen picnicking beside the road, ‘seated at a tiny folding-table which formed part of their Rolls-Royce equipment’. The gentleman with the neatly trimmed beard and his elegant wife were back in Paris. Clara wrote, ‘I met them walking down one of the streets near the American Library. The man was still well-dressed but wore a yellow star; to his credit, he wore it jauntily.’ The library staff still delivered books to the houses of its remaining Jewish readers, whose numbers decreased with the deportations to concentration camps.

While observing the letter of Dr Fuchs’s rules, Clara contrived to violate their spirit: ‘Without actually raising salaries, I arranged to have the staff admitted to a free canteen in the neighboring building and instituted an “off the ledger” system of gifts at Christmas and Easter, and bonuses which made living possible.’ In the meantime, Clara managed the library with a light hand, noting that ‘my small staff whose quality made up for its quantity did better without me. So instead of exhibiting my technical incompetence in the cataloguing department or at the distributing desk, I remained in my office, made regular rounds of the building, and kept myself in readiness to give help in case it was requested.’ Her free time was devoted to writing a new book on William Shakespeare’s life and works, to be published in English as
Shakespeare Rediscovered
. When Aldebert was not sleeping at the American Hospital, he and Clara went to plays. Their usual venue was the Théâtre de l’Odéon, ‘which being a few blocks from the house was easy of access, and allowed us, even in case of an alert, sufficient time to return to our own home without being shepherded into an
abri
[shelter]. But occasionally we were tempted to Montparnasse, where the show was always worth seeing, and even to the Français [Comédie Française] which is more difficult of access.’

To reach the Comédie Française near the Louvre, Clara and Aldebert took the subway across the Seine. Clara was unlikely to have stood up when the train pulled into the George-V Metro station, as many other Parisians did in defiant tribute to the late British monarch. Clara had little patience with meaningless acts of resistance and none at all for direct assaults on the Germans. When Clara and Aldebert were exiting the Barbès Metro station one evening, she recalled, ‘There was a deafening noise, whether of a pistol or a hand-grenade I could not tell: then the sound of running feet.’ Suddenly, German military police ordered, ‘Hands up!’ Clara, Aldebert and the other passengers were led single file to two police examiners. The 69-year-old matron was frisked ‘from throat to ankle’ for firearms, an indignity she endured with her usual sangfroid.

This was the first assassination in occupied Paris of a German, a naval cadet named Moser, on 21 August 1941. The culprit, 21-year-old communist Pierre Fabien, was later captured by the Gestapo on suspicion of other offences and escaped. In response to such attacks, hostages–communists, Jews, Freemasons, captured
résistants
or anyone held in a police station for violating the midnight curfew–were shot. On 20 October 1941, the Nazis executed fifty hostages in response to the killing of one lieutenant colonel. An anonymous American in Paris wrote to
The Nation
in New York about the reaction to the knifing of a German officer in the Bastille Metro station: ‘Everyone on the platform and on the train was arrested. A certain number of them were allowed to see their families. They were optimistic and said they would be home soon. They were executed the next day.’ After the killing of a German soldier on 1 March 1942, the commander of Grossparis, General Ernst von Schaumburg, ordered the execution of twenty Jews and communists–with twenty more to follow if the culprits were not captured. Five months later, Schaumburg was himself the object of an assassination attempt when a 17-year-old Jewish communist, Marcel Rayman, threw a bomb into his car. More hostages were murdered in response.

Clara, characteristically, blamed the Resistance rather than the Germans for the executions. The attacks led the Germans, in Clara’s words, to come down ‘harder and harder upon all those who were known to be connected with England and the United States’. While Dr Fuchs’s assurances to the American Library were honoured, the American Hospital came in for scrutiny. Clara wrote, ‘Général de Chambrun received visit after visit from German medical officers of high rank with no other object in view than to take over the whole establishment for the use of their army. Every time, he pointed out that it was full to overflowing, and that it would not be large enough for them.’ In his obstinate refusal to admit German patients or to allow the Nazis a role in running the American Hospital, Aldebert was inadvertently assisting Dr Jackson to perform work for the Resistance that Clara abhorred.

 

In Princeton, New Jersey, Holly Beach Dennis began receiving unexpected letters from France. The authors claimed to be friends of her sister Sylvia. One letter, dated 27 August 1942, been posted from Orange in the Vaucluse. It said, ‘I am a friend of your sister Sylvia who asked me to tell you she was very well and not in need of anything, has enough to eat and is in all respects all right.’ It invited Holly to write to Sylvia at: ‘Mlle. F. Bernheim, c/o Mme. Cohen, Hotel des Princes, Orange, Vaucluse.’ The writer of the letter added, ‘I have been helping her in the shop a little this winter and enjoyed it.’ Holly, who had not received Sylvia’s letters for many months, did not know that Shakespeare and Company had closed in December. Another letter from Marseilles from an Alexis Roger Roubin said, ‘Dear Madame, I have had the pleasure to see, some days ago, your sister, Miss Sylvia Beach, whom I’ve met often in Paris.’ The writer urged Holly to write to her at an address he gave in Marseilles. Holly was understandably suspicious, particularly because Sylvia did not spend time in either Orange or Marseilles. Rather than reply, she sent the letters to the State Department. Had Sylvia known someone was writing to Holly in this way, she would have been certain that the German security services were attempting to incriminate her. The coincidence that all three names–Bernheim, Cohen and Roubin–were Jewish pointed to Gestapo entrapment.