One Hundred Twenty-One Days (5 page)

(1917-1939)

A POLYTECHNICIAN MURDERS HIS ENTIRE FAMILY

(Le Petit Parisien, June 25, 1917)

Yesterday in Le Chesnay (Seine-et-Oise), Roger Goldstein, former student of the École Polytechnique and lieutenant in the 6th Artillery Regiment, killed his father, his mother, his brother, and one of his aunts, who was a nurse at Hospital 209. The family was gathered around their Sunday lunch when the madman fired the mortal gunshots. Alerted by the racket, a female neighbor went to get the police, whom the murderer obeyed without any difficulties.

THE AMERICANS ARRIVE!

(L’Ouest-Éclair, June 30, 1917)

After General Pershing’s arrival in Paris on the 13th, last Tuesday saw the first American soldiers disembark at the port of Saint-Nazaire.

THE MURDERER HAD HIS SENSE KNOCKED OUT OF HIM!

(Le Petit Parisien, July 2, 1917)

We have been informed that Robert Gorenstein (and not Roger Goldstein, as we printed in error), the polytechnician and officer on leave who was arrested last week for the murder of his uncle, his aunt, and his brother (three and not four crimes as was written in haste in a previous article) was a victim of an artillery shell last January. Almost all the men in his battery were killed, and he himself hit his head.

In a horrible development, according to information gathered from neighbors, the three Gorenstein children were orphans and had been raised by their aunt and her husband.

At the time, military doctors considered him recovered, and he was sent back to the front. He is presently undergoing psychiatric exams.

DEATH OF A FLYING ACE

(Le Soir, September 15, 1917)

The aviator Georges Guynemer died on Tuesday in Poelkapelle (Belgium). He achieved more than eighty victories in the “Storks” fighter squadron.

A PLAGUE VANQUISHED

(Le Petit Parisien, October 2, 1917)

Typhoid fever has disappeared from the French front.

COUP D’ÉTAT IN RUSSIA

(L’Humanité, November 9, 1917)

The Maximalists are the rulers of Petrograd. Kerensky has been deposed. The fallen government no longer has the support of the Soviets.

Lenin has won the Soviets’ acclaim. The new government is calling for peace.

BOLSHEVIK NEGOTIATIONS

(Le Matin, December 15, 1917)

The Bolsheviks have started peace negotiations with the Krauts. If they reach an agreement, the liberated German troops will be free to come reinforce our attackers.

DERANGED POLYTECHNICIAN SHUT AWAY

(Le Petit Parisien, January 17, 1918)

The verdict in the Robert Gorenstein affair was announced yesterday. Readers may recall that he was arrested in June after murdering three members of his family. During the trial, the polytechnician,
who had injured his head in battle at the Chemin des Dames, declared that he had wanted to eradicate the dead branches of his family. The psychiatrist deemed him irresponsible and as harmless as a little boy, now that he considered his task accomplished.

In view of this expertise, the court pronounced a sentence of life internment in a psychiatric ward.

PIERRE MEYER
(interview, December 18, 2006).
Marguerite never spoke about Gorenstein to anyone, I believe. Until 1945, when her daughter Bernadette left home. She went to get her notebooks from the bottom of the big wardrobe and gave them to Bernadette, asking her to read and save them. The newspaper clippings about the triple murder and the trial were slipped into the notebooks. She had stopped writing when she got married. She gave them to her daughter and died not long afterwards.

The article on typhoid was also among her papers. It appeared right around the time her sister died of typhus. She was eighteen. Marguerite named her first daughter, Thérèse, after her.

Bernadette was the fourth. Why she was the one Marguerite gave her diary to, I’m not sure I really ever knew.

THE G. CASE: A FIRST REPORT

BY J. MEYERBEER, PSYCHIATRIC DOCTOR, SAINT-MAURICE

(Gazette of the Association of Psychiatric Doctors of France, Vol. 28, 1920)

One may recall the bloody criminal story that the daily newspapers had a field day with in 1917–18, probably after being tired of publishing news from the front passed through the sieve of military censure. A multiple family murder, a matricidal (or almost) polytechnician—none other than a journalist would have more reason to celebrate. The goal of this article is to present the patient and his current state, two years after he was hospitalized.

HISTORY

Let us briefly recall the facts. On June 24, 1917, Robert G., then 22 years of age, killed his uncle and aunt, Monsieur and Madame H., and one of his sisters, Cécile G., during a family meal. More specifically, as he himself confessed and as the investigation confirmed, he started by shooting his youngest sister, then his aunt, and only killed his uncle when the latter interposed. Monsieur and Madame G. died in an accident when their son Robert was only two years old. Madame H. was his mother’s sister. She and her husband, who had no children, took on the responsibility of raising Nicole, Robert, and Cécile G., then aged four, two, and one. The three children did brilliantly in school; only Cécile, the youngest, was still living with her adoptive parents.

A student of the École Polytechnique, Robert G. had been
mobilized as a second lieutenant of artillery. The only one from his battery to survive after a violent German attack in February 1916, he was hospitalized for a head injury, then sent back to the front in April. During the events of June 1917, he was on a few days’ leave.

At the court’s request, he was the subject of a psychiatric appraisal performed by our esteemed colleague, Doctor Bergamotte. The latter shared with us his remarks on the report he submitted to the judicial authorities, for which we are grateful. Briefly:

-    the subject was perfectly conscious during the crime,

-    he acted for reasons of eugenics,

-    he declared himself satisfied with having eradicated the deficient branches of the family.

From the doctor’s interviews with the patient and the exams he performed on him, Doctor Bergamotte concluded that Robert G. would be harmless from that point forward.

The judge—acting very prudently where a combatant was concerned, one who, moreover, was wounded in the war—was lenient and decided to have him interned. He has been at the Saint-Maurice Hospital, in our unit, for three years.

We would like to highlight the fact that Robert G.’s eldest sister, Nicole, who is two years older than he, was not present at the fatal lunch. She is very attached to the patient. She was also a witness at the trial. Her love for her brother, in spite of the crime committed against the family, stupefied the jury and bore weight on the decision as well.

REMARKS ON THE HOSPITALIZATION

Robert G. is living in a locked room that has been furnished for a long-term stay.

He is a calm and amiable patient. For this reason, he is well-liked by the staff. He demands far less attention than the noisy, agitated patients who are brought in here wrapped up like dolls.

He seems to be very satisfied with his situation. Dressed in a hospital gown and a black velvet cap, he spends his days reading and writing.

He willingly goes along with our questions, enduring them with a look of indifference, which might be feigned.

He asked to be allowed to use books. He wrote a list of the ones he needed himself, and we asked his sister to bring him the desired volumes. With the exception of Goethe’s
Faust
, they are all books on mathematics. A bookshelf and a table have been set up in his room so that he can write.

He has returned to studying mathematical science, to which he had had little time to devote after he left the École Polytechnique, on the very eve of the war. He asked permission to correspond with mathematicians from France and other countries (but not Germany), to which we agreed.

As he himself has made us note, he can work peacefully, without having to be preoccupied with teaching classes or engaging in other lucrative activities needed to earn a living.

We will add that he reads a passage from his copy of
Faust
every evening. This act of reading and the evocation of hell make him cry. Each time we ask for an explanation of these tears, he launches into a long series of reflections which are unclear (and repetitive),
with recurring mentions of succubi, which are, according to G., demons with blue eyes.

He receives regular visits from his sister, sometimes accompanied by her husband.

A VISIT TO VAL-DE-GRÂCE

(L’Humanité, July 14, 1920)

Here, faces are remade. Just a glimpse at the two photos included in this article will allow you to judge the doctors’ work completed on the broken faces of our soldiers.

THE SOLEMN HOMAGE OF THE GRATEFUL HOMELAND

(Le Petit Parisien, November 12, 1920)

The coffin of the “Unknown Soldier,” placed on a cannon, preceded by the chariot carrying Gambetta’s heart, arrived at the Arc de Triomphe yesterday.

DID YOU SEE THE ECLIPSE?

(Le Petit Parisien, April 9, 1921)

The extreme clarity of the atmosphere allowed curious amateur astronomers to contemplate yesterday’s solar eclipse in all its beauty. The classic method? Good old cheap smoked glass.

PIERRE MEYER
(interview, December 18, 2006, cont.).
She felt a tremendous amount of compassion for her husband. His injury caused him to suffer for his entire life. He must have not been very easy to live with. Terrible temper. And that huge household she had to look after, six children! They were very close in age: the youngest, Ignace, was born in 1924. They named him after Mortaufs’s brother, who was killed in 1918. Such an atrocious war…

It was at that time, when Ignace was born, that they bought the house in Chatou. Marguerite had a personal fortune, and Mortaufs was earning a good amount of money, with all those courses he was teaching in various places.