The Sixth Lamentation (49 page)

Now that I’m dying, I can see lots of things far more clearly than I
ever did before. When all the faces of my youth started coming back, I looked
far yours. You didn’t come. That’s what first set me thinking. And something
tells me you’re still alive.

I have spent over half my life revisiting July 1942, always
believing you and I, and our oldest friends, were betrayed by Victor. But, as I’ve
said, I started seeing things differently. It wasn’t Father Rochet who caved
in, was it? It was you.

Did it happen when you were picked up for wearing that Star of
David? I never sensed the link before, between your arrest that June and the
breaking of The Table in July. But as this note is being written, they’re
preparing to put Schwermann on trial. Everything I hear moves from your arrest
to the betrayal a month later as if they were unconnected, yet it’s obvious to
me now that they were. I’ve looked back again. As usual, you organised the run.
All the others were picked up in the afternoon, except for you. When I got out
of Ravensbrück I was told you stayed at home after your family had gone. Why?
Not for me. I was already in La Santé prison. Did you hang around so the
Germans could find you easily? I don’t think so. No, something went badly wrong
on that terrible day and it has something to do with that last run. So,
Jacques, if anyone waited patiently for the knock upon the door that night it
wasn’t you. Surely it wasn’t Franz
…
Mr
Snyman?

You had a hand in my dying, and our little Robert’s. You didn’t mean
to, or want to. And if you have lived, as I believe you have, it has been no
life. If 1 could see you again I’d kiss you and tell you what you must
desperately want to hear. Instead, I raise these old hands of mine: may God
protect you, always; and forgive you, as I do now.

Agnes

Author s Note

This novel weaves fact and
fiction. The historical framework of the trial and the details of life in Paris
during the Occupation are all (I hope) accurate. The Vél d’Hiv round-up
occurred as described but I could not replicate the horror of what actually
transpired.

The
progress of judicial retribution after the war causes pause for thought. It was
not until 1980 that Herbert Hagen, Kurt Lischka and Ernst Heinrichsohn, three
Nazis closely involved in the deportation of Jews from France, were brought
before a court in Cologne. Only two out of the thirty or so convicted in their
absence by the French authorities had served a sentence (Karl Oberg and Helmut
Knochen). Numerous alleged war criminals settled in Britain, but legislation
enabling prosecutions to take place was not passed until 1991 (the War Crimes
Act) . Three hundred and seventy-six suspects were investigated. A third of
them were dead, and twenty-five were innocent. The first trial took place in
1995 after a £5.4m investigation and collapsed due to the defendant’s ill
health. A second (and probably the last) prosecution was concluded in 1999.
Anthony Sawoniuk was convicted of murdering two Jewish women in 1942. The name
of one was unknown.

The
reader wanting to better understand the previous paragraph, and the purging of
Nazi Germany in general, could profitably consult
Blind Eye to Murder
by
Tom Bower, cited below.The Round Table did not exist, although monasteries
throughout France were involved in similar activities. The idea was prompted by
an event in the life of my mother, Margaretha Duyker. As part of a smuggling
operation she took an infant by train out of Amsterdam to Arnhem but was
arrested by the Gestapo. The child was taken away. She was imprisoned and
eventually released. She died of motor neurone disease in 1989.

The
Gilbertines never came to France. That is an invasion of my own making. They
were the only English-born religious order and did not survive the Dissolution.
At their foundation, the monks (canons, to be precise) followed The Rule of
Saint Augustine and the nuns that of Saint Benedict. For simplicity I have
opted for the latter.

For the
purposes of the plot I have taken small liberties with the manner in which
deportation records and other formal documents were compiled during the
Occupation of France. I have rather ignored the security arrangements of the
Old Bailey.

The
facts in this novel were harvested from a variety of sources that traverse this
tragic period of French history. It would be impractical to list them all but I
record my debt to the following:

Blind
Eye to Murder,
Tom Bower (Warner Books, 1995)

Die
Endlösung der Judenfrage in Frankreich,
(Dokumentationszentrum
fur Jüdische Zeitgeschichte CDJC Paris, Deutsche Dokumente 1941—1944),
Heransgegeben von Serge Klarsfeld, Rechtsanwalt (Published 1977)

France:
The Dark Years, 1940—1944,
Julian Jackson (OUP,
2001)

French
Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial,
Serge
Klarsfeld, (New York University Press, 1977)

The
Holocaust, The French, and the Jews,
Susan Zuccotti
(BasicBooks, HarperCollins, 1993)

Le
Syndrome de Vichy: De 1944 a nos jours,
Henri
Rousso, (Editions du Seuil, 1990)

Occupation,
The Ordeal of France, 1940- 1944,
Ian Ousby (John
Murray (Publishers) Ltd, 1997)

Paris
after the Liberation: 1944—1949,
Antony Beevor and
Artemis Cooper (Hamish Hamilton, 1994)

Pope
Pius XII and the Holocaust,
edited by Carol Rittner
and John K. Roth (Continuum by arrangement with University of Leicester, 2002)

The
Sacred Chain: A History of the Jews,
Norman F
Cantor (HarperCollins, 1995)

The
evidence of Mine Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, given at Nuremburg, 28th
January 1946

About
the Author

William Brodrick was in
religious life but left before his final vows. He worked with homeless people
and then became a barrister.