The Greatest Escape: How one French community saved thousands of lives from the Nazis - A Good Place to Hide (22 page)

Catherine inevitably carried a lot of information in her head—names and addresses, for instance. If she had been caught by the Gestapo
and forced to talk, the damage could have been substantial. However, the Resistance was crafty enough to keep the problem to a minimum.

You never knew very much, only the next step. That way you didn’t know any of the other people involved … I was never stopped and searched on the train. I got away with it. They didn’t stop everybody. But that’s what I was scared about. What the hell would I say? How could I explain this?

Catherine’s first trip may have brought back to the Plateau nothing more dangerous than soap dropped in by parachute. But soon she became the last leg in a relay team bringing in something far more incriminating. Money. From Switzerland.

The money that was smuggled to the Plateau from Switzerland appears to have been delivered by a relay team rather than a single courier. As already mentioned, one of the most important rules in any clandestine operation is to keep all the parts separate and make sure each member of the team knows as little as possible about the rest. So Catherine Cambessédès has no idea to this day how money travelled between Geneva and Lyon. She would simply receive a message consisting of not much more than an address to go to, and a password. That was all she needed. The people at the first address would brief her on the next step, and so on. That kept to a minimum the amount of information that could be dragged out of her by the Gestapo if she was caught.

This trip was less dangerous than the trip to the maquis, because there were no guns involved. I was given an address in Lyon and I went there. You got to wherever you were sent and said a password so they would know you were genuine … They gave me a suitcase that had money in it. I have no idea how much. It could have been ten francs or a million. I sat on it all the way home. The train was full so there were no seats. I saw a friend of mine on the train, and he sat on the other end of the suitcase. I’m pretty sure the money came
from Charles Guillon in Geneva. I delivered it to Camp de Joubert in Le Chambon, and Joubert was Charles Guillon’s baby. I handed the money over to somebody there, probably Charly Durand. He belonged to one of the families living at Joubert. Getting back to Le Chambon always meant safety. In Lyon, or Saint-Étienne, I didn’t know anybody. But in Le Chambon, if anything happened, I knew plenty of places to hide. I  was always anxious to get back there. I remember being scared. If a German walked by I’d think: Oh, dear!

Catherine never kept a record of any of these missions, so it is impossible to know how many courier trips she made, but she thinks it was at least ten and maybe as many as twenty—to Lyon, to Valence, to Nîmes, wherever the Resistance asked her to go. Everything she brought back was incriminating, and could be easily linked to the Resistance. If she had been caught she would certainly have been arrested, and the penalties for aiding the Resistance were dire, including death or deportation.

Things didn’t always go smoothly.

I was in the Lyon train station one night and it was hot as hell. Fresh from Le Chambon where there was no hanky-panky, I said: ‘I’m going outside to get some fresh air.’ A  man followed me out, not a lot of people as I expected. I got into a train because I thought I could sleep on a seat. He followed me in there. It was obvious what he was going to do. I was so stunned, because … well, you never thought that way in Le Chambon. And I said: ‘No! No!’ as he made a move. Just then, the [Allies] started bombing the station. Believe me, at that point you don’t think of anything but to save your life. I  got off that train. He did too. And everybody from the station started to run, trying to get to the tunnel close to the station. It was very awkward and slow, running over the rails, but we all scrambled
madly in the dark. As we were running, one woman dropped a suitcase and I … said: ‘Madame, you dropped your suitcase.’ She didn’t even turn around to look. She just kept running. Then, from the sky, came parachutes with lights attached so the pilots could tell what they were going to bomb. Suddenly we were in broad daylight. That made running a little easier. We all made it into the tunnel, and soon it started to shake and tremble: the Allies were bombing the other end of the tunnel. That was my scariest experience, for sure.

• • •

The other side of the smuggling operation—getting the refugees across the border into Switzerland—was no walk in the park either. For a start, the refugees themselves presented all sorts of problems. They were mostly foreign Jews, many of whom spoke no French. They would give themselves away if they so much as opened their mouths. Also, they had to be briefed beforehand in their own language. German was most frequently needed, and that presented few problems, but Polish was more difficult.

They travelled in small groups, perhaps two or three people at a time, plus their
passeur
. They would spend the night before the journey in a safe house in Le Chambon where, Pierre Piton recalls, a briefing similar to the following would take place on the evening before departure, usually in German or Polish:

A man ([i.e. Piton, or another
passeur]
will come looking for you at this house. Follow him at a distance. Just before you depart he will give you your train tickets. If someone asks for your ticket or your proof of identity, act as though nothing important has happened and you aren’t bothered. Don’t speak. For as long as you can, pretend to be asleep during the whole day and night of the train journey. In the railway station waiting rooms, you should doze off. Don’t let anybody
start a conversation with you. If you lose sight of your guide, don’t worry; he’ll be back as soon as he can. If you are arrested but your guide isn’t, you must leave without giving any sign that you know him. Don’t chat with your two or three companions in your own language. Try to relax, and avoid eye contact. If somebody seems to keep staring at you, pretend to fall asleep. You will have a chance to relax and talk among yourselves during the various stops you will make at the homes of friends of your guide.

Leave behind your little suitcase and your bundle of belongings; your guide can’t take you and your bags. It will be necessary for you to go under the barbed wire one at a time, and you mustn’t worry about your companions, not even your wife or husband. Once you are in Switzerland, don’t talk about your guide. You are hereby warned that the trip involves risks and that there is no guarantee for everybody. If you agree, good luck!

They tended to agree. As Pierre Piton points out, they already trusted him; after all, he was often the one who had earlier led them to their original farmhouse shelter.

In general, the people being smuggled out under the protection of Mireille Philip used the western ‘pipeline’, through Saint-Étienne and Lyon. It was quite a journey. Before they set off, the party of refugees and their guide would all be equipped with false papers, courtesy of Madame Philip. Then, according to Piton, this was how it worked:

We would leave Le Chambon by train in the morning, and arrive at Dunières around midday. There our brave travellers would do as they’d been told and park themselves on a bench seat at the station and sometimes sleep, a bit embarrassed, with their hats tipped down. I would then go and get a ticket for Saint-Étienne and hand it over to them. Then they would follow me and we would catch the next
train for Saint-Étienne. I got into the habit of not sitting down with them. I would be in my Boy Scout uniform, wearing shorts, seventeen years old, and I would travel in the corridor. If the conductor came along, I  would take a quick glance in their direction to see how calmly and naturally they showed their tickets. At Saint-Étienne my three friends would follow me and we would go to the home of Henri Rivière, who owned a large transport business. Monsieur Rivière lived in this huge house. He was very much the patriarch, with a large grey beard. We would all eat, me in the house with Henri Rivière, and my friends in a barn above the stables. After the meal I would go to the station and buy third-class tickets from Saint-Étienne to Lyon and on to Annecy. At around five o’clock in the afternoon we would leave for the railway station, and arrive in Lyon around six thirty.

There everything would be different, because although there was sometimes an identity check between Saint-Étienne and Lyon, it would be carried out by the French gendarmes. From Lyon onwards we were stepping on hot coals! Lyon had already become something of a hub, and was crawling with the men in leather jackets and felt hats.
⁴⁰
We would arrive at the railway station at between six thirty and seven o’clock in the evening, but our train for Annecy didn’t leave until around midnight. It eventually arrived at Annecy at six thirty in the morning, travelling all night, so my little world of responsibility could sleep, safe from the wrong kind of attention. In general, the German military police checked identity cards once during the night, but happily they did it inside the railway cars, where the light was terrible!

At Annecy my three friends would follow me, and I would go the short distance from the station exit to the Protestant church and the home of Pastor Chapal. He offered free food for everybody, which for me meant the chance to move about freely. I  would go in my
Scout uniform to see the Abbé Folliet,
⁴¹
who would tell me that the driver of the nine o’clock bus from Annecy to Collonges-sous-Salève [a village north of Annecy on the French side of the border, but so close to Switzerland that it was almost a suburb of Geneva] was already ‘in the know’ and that in principle the day was looking good. I would go back and look for my friends, who would follow me as far as the bus. I  would pay as nonchalantly as I could for four people, give them each a ticket, and then sit well away from them so that I could look at the view. At Collonges the bus driver would see to it that we were let out at the top of the road that led to the home of Abbé Jolivet, the parish priest of Collonges. And there, once I had given the password, the abbé would open the door and immediately take my friends to his attic.

It would then be around eleven o’clock [in the morning]. I would stay there all day to get the latest briefing on the patrol routines of the Italian border guards and, the first few times, to take a discreet look for myself at what the problems might be on the route from Collonges to Annemasse, and to use the daylight to find a good place where I could pass my Jews under the barbed wire. From the attic, I could point out to my friends the green fields of Switzerland, the line of barbed wire and, behind the poplar trees, the Swiss Army sentries.

As the refugees could see from the priest’s window, Switzerland was only 500 metres away. But there were patrols to dodge, barbed wire to climb over and all sorts of dangers still to be faced. Understandably, the refugees would become more and more agitated as the hour of the crossing approached. It was generally set for around nine o’clock at night. At about that time, Abbé Jolivet would go down to the road to look out, and race back as soon as the Italian patrol had passed. Pierre Piton had established that the patrols came by about every twenty minutes. He would give ‘his Jews’ the thumbs-up, and tell them
to follow him out of the presbytery. Once he was walking ahead of them he couldn’t see them, so he simply had to trust that they were still behind him.

When he arrived at the asphalt road he stopped to listen, and tried to see the lights of Switzerland far off in the night. Once they had joined him, he told his group to lie down in the ditch on the presbytery side of the road and wait while the second patrol passed. He would wait on the other side. About five minutes later they would hear the boots approaching. Thud, thud, thud. The soldiers tramped by within feet of them, talking. By this time the group’s eyes would have become accustomed to the dark. Once the patrol had passed, Piton would cross the road, back to his three charges, and tell them that the moment had arrived. They should follow him.

Across the asphalt. Softly, softly. Up to the barbed wire. Gently, gently. Lift the wire. One by one, crawl under the wire. Even the old men and women. That’s Switzerland on the other side of the wire. You’re through. Run, run, run, towards the first Swiss soldier you see. When they challenge you, answer. But watch it: sometimes the Italians patrol on the Swiss side, not on their own side. If that happens, don’t hang about. Keep running. Find a Swiss soldier.

Once his Jews had crawled under the wire and taken off, Piton would go straight back to the presbytery. He would spend the night there and catch the next morning’s bus to Annemasse, then catch the train to Lyon. Arriving at Lyon in the afternoon, he would have to hang around in the station until the next morning to catch the train to Saint-Étienne. All night the Gestapo patrolled the station, together with French gendarmes and German military police.

Nobody has any way of counting how many successful missions Pierre Piton ran from Le Chambon to the Swiss border, but it is generally thought to have been at least twenty. He is rightly regarded as one of the best and brightest of the
passeurs.
And he was seventeen years old.

• • •

Even the most serious stories have their moments of comedy. Above, Pierre Piton describes an escape along the western route, which involved travelling by train and bus. The alternative, eastern route, via Valence and Grenoble, involved an early commitment to the healthy outdoors. Valence and Le Chambon are about 67 kilometres apart, and the refugees and their escort would make the first part of the journey on foot.

‘They would dress these Jews as Boy Scouts, as though they were going on an outing,’ says Catherine Cambessédès. ‘They looked really ridiculous, because some of these guys were hardly young.’ So unlikely parties of middle-aged Jews, bare knees on display below their Boy Scout khaki shorts, pointy hats on their heads and whistles in their pockets, set off across the Plateau at as jaunty a pace as they could manage, hoping to be mistaken for a group of fourteen-year-olds. Incredibly, it worked.