The Greatest Escape: How one French community saved thousands of lives from the Nazis - A Good Place to Hide (28 page)

It was not uncommon for Dreyfus to bring two or three parties like this every week.

So where previously the children had been transferred legally from the camps, now they were brought clandestinely to the Plateau, already carrying false identity papers. As a result, the focus was on finding shelter with farmers or in remote and tiny villages, rather than housing the refugee children centrally in the large hostels and shelters in and around Le Chambon. And, of course, refugees continued to arrive on their own initiative, and in growing numbers, as Gestapo raids across France grew worse. The rescue operation required the willing participation of farmers and villagers throughout the Plateau, not just in Le Chambon, Le Mazet and Fay-sur-Lignon.

After the debacle of the raid on the House of Rocks, the managers of the various hostels and refuge centres vowed never to be caught napping again. All sorts of warning systems were put in place. Oscar Rosowsky set up one.

The geography of the Plateau played a part, in the sense that the movements of the German troops there could be spotted and the Resistance around Le Chambon could be tipped off about any threats coming from Saint-Étienne or from the Ardèche. This was then relayed via the departmental railway’s telephone system, and via a PTT [Post, Telegraph and Telephone] network that I myself organised linking the ticket inspectors on the trains with the lady in the Le Chambon post office. They warned of any threats that might come from Le Puy-en-Velay.

With tip-offs from town halls and from inside the prefecture, with warning systems like the one set up by Rosowsky, and with the gendarmes none too keen, the Plateau was never again taken by surprise.

Nevertheless, the raids on children’s homes and guesthouses continued. A  typical sequence might go something like this. An establishment would receive a message: the gendarmes are coming, searching for Jews. The management would then brief all the residents, children and adults alike. Most of the residents would elect to hide in the woods, but a few—some literally paralysed with fear—stayed in the house, where they could be hidden in the attic.

In the middle of the night there would be the sound of cars arriving, usually accompanied by a bus, followed by loud knocking on the door. Someone inside would open an upstairs window and ask innocently: ‘Who’s there?’ The door knocker, usually a junior officer, would step into the light to identify himself. Once the door was opened, the
gendarme would announce that he had come for any ‘non-Aryans’ and that he intended to ‘transfer’ them ‘elsewhere’. Whoever had answered the door now set about delaying the search as long as possible. Surely, he or she might ask, this very important task should involve a more senior officer? At this point a commandant would step forward and explain that the Jews were being ‘resettled’ in Poland, where they could live in peace.

The gendarmes would now come in, list of names in hand, and begin the search. First bedroom, empty. Second bedroom, empty. Third bedroom, empty. ‘So where are they all?’ the commandant would demand. It was now the job of whoever had answered the door to assume an air of puzzled innocence. ‘They were all here last night,’ they might say. ‘But this isn’t a concentration camp. They’re free to come and go.’

In one celebrated raid on The Flowery Hill, the commandant brandished the list of names in front of Pastor Marc Donadille, the Cimade representative who had answered the door. One of the names struck Donadille as a little odd. Madame Bormann was indeed a guest, but she was not Jewish and she even claimed to be a distant cousin of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary. Surely there had been some mistake? The gendarmes demanded to see her anyway. Having found her, still in bed, they ordered her to get dressed and come with them. Everybody waited in the corridor outside her room while she dressed. There followed the most horrible screams and cries of distress from behind the closed door. When they opened the door again, the gendarmes saw Madame Bormann wrapped up in her bedclothes, rolling around on the floor, eyes wild, arms and legs flailing, in the middle of some sort of fit. They called a doctor. Before the doctor’s arrival, Donadille was alone with Madame Bormann for a brief moment, and winked at her, which magically brought the fit to a temporary halt. However, she resumed for the doctor’s benefit,
and was duly pronounced unfit for travel. The gendarmes had no choice but to leave her; they searched the rest of the house, found nothing and left with an empty bus. Afterwards, Madame Bormann explained to Donadille that it was not the first time she had used
that
particular trick.

• • •

The Resistance continued to be active, despite the arrest of Jean Bonnissol. Some of their actions were more farcical than heroic. In the very early hours of Sunday 9 January, they raided the main grocery store in Le Mazet. Between fifteen and twenty men armed with submachine guns arrived in two vans. They took sugar, coffee, cocoa, flour, jam, cooking oil, pasta, barley, potatoes, chocolate, baby soap and 780 litres of red wine, then capped it all by towing away the grocer’s car, a dark blue Renault. They left behind 8000 francs in cash, and a note promising to return the car by next Tuesday at the latest.

As a result of this sort of operation, a
faux maquis
or ‘fake Resistance’ sprang up. Any local burglar who fancied his chances did his best to be taken for a member of the Resistance ‘requisitioning’ his loot. The historian François Boulet analysed 84 raids in the Plateau area in the first half of 1944, and came to the conclusion that 35 were carried out by freelance bandits, while 40 were carried out by the genuine maquis, and the remaining nine could not be classified either way. The situation presented the gendarmes with a huge dilemma. By now many of them believed that their patriotic duty required them to let the Resistance get on with its work, but that did not stretch to allowing the local burglars to do the same. In the end, Lieutenant Morel, the most senior gendarme in Yssingeaux, laid down a slightly satirical set of orders to his men: don’t worry too much about catching thieves, he wrote, but see if you can get them to drop the loot while they are escaping. That way, nothing gets stolen and no harm done.

Then, in one monstrous weekend, the German occupiers and their Vichy collaborators turned the Plateau from stubborn civil disobedience to seething anger. The Germans were convinced (not without cause) that farmers were hiding members of the Resistance. On Saturday, 22 April, a force of German Feldgendarmerie together with French members of the GMR (Groupes Mobiles de Réserve or ‘Mobile Reserve Groups’, a paramilitary force set up by the Vichy government to combat the Resistance) swooped on the area around Yssingeaux and Araules on the Plateau. They stormed onto farms and demanded to be led to the concealed members of the Resistance. What happened next is unclear, but the outcome is well established. After the raids, the bodies of nine unarmed French farmers were found where they had been gunned down. The attackers then burned down three farms.

Not content with this, the Germans and their Vichy allies struck again the next day. Mobile units, reservists and military police mounted raids in the Tence and Yssingeaux area. Eleven men were arrested and taken away. The Plateau was now in uproar as never before. If ever the mood changed from resistance to revenge, it was now.

• • •

An important character was about to return to the Plateau. After her release from the Spanish prison in early 1943, Virginia Hall had initially cooled her heels—or heel—in London, working at a desk job in the American embassy. Despite the fact that she was on a Gestapo wanted list, her one ambition was to get back to France. To her own disappointment, and that of Maurice Buckmaster, the head of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, the Americans chose to send her back to neutral Spain. She had arrived in Madrid in May 1943, working under cover as a correspondent for
Time/Life
.

Madrid was an odd and probably unwise appointment. It was awash with spies from both sides, so it could only have the effect of making
her face and name better known to the enemy. She was able to do a bit of good, helping a group of old contacts from the French Resistance to escape to England via Portugal, but otherwise the Madrid posting was a waste of talent. The Resistance was clearly going to play a key role in the imminent battle for Europe. She wanted to be part of it when it happened, and that meant getting back to London and then France. Ideally she wanted to be somewhere not too far from Lyon, the territory she knew best and the place where she had already been active setting up Resistance cells.

In January 1944 she demanded to return to London to join the American Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. The OSS worked in partnership with the British SOE, arming and coordinating the various resistance movements in occupied Europe. Through old contacts, Hall managed to get an interview with the OSS. It was agreed that she should work for them and not for the SOE: as an American, she should be part of her own country’s clandestine service. Nevertheless, she would have to work closely with the SOE. At first the British were not sure they wanted her. The Germans knew her by her true identity, and that left her compromised. And, let it be said, her wooden leg made her easy to spot in a crowd. However, both the SOE and the OSS agreed to take her in.

Her first move once she was accepted was to train as a radio operator. She did not want to bring the extra baggage of a specialist radio operator with her into France; she preferred to travel alone and do the job herself. She also trained with the SOE in sabotage work. She was a quick pupil and already had most of the skills she would need to survive in Occupied France. By March 1944 she was ready to be inserted into France. Her orders were simple. ‘In an area limited to Central France, examine the capabilities of the Resistance, in particular their manpower, and establish their requirements. Locate suitable landing fields and parachute drop sites. Assist the Resistance, and plan
acts of sabotage.’ That left a big question unanswered: where should she go in France? Her bosses thought about Cher and Indre in the Centre region, La Creuse in the Haute-Saône, and Nièvre in Burgundy, before coming up with a brand-new suggestion: the department of the Haute-Loire in the Auvergne. It was ideal. There was even reasonable access to Paris if she needed to go there.

So Virginia Hall ceased to exist. She would now be ‘Diane’, ‘Marie Monin’, ‘Germaine’, ‘Marie of Lyon’, ‘Camille’ or, to some, ‘la Madone’ or even ‘
la sorcière rousse
’ (the redheaded sorceress). To the Germans she was ‘Artemis’
⁵¹
or
Die Frau die hinkt
, the limping woman. In their estimation she was ‘the most dangerous of all Allied spies’.

On Tuesday, 21 March, Hall arrived off the Brittany coast in a British motor torpedo boat. Most agents parachuted in, or were inserted by the extraordinary 161 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, using single-engine Lysander aircraft. However, ‘Diane’s’ wooden leg made her poor parachuting material, so she chose the sea route. She was rowed ashore in a rubber dinghy, with her wireless set. At this point she was junior partner to a Frenchman named Laussucq, who had taken the name Henri Lassot, otherwise ‘Saint’ or ‘Aramis’. Hall was simply his wireless operator. The two agents took the train to Paris. Hall moved into the flat of an old friend, Madame Long. Her new address was 59 Rue de Babylone, in the 7th arrondissement. She was in the heart of Paris, not far from the Eiffel Tower. Laussucq lodged with a sympathetic neighbour, who ran a guesthouse.

The two then moved on to La Creuse in the eastern department of Haute-Saône, and from there to Maidou near Crozant in the Limousin region of central France. On Tuesday, 4 April, ‘Diane’ sent her first radio message from Maidou to London. They were healthy and safe, she told them, and ready to start work.

At this point, work consisted of organising the ‘Heckler’ network. This gave Laussucq plenty to do, but left Hall with time on her hands.
She spent it investigating the La Creuse, Cher and Nièvre undergrounds, and training groups of men. For hard-pressed members of the Secret Army, Hall had a particular talent: she could organise guns. Once she’d put in a good word with London, the night skies would blossom with parachutes as containers of arms swung gently down into the eager hands of the Resistance. London trusted Diane. If she asked for guns, she got them.

Hall stayed on the move through April and May. Then she had a message from London to say that one of the SOE’s agents had been arrested, and that Hall herself might be compromised. Time to move on once more. She returned briefly to Paris and Rue de Babylone, then shuttled between Paris, the Loire and Burgundy. Finally, a new set of orders arrived. She should proceed to the Haute-Loire.

• • •

Allied military leaders now set about preparing a simple trap. Readers familiar with the game of chess will know about a tactic called a ‘fork’. This is a chess position where one piece simultaneously threatens two of the opponent’s pieces. If the opponent moves one of his threatened pieces to safety, he loses the other. The role of the Resistance would be to act as an attacking piece in a gigantic military fork.

By the spring of 1944, it was clear that the Allies would soon attempt a landing on the Western European mainland. The Germans expected it to occur around the Pas-de-Calais, the far northwest department of France and the one with easiest access from England: at this point the crossing from Dover to Calais is both short and simple, only 33 kilometres across the English Channel. The Allies did everything in their power to reinforce this idea, with elaborate deceptions involving double agents, dummy wooden aircraft and fake radio traffic; in fact anything they could think of to keep all eyes on the Pas-de-Calais and away from the beaches of Normandy.

From 1942 onwards, the Germans had poured enormous energy and resources into building an ‘Atlantic Wall’, a line of defence that stretched along the Atlantic coast of Europe from the north of Norway to the Spanish border. When the Allied attack came, the Atlantic Wall was designed to hold the Allies at the beaches until German reinforcements could be wheeled in to throw the invaders back into the sea. So the principal job of the Resistance would be to stop the Germans bringing up their reinforcements. They would be needed to wreck railway lines, block roads, destroy bridges, sabotage airfields, attack barracks, ambush troops on the move—anything to keep the German reinforcements from reaching the front.