Chapter 10
The Gestapo
One year
They sent a million here:
Here men were drunk like water, burnt like wood.
The fat of good
And evil, the breast’s star of hope
Were rendered into soap.
- Randall Jarrell
Bellenave, France
“Bonjour, madame,” the Mother Superior said as she offered her hand to Marianne. “Welcome to our humble monastery.” Humble, indeed. The Chantelle Abbey was an impressive fortress of stone, a collection of numerous Romanesque buildings, and run by a community of Benedictine sisters.
“Thank you, Mother. This is my daughter, AriŽle,” she responded back, quietly. It had been a longer journey than normal, complicated by security checkpoints along the way that had to be avoided. After three days they had reached the small commune of Bellenave in the interior in the region under the administration of the Vichy government. The sisters of the monastery at Chantelle had agreed to take the two refugees in for protection, after having been contacted by an agent for the Lorient resistance working through the Catholic church.
“Come in, child,” she soothingly offered. She led the two through the courtyard and introduced them to one of the nuns working in the garden. Sister Marie-ThŽrse was in her late seventies, but stood strong and confidently.
“Come, come with me,” she added quickly, and led them into the fortress. As they worked their way through a maze of hallways, the sister explained how they were to spend their confinement.
“Do not speak to anyone of your past lives while you are here. This is for your protection. You will dress in the robes of an initiate and work in the infirmary. This will allow you to blend in and not be noticed.”
They turned the corner and the sister opened an ancient wooden door to a small room with two rough beds.
“You will sleep here, eat with the other initiates, and generally follow my orders. We are a simple community. We grow our own food, and make soaps and other goods for sale in town to help pay for what we cannot grow. The infirmary offers help to the poor in the villages we service.
“We have few comforts here,” she smiled, “but our life is quiet, and the work is not so hard. Helping others is God’s work, and I hope you will find it restful as long as you are here.”
“How long must we stay here, mother?” AriŽle asked.
“Oh, my child, we are not a jail! You and your mother are offered sanctuary. You may leave at any time you desire. When it is safe, I presume your father will come for you. In the meantime, please accept our humble sanctuary, and rest in God’s hands in these troubled times.”
Her warm smile and calm voice soothed their fears.
“Now, you must be tired from your journey. I will leave you. The bell will sound for supper. Tomorrow I will help you settle in to your work routine.”
“And my daughter?” Marianne asked.
“There are many children who come to the monastery for school. I hope you will permit the sisters to attend to her schooling as well,” she smiled.
The sister retired, and Marianne and AriŽle settled in for a rest after their long journey.
Sister Marie-ThŽrse had been correct. Although the life was plain, the work was not any harder than she was used to. The food was plentiful and nourishing, the grounds quiet and secluded. She felt safe here, but continued to worry about her Antoine.
R
LŽon Vercher sat in his office and listened to an agitated Pierre Villar ramble on about that damned Alsatian pig Bouchard sending his daughter away - to protect his bastard child! The smell of brandy filled the small room on the edge of the quay and the putrid mix of brandy, fish, oil, and an unwashed Pierre Villar repulsed him. You need to clean up and get back to your bakery, he thought to himself, but the story Pierre Villar was telling alarmed him, and he put up with the rancid smell.
Vercher was especially interested in the part about the meeting Villar had witnessed on the St. Justine. He had been keeping an eye on Bouchard that day when he learned the St. Justine was getting ready to leave port. From a small room in a nearby warehouse he could watch the goods and supplies being brought aboard. Whenever any unusual looking cargo was spied, he kept notes of the times and dates.
“Tell me of these men,” Vercher replied to his rantings. “Do you know their names?”
“One was Maurice, who works in the net shed. The other was a stranger. They boarded the boat, then went below deck. I followed them as best I could, but lost contact at the edge of town.”
“What did he look like?”
“My height. A clean face. Nothing special, nothing that stands out.”
“Pierre, you are imagining things. What is so strange about two men joining Bouchard aboard the vessel? Perhaps they simply had business - he does almost all the fishing now.”
“Well, you would know if they had some special cargo, now wouldn’t you,” he sneered. Vercher bristled. This was not the first time Villar had implied a threat. He knew too much, or thought he did in any event. He was becoming dangerous.
“I will look into the matter, Pierre. In the meantime, I suggest you go back to your bakery. You are seeing shadows, my old friend.” He ushered Pierre Villar out of his office, and closed the door behind them. “By the way, do you know where they were sent to.”
“She told me they were going to a monastery near Bellenave. Her and that bastard child of his. He stole her from me, and I will kill him for it!”
Villar stormed off in a rage, back to his bottle of brandy, I suppose, thought Vercher. Interesting information, he thought. This could be profitable for me.
When Villar was out of sight, he opened his top drawer and removed a file. Inside was the dossier on a suspected conspirator the Lorient police were investigating - Luc Brodeur, who often used the name “Senesac” as a cover. The picture showed a man of average build, and nothing unusual to distinguish him.
As the de facto police representative, he now had a telephone installed in his office that rang at police headquarters in Lorient. He picked up the phone.
R
The knock on the door of his cabin was loud and demanding.
“What is it? Who is there?” Antoine demanded. As he opened the door two men appeared before him - one in the uniform of the French police, the second in a gray trench coat. The man in the trench coat stepped inside before Bouchard could respond. The policeman followed.
“So come in,” he replied sarcastically.
“You are Antoine Bouchard?” asked the man in the trench coat.
“Oui, I am Bouchard. Who are you?”
“I am Capitaine Foucault, Department Morbihan, Lorien,” the policeman stated curtly. “That is all you need to know.” He stepped around the room looking inquisitively.
“We have some questions to ask of you.”
The police captain opened a folder and laid some documents on Antoine’s table. The top one was a single page report typed in letters too small to read from where Bouchard stood, but the letterhead was clear - Geheime Staatspolizei. Gestapo. The report was entitled “Bouchard, Antoine - Alsace.”
“You are a German citizen with French nationality. A veteran of the Great War.”
“I am a French citizen.”
“Monsieur, you are Antoine Bouchard. Your discharge and naturalization papers were located in the civil records of Strasbourg. You were born in the Alsace region under the administration of Imperial Germany. Your naturalization as a result of the illegal Versailles Treaty does not invalidate your German citizenship. You and your family are therefore under the command of the German Reich, regardless of your current residence. You are expected to serve your homeland, monsieur.”
The second report was obscured by a photograph of the man known to Bouchard as “Senesac.” Bouchard stiffened.
“You know this man?” Speak carefully, Bouchard thought. They would not be here if they did not already know the answer to that question.
“I have met him. Once. He came to my boat a few weeks ago.”
“What did he want?” asked the man in the trench coat, in a perfect French accent, not making eye contact.
They know the answer to this as well. I am certain of it.
“He wanted me to run some goods to the Channel Islands - without notifying the harbor master.” It was a lie, but a plausible one.
“Your answer is remarkably frank, monsieur,” stated the Gestapo agent. “Did you report him to the harbor master?”
“I told him to leave me alone. I was not interested in his intrigues. I have a family to support.”
“Yes. So you do,” the man in the trench coat responded, in a slow, deliberate tone. “A wife, and a young daughter, I believe?”
At this, Antoine became alarmed, and struggled to maintain his composure.
“Where are they now, Monsieur Bouchard?” he asked, again, not making eye contact.
He refused to fall into the trap that was set. Instead, he tried to turn the conversation away.
“I asked before, what is your purpose?”
“We are just trying to maintain order in these very difficult times, monsieur. There are many people who seek to profit from the, shall we say, unusual circumstances. I hope you are not one of them, monsieur.”
“I am just a fisherman. I only wish to be left alone,” Bouchard answered back.
“Ah, yes. So you do. But then again, there are others who think you might be helpful to them as well. That would not be a good thing, for either you ... or your family.”
The threat was very clear. Bouchard began to panic.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
“Ah, monsieur, again the mistrust,” the trench coated man said as he stepped around the room slowly, menacingly. “We just want to impress upon you how important it is to maintain a good relationship with Monsieur Vercher, the harbor master. As the local police representative, he wants to help maintain order. I presume you do as well?”
The question was a trap he could not escape.
“We know that, occasionally, we may need some assistance from the loyal German citizens, even those living in France. I am sure you are one of those.”
Bouchard waited for the trap to close.
“Do not be alarmed, monsieur, for you are too old for conscription in the German armed forces. However, you can still serve your homeland in other ways. Monsieur Vercher will be calling on you occasionally, for information and assistance, for the benefit of France, monsieur, and of your homeland, the German Reich. I am told we can count on your cooperation. That is all.”
The captain collected the documents from the table and returned them to his valise. The two turned and walked towards the door.
“By the way, monsieur. I hope all is well with your wife and child. When a woman and a young girl child seek the refuge of the Benedictines, it is generally from a man of violence, or heavy drink. I pray that is not the case here. I hope you understand how important it is to cooperate.”
The threat could not have been more clear.
That night he slept fitfully thinking of his Marianne and baby girl. Finally, he rose and under the light of a single candle, wrote to his friend in America.
10 Jly 1941
Dear Andy,
The Boche have found me again! I was visited by the police. They told me I would be expected to do my duty to Germany - once a Boche always a Boche!
They know where I sent Marianne and AriŽle! I am afraid for them. I do not know what they want me to do.
They stole my youth. They will steal from me no more.
Antoine
R
A black Mercedes sedan pulled into the courtyard of the monastery, and two dark suited men and two uniformed German soldiers exited the doors quickly. The soldiers ran toward the infirmary. Shortly there were screams, and they returned dragging a woman and a young girl, dressed in initiate robes, out into the courtyard.
One of the sisters ran screaming after them, and grabbed one of the soldiers by the arm, trying to hold him back. One of the men in civilian clothing raised his pistol and struck her across the forehead. She fell to the ground and lay very still. The two who were dragged from the infirmary were pushed roughly into the sedan, and it turned quickly, spewing gravel in the courtyard as it sped off into the late afternoon.
R
Over the next several months, Harbor Master Vercher occasionally asked Antoine Bouchard for a small favor - a little information about this person, some background on another. Each time a request was made, it seemed the requests were becoming more complex, more involved. The escalation of his informing was placing him at risk of being discovered by anti-German cells operating in the area. His was a dangerous tightrope.
He knew the Gestapo were watching Marianne and AriŽle. They knew where they were hiding, or at least had enough information to bluff him into compliance. The threats were obvious, the risks great. He was spiraling downward into an abyss he could not control. He began to panic.
He needed to break the spiral.
“Vercher, un moment,” he interrupted the harbor master one morning as he walked to his office. Bouchard desperately wanted to contact the man they called Senesac, but he knew he was being watched as well. So he concocted a scheme to meet with this man from the conspiracy cell with the foreknowledge of the Gestapo and the police.
“What is it, Bouchard?” he asked.
“I have heard of something - a shipment coming in from England. I do not know when or where, just a rumor. I thought you should know.”
“Is that all you know? A shipment of what? Can you find out more?”
“That is all I know. If I ask too many questions, I would raise suspicions, I fear.”
“We need more information, Bouchard. I expect you to find it,” Vercher snapped.
“OK, I will try. I suppose I could try to meet with this Senesac again. He wanted my boat - maybe he needs a boat to make this delivery. You could get your information from that.”
“How do you know to contact him?” Vercher asked suspiciously.
“I don’t, but Maurice Paschal would. You probably are watching him, but I can get to him quietly.”
“I will have to check in. Do nothing until I talk to you.”
Bouchard left, knowing he had planted a seed that would take root quickly. Even so, he was surprised at just how quickly it happened.
Vercher met him at his boat that afternoon.
“Make your contact. Try to find out when and where this shipment is due. It will go well for you if you do.”
R
Present Day
One of the letters, what I called the “July Letter,” haunted me. Something had gone terribly wrong.
I was visited by the police ... They know where I sent Marianne and AriŽle!
Throughout my research and travels, I had maintained an active email correspondence with Professor Douglas. He provided me with criticism, advice, and historical notes - suggestions, really - to help guide me in my search. This letter was the topic of several emails. He had given me a clue I needed to follow while here on the coast of Brittany:
The French police collaborated with the Germans under the terms of the General Occupation Order. What we generically call the “Gestapo” were mostly French secret police working for their Nazi masters. Although the letter does not indicate the police were Gestapo I would presume for the sake of research that such was the case.
Try to locate records for the sub-camps of Natzweiler-Struthof, a concentration camp in the Alsace region, a few miles from Strasbourg. This was where most French deportees were interred. I have attached a list of the sub-camps in the French system and a map showing the network, most of which fed Natzweiler-Struthof.
The very subject caught me completely off guard. I had not considered Antoine’s family may have been sent off to a concentration camp. As I looked over the list of sub-camps I felt a cold chill creep over me. The systematic map of sub-camps showed the scope of the receiving and forwarding stations that supplied an increasing number of French citizens to the camps.
I searched for more information on the deportations in France. I found a web site that documented the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Vel d’ Hiv roundup. On July 16 and 17, 1942 more than 13,000 Parisian Jews were arrested. During what was the largest roundup of Jews in occupied France, 8,152 people, including 3,000 children, were locked up for 4 days in the VŽlodrome d’ Hiver in Paris under inhumane conditions, before being sent to the death camps. Between 1942 and 1944 almost 12,000 Jewish children were deported from France, 2,000 of whom were less than 6 years old. Only 200 returned alive.
The Vel’ d’ Hiv Roundup was not the first such action. Nearly 4,000 Jewish men were arrested on 14 May 1941 and taken to the Gare d’Austerlitz and then to camps at Pithiviers and Beaune-La-Rolande. There were several camps in the general vicinity of the Brittany coast, the most likely one, according to a note scrawled on Dr. Douglas’ scanned map, was called Choiseul, in Chateaubriant. It operated from 1941 to 1942. Clearly the camp system was operating with its terrible efficiency at the time of the “July Letter.”
R
The three met in a farmhouse halfway between Lorient and Pont-Aven, away from prying eyes.
“The Gestapo knows who you are,” Bouchard explained. “Both of you. I saw a file with your photograph.”
“Why are you telling us this?”
“Because they have my wife and daughter under watch. I thought I had removed them to safety, but they know. I don’t know how, but they are blackmailing me to help them. I have been feeding them false little bits of information, but they are demanding more and more.”
“What do you want from us?”
“I will give you my boat if you need it, but I need you first to find out about my wife and child. If they are safe. Find that out for me, and I will work for you. I told Vercher there were rumors of a shipment coming into the peninsula, as a pretext for meeting with you. I have to report back something, Senesac.”
“The Lorient police captain is greedy, and desperate for something to show off to his Gestapo handlers. We can give him his ‘shipment,’ in exchange for information about your family and the use of the boat to bring in a real shipment,” Senesac replied.
They concocted a plan. Under cover of a rainy night, a few boxes of explosives and blasting caps taken from one of the cell’s safe houses was left in an abandoned shed at the head of one of the small inlets along the coast between Lorient and Pont-Aven. The land had been abandoned for many years, so it would be impossible to trace who was responsible. Bouchard would alert the Lorient police who, in turn, would alert the Gestapo. A raid would find the stash, just as the real shipment - considerably larger in size - was arriving aboard the St. Justine and offloaded through the port as Vercher was away - clearly, he would want to be at the phony shipment for the credit as well.
If the deception was successful, it would build credibility for Bouchard with the Lorient police, and set the stage for larger and more successful interactions and counterintelligence operations in the future.
On the night of August 12, 1942 the Gestapo raided a small shed in an isolated inlet and seized a small cache of explosives, as planned. In Pont-Aven, a small crew unloaded boxes of ammunition, weapons, and explosives from the hold of the St. Justine, and carried them away to a safe house while the harbor master was off taking the take credit for the cache seizure.
The Gestapo report filed the next morning wrote of the cooperation of Antoine Bouchard and Harbor Master Vercher. Captain Foucault was pleased he had Bouchard right where he needed him. As long as he did not know what had happened to his family - if so, he would have to disappear.
R
Present Day
Rabbi Bernheim welcomed me into his office, a beautiful walnut paneled study next to the synagogue in Lorient. On his desk were several old ledgers. He bade me to have a seat.
The rabbi was a generation younger than I, and when I had asked him by phone about the possibility of records still existing for deportees out of the Lorient area during the war, he immediately requested I visit him.
“Such a conversation requires a face-to-face meeting,” he insisted. I remember thinking at the time I had struck a sensitive nerve.
“I am quite comfortable discussing this in English,” he started. “I studied in New York and lived for almost ten years in the United States before returning to Lorient.”
“I must admit I was a little surprised you would not talk on the phone, pleasantly so. I usually have to recant my entire journey before persuding someone to meet with me. At times I sound like a broken record.”
He smiled, and added, “Well, Americans are not always known for their patience.”
“A well deserved criticism, I am certain.”
We both laughed at the inside joke, then he became serious.
“You see, Jewish deportation and French collaboration during the occupation is a subject the French would rather see kept buried away from public view. It is complex, socially and politically. Over the years, the synagogue has worked with others, especially in Israel, who have toiled to collect and preserve records of the Holocaust. My predecessor was particularly - shall I say, obsessed - with documenting the activities here in Brittany that led to the deaths of so many. It made his life here difficult, but he persisted, nonetheless.
“Perhaps you have heard the term ‘Nacht und Nebel’ - Night and Fog. That is the phrase the Germans and their French collaborators used to describe the disappearance of people without trial or official action. It was used as a weapon against the resistance, and anyone who was seen as a threat. Since Lorient was the location of the largest U-boat base during the war, the Gestapo had a major presence here.”
He rose and began to slowly pace around the room as he spoke.
“You mentioned the sub-camps. They were often rather crude facilities, not much more than weigh stations, to use an analogy. They, in turn, were supported by locations within the cities and communes where people would be brought, processed, and passed on. The network was much larger than anyone would have believed, and involved far more local people than one might think. Some are still alive today, and certainly they have relatives here. So you can understand the topic is very sensitive.
“As the Germans retreated following the Allied assault on France, most of the official records - the records kept at the major sub-camps and those at Natzweiler-Struthof itself - were destroyed. Those people still in the camps were moved quickly, often with terrible losses of life, to camps in Germany and Poland. Most of the inmates of Natzweiler-Struthof were force-matched to Dachau.”
“So the odds of finding records would be slim,” I remarked, displaying a slight despair borne out of experience.
“Ah, Mr. Hewitt, the capacity of man to create order in the face of chaos, even with the terrible ferocity of the Nazis, is irresistible.”
He turned back to his desk, and opened one of the leather journals.
“A clerk in Lorient kept a secret copy of transfer records during the entire period of the German occupation. When the Allies arrived, he bartered these handwritten journals for his safe passage to Spain. They eventually were given to the synagogue when it first reformed here - a time of considerable resistance, as you might expect. Few know they exist, outside of an organization of the Elie Wiesel Foundation research group.
“I have some latex gloves, and must insist you wear them. I will leave you alone while you search the journals. Some things are best left to a single man, and God.”
As he moved to the door, he turned.
“You may record the information for your research, but I cannot allow you to copy anything. And no one is to know these archives exist. Those are my conditions.”
“Agreed,” I replied quietly, rising to my feet. He turned back to the door, and quietly left, closing the door behind him. I looked at the journals, and my hands began to shake. I was suddenly overwhelmed by the awful reality contained within those pages.
The handwriting was flawless, meticulous, a metaphor for the terrible contradiction of order to such hideous chaos. Page after page listed people, activities, rumors, and comments of persons identified only by initials. The second of the two journals was where I found the beginning of the list, in careful column order. A date, a name and gender, known residence, and camp. It was the start of their terrible journey to where, only God knows.
In the entries for the month of April 1942, my worst fears were realized. I managed to write the entries down in longhand and carefully closed the journal before I collapsed into the chair, sobbing. What had begun as a journey to reunite the memories of two old friends had taken a dark, evil turn. I sat for several minutes, unable to breathe, unable to think.
I removed the gloves and threw them into the waste basket next to the desk, then left the study. Rabbi Bernheim was in the anteroom, and upon seeing my expression, simply extended his hand. We acknowledged our goodbyes without speaking.
Later that evening in my room at the chateau I sent an email to Professor Douglas.
I found this entry in private records at a synagogue in Lorient:
18 Apr 1942
M, Bouchard, Female, Pont-Aven, La Guiche
18 Apr 1942
A, Bouchard, Female Child, Pont-Aven, La Guiche
La Guiche is a sub-camp of Natzweiler.
Because of the time difference, the email would have arrived just before the start of Dr. Douglas’ morning class. He wrote back to me,
I am so sorry. Will cancel class today.
R