Chapter 11
The Stuff of History
Let us be silent, that we may hear
the whispers of the gods.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The word from Lorient dropped him to his knees in despair.
“No, no! Not my Marianne, my AriŽle!” he cried. In a panic he paced quickly around the room, unable to breathe, unable to speak any further.
“Je suis dŽsolŽ, Antoine - I am sorry, but we have confirmed it. The Gestapo arrested Marianne and AriŽle three weeks ago. They were taken from the monastery by force. We cannot determine where they are being held or what has happened to them since.”
“Those Hun bastards, they promised they would be safe if I cooperated!” he screamed. “How did they know they were there?”
“There is more, Antoine. One of the sisters who tried to stop them was beaten badly and has died. I do not know who.”
Antoine knew his Marianne would not have gone without a fight, and knew she was in terrible danger.
“No! Marianne!” He fell to the floor and wept uncontrollably.
The men passed around a bottle of brandy to ease the edge, but Antoine refused.
“Our contact in the police department says a man from Pont-Aven she could not name implicated you with smuggling, and told of your family going to Bellenave.”
His breathing stopped again, and he felt the weight of truth pressing down on him. He knew it could have been only one person. Pierre Villar!
R
Present Day
I boarded the train again for Paris. In my research I found a series of articles on trauma and its manifestations in survivors of the world wars, especially Holocaust victims, even some 70 years after. The author was Dr. Simone Severin who had an office in the Pigalle district within walking distance of the Paris train station. I phoned and after an extended conversation she invited me to meet with her and have lunch to discuss my project. I emailed her a copy of the letters and my notes for her to review.
The receptionist ushered me into a modern, slightly spartan meeting room. Water and a glass of wine were waiting on the table. Dr. Severin joined me shortly.
“Ah, bonjour, Monsieur Hewitt. I am delighted to meet you. I hope you had a pleasant trip. Is this your first time in Paris?”
“No, my second visit. It is such a beautiful city. I need to spend more time exploring Paris when I am not so preoccupied.”
“Bon! I have read your narratives and notes, especially your correspondence with Professor Douglas. Your research has been thoughtful and very thorough, although I am sure you are frustrated by the numerous dead ends.”
“Yes. Many records, especially those from Natzweiler-Struthof, were destroyed as the Allies advanced. Many others are buried away so deeply they are difficult to find.”
“Yes, and you will find many have been destroyed by French authorities as well. The extent of French cooperation with the Germans throughout France is a closely guarded secret. Many wish that period could be simply swept away and forgotten. Such will not be the case, I am certain.
“As you know, I specialize in trauma. I began my interest in the subject because of the neglect in the field of rape and child molestation I felt paralyzed the world of psychotherapy when I began in the 1970s. The more I worked with victims of violent personal trauma, I realized how similar symptoms existed in survivors of wartime violence, political repression, terrorism, and especially the Holocaust.
“I am especially interested in the developing profiles of the key players in your drama. Your grandfather’s reaction to his World War I experiences is not so unusual. He did not serve in the front lines, but it is a mistake to assume trauma in war is manifest only in combatants. His move into the clergy and his subsequent work during WWII are likely extensions of his conscious reality coming to grips with his experiences in France. He was able to create what we call a narrative out of the conflicting and traumatic events. As a consequence - unlike so many others - he was able to turn that experience into a positive mission in his life.”
“One thing Professor Douglas did not know is Grandpa Andy earned his doctoral degree in theology when he was 82,” I added. “The title of his thesis was ‘The Abnormal Symptoms of Religious Manifestations Resulting from Extended Confinement in Japanese Prisoner of War Camps.’”
“Vraiment! Oh, my. I would love the opportunity to review his work.”
“I have scanned the original. I would be pleased to email you a copy when I return to the States.”
“Your grandfather sounds like an extraordinary man. Now, what I wanted to discuss with you. Working with the university over the years I am quite familiar with the process historians go through in their research. I have some additional ideas for you to consider.
“One of the fundamental elements of historical research, indeed any form of empirical research, is to verify specific aspects of an event, or testimony to an event. In many ways, it is like psychotherapy - the gathering of narratives to recreate events of the recent past.
“In therapy, however, especially in cases of trauma, such a narrative may not exist in the minds of the victims. The memories of a traumatic event are not encoded like normal memories of day-to-day activities. Recurring trauma, such as confinement in a concentration camp or violence associated with war, results in an even more dissociated array of encodings. It can take years of therapy for the truth to become known, at least the truth as best a victim can recover it. One learns to take a very broad view.”
I thought of Professor Douglas’ lecture on the Uncertainty Principle and the similarity to her perspective.
“You can usually rely on a reasonable degree of legitimacy in the narrative of a witness to historical events. Different accounts may surface of the same event through witness testimony, but they are still somewhat similar as to form and circumstance. Details will differ as people see and remember the same event differently. However, the individuals are still able to complete a narrative of the event despite the different perspectives.”
Again, there were parallels with the Douglas lecture.
“When a person is a victim of trauma, especially repeated trauma, their ability to narrate the experience is often incomplete, or even nonexistent. Memories of the traumatic events can be encoded in disjointed means that are not rational as one might expect. Denial is commonplace. Events that may seem real to the victim may not have occurred in the manner they remember - although assuming the trauma did not occur and is just a manifestation of their imagination, what was once termed hysteria, is a mistake. The trauma itself has caused the memories to be disjointed, obscured, malformed, or worse yet, recurring.
“Outside pressures from society, family, and friends can lead to a suppression of the reality of the trauma, and it can resurface sometimes years later. No one is immune from the pressure of peers. Even Freud, with as great an effect as he had in the origins of psychotherapy, could not rationalize the society he had encoded in his own intellect could produce the kind of monsters he found within all the recollections of his trauma victims. He ended up disputing his own work and denying the reality of his victims’ experiences.
“It is true there are disagreements among academics why Freud disputed his own research. It is generally known, however, that under the pressure of his peers he rejected years of his own work and the emerging science of trauma therapy evaporated into the ether.
“It was not until my generation, who saw this as much of a feminist issue over rape and child abuse and therefore refused to be cowed by peer pressure, that trauma therapy began to make legitimate strides.
“I would be cautious either taking too much of what you are told at face value or of denying an atrocity occurred. Neither bias is valid. Under protracted therapy some atrocities are often revealed, pieced together and altered as additional components of the atrocity are recalled, the likes of which seem incredible to the listener. We know from experience such events actually did and continue to occur, however difficult they are to reconstruct.
“I would also caution you to be a ‘disinterested listener’ as difficult as that is. Empathizing with your subject who is recounting images of traumatic suffering, such as surviving the death camps, can trigger deep rooted traumatic memories in the narrator that are not yet resolved.”
She took a sip of water, and looked closely at me.
“It can also effect you. One thing we have learned is trauma is contagious. It is all too easy for a therapist to internalize the terror and trauma, often triggering hidden memories and fears. In my own work I keep close observations on myself as well as my patients. In one case, a patient who had been continually bound and forced to commit sexual acts with a relative had repeated visions of this relative emerging through a wall in her bedroom at night, much like a ghost, even long after the relative had died. She fantasized that the only way to stop the ongoing rape was to drive a stake through the dead relative’s heart - even though rationally she knew the relative had been cremated. After months of therapy with her, I began to have a similar nightmare. It was terrifying despite my rational ability to resolve the source of the fears.
“In therapy we develop a peer support group to help guard against such encoding of the patient’s traumatic experiences. My writings are peer reviewed regularly, especially the section of my personal reactions.”
“How can you know when a person is not recounting their story accurately?”
“I would suggest if one of these victims wishes to recount their story you try to team with a therapist skilled in trauma therapy who leads the discussion - if and only if the victim agrees willingly to have you as an observer. You are playing with potentially volatile areas of a person’s psyche, and you may trigger reactions that may be harmful to your story teller.”
“But it has been over seventy years since these events occurred.”
“Yes, that is so, but where these memories have not been reprocessed into the cognitive state, time has no basis. I have often worked with patients who are victims of PTSD from Korea and Vietnam for whom the memories are as vivid and active as if they occurred yesterday.
“I appreciate it may not be possible to arrange such a collaboration. I have some advice. If your storyteller can recount their story in discrete terms and form together a story that seems reasonably sequential - regardless of how incredulous it may seem - you are more likely to be talking with someone who has come to grips, at least in part, with the trauma of their past.
“If, however, their story rambles, shows signs of the sequence of events being jumbled or confused, or if such significant traumatic events such as internment or killing are spoken of in sanitized terms, I would urge extreme caution. Now, these are generalizations, of course, and as a layman you should not try to act the role of a therapist, just an observer.”
“Sanitized terms? Just what do you mean?”
“Well, for example. I treated an especially troubled Holocaust survivor in his late 80s who still had horrible nightmares of his captivity. He used such phrases as ‘housed’ to describe being confined in the barracks, eight to a wooden bunk. He ‘lost’ family and friends in the camp. He did not harbor any surface resentment towards the guards, and spoke of them almost in a friendly and familiar tone. And yet in therapy, the visions and experiences he revealed were terrifying. It was my first experience with a survivor of a death camp, and the difference between his waking state recollections and those under hypnotherapy disturbed me greatly.
“I eventually learned these atrocities were quite real. As he slowly was able to bring these memories out and associate them with his current life, he began to talk of being ‘locked away’ by the ‘butchers’ in the camp. Quite a different perspective, but a very common response.”
She got out of her chair, went to a filing cabinet, and pulled out a report.
“This is a case study that has been widely circulated as part of a learning packet for those of us who do severe trauma therapy. This has been carefully edited to avoid any way to identify the patient so it can be shared as an example.
“I have to meet with a patient briefly, so if you do not mind, my receptionist has arranged for lunch in the cafŽ downstairs. Take a few moments and read through it, then let’s talk about its implications after I join you. D’accord?”
R
Pont-Aven, 1942
He stormed out of the cottage and ran down the road toward the edge of town where Pierre Villar lived, and where he had wooed his lovely Marianne. Maurice and Senesac chased after him. He broke through the door, and found Villar alone inside, overcome by drink.
“What have you done! You stupid bastard! They arrested Marianne and AriŽle! They have taken them away! Your own daughter!” he grabbed Villar by the throat and tried to squeeze the life from him. He violently pushed him back against the fireplace as Villar gasped for breath, too drunk to effectively resist. Senesac and Maurice ran through the door and knocked Bouchard hard against the wall, and he lost his grip on Villar’s throat.
“No, Antoine! You cannot kill him. Not yet, anyway. They will arrest us all. We have to get out of here!”
They grabbed Antoine and forced him out of the door and back down the street, half carrying him as he collapsed in exhaustion and desperation.
Villar recovered from the attack and rose to his feet trying to understand what happened. Marianne is arrested? How can this be? They promised they would just watch her! That they would help me get Bouchard, but that she was safe! That Vercher - he lied! He lied to me, just as sure as the Germans had!
He stumbled outside and headed as fast as he could towards the harbor master’s office. He found Vercher inside, on the telephone.
“You pig!” he screamed. “You arrested my daughter. You took my Marianne! I will kill you, you money-grubbing bastard!”
With that he lunged at Vercher, and the two fell to the floor. Pierre Villar was too drunk to put up a decent fight, and Vercher was able to push him aside, and ran out of his office. He would deal with Villar. This was one step too far.
The next morning, the bakery did not open. Pierre Villar was not seen in Pont-Aven again.
R
Present Day
I took a seat in the cafŽ and ordered a glass of wine. While I waited, I took the report in hand and looked at the cover. It was an abstract of a patient’s narrative of an event in eastern Poland in 1941 by the Einsatzgruppen, the SS killing squads.
I watched as the guards selected 12 inmates and brought them out of the group standing together. To each was sent 10 inmates. The 12 were instructed to herd them toward a pit and make them line up in a row. This they did without objection. The guard then gave each of the 12, one by one, a pistol and ordered them to shoot each of the 10 in their section in the back of the head. They complied, and one by one I watched the bodies fall into the pit. No one even bothered to see if they were dead, and by the cries coming up I knew they were not all killed immediately.
When the inmate had finished killing his 10, the guard ordered him to stand and face the pit. The next of the 12 brought his 10 to the pit and they stood alongside the first inmate. He then shot each of his 10 including the first of the 12, and they fell into the pit. They then repeated the same thing with each of the 10s. When the last of the 12 was left standing by himself, the guard took his pistol, ordered him to face the pit, and shot him in the back of the head. He fell forward into the pit.
Those of us who stood and watched this then took shovels and filled in the pit, even though they were not all dead. We buried these alive.
I thought, you have a pistol. Shoot the guard! By the time I had witnessed this each day for several days, I no longer had such thoughts.
I looked up at as Dr. Severin joined me at the table. The waiter brought her what I assumed was her customary glass of wine.
“By the look on your face I can see you were moved by the report. You can imagine recounting such terror could invoke trauma itself. A rational mind could easily bury such detail deep within their subconsciousness. The therapist who recorded this narrative at first discounted its credibility. We now know this activity to be an accurate retelling - we have had independent verification. Later, the therapist became a leading expert on Holocaust survivors after first having to reconcile his own sense of perspective with reality.
“Yet notice how this survivor refers to the groups of inmates. They are the ‘12’ and the ‘10’. They cease to be people, but are relegated to anonymous groups, what the Nazis saw as subhuman. This was a conscious objective of the camps, part of the process.
“I once read an account from survivors of the camp at Dachau. The interviewer asked each survivor what could have happened if all the inmates simply rushed the gate at once. We know from historical analysis there were simply not enough bullets in the machine guns on the towers to kill them all. They could have pushed through, although of course hundreds if not thousands would have died. They were going to die anyway. So why not?
“The answer was universal. ‘Where could we have gone? How could we have lived? It was futile.’ Futility is a powerful opiate.”
“I can see it would be suicidal,” I replied.
“Suicide is an interesting subject in this respect. A unique perspective on suicide was presented by Jacobo Timerman, a publisher and a man of letters who was imprisoned and tortured for political dissent in Argentina in the late 1970s. He wrote of suicide as placing one on par with the violence of the perpetrators, of making an active attempt to preserve control by making a defiant stand to end one’s life. To deny the devil his due, which is not to kill you - which is of itself a small act - but to dehumanized you to where death has no meaning.
“There were inmates at Dachau who threw themselves on the electric fencing, knowing it would kill them. There is a story told by the children of a man who was caught sleeping when he was supposed to be in a work group, and how the Nazis beat him to death in front of his children. His dying breath was to recite Psalm 22 - ‘Eli, Eli, lama azavtanu? - Oh, God, my God, why have Thou forsaken me?’; a symbolic reaffirmation of his faith. Under such extreme conditions, an act of individual defiance can be ultimately empowering, even if it means your death.”
R
On the train trip back to Tours, I carefully reviewed my notes of the conversation with Doctor Severin. I thought of Marianne, and pondered her fate in the Natzweiler-Struthof camp system. My attempts to find out had so far ended in failure.
It had taken me awhile to reread the notes I took in Lorient. Antoine lived in Pont-Aven - the evidence from the Lorient ledgers confirmed that. I looked on the map, and found Pont-Aven at the head of a long finger channel coming off the Bay of Biscay not far from the chateau. That was my next stop. After the flood of emotions I experienced discovering this piece of information, I renewed my commitment to find out everything I could about Antoine Bouchard.
R
ƒglise Paroissiale Saint-Joseph-St Joseph’s Church-on Place d’Englise in Pont-Aven was built in 1872. More of a chapel than a church, the beautiful granite architecture is classically Breton. I spoke with the priest who gives the Sunday service, and he was kind enough to let me look through the book of birth, marriage, and death records. It took a while, pouring over dutifully inscribed and beautifully penned entries, but I eventually found the following:
8 May 1928
Baptism, AriŽle Lysette Bouchard
5 May 1928
Birth, AriŽle Lysette Bouchard,
Antoine Bouchard, w. Marianne
15 Jan 1926
M. Antoine Bouchard, fisherman
Mme Marianne Laroque, baker
10 Jan 1926
Baptism, Antoine Bouchard
The entries forced a smile, long missing since my trip to Lorient. I can just imagine Antoine asking Marianne to marry, only to be told in no uncertain terms he would have to be baptized in the church before the wedding. The birth of AriŽle shortly thereafter confirms the period of happiness referenced in the letters.
I was curious, however, at the entry for the marriage of Antoine and Marianne, and asked the priest for a clarification.
“She is listed as Madame Laroque. A wedding following a divorce would not be permitted in the church, n’est ce pas?”
“Vraiment, monsieur. In those days, yes. She would have to have been a widow.”
I looked back through the records further, on a hunch, and discovered the answer.
Apr 23 1917
Blessed unto God
M, Robert Laroque, Marianne Villar
and the same day,
Apr 23 1917
Blessed unto God
Robert Laroque
S, Marianne Laroque
“Father, can you explain these entries to me?”
“‘Blessed unto God, the Marriage of Robert Laroque and Marianne Villar’ - this means they were married, or more correctly, their marriage was blessed in the church. The other entry - a burial, Marianne Laroque, survivor.”
“Robert Laroque and Marianne Villar were wed, the same day Robert was buried?”
“Oui, this is an interesting entry. Un moment, s’il vois pl‰is,” and he left by the side door into the small room where the archives were kept. After a few minutes, he returned.
“Monsieur, the priest blessed the union of Robert and Marianne as an honorarium, not an official marriage. According to the papers, they were married in Paris in a Protestant church. Robert was killed in the Great War in 1917, and re-interned here on that day in April. To be buried in the cemetery, he had to have been blessed by the church - and that was the honorarium ceremony, making their marriage sanctified in the Catholic church.”
“So they were married, and he was buried, on the same day.”
“In the eyes of the church, God rest his soul, yes. That is correct.”
“And the name, Villar?”
“The records show Pierre Villar was the baker in the commune who requested the honorarium. However, there is nothing listed in his tithe account after June 1942.”
The empty tithe account could mean only one thing - Pierre Villar had left Pont-Aven, one way or another.
“One more thing, Father. Saint Justine. Is that one of the patron saints of this chapel?”
“Non, monsieur. Why do you ask?”
“One of my grandfather’s letters to Antoine includes the phrase, ‘St. Justine be praised!’”
“Saint Justine?” He paused. “This Antoine you speak of. What was his profession?”
“He was a fisherman.”
“A fisherman?”
The priest wrinkled his brow, thought for a moment, then his eyes lit up.
“Follow me, my son.”
We walked out of the chapel to an old garden on the side, now mostly encroached upon by a parking lot. In the center of the garden was a monument with an inscription.
“It translates roughly, ‘To those who gave their lives to the sea’,” the priest remarked.
The monument had been erected in 1972 as a part of a centennial celebration. One of the entries chiseled into the granite edifice read:
June 1942
Saint Justine
A. Bouchard, Mate - lost to God
But I knew he had not been lost!
R
“You’re kidding!”
Professor Douglas was practically giddy when I spoke to him on the phone that evening.
“I cannot believe it. What a find! Amazing! The odds against finding such a piece of information are enormous! And sitting out in plain sight all along. The class will be very interested in hearing this news. Take a break - on me! You deserve it!”
“You buying dinner?”
He laughed, and promised a lunch when I returned.
“One more thing, Professor. I called my rabbi contact in Lorient on a hunch. Pierre Villar is listed in the transfer registry. He was arrested June 1, 1942, and transferred to Choiseul sub-camp. He most likely ended up in Natzweiler-Struthof.”
“Or he was shot,” Douglas offered. “Sounds to me like you have stumbled upon a resistance cell, or people suspected of resistance activity. The Natzweiler-Struthof camp system was where Maquis arrests were sent.”
He paused momentarily, then added, “But there is something about the date of the St. Justine’s disappearance that strikes a chord with me. I’m just not sure what it means. Let me get back to you.”
I hung up the phone and sat back on the bed in my room at the chateau. The day had been a revelation. It felt good, like the day I found Antoine in Tours.
I thought of Antoine and Marianne, and little AriŽle, and remembered what Professor Douglas had boomed out to his class - “This is the stuff of history!”
R