Nick Lampert

ALEXANDER GLASBERG

(1902-1981)

Résistant, social pioneer, maverick priest

Contents

Preface Comment on sources Acknowledgements Chronology of events

1. The Glasberg family : the early years 2. Settling in France and ordination (1932-1938) 3. To the rescue of refugees : the ‘Juggler of Notre Dame » (1940-1942) 4. From assistance to resistance : Direction des Centres d'Accueil (1941-1942) 5. The round-ups, Amitié Chrétienne and the drama of Vénissieux (summer 1942) 6. The Centres d'Accueil in crisis (1942-1943) 7. Curé and résistant in Honor-de-Cos (1943-1944) 8. Centre d’Orientation Sociale 9. The abbé, Palestine et Israël 10. The quest for French nationality 11. France Terre d’Asile 12. The brothers Glasberg : Righteous among the Nations 13. The enigma of Alexandre Glasberg ?

Bibliography Sources of photos

1 “We fail through ignorance, through laziness of mind, through opportunism; we succeed when we take as our point of departure respect for the human being.”

Alexandre Glasberg, A la recherche d’une patrie (1946), Preface

“Do everthing you can for people, but never act in their place.”

Alexandre Glasberg

“To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems an unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when you lay down your stone, that you are contributing to building the world.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des Hommes. (A quotation prominently displayed among the papers of Alexander Glasberg in the COS archive)

“I said that Abbé Glasberg must have been welcomed in Paradise by a huge crowd of the disinherited and the persecuted whom he helped with so much perseverance, and that they would have sung for him happy hymns of welcome in all the languages that he knew so well, and even in Yiddish because who would dare any longer to exclude Yiddish from the celestial choir? ”

Jean-Marie Soutou, Un diplomate engagé (2011), p.29

2 PREFACE

This book tells the story of Alexander Glasberg, a diaries or memoirs and very few letters, and was remarkable great uncle, younger brother of my not given to reflect on his life and work, in grandmother Tatyana Lampert. particular on his decision to become a Catholic priest. He was born in 1902 into a Russian-speaking Jewish family in western Ukraine, then part of the There is therefore little to rely on in the way of Russian empire. He left Russia in 1920 and, after conventional biographical material and this an unstable period in various European countries, account cannot pretend to unravel all the settled in France in 1932. He trained in a Catholic unkowns about him. Yet he made a powerful seminary in Lyon and was ordained in 1938. After impression on the people he worked with and the German invasion of France in 1940, the helped, in the course of his courageous support of country was divided into an occupied north and Jewish and other refugees in Vichy France, his an unoccupied south under the Vichy government involvement with the French Resistance, and for which retained some independence from the many years after the war as a social innovator. German authorities but collaborated with them. We have the testimony of others and can convey Between 1940 and 1942 Abbé Glasberg, based in key moments of his extraordinary life and some a parish in Lyon in the unoccupied zone, worked aspects of his intriguing personality. tirelessly on behalf of refugees, Jewish and non- Jewish, who had fled there from fascist regimes. I have vivid memories of abbé Glasberg from my When the German army occupied the whole of youth. Within my family circle he was called France in November 1942, he was wanted by the Shura, one of the Russian diminutives of Gestapo and sought refuge in a small parish in Alexander. Shura was a name to conjure with. My south-west France under an assumed name. Here grandmother Tatyana, like Shura, settled in he joined the local Resistance. France in the early 1930s, and after the war they were both living in Paris. They were not especially After the Liberation of France in 1944, he set up close, but we (my father, mother, brother and I) the Centre d’Orientation Sociale (Centre for Social would see him during family trips to Paris in the Orientation) to help refugees who wanted to find 1950s. Later he made the occasional appearance their feet in France after the traumas of the in Oxford, where we lived and to which my second world war. This work evolved into a grandmother had moved at the end of the 1950s number of pioneering social projects: homes for in order to be near to my father. the elderly, facilities for the disabled and reception centres for asylum-seekers. Through Shura was a commanding presence, he filled the forty years of activity from the beginning of the room. His impressive physical dimensions helped, 1940s to the end of the 1970s, abbé Glasberg, but there was something else: he exuded a sense as he was known in France, remained loyal to a of self-contained authority, not lessened by central project: to find a place of welcome in extreme short-sightedness: he wore the thickest French society for the marginalised and excluded. spectacles, and could read only by removing These centres were informed by a radical ethic of them and holding a text right up to his face. He social work, based on complete respect for the would stare at us impassively for a while, then all dignity of the person, promotion of a maximum of a sudden a wicked grin would appear and he autonomy, and building bridges between the would enter into animated conversation. centres and the outside world. In each case they were funded by international bodies or the French The strength of his personality enabled abbé state, with no connection to the Church. And he Glasberg to maintain a striking independence in left a great heritage since the Centre relation to the Church hierarchy and anyone else d’Orientation Sociale, now known simply as COS, who might seek to influence him. It also helped remains alive and well today, greatly expanded him to sustain an aura of impenetrability which yet pursuing the same ideals which inspired its many have commented on. He was greatly foundation. admired, yet hard to fathom.

Alexander Glasberg was a fascinating figure. He My purpose has been to tell a story, to leave a was a free spirit who defies all attempts at record, however patchy, that people can turn to, categorisation. He was a Jewish émigré who especially my family and descendants. At the became a Catholic priest, and a priest who same time his message has a big resonance in cherished the secular ideals of the French state. the face of the refugee crisis facing the world He was an ardent Francophile and a passionate today, and he deserves to be known to a wider defender of the rights of foreigners, a socialist public. who resisted ideologies, a Zionist who recoiled against all forms of nationalism, a friend of Israel The book has provided an opportunity to pay yet a staunch defender of the Palestinian people. homage also to another great uncle, Alexander And on a personal level he was at once very Glasberg’s younger brother Victor (1907- sociable and very private. c.1944), who worked closely with the abbé during the war. He played a much more low-key role, In the light of this extraordinary combination of but unlike Alexander did not survive the horrors elements, it is hardly surprising that Alexander of Nazism. He was arrested by the Gestapo in Glasberg is often seen as an enigma. And he August 1943, deported and never seen again. contributed to this perception by his silence on many things. He left few written records, no Nick Lampert

3 A Comment on Sources

In 2012 a number of French historians assembled Gourfinkel met the abbé in 1940 and collaborated in Lyon for a commemorative conference on closely with him during and after the war. She Alexander Glasberg. The event was inspired by was a brilliant commentator on her times, a Roger Millot, then honorary president of the woman of remarkable intellect and honesty, and Centre d’Orientation Sociale, while the conference provides vivid testimony about the man whom was coordinated by Professor Christian Sorrel, she described as the ‘Juggler of Notre Dame’. She who also made important contributions to it and is a star witness in particular for the events edited the proceedings under the title Alexandre described in chapters 4 and 5. This does not Glasberg 1902-1981. Prêtre, Résistant, Militant mean that everything she says can be taken at (2013). I have drawn on this collection a great face value—after all it was a memoir—but she deal. I have in particular borrowed the work of was writing in the early 1950s, not so long after Christian Sorrel in chapters 2 and 10, Norbert the events, and where it is possible to check Sabatié in chapter 7, and Cindy Banse in chapter against other sources her memory comes out 12. Wherever I have borrowed material in this well. way it is clearly indicated at the start of the relevant chapter. For the rest the bibliography provides a list of the sources used. Internet sites, which have been I would also like to make special mention of Nina very important, are not included in the Gourfinkel’s memoir L’Autre Patrie, sections of bibliography, but references to these may be which are devoted to Alexander Glasberg. Nina found in the notes for individual chapters.

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend special thanks to Roger A big thank you also to Julie Bertuccelli for Millot, without whose friendship and support this permission to use images and interview material project would not have seen the light of day. I from her documentary film, Le Mystère Glasberg. am forever in his debt. (2008 Beamlight—KTO—Pola productions) This wonderful film triggered memories of abbé My thanks to Christian Sorrel, Norbert Sabatié Glasberg from my youth and has been a big and Cindy Banse for permission to borrow their source of inspiration. Permission was given also contributions to Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981. by the producer of the film Emmanuel Chouraqi, Prêtre, Résistant, Militant (2013). Furthermore, who has been very supportive of this project. Norbert Sabatié was kind enough to show me some of his source material and has encouraged I am indebted to the mayor of Honor de Cos me greatly in my efforts. Michel Lamolinairie, who received me warmly and gave me access to the Honor de Cos archive. Thanks to Raphaël Diaz for allowing access to the COS archive, also to the members of the COS I would like to thank Eliane Obermeyer very team in Paris and to the teams in a number of much for meeting me in Marvejols and speaking COS centres in France who made it possible for with such eloquence about her experience of me to see something of the work of COS today. working with Alexander Glasberg in the 1960s and 1970s.

4 A Chronology of Events

This is a revised version of the chronology provided in Alexandre Glasberg. Anti-conformiste, Résistant, Innovateur Social (COS 2008)

7 March 1902 Alexander Glasberg born in Zhitomir (then part of the Russian empire, now in the western part of Ukraine)

1920 Alexander Glasberg leaves for Vienna with his parents, his sister Adela and brother Victor

1932 Alexander Glasberg arrives in France

8 June 1933 Alexander Glasberg is ‘conditionally’ baptised

1934 Alexander Glasberg begins his studies first at the seminary of Moulins, then at the University Seminary in Lyon

24 September 1938 Alexander Glasberg is ordained priest at the Church of the Abbey of Sept Fons (department of Allier)

2 May 1938 Daladier Decree authorizes prefects to issue compulsory residence orders to refugees and asylum seekers

12 November 1938 Decree on foreigners, creating a work permit for foreigners, authorising compulsory residence orders and internment of foreigners likely to be harmful to security, and opening 'special centres' to allow ‘continuous monitoring'

1939-1940 Mass internment of nationals of the Reich

21 January 1939 Opening of Rieucros in Ariège, first internment camp for ‘unwanted (indésirable) foreigners’

January 1939 General Franco takes power

February 1939 Opening of camps in Argelès and Agde to cope with the arrival of huge numbers of republican Spaniards in the south-west

2 April 1939 opening of camp in Gurs in the Pyrénées Atlantiques

Summer 1940 Alexander Glasberg appointed curate (vicaire) of Notre Dame parish, St Alban, Lyon

22 June 1940 Franco-German armistice

27 September 1940 Vichy law allows any foreigner 'surplus to the French economy' to be interned and placed in foreign worker battalions (Groupements de Travailleurs Etrangers)

1940 AG appointed Cardinal Gerlier’s delegate in the Comité d’Aide aux Refugiés (CAR). In that capacity he meets representatives of the Féderation des Sociétés Juives and becomes acquainted with Nina Gourfinkel.

3 October 1940 French law on the status of Jews

4 October 1940 French law authorising prefects to intern foreign Jews in designated camps. 9000 German and Austrian nationals, of whom 50% were Jewish, interned with their children in the Gurs camp

20 March 1941 Opening of Drancy camp in the Paris area

21 March 1941 Creation of Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (CGQJ) directed by Xavier Vallat who advocates an ‘antisémitisme d’Etat’

5 14 May 1941 First mass arrests of foreign Jews. 3,700 people, summoned by 'green ticket' in order to ‘review their position’, arrested by the Paris police, then interned at Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret

2 June 1941 Second law on status of Jews

Spring 1941 Alexander Glasberg and colleagues establish the Direction des Centres d’Accueil (DCA)

May 1941 Amitié Chrétienne established

20-25 August 1941 Further mass arrests of foreign Jews in Paris, at the request of Germany. 4,232 interned at Drancy by the French police

November 1941 Transfer of first group of 57 internees from Gurs to the DCA home in Chansaye (Rhone)

November 1941 Publication of the first issue of Témoignage Chrétien, under the editorship of Father Pierre Chaillet

12 December 1941 Germans assisted by the French police arrest 743 French Jews in Paris and intern them in the camp at Royallieu, near Compiègne

27 March 1942 First convoy of Jews deported ‘to the East’ leave France. 4000 Jews, arrested in May and August 1941, leave for Auschwitz

18 April 1942 Pierre Laval returns to power and appoints René Bousquet Secretary General of Police

May 1942 52 Refugees transferred from Gurs to the DCA centre in Pont de Manne (Drôme)

16-18 July 1942 Vel d’Hiv round-up: 12,884 Jews arrested in Paris

August 1942 French authorities receive authorisation to deport the 4,135 children at Drancy (2000 of whom are under 6)

26 August 1942 First mass round-ups in the non-occupied zone. 10,000 Jews from the free zone are delivered by Vichy to the Gestapo so that they can be ‘deported to the East’

26 August-29 August 1942 Arrest of 1,106 men, women and children, who are held in former barracks in Vénissieux near Lyon; 471 (of whom about 100 children) are saved from deportation by a screening commission in which Alexander Glasberg plays an important part.

Autumn 1942 Opening of DCA centre Château Bégué in Cazaubon (Gers)

11 November 1942 German occupation of the free zone; abbé Glasberg is wanted by the Gestapo. In December he leaves Lyon and finds refuge in the parish of Léribosc, Honor de Cos in the diocese of Montauban, under the assumed name Élie Corvin. Later he joins the local Resistance.

22-29 January 1943 Round-up in Marseille

9 February 1943 Round-up in Lyon at the premises of the Fédération des Sociétiés Juives de France, rue Sainte Catherine; 86 arrested

2 July 1943 German administration takes over Drancy

6 August 1943 Victor Vermont (Glasberg) arrested by the Gestapo

September 1943 Round-up in Nice and the Nice area

7 March 1944 Victor Glasberg deported to Auschwitz

6 June 1944 Allies disembark in Normandy

17 August 1944 Last convoy leaves Drancy for Auschwitz

6 25 August 1944 General de Gaulle enters liberated Paris

7 December 1944 Service des Étrangers association registered with Paris Prefecture; in February 1945 renamed the Centre d’Orientation Sociale des Etrangers (COSE)

1947 Alexander Glasberg plays an important role in the “Exodus 1947” affair

1947-1952 Four training centres established by COSE: shirtmaking school in Toulouse (1947-1951); carpentry school MEUBLUTIL in Paris (a work cooperative); school for plastics processing in Paris; watchmaking school in Valence (1950-1951)

March-April 1948 Alexander Glasberg visits Palestine

1950 Alexander Glasberg acquires French nationality

1950 COSE opens retirement home ‘Beauséjour’ in Hyères (Var)

1951 COSE opens centre for post-cure and retraining for TB sufferers, Nanteau-sur-Lunanin (Seine-et- Marne)

1952 COSE opens retirement home Château Abondant (Eure-et-Loir)

1952 Creation of the Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et des Apatrides (OFPRA)

1955 COSE opens centre in Cachan, a southern suburb of Paris, for vulnerable young people

21 September 1960 COSE becomes the Centre d’Orientation Sociale (COS)

1964 COS open retirement home La Colagne in Marvejols (Lozère)

1967 COS Cachan centre for vulnerable young people replaced by “Les Sureaux” centre in Montreuil, an eastern suburb of Paris

1968 COS opens “Divio” rehabilitation centre in Dijon

1971 Alexander Glasberg co-founds France Terre d’Asile

January 1972 Alexander Glasberg named Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in the category of public health and social security.

22 March 1981 Alexander Glasberg dies in Meaux

23 October 2003 Alexander Glasberg and his brother Victor (Vila) Glasberg posthumously awarded ‘Righteous among the Nations’ medals by the Vashem Institute in Jerusalem

7 vaya No Chertoriya dziądz Gru

8 Circa 1930 1942

Portraits of Alexander Glasberg

1944

1949

9 Circa 1950 1956

Circa 1960

1968

Circa 1975

10 Chapter 1 The Glasberg family: the early years

This chapter draws on information supplied by The Glasberg family before the revolution my grandmother Tatyana, on Roger Millot’s contribution to the Study Day on Alexander AG was born in Zhitomir and went to school there, but the main family home was in the [1] Glasberg in Lyon in 2012 , and on the diary of village of Novaya Chertoriya, about 80 kilometres a visit to Novaya Chertoriya and Zhitomir in to the west. He was one of eight children, seven 2008, places associated with Alexander of whom survived into adulthood: Irina, Lev, Glasberg’s family.[2] Tatyana (my grandmother), Asya, Adela (Dusya), Alexander, Victor (Vila).

Volynia Their father Savelii Gershovich Glasberg (1861- c.1933) was an able man of business, with little Alexander Glasberg was born on 17 March 1902 formal education. (‘Savelii’--the Russian version in Zhitomir, the capital of the Ukrainian province of the Hebrew ‘Shevel’--was used within the of Volynia, into a Russian-speaking Jewish family. family, and ‘Shevel’ in official documents.) Savelii Volynia was then within the Russian empire. The married Berta Moiseevna Numsonicz (1864-1928) province had once been under Polish rule but in 1884. She had been tutored at home and was along with most of Ukraine was annexed by more cultivated than him (she had even attended Russia in the 1790s after the partition of Poland. lectures on art in Switzerland), but she respected Volynia became part of the so-called Pale of his entrepreneurial talents. She was the daughter Settlement, established as a result of the of his employer, a man of considerable means, decision by Catherine II in the late 18th century with property that included several taverns and a to restrict the areas where Jews in the Russian flour mill. Empire might live and work. [3] As a result by the After the death of Berta’s father, Savelii was th end of the 19 century Volynia had a large asked to manage the businesses that his mother- Jewish population, about 13% in the province as in-law had inherited, and he later developed his a whole, 50% (35,000) in the provincial capital own commercial interests. He rented a flour mill Zhitomir, mainly involved in commerce and from a local aristocrat, the widow of a colonel of finance. [4] the Tsarist gendarmerie under Nicholas II, Natalya Ivanovna Orzhevskaya. [7] This was a Volynia benefitted from fertile soil, with an econ- common arrangement at the time and Savelii omy dominated by agriculture (crop cultivation Glasberg did very well. He employed 31 workers and animal husbandry), together with forestry in the mill in 1905 and 36 in 1910, a large and some small-scale industry. [5] It was cultivat- workforce in Volynia by the standards of the ed by a poor peasantry. Ownership of land, pre- time, about 20 of whom were housed in a viously in the hands of the Polish nobility, had building which he put up at the edge of the passed to the Russian (or russified Polish) and village. [8] Ukrainian land-owning class. [6]

Savelii Gershovich Glasberg Berta Moiseevna Numsonicz 1861-c.1933 1864-1928

11 No. Type of pro- Year Owner Rented Postal workers duction opened by Location address

Natalya Ivanovna Orzhevskaya (1859- 1939), owner of the mill rented by Savelii Glasberg - see no. 45 in this list published by the gubsovnarkhoz (Soviet provincial economic authority) in 1919

Following a fire Glasberg was able to replace the original wooden structure with a stone edifice. According to village rumour the fire was suspicious: Glasberg had organised it in order to get the insurance money to replace it with a modern building! That story had been passed down and was still being told by an elderly resident of Novaya Chertoriya when I visited the village in 2008. [9]

The mill still stands today and is a heritage site. It is an imposing structure on four floors, undoubtedly ‘state of the art’ at the time it was built. No member of the Glasberg family has lived in Novaya Chertoriya since about 1921, yet the mill is still known by the locals as the ‘Glasberg mill’, as I discovered during my 2008 visit—a striking continuity in the face of the violence and upheavals experienced in this part of the world in the 20th century.

The Glasberg mill next to the village sign: Other views of the mill, built on a branch of in Ukrainian Nova (N) Chortoriya (in the river Sluch Russian Novaya Chertoriya)

12 In addition to the flour mill Savelii acquired The family lived in a large single-storey brick interests in forestry and sugar production, and in house in Novaya Chertoriya. This property still 1905 a house in Zhitomir at 14, Ulitsa stands, now multi-occupied. As with the mill, the Chernigovskaya, purchased from Nikolai Lukich family name is still mentioned: in 2008 the locals Pustovoitov, documented in a contract drawn up were still calling the house ‘Glasberg’. Evdokiya by a Zhitomir lawer. [10] In that year he referred Leontievna Kanchura, a kind widow of 86, to this as his place of residence for the purposes showed me her apartment, and later I was of the electoral register for the forthcoming introduced to another elderly lady Olga, who Duma (parliament). occupied another part of the house. Olga explained that her mother, who lived to the age He was, then, a man of substance within a world 96, had at the age of 12 been employed as a of peasant farming and very small-scale industry. nanny to two young Glasberg children! In 1907 he figured in a list of traders who had acquired a certificate of ‘bourgeois’ status. Savelii Glasberg was a self-made man with little He was a ‘merchant of the first guild’ and paid for formal education, but according to Tatyana he his membership in the capital St Petersburg, became more ‘intelligentsia-like’ under the rather than locally, a sign of relatively high influence of his wife. He was a Russophile, while status. his politics were western-liberal. He joined the

Vues de la «Maison Glasberg» 2008

Olga, dont la mère avait été nourrice de deux enfants Glasberg, 2008

L’auteur avec L'auteur avec Tamasii (qui a raconté l'histoire Evdokiya de l'incendie du moulin) et son épouse Evdokiya Leontevna 2008 Kanchura 2008

13 Kadet (Constitutional Democrat) party and was A secular Jewish background overjoyed by the February 1917 revolution, but not all by the Bolshevik revolution in October. Savelii’s father was a Hassid (in a part of the Russian empire that had given birth to Savelii was no doubt a fair employer by the Hassidism), and Berta’s mother a devout Jew, standards of the period, but the early years of the and there was a prayer house in Novaya 20th century were times of ferment among the Chertoriya [11], but neither parent practised the working class throughout the Russian empire, and faith. They were secular in orientation, part of the around 1907, he faced a strike by his mill Jewish community in a cultural not a religious workers. Tatyana recalled that this strike was sense. Thus Alexander was listed in the Jewish during a vacation in her second year at St civil register (as no doubt all the Glasberg Petersburg university, and that she and her older children), where his circumcision was also brother Lev, who had become fervently socialist recorded. [12] He also learned Yiddish, which (their older sister Irina to a lesser extent), took greatly impressed those who came to know him the side of the strikers and encouraged them in later years as Abbé Glasberg. (A catholic priest during clandestine meetings. When he found out who knows Yiddish?!) The main influence here about this Savelii was furious and commanded was very likely his maternal grandmother whom the offending children to leave the house, he he adored, and he would say that all he knew of would not have enemies living there! It was, [13] Tatyana said, a ‘terrible tragedy for the family’. Judaism he had learnt from her. Evidently the threat was not carried out, but it left its mark on the relationship between the Tatyana too spoke in glowing terms about this father and the three older children. (the four grandmother, whom she remembered saying younger siblings were too young to have been prayers in Hebrew. Judaism as a faith was thus involved). present in the wider environment, but it was absent within the immediate family. This is worth Tatyana recalled that the strike went on for four remembering when considering Alexander’s days and that it was quite successful, since the trajectory. He became a Christian in adulthood, workers did get a wage increase. There were but it would be misleading to say that in doing so other demands, including sick pay and a change he was turning away from Judaism, since the in holidays, so that the Jewish workers (about a Jewish religious foundation was weak to begin quarter of the workforce) would be allowed to with. observe Jewish holidays, while the Christians would continue to observe Christian holidays. In I imagine that Alexander Glasberg spent his first addition the workers demanded to be addressed years in Novaya Chertoriya, up to the time that using the polite ‘you’ (vy), not the familiar ‘thou’ he went to gymnasium (secondary school) no. 2 (ty). Tatyana remembered that the chief engineer in Zhitomir. Here, during a period of war and at the mill did start to say ‘vy’, but her father revolution (he was 15 at the time of the October was too fixed in his ways. revolution), he completed his secondary education, graduating in April 1919. The teaching

Alexander Glasberg: enregistrement de naissance et circoncision les 25 avril et 4 mai

14 was thorough, but the school received complaints from some Jewish parents that Judaism was being neglected. A collective letter dated 21 September 1916, addressed to the school head, called on him to organise the teaching of the Jewish religion in all classes. [14]

Alexander Glasberg’s graduation diploma 1919

World war, revolution and civil war

Alexander Glasberg’s schooling was at a time of huge upheaval in Ukraine. It became a battleground for the belligerents in the First Letter from parents of Jewish pupils dated World War (Austro-Hungary, Germany and 21 September 1916, addressed to the head Russia), and then after the Russian revolution of of Gymnasium n° 2 in Zhitomir, asking that 1917 for the red and white armies battling it out the Jewish religion be taught in all classes during the civil war of 1918-1920--all complicated by Polish claims on Ukrainian territory and Ukrainian nationalist forces fighting for a Ukrainian state. There was a short-lived period of Ukrainian independence, but the The young Alexander was evidently a bright nationalist current was divided and finally broken pupil, and especially good at sciences and by Soviet power, which took possession of most languages, as indicated in a graduation report of this devastated land in 1921. with marks from 0-5: Ukrainian language and literature 3; Russian language and literature 3, This period, especially the year 1919, also saw a geography 3; general history 4; Ukrainian history wave of pogroms (attacks on Jews and their 4; Ukrainian geography 4; philosophy 4; Latin 5; property), recalling earlier waves in 1881-1883 mathematics 5; physics 5; natural sciences 5; and 1903-1906. In the Russian revolutionary pe- German 5; French 5. riod 1918-1921, 1,236 ‘pogroms and excesses’ were recorded in the territories of Ukraine, three quarters of which occurred in 1919, with esti- mates of numbers of Jews killed in the tens of thousands. [15]

15 The Glasberg parents leave for the West time as his sister Tatyana and two or three years with Adela, Alexander and Viktor after his younger brother Victor.

In 1920 the Glasberg parents decided to leave. By that time AG had embarked on a religious According to Tatyana this decision was less a path, becoming first a Lutheran then a Catholic. reaction to Bolshevism as such, more a result of This strand in the story is taken up in the next the political chaos and lawlessness which reigned chapter. in the territory of Ukraine during the civil war period, before Soviet power was finally Some notes on Alexander’s siblings established, when competing armed groups (including Soviet Russian, White Russian, I provide below some information about Ukrainian nationalist and Polish forces, and Alexander’s siblings, together with a family tree. various armed peasant bands) were active, none Most of what I know revolves around my being able to establish supremacy. The pogroms grandmother Tatyana, of whom I was very fond of 1919 may well have played a part also. The and who reminisced about her life. She lost Glasberg family was not directly affected, but the contact with her brothers and sisters in the anti-Jewish currents must surely have added to Soviet Union and Poland in the 1930s and during the sense of insecurity. the cold war. Certain contacts were resumed in the 1960s, in particular with Adela, but for the Once Soviet power was established in 1921, the time being the Glasberg house and mill were confiscated, but information here must the family had managed to export some of its remain very sketchy. wealth. The parents went to Vienna, taking with them their three youngest children Adela, Irina (1887-1971) Alexander and Victor. A Glasberg relative was became an actress already living there and no doubt received them. and director and a Three of the older siblings, Irina, Lev and Asya, leading figure in the remained in Soviet Russia. Tatyana stayed until development of 1923, when she departed for Berlin with her two children’s theatre in young sons, to join her husband who had settled the Soviet Union. She there one or two years before. began her career in Ukraine, the first The Glasberg parents and younger children female theatre stayed in Vienna for perhaps two years, during director in that which time Alexander studied in a business region. In the 1920s she was chief director of the school. [16] Then they moved to Poland, where Kiev Youth Theatre and one of the founders of the parents had bought an estate near the Kiev Puppet Theatre, and in the 1930s and Grudziandz, a town on the Vistula 100 kilometres 1940s successively head of the Dnepropetrovsk, south of Gdansk. For a while Alexander helped to Archangelsk and Novosibirsk Youth Theatres. In manage it, but according to Tatyana he got on the latter part of her life she lived in Moscow. She badly with his mother and this arrangement was married (the marriage did not last long) and had not successful. one son Yurii Brodsky, who emigrated to Poland in the early 1920s, joined the Communist party, Meanwhile Savelii was unhappy in Poland and rose to a high rank in the Polish army and fought yearned for home, and at some point in the with the partisans in the wartime Resistance. In 1920s decided to return on his own, and found 1948, during the postwar Bierut regime (1947- employment in the management of a flour-milling 1952), he was tried on charges of bribery and cooperative. He managed to persuade the Soviet corruption, and sentenced to death. Many Polish authorities that he was divorced, and remarried. wartime military leaders (including the ‘hero of He apparently died a natural death in the 1930s. Auschwitz’ Witold Pilecki) met a similar end [17], Berta stayed on the Polish estate for a time, then and it is very likely that the trial was politically moved to Belgium. She died in 1928, during one inspired. Alexander Glasberg, who had links with of her visits to Tatyana in Berlin. the Polish government and was respected in Poland because of his wartime Resistance Unfortunately there is very little information activities, tried to intercede for his nephew, but about Alexander’s activities during the 1920s. without success. Along with the years spent in Vienna and in Poland, where he acquired Polish nationality, this Lev (c. 1889 -?) trained as an engineer and period included some time spent in Berlin, and at settled in Kiev. He was committed to the new the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s, Soviet order and joined the Communist party. in Yugoslavia. Here he worked as head of a He married and had two daughters. My trading house which had headquarters in Berlin, grandmother told me that he was killed in the and as 'Chancellor of the National Union of Second World War during the German occupation Yugoslav Farmers'. It was from Belgrade that he of Ukraine. There is a puzzle about the timing of arrived in France in April 1932 , around the same Lev’s death, because when Alexander first

16 applied for French citizenship in 1935 and after a long return journey via Sweden, Great provided details about his family, Lev was not Britain and France. Following the February 1917 mentioned. revolution Ilya resumed his legal career in Petrograd. However after the October revolution Tatyana told me that during the immediate post- life became very difficult for him professionally, revolutionary period she lived for a time in and in 1920 or 1921 he left for Berlin, where he ‘Chertori’ with other members of the Glasberg set up an office dealing with the legal side of family including Lev, in the house that had trade with Russia, leaving Tatyana and her sons belonged to her maternal grandparents. The in Russia. house had been confiscated by the Soviet authorities, but the family was allowed to occupy For a time Tatyana lived in Novaya Chertoriya one wing on condition that the adults helped out with some members of her wider family. Then in on the land. This group included Tatyana and her 1923, following a spell in the Caucasus, she two sons Alexei and Genya and (briefly) rejoined her husband in Berlin, together with her Tatyana’s husband Ilya, together with Lev, Asya two sons. During this period, before her with her two children Tolya and Mura, and Irina’s departure from Russia, she was baptised in the son Yurii. Tatyana also said that Lev visited her in Orthodox church, and also baptised her sons, a Berlin during the 1920s. What happened to Lev demarche which at first caused great tension in subsequently remains to her marriage because she did not tell her be established. husband about it at the time and because he was entirely out of sympathy with her religious Tatyana (1891-1985) preoccupations. was born in Novaya Chertoriya. At the age of Ilya Lampert died in 1928, following surgery for a about 16 she embarked stomach ulcer. Tatyana remained in Berlin for a on a law course at the few more years, then left for France with her university of St sons Alyosha and Genya. Here she trained as a Petersburg. This was nurse and settled in Paris. Genya studied during the aftermath of theology at the University of Strasbourg, then at the 1905 revolution the Saint-Serge Institute in Paris. He was when student life was influenced by Sergei Bulgakov and, outside the highly politicised. Here Institute, by Nikolai Berdyaev. In June 1939 he she identified with the came on a visit to Britain, furnished only with a Bolshevik wing of the Tatyana travel document. War was declared in September Russian socialist movement. Zhitomir, 1904 and he was not able to return to France. She remained left-leaning all Meanwhile he met Katharine Ridley (1912-1976). her life, but her Bolshevik They married in 1941 and settled in Oxford. involvement was brief, to be replaced by an Alexander (Tosha) was born in 1943 and I was interest in Russian philosophers who were born in 1945. moving away from social democracy towards religion, including Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), In the 1950s Genya Lampert abandoned Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944) and Pavel theology, became inspired by the Russian Florensky (1882-1937). revolutionary tradition, and published several works on 19th century Russian social thinkers. He During her fourth year at university she met Ilya taught at Oxford University in a free-lance Lampert, a lawyer, also from a Jewish family. His capacity and then in 1965 was appointed to the father was a banker who had moved from Grodno University of Keele as head of the Department of (where Ilya was born) and settled in Warsaw. Russian Studies. Katharine died in 1976 and he in Ilya studied law in Kiev and later worked in St 2004. Petersburg. They married in 1910 or 1911, and Tatyana abandoned her university course. Ilya At the end of the 1930s, Tatyana’s older son had already been married, and had a very young Alexei (Alyosha), wanting to contribute to the war daughter Ida, but had separated from his wife a effort, joined the Foreign Legion and in this year before meeting Tatyana. After their capacity was posted to Algeria. Here he met his marriage they lived for a time with her in-laws in future wife Camille Cabrera. They had two sons Warsaw, where she was not happy, then returned Stephan (born in 1945) and Philippe (1947- to St Petersburg after the birth of her first son 2008). After Algerian independence in 1962, Alexei (Alyosha) in 1912. Later, before the onset Alexei settled once more in France. Camille and of the First World War, she moved with Ilya and he separated and in the latter part of his life he Alexei to Munich, where Ilya was seconded to do was based in England. research on social insurance law. Here a second son Evgenii (Genya) was born in 1914. At the end of the 1950s, after retirement, Tatyana came to live in Oxford to be closer to After the outbreak of war Ilya was interned, but Genya. soon released, went back to Russia and was mobilised. Tatyana returned in 1915 or 1916,

17 Four generations: Tatyana on the right, Genya on the left, the author with his first child Katie in the centre Oxford, 1969

Asya (c.1894-c.1950), like Lev, was committed to the new Soviet regime and joined the Communist party. She trained in medicine and became a specialist in respiratory disease. She married at the age of 17, divorced and remarried. She had a son Tolya and a daughter Mura. Like Lev she visited Tatyana in Berlin during the 1920s, but at some point in the 1930s Tatyana lost contact with her completely. She died of TB after the war.

Adela (Dusya) (1899-c.1998) followed her Adela (Dusya) on the right, Tatyana on the parents to Vienna and then to Poland where she left, Genya in the centre, during a visit by married the farm manager on her parents’ estate, Adela to Oxford, c.1975 Olis Ukrainski, and remained in Poland for the rest of her life. She was close to her brother Alexander and received several visits from him before and after the Second World War. After the war she joined the communist party, trained in agriculture and became director of a state farm. She lived to nearly a hundred. She had a daughter Irina and a son Yurii, who joined the resistance as a teenager and later trained at military academies in East Germany and in Moscow.

Adela during an interview for Julie Bertuccelli’s film, c.1995

Adela in her youth

Alexander and Adela in Poland 1939

18 Viktor (Vila) (1907-c.1944) accompanied his parents to Vienna and to Poland. Later he lived for a time with his mother in Belgium, to which she had moved following Savelii’s return to Russia. He also spent periods with Tatyana in Berlin. He moved to France in 1929, a little earlier than Alexander and Tatyana. Once in France his life became closely bound up with Alexander’s. They trained in the same seminary, though Viktor did not complete the course. Viktor worked closely with his brother during the war, managing one of the homes that Alexander had set up to house refugees. In 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo, imprisoned and deported, and was not heard of again.

Photo of Berta Numsonicz Vienna 1927 Inscribed in Russian: “To my dear Vityusha, from his very loving mother” (Vityusha: an affectionate diminutive of Victor)

19 NOTES [9] During my visit to Novaya Chertoriya in 2008 I was introduced to an elderly couple Tamasii and [1] Roger Millot, ‘Les Glasberg, une famille juive Evdokiya; it was Tamasii who told me in ukrainienne’ in Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981. confidential tones that the fire at the Glasberg Prêtre, Résistant, Militant (2013). This account mill was not accidental! includes information from archival documents provided by Schlomo Wilhelm, rabbi of Zhitomir, [10] The contract was drawn up by Erasmus and from Alexander Glasberg’s naturalisation file, Stepanovich Prshemenskiz. investigated by Christian Sorrel (see chapter 10) [11] In 2008 a villager showed me the place [2] Nick Lampert, Connecting with Family History. where a Jewish prayer house once stood. I asked Ukraine 24 May-1 June 2008. A diary in words about the Jewish population in the village in the and images (2010) old days. I was told that there had been many Jewish families, ‘280 homesteads’ (dvory) before [3] The territories which came to be known as the the war. Today the village comprises 700-800 Pale of Settlement included Imperial Russian homesteads, so possibly half the pre-war provinces in what is today Poland, Lithuania and population was Jewish. Belorus, and all the provinces of Dnieper Ukraine (provinces in eastern and western Ukraine, on the [12] Registered on 25 April 1902 no.170; Right and Left Banks of the River Dnieper). The circumcised on 4 May 1902 aim of the Imperial government was that Jews be prevented, with certain exceptions, from moving [13] Lazare reports that Alexander Glasberg further east, that they remain on territories confided to a member of staff at the Centre acquired from the partitioned Polish-Lithuanian d’orientation sociale that he had loved his Commonwealth. Paul Magocsi, A History of grandmother ‘infinitely’. He would say: Ukraine 2nd ed. 2010, ch. 28 “Everything I know about Judaism, I owe to my grandmother.” Lazare, L’Abbé Glasberg, pp.25-26 [4] From 1897 Census of Russian Empire, summarised in [14] The letter was supplied to Roger Millot by https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Волынская_губерн the rabbi of Zhitomir Shlomo Wilhel. ия A History of Ukraine nd [5] The main agricultural products in Volynia [15] Paul Magocsi, 2 ed. included wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, 2010, chs 28 and 40. millet, peas, potatoes, sugar beet, tobacco, hops, [16] In Alexander’s application for French and fruit in the south (including peaches, citizenship in 1935 he mentioned that in 1923 he apricots, grapes); animal husbandry and bee- had been declared unfit for military service in keeping were also important, while industrial Poland because of poor eyesight. Archives production, mainly small-scale, included sugar, nationales [AN], 19770888/196, dossier de tobacco, water and steam-driven flour mills, naturalisation d’Alexandre Glasberg (4931/36), forestry and sawmills, and distilling. notice de renseignements etablie par la traditio.wiki/Волынская_губерния prefecture de l’Allier, 18 octobre 1935. Cited by Sorrel in Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981, p.26. [6] Paul Magocsi, A History of Ukraine 2nd ed. Hence it is safe to assume that by then the family 2010, ch. 27 had left Vienna and were resident in Poland. [7] The former Orzhevskii mansion is now a [17] Military leaders tried and executed in 1948 technical college, still impressive from the under Bierut included General Stanislaw outside, standing in an attractive wooded garden, Tatar and Brig-General Emil August Fieldorf, 40 with a small but imposing family church. members of the Freedom and Independence organisation, together with a number of church [8] A villager told me that Glasberg had built a officials, and many other opponents of the new 20-room house for his workers, and showed me regime including the "hero of Auschwitz", Witold the plot where the house once stood, close to the Pilecki. river which forms the border between the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki provinces of Zhitomir and Khmelnitskii.

20 21 22 Chapter 2 Settling in France and becoming a priest (1932-1938)

The account below relies very largely on research by Christian Sorrel, which has thrown important light on the religious path taken by both Alexander and Viktor Glasberg. Most of the footnotes, with altered numbering, are taken from Sorrel’s work. [1] In certain places I have added material and in this case the relevant notes are placed in brackets in order to distinguish them from those of Christian Sorrel.

Alexander Glasberg arrives in France

After more than a decade of unsettled existence Jules in Vienna, Poland, Germany and Yugoslavia, Monchanin Alexander Glasberg arrived in Paris from Belgrade 1895-1957 in April 1932.[2] His older sister Tatyana also moved to France around this time, from Berlin, while his younger brother Victor had arrived earlier, from Belgium, in October 1929. [3] friendly with the Glasberg brothers while they were training for the priesthood in Lyon (see It was now that Alexander embarked on the path below) and it was through them that Monchanin that would lead to ordination in the Catholic [9] church. His religious quest had begun in the was introduced to Belenson. 1920s, before he came to France. The details are not clear, but a recent investigation by Christian How Alexander Glasberg first came to know Sorrel has established that he first became a Elizabeth Belenson is not clear, but it was she who hosted him when he arrived in Paris, in her Lutheran, and later a Catholic.[4] Victor, home in Rue Bonaparte, where he stayed until influenced by Alexander, followed a similar the end of September 1933, before moving into a trajectory. Victor reported that in February 1930 th [10] he was baptised “conditionally” at the Catholic modest hotel in the 15 arrondisement. [5] church of Saint-Ludwig in Berlin-Wilmersdorf , There was gossip at the time about Alexander’s which means that he had been baptised earlier, relationship with Elizabeth Belenson, which but for some reason the church authority had remained alive in my family, to the effect that doubts about its validity. Victor reported that his they were lovers. This found its way into a report conversion was due to the influence of his by French General Intelligence in 1949, when brother, whom he had “resisted for a long time”, Alexander was applying for French citizenship: and to the influence of his older sister.[6] This ‘We must note that, during his first stay in the strongly suggests that Alexander’s conversion to capital, [Glasberg] was cohabiting with Mme Catholicism came earlier, at some point during Schwarzwald, divorcee Belenson, […] a Russian the 1920s. refugee and woman of letters.’ [11] It is quite possible that the story is true, but it has to be The role of Elizabeth Belenson said that neither family talk nor French General Intelligence are reliable sources on this matter, After arriving in Paris Alexander was in so we shall probably never know. communication with a number of people who encouraged his and Victor’s religious journey. The A Catholic education most important of these was Elizabeth Belenson, a Russian Jew from Ukraine who had converted to In 1932 Alexander joined the Institut Catholicism, and who was described as a “second [12] [7] Catholique , and in January 1933 enrolled on a mother to the Glasberg brothers”. She was course in philosophy. In June 1933 he was very preoccupied with Judeo-Christian [13] understanding, and convened a discussion group “condtionally” baptised at the Solitude d’Issy. in the mid-1930s which included a number of Thus it seems that as with Victor, there was exceptional thinkers, among them Edmond Fleg, doubt about the validity of the earlier baptism. [8] Louis Massignon and Jules Monchanin. At the Institut Catholique Alexander met Georges Monchanin was a Lyon-based Benedictine monk Tzebrikov, a former Orthodox priest who had and priest who would spend the latter part of his joined the Eastern Catholic Church and was life in India as a devotee of Hindu-Christian teaching at the Institute. [14] Tzebrikov entrusted dialogue. He was also a strong advocate of Alexander to the spiritual direction of Father Jules Judeo-Christian bridge-building, emphasising the Lebreton, a theologian and professor at the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. He became

23 Institute, who supported him in the search for a such a favour. He will be much better able than seminary in which to train, bearing in mind that if he stays in Paris, to respond to a vocation Alexander had no funds. which I think is real but which needs to mature.” [19]

The diocese was faced with a serious crisis in recruitment to the priesthood, and the bishop of Moulins Monsignor Gonon quickly agreed. The superior of the Moulins seminary wrote to Alexander: “You will be received free of charge if you sign a commitment to carry out your ministry in this diocese when you enter the priesthood.”[20] Alexander enrolled on 2 January 1934 and on 1 May was joined by Victor, who had been recommended by Dom Chautard. The Abbot of Sept-Fons wondered however about Victor’s capacity to keep vows of chastity, here resorting to stereotypes that were typical of the period:

Père Jules Lebreton “I admired, in Ireland, the extent to which the 1873-1956 majority of Celts were able readily to maintain their chastity. On the other hand, it is quite Alexander hoped to enrol in the seminary of Issy- otherwise for the race to which Victor belongs, as les-Moulineaux (a Paris suburb) in the autumn of [21] 1933, and was recommended by Father Lebreton. even great converts have confessed.” It was agreed that the Paris diocese would fund his board, should he be accepted there. However the directors required an observation period of one year. Father Lebreton commented:

“I understand why a trial is imposed on a convert, but I fear that it will be hard to bear, and perhaps do more harm than good […]. I still do not know how he is going to support Viktor himself. The very precarious conditions of life in Glasberg a small hotel are hardly conducive to the 1907-1944 preparation which he wishes to pursue.” [15]

Alexander then turned to the seminary of Moulins (capital of the department of Allier), run by the Marist Fathers. [16] He had met the superior of the Moulins seminary during the summer, at the Trappist monastery of Sept-Fons: in order to supplement his income, he spent three months (July to September 1933) helping with hospitality at the monastery, and had developed a friendly relationship with the abbot, Dom Chautard. [17] Dom Jean- Baptiste Alexander wrote to the Moulins seminary in Chautard October 1933: “Not wishing to lose a year, I OCSO (1858- would be happy to enter your seminary and I 1935), abbot would be grateful if you could give me some of the Abbey information on this subject […] There is a of Sept-Fons difficulty, which is financial : since I am without means, it is quite impossible for me to pay for my studies.” [18]

Father Lebreton again supported his application:

‘M. Glasberg was born into Judaism, and after In autumn 1934 the two brothers embarked on a passing through Lutheranism he converted to study of theology, with the obligation to do some Catholicism and aspires to the priesthood. He supplementary courses to fill the gaps in their seems to me courageous and sincere….If you knowledge.[22] Their results were good, especially could receive him, this would be a great Alexander’s, who was considered “intelligent”, blessing and a source of security. I hope that and “good” in piety, conduct and character, that he will make the effort to be worthy of though he “could work harder” and was

24 “mediocre” in the domain of ceremony. Victor was judged weaker, both in academic results and in character (“needs to study”) and conduct (“too many visits”), but was thought “intelligent” and “good” in piety.[23]

The brothers stayed at the Moulins seminary for only a year and a half, then continued their studies at the University Seminary of Lyon in October 1935. [24] The trigger for this move is not Louis Richard clear, but they benefitted from the change 1880-1956 because the atmosphere here was more open and progressive than the very traditional milieu of Moulins, and evidently suited them both much better. The Lyon seminary offered a stimulating intellectual environment, under the direction of the superior Pierre Girard and his assistant Louis Richard [25], an innovative theologian who established a supportive relationship with Henri de Lubac Alexander. [26] 1896-1991

The residents, drawn from about twenty dioceses, took courses in the Catholic faculties, where the Jesuit Henri de Lubac was an outstanding teacher. Both Louis Richard and Henri de Lubac

Alexander Glasberg with his fellow seminarists

Alexander and Victor Glasberg

25 were close to Father Pierre Chaillet, who would become a key figure in the Catholic Resistance in wartime Lyon, collaborating closely with Alexander Glasberg.

By the time Lucien Lazare was writing his biographical sketch on abbé Glasberg, published in 1990, more than fifty years had passed since the time of the abbé’s seminary training, and Abbey of St Lazare was able to elicit very little information Vincent de from the few former fellow seminarians whom he Chantelle interviewed. But any reminiscence is precious and High Altar the following deserves to quoted:

“He had a heart of gold. He was always impoverished. When he received a few pennies from time to time, sent to him by the Sept-Fons Trappists, he exchanged them for pastries, and the whole seminary feasted. He was as Signature of gourmand as he was myopic. Never satisfied, Mgr Gonon he would devour the salad dressing at the after the bottom of the salad bowl after a meal. He was a ordination of very vigorous and unyielding man. After the Alexander Liberation, there was a meeting of former Glasberg as students at the university seminary, in the deacon, absence of abbé Richard, who was still in prison church of Saint- because of his Resistance activities. Abbé Vincent-de- Glasberg took out the manuscript of R.P. Chantelle Bruckberger’s book, Si grande peine, and we read the pages denouncing the collaborationist clergy.” [27] September was ordained priest by Monsignor Gonon, bishop of Moulins, once more at Sept- On 4th July 1937 the Glasberg brothers were Fons.[30] tonsured at the Trappist monastery of Sept-Fons where they became acolytes till the autumn.[28] His first appointment in Moulins was as supervisor Not long after this Victor was dismissed from the of senior students at the Sacre-Coeur Institute. Lyon seminary, apparently in connection with a Remembering this many years later, one of his sexual affair, but in February 1938 he was able to former classmates said that they were all join the University Seminary of Strasbourg to do surprised at this appointment because Alexander was extremely short-sighted, and because they courses at the Faculty of Theology. [29] thought that by temperament he was not suited [31] In the following year Alexander was ordained, to the role. However it was said that while there ‘surprisingly, he gained sympathy and first as sub-deacon on 3rd July 1938 at the abbey influence over his subordinates’, while continuing of Sept-Fons, then as deacon on 31 July at the to visit his classmates at the University Seminary Benedictine abbey of Chantelle, and on 24 in Lyon. [32]

Abbé Glasberg, supervisor of “senior students division” at the Sacre-Coeur Institute (to the left of the Head, Canon M. Lépée) 1938-1939

26 In April 1939, during Holy Week, he was in Paris and met up with Victor (now living in Strasbourg), to say goodbye to Father Jules Monchanin, who was about to leave for India.[33] A few months later, the two brothers went to visit their sister Adela in Poland for the holidays. Victor returned suddenly ‘by the last train on 24th August’ in order to enlist in the French army (colonial troops) following mobilisation, while Alexander, ‘being a priest’, stayed on for a time with Adela’s family.

Laurent Remilleux 1882-1949

to avoid anything archaic, ostentatious or in poor taste. The general impression is summed up in two words: whiteness, simplicity.

The interior is a large rectangular room, as unencumbered as possible. A stained glass window by the painter Burlet, former sillonnist, occupies the background and represents the Holy Family, a spiritual theme dear to Father Remilleux. His artistic sense was not strong and Visit to Poland: above from left: Oleg he confessed that he did not find it very Ukrainski (Adela’s husband), Alexander beautiful, he did not feel the need for any Glasberg, Adela, Victor Glasberg; below: further comment. A statue - simple and Adela’s children, Irina and Yuri dignified - of Our Lady of Peace, a reproduction of a work by Jacques Marton. A Pieta by Chorel, a maquette donated by the artist himself, and a The German invasion of Poland began on 1 statue of Saint Francis. A large inscription: September 1939, one week after the signing of 'Come to me, all ye that are weary ...' A the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and the Soviet commemorative plaque for the dead of 1914. invasion started on 17 September. Alexander was That is all and there is nothing that catches the able to get back to France only after a long eye. The altar is a table, with these three detour via Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Sweden letters: Pax. It would thus be easy to celebrate [34] and Great Britain. Mass 'face to the people'. Nothing could be more simple, more sparse, with a blend of the On his return from Poland Alexander went back to Benedictine, or rather Cistercian spirit, and the Moulins, where Mgr Gonon quickly accepted his Franciscan spirit. secondment to the diocese of Lyon, which he no doubt missed a great deal. Soon after the the fall We should be clear, however, that the edifice is of France in June 1940, he was appointed curate convenient for worship. A vast choir, two of Notre-Dame Saint-Alban, a parish in Transvaal, vestries ..., the possibility for the priest to see a working class district in south-east Lyon. The 'all his people' and to speak without a parish was established in the 1920s by Laurent microphone, the immediate proximity of the Remilleux, a pioneering priest who became well- presbytery. It was all planned in a very practical known in Catholic circles for his commitment to spirit. the simplest form of Christian worship, stripped of all adornment. He was also socially progressive The presbytery gives the same impression of and sympathetic to the exiled and the whiteness as the church. So simple that it persecuted, though he was not political in a verges on poverty. It is small, ordinary, with no narrow sense. The new church was completed in graces, but practical, with its parlour at the 1924, and was described thus by Remilleux’s entrance and its monastic cells. No ornaments. friend and biographer Joseph Folliet: In the parlour, some memories of the dead: Father Jean, Maurice le Gros. In the curé’s "There is nothing special about the church, office, portraits of Father Jean and, later, nothing that captures the eye neither inside nor Yvonne Girard, a militant saint, perhaps the outside. A place of worship, no more and no most beautiful spiritual flower of the parish. '[35] less, and for a poor parish. At least it knew how

27 nationalisms, perhaps even sometimes underestimating the need for self-defense. As a Christian, he rejected the ideology of National Socialism, but also all other anti-Christian ideologies, even when they were for a time in struggle against Nazism. '[37]

It is very possible that Alexander Glasberg already knew Remilleux through abbé Jules Monchanin, who was close to Remilleux and also, as we have seen, friendly with the Glasberg brothers. In any event his appointment to a parish headed by such an innovative and progressive priest benefitted Alexander greatly in the next phase of his life, devoted to the cause of refugees. Remilleux was not involved in this work and did not always see eye to eye with his curate, but he provided shelter and support. [38] Notre Dame St Alban

NOTES

[1] Christian Sorrel, ‘Notes sur la conversion et la vocation sacerdotale d’Alexandre Glasberg’ dans Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981. Prêtre, Résistant, Militant. 2013

[2] Archives nationales [AN], 19770888/196, dossier de naturalisation d’Alexandre Glasberg (4931/36), notice de renseignements etablie par la prefecture de l’Allier, 18 octobre 1935.

[3] (Tatyana had left Russia for Berlin in 1923 and was widowed in 1928. She stayed on in Berlin for a few more years with her two sons Alexei and Interior of Notre Dame St Alban in recent Genya, and moved to France in the early 1930s) times Victor arrived in France from Belgium in October 1929, the date mentioned in a letter from the Rhone Prefecture to the Bas-Rhin Prefecture of 7 April 1938, supporting Viktor’s application to stay Remilleux’s liturgical style ran into opposition at in the Bas-Rhin department (see note 29). Victor first, especially when he ‘refused the routine had been living in Brussels and in Liège, where he pomp of weddings, funerals or first communions’, obtained a diploma in commerce before and he would then gently suggest to the attempting, ‘without relish’, a commercial career discontented that a neighbouring parish might in Paris. Archives diocésaines de Moulins [ADM], 2 offer them “the flowers, candles, carpets and H 6.5, dossier Glasberg, lettres de Dom Chautard suisses that they needed for their happiness.” But à Mgrs Gonon, évêque de Moulins, 9 et 17 avril people got used to it and began to take pride in [1934]. In 1932 he tried to earn a living by the fact that their parish was so avant garde.[36] organising ‘correspondence courses in commerce, and drew Alexander into it, but this venture came A further source of tension was Remilleux’s strong to an end in 1933. Meanwhile both brothers had commitment to Franco-German understanding, to resolved to enter a seminary. ADM, 2 H 6.5, the extent of bringing three German curates to dossier Glasberg, lettre du Père Lebreton au the parish in the interwar period, at a time when supérieur du grand séminaire de Moulins, 16 the French church was closely identified with octobre 1933. nationalist sentiment. His friend and biographer Joseph Folliet comments: [4] The Lutheran phase is mentioned in ADM, 2 H 6.5, dossier Glasberg, lettre du Père Lebreton au "As a priest, he wanted to remain at the supérieur du grand séminaire de Moulins, 16 disposal of everyone, to be above differences octobre 1933. and political opposition, even national interest. But his sense of charity led him to the most [5] ADM 2 H 6.5, dossier Glasberg, lettres de hapless, to exiles, refugees, the persecuted. He Dom Chautard à Mgrs Gonon, évêque de Moulins, was peaceful even pacifist, he hated war, 9 et 17 avril [1934]. rejected all manifestations of hatred, all

28 [6] Ibid. (The ‘older sister’ almost certainly refers [14] On Tsebrikow, see Pierre Van der Meer, Dieu to Tatyana rather than Adela, who was living in et les hommes, Paris, DDB 1957, pp 336-341, Poland and as far as I know had no religious and Stanislas Fumet, Histoire de Dieu dans ma commitment at that time). vie, Paris, Cerf, 2002, pp.510-512.

[7] A comment by Jules Monchanin (1895-1957). [15] ADM, 2 H 6.5, dossier Glasberg, lettre du Francoise Jacquin, Jules Monchanin. Lettres à sa Père Lebreton au supérieur du grand séminaire de mère 1913-1957, Paris Cerf 1989, p.476 Moulins, 16 octobre 1933.

[8] (Ibid. p.216. Edmond Fleg (1874–1963) was a [16] ADM, 2 H 6.5, dossier Glasberg: lettre French Jewish thinker, novelist, essayist and d’Alexander Glasberg au supérieur du grand playwright, and co-founder (1949) of Amitiés séminaire de Moulins, 12 octobre 1933. judéo-chrétiennes; Louis Massignon (1883–1962) was a Catholic scholar of Islam and a pioneer of [17] Archives de l’abbaye Notre-Dame de Sept- Catholic-Muslim understanding) Fons, registre de l’hôtellerie. Glasberg stayed at Sept-Fons from 21 July to 22 September 1933 for [9] (Francoise Jacquin, ‘L’abbe Monchanin, practical reasons, to earn some money, not precurseur du dialogue judeo-chretien, 1935- because he was attracted to the contemplative 1938, Revue d’histoire de l’eglise de France, life, as suggested by Lucien Lazare, L’Abbe Janvier-juin 1994, p.90. This article is based on a Glasberg, Paris, Cerf, 1990, p.32 record of the meetings of Elizabeth Belenson’s group. In addition to Fleg, Massignon and [18] ADM, 2 H 6.5, dossier Glasberg: lettre Mochanin, Jacquin mentions among the d’Alexander Glasberg au supérieur du grand participants: Aimé Pallière, Jacob Gordine, Isaac séminaire de Moulins, 12 octobre 1933. Pougatch, Elie Gozlan, Walter Riese, Ernst Kaminintzer, and also Eugene Lampert, the father [19] Ibid., lettre du Père Lebreton au supérieur of the present writer. Eugene Lampert was du grand séminaire de Moulins, 16 octobre 1933. studying in a Russian Orthodox seminary in Paris in the second half of the 1930s. [20] Ibid., lettre du supérieur du grand séminaire de Moulins à Alexandre Glasberg, 25 octobre Monchanin’s friendship with the Glasbergs is 1933. reflected in a number of his letters where one or other of the brothers is mentioned. Françoise [21] Ibid., lettres de Dom Chautard à Mgr Gonon, Jacquin, Jules Monchanin. Lettres à sa mère évêque de Moulins, 9 et 17 avril 1934. (See also 1913-1957, Paris Cerf 1989, ADM, 2 H 5.3.8, fiche biographique de Victor pp.269,315,322,348,372,474) Glasberg)

[10] Le Park-Hôtel, 36 rue Desnouettes (15e [22] Ibid., lettre de Mgr Gonon, évêque de arrondissement), notice de renseignements by Moulins, au supérieur du grand séminaire, 21 prefecture of Allier, 18 octobre 1935. septembre 1934

[11] AN, 19770888/196, dossier de naturalisation [23] ADM, 2 H 5.3.8, fiches biographiques d’Alexandre Glasberg, rapport d’enquête des d’Alexandre et Victor Glasberg Renseignements généraux, 12 avril 1949. [24] The Lyon establishment was founded at the [12] A private university, founded in 1875 end of the 19th century as a ‘family home for as Université Catholique de Paris. student priests’ of the Catholic faculties, and in 1933 became an ‘interdiocesan seminary for [13] ADM, 2 H 5.3.8, fiche biographique training for the priesthood’. d’Alexander Glasberg. (In his biography of Alexander Glasberg, Lucien Lazare, while [25] Maurice Jourjon, ‘Richard Louis’, in Xavier de acknowledging the lack of evidence, speculates Montclos, dir. Lyon—Le Lyonnais—Le Beaujolais, that Alexander may first have been baptised by 1994, pp 366-367 (Dictionnaire du monde his parents when he was very young, as a form of réligieux dans la France contemporaine, 6) protection against anti-Semitism. (L’abbé Glasberg, pp.19-27) However, what is known [26] (The strength of this relationship is reflected about Alexander’s parents, who showed no in a letter of support from Louis Richard when interest in religion, is completely inconsistent with Alexadner Glasberg pplied for French citizenship. such a scenario. I would add that Alexander’s See chapter 10) sister, my grandmother Tatyana, who was baptised in the Russian Orthodox church in [27] (L.Lazare, L’abbe Glasberg, pp 32-33) adulthood, never referred to anything of this kind when speaking about her family. It is clear that [28] Pax, no.10, 1 décembre 1937 Alexander’s religious choices, like those of Victor and Tatyana, were personal decisions, though he [29] ADM, 2 H 5.3.8, fiche biographique de Victor chose to remain silent about what inspired them.) Glasberg. The Rhône prefect, in response to a request for information from the Bas-Rhin,

29 indicates that Victor Glasberg had left Lyon for [32] Pax, no.21, 30 octobre 1938 et no.22, 26 the University Seminary in Strasbourg and was juin 1939 taking courses in the Theollogy Faculty: ‘He came to France in the month of October 1929. He lived [33] Françoise Jacquin, op. cit., pp. 269-270 in Paris, in Moulins and in Lyon at the University Seminary, 39 bis rue des Farges, from 11 October [34] Pax, no.23, 11 septembre 1939; Francoise 1935 to 15 February 1938. On this date he left Jacquin, Jules Monchanin. Lettres à sa mère Lyon for Strasbourg, the University Seminary at 1913-1957, Paris Cerf 1989, p.322 1, rue Richqrd Wagner, to take courses at the Faculty of Theology of this city...During his stay [35] (Joseph Folliet, Le Père Rémilleux, Chronique in Lyon nothing unfavourable was said about Sociale de France, 1962, pp.72-73) him.’ Archives departementales du Rhone, 3494 Ibid W 118, dossier Alexandre Glasberg, lettre du 7 [36] ( .pp.83-84) avril 1938. See also 3494 W 205, dossier Victor [37] (Ibid. p.155) Glasberg, rapport du chef de la Sûreté du Rhône, 23 mars 1939, concerning a request for [38] (Joseph Folliet comments that the two naturalisation. curates who were brought into the parish in summer 1940, abbé Glasberg and abbé [30] Archives de l’abbaye Notre-Dame de Sept- Fauconnier, were both fierce ‘résistants’. This Fons, chronique du monastère; Pax (bulletin du meant that ‘their views did not always coincide Séminaire universitaire publié à partir de 1936), with those of their curé and that sometimes, it no.16, 20 juin 1938 et no.17, 30 octobre 1938 must be admitted, there were tensions between [31] (Former fellow seminarian, quoted in Lucien them...which Père Remilleux suffered without Ibid Lazare, L’abbé Glasberg, p. 33) however speaking about them to anyone.’ . p.159)

30 Chapter 3 To the rescue of refugees: the ‘Juggler of Notre Dame’ (1940-1942)

Vichy

On 22 June 1940, following the collapse of the French army and German occupation of Paris on 14 June, an armistice was signed with Germany. France was divided into an occupied and unoccupied zone, while Alsace-Lorraine was annexed to the Reich. A French government was set up in Vichy in the south, voted in by the National Assembly in July 1940, which granted extraordinary powers to Marshal Pétain, the hero of World War I, who took on the title of Head of the French State. The Vichy government had nominal authority in the occupied as well as the ‘free’ zone, but the term ‘Vichy France’ usually refers to the unoccupied territory, which included Lyon where Alexander Glasberg was based. This division of the country came to an end after the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, when the German army occupied the whole of France. France after the German invasion The Vichy regime collaborated with the occupying German forces, established its own programme of ‘national regeneration’, supported by large sections of the population who held the preceding Third republic as responsible for the catastrophic defeat of 1940, and saw Pétain as offering France the best chance of regaining its honour.

The programme of ‘regeneration’ included strong anti-Semitic currents. Vichy drew up its own anti-Jewish laws (notably the Statut des Juifs of October 1940), conducted censuses, revoked recent naturalisations, and used its own police force to intern foreign Jews and other non-nationals. In March 1941, on the request of the Germans, a General Commissariat on Jewish Affairs was set up, to coordinate policy relating to the Jewish population. French Jews were treated differently by the Vichy regime and were to some degree protected, but they suffered Marshal Pétain meets Hitler in October 1940 discrimination also, within the civil service, in higher education and in most professions, and Jewish property could be ''Aryanized'' by decision Those deported from the unoccupied zone, the of the General Commissariat. great majority destined for Auschwitz, have indelibly shaped the reputation of the Vichy In summer 1942, following further German regime. At the same time Vichy was not a pressure, a turning point came with the mass monolith. There were internal divisions, divided deportation of Jews, first from the occupied north loyalties, leaks of information about forthcoming and then from the unoccupied zone. A total of arrests. And above all there were courageous 75,000 (of whom two thirds were foreign Jews) people ready to protect those lives were were deported from metropolitan France by the threatened by the policies of the regime. [1] end of 1944, out a total Jewish population of 340,000 in 1940. About 2,500 survived.

31 The background: immigration and A majority of the Spanish refugees, some internment 270,000, were repatriated between April and December 1939, some others returned to Spain Very soon after the armistice and the during the war, and several thousands emigrated establishment of the Vichy government, abbé to South American countries willing to receive Glasberg was installed in the Lyon parish of Notre them, leaving some 150,000 still on French soil Dame St Alban, and here devoted most of his by the end of 1944. [4] considerable energy to the cause of refugees who had found their way to Lyon before and during During 1939, following a big reduction in the the war. The background to this work was a Spanish presence in the camps, other categories hardening of French immigration policy both of indésirables were interned. These included before and during the Vichy period. German and Austrian refugees who, although they were nearly all anti-Nazi, were treated France had seen a big increase in immigration indiscriminately as a security threat when France between the two world wars, at first officially entered the war in September, and members of encouraged because of the huge losses of the the French Communist Party who were seen as First World War and a falling birth rate. The dangerously pro-German following the German- foreign population expanded from about one Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939. Then million to nearly three million in this period. But a new phase began after the armistice and the the open approach of the 1920s began to change establishment of the Vichy regime, and the following the depression and unemployment of ensuing anti-Semitic legislation of October 1940, the early 1930s, and in response to the influx of which laid down that ‘foreign nationals of the refugees from central and eastern Europe Jewish race may be ….interned in special camps triggered by the growth of fascism. Anxiety about by decision of the prefect of their department of the large numbers of immigrants, with residence’, and in a separate clause that ‘foreign accompanying xenophobic and anti-Semitic nationals of the Jewish race may be at any time sentiments and a rhetoric of ‘invasion’, could be assigned a compulsory residence order by the found across the political spectrum, not only prefect of their department of residence.’ As a among conservatives but also in trade union result the camps which were previously filled with circles. Spanish refugees were now used for anti-fascists, foreign Jews, and other indésirables. [5] The attitude of the Popular Front government (1936-1938) was once more relatively open, but These developments brought a rapid expansion in under the third Daladier administration (April the camp population in late 1940 and early 1941. 1938 to March 1940) policy towards immigrants It was then followed by a reduction in spring hardened again, at a time when persecution of 1941. The main factor in the reduction was the Jews and political opponents was intensifying in enrolment of internees, non-Jewish and Jewish, in Nazi Germany and Austria. In May and November Foreign Labour Battalions. These were first 1938 the French government issued decrees ex- introduced in April 1939 under the name pelling foreigners without residence permits, des- Compagnies de Travailleurs Étrangers, intended ignating certain immigrants as ‘undesirables’ for Spanish refugees, and run by the military. (indésirables), giving prefects the authority to Then following a law of September 1940 the remove them, to issue ‘assigned residence’ or- battalions were renamed Groupements des ders, or to intern those judged a threat to nation- Travailleurs Étrangers (GTE) and assigned to the [2] al security. Ministry of Labour. The legislation laid down that foreigners aged 15-60 who were ‘in excess in the In early 1939, after the defeat of the republican national economy’ could be enrolled. For the forces in the Spanish civil war, a big exodus regime the GTE created a useful compulsory followed. During that winter some 460,000 workforce for unpopular heavy labour while Spanish republicans and their families and keeping foreigners out of the general labour members of the International Brigades crossed market. It was also a means of reducing the over through Catalonia into south-western dangerous overpopulation of the internment France. It was for these refugees that the first camps. Because of the grim conditions in the French internment camps were quickly set up. camps, the prospect of leaving them was Five were established in the Pyrénées-Orientales welcomed by many to begin with, but conditions department (Argelès, Saint-Cyprien, Barcarès, in the labour battalions were no picnic either. [6] Arles-sur-Tech and Prats-de-Mollo), taking a total of 226,000 internees. Soon after, in the attempt Accurate figures on the changing camp population to reduce extreme overcrowding and appalling are not available, but the table below is drawn conditions, the government opened further camps from an authoritative account and is likely to be in Agde (Herault), Bram (Aude) and Septfonds as reliable as the documentation allows. (Tarn et Garonne). Then in spring 1939 a huge camp was hastily constructed in Gurs (Pyrénées- Orientale). Other major internment camps would include Rivesaltes, Vernet, Agde, les Milles, Récédébou. [3]

32 Population of internment camps in the unoccupied zone

Date Number of Jewish Total number internees in camps of foreign This table is drawn from Anne in the south of internees in the Grynberg, Les camps de la honte, France camps of the p.12 south of France End of spring 1940 5,000 8,000 * The difference between the figures in February and April End of 1940 28,000 40,000** 1941 is explained inter alia by enrolment in the GTE, February 1941 40,000 47,000** compulsory residence orders outside the camps, and the April 1941 16,000* 22,000 departure of a few to other countries. November 1941 11,150 15,000 ** It seems that these figures February 1942 10,500 15,000 include also some French political internees. End of July 1942 9,800 n.d

French internment camps 1939-1944

33 Abbé Glasberg at Notre-Dame de Saint- by his secretary, Hans Poukert, a young Alban Viennese catholic, who himself had come out of the camps.’ [7] Such was the context of the abbé’s work in support of refugees while curate of Notre Dame The benefits of a cassock and the patronage St Alban. German and Austrian anti-Nazis, Jewish of Cardinal Gerlier and non-Jewish, survivors of the Spanish International Brigades, Jewish refugees from In his tireless dealings with the administration on occupied Europe (from Alsace, Belgium, Holland, behalf of refugees Alexander Glasberg made full Poland, Czechoslovakia) found their way to the use of his advantages as a priest. The Church had abbé’s modest premises in Lyon, seeking support gained a new prestige under the Vichy for their attempt to remain in France and avoid government, which gave strong support to the penalties threatened by their illegal status. religious values and removed restrictions on the freedom of action of religious institutions. The In a report drawn up after the liberation of France episcopate and in particular Cardinal Gerlier, in summer 1944, Alexander Glasberg, referring to Archbishop of Lyon, were in turn strongly himself (‘the abbé’) in the third person, described supportive of the new order, as were large parts his work at St Alban as follows: of the French population who saw Pétain, the hero of the World War I, as a symbol of hope in ‘One of the most dismal consequences of the the face of France’s humiliating defeat. advent of the Vichy regime was the massive and unjustified internment of refugees who had Refugees who sought to appeal directly to the come from the countries of central and eastern authorities risked being spotted by those charged Europe seeking asylum in France, fleeing with interning them, but the mediation of a priest Hitlersim on account of their religious or offered a chance of success. Hence the cassock political convictions or their ‘non-Aryan’ origin. [8] Under the pressure of the occupiers, was an important weapon. internments increased further in the autumn of 1940, at first under an economic pretext, later Still more important, abbé Glasberg had the with a brutality which did not trouble itself any advantage that he was Cardinal Gerlier’s Comité d’aide aux réfugiés longer with pretexts or excuses. representative on the (CAR). This was a Catholic body set up in the late The refugees who managed to survive outside 1930s (the precise origins are not clear), which the camps faced bureaucratic obstruction. In Gerlier endorsed and of which he was honorary the atmosphere of growing xenophobia and president.[9] antisemitism, it was extremely difficult for them to avoid the difficulties that engulfed them because of an ever more malicious regulation of foreigners. By intervening with the authorities one could hope to succeed in only a few cases, in a small way, without noise, taking advantage of the rare cases of goodwill that were still secretly present in the Prefecture, at the Sûreté, the police commissariats, in order to gain seemingly very small amounts of relief: residence or work permits, validation of identity papers, safe conducts, tolerable compulsory residence orders, lifting of judicial sentences for inevitable violations, all matters that might seem of minor importance, yet which decided the fate of tens of thousands of human beings. Since the least infraction ended in imprisonment, internment and later deportation, to smooth the way in each of these cases meant to provide a temporary security, avoid the dispersal of a family, protect the refugees’ last remaining resources, and often quite simply to save human lives...... Cardinal Gerlier with Marshal Pétain For months and months the abbé received thousands of refugees at the Comité in rue Sainte-Catherine [the headquarters of the Fédération des sociétés juives de France and also a base for the Comité d’assistance aux Réfugiés ] and in his parish in the suburb of Saint-Alban, assisted in this overwhelming task

34 Cardinal Gerlier was a complex figure. In 1940 he sympathetic to his cause or at least amenable to described himself as ‘100% Pétainiste’ and, along influence. Some Vichy officials were strongly pro- with the great majority of the Church hierarchy, Catholic and were responsive to the cassock. became closely identified with the Vichy Others had remained discretely faithful to administration. He was not one of those very few republican and secular traditions and were ready Catholic clergy to take a public stand against the to help anyone working on behalf of the victims of policies of the Vichy regime. Yet he was ready for the regime. Then again there were those with a humanitarian reasons to support initiatives in wait and see attitude who would not want to risk support of refugees. These started in a legal displeasing the authoritative figure of Cardinal framework but when the threats to foreign Jews Gerlier. [10] intensified in 1942, some of the people whom he supported would move from legal relief work to The bicycle affair and the meeting with Nina illegal resistance. Gerlier remained loyal to Pétain Gourfinkel and was not part of that resistance, but through his patronage of Alexander Glasberg and others The main source of funding for Alexander he in effect helped to sustain it. Glasberg’s activity was not the Church but the Fédération des sociétés juives de France which in turn received allocations from the French office of the American Joint Distribution Committee (known in France as ‘le Joint’)—a major funding agency for relief work with the Jewish population [11] Cardinal in Europe. Usually applications for support did Gerlier not meet any difficulty, but objections were raised Fédération 1880- at the Lyon committee of the when the 1965 abbé made a request for a bicycle to help him to travel between Saint-Alban and the town centre.

It was at the time of the bicycle episode that the abbé met Nina Gourfinkel, who was then working for the Fédération at the Lyon headquarters. She was an atheist and a professed anti-cleric, yet was to become one of the abbé’s closest allies during and after the war.

Gourfinkel (1898-1984) was born in Odessa in Russia into an educated, assimilated Jewish family. At the time of the 1917 revolution she was a student at the University of Petrograd. To begin with she was an enthusiast, but after a time she found herself unable to adapt to the new Russia and left for France in 1925. She worked for a number of Paris Jewish periodicals and at the Paris branch of the World Jewish Congress. After the German occupation she left for the unoccupied zone, eventually settling in Lyon. [12]

Like Alexander Glasberg, Gourfinkel was a free spirit, not bound to any party line, but she was strongly rooted in moral values and a commitment to serve humanity. The abbé and Gourfinkel were drawn to each other and the abbé’s identity as a priest did not in any way interfere with that. It was a shared social and moral purpose that brought them together, unencumbered by religious faith or the absence of it. This reveals something very important about Abbé Glasberg 1942 the abbé: being a priest did not define him and did not confine him.

Identifying friends Gourfinkel was such an important figure in Alexander Glasberg’s life that a biographical The abbé benefitted from his cassock and sketch is provided in a separate entry on pp 36- Gerlier’s patronage, but he also had great skills in 38. dealing with officialdom, identifying those within the Vichy administration who might be

35 Gourfinkel published a memoir, Aux prises avec abbé as ‘Père Élie’, an identity which he took on mon temps (1953) in two volumes: Naissance in 1943-44, when he went underground in Honor d'un monde and L'Autre patrie. The second de Cos in south-west France after the German volume contains an account of her work with occupation of the whole country (see chapter 7). Alexander Glasberg, which began in 1940 and But during the period described in her narrative includes a description of her meeting and he was abbé Glasberg and ‘Père Élie’ had not yet collaboration with him in Lyon. It is a wonderfully been invented. She also uses assumed names for vivid account and is given in full on pp. 38-43. It the abbé’s fellow curate abbé Fauconnier (‘Père was Nina Gourfinkel who called the abbé the Anselm’) and for his assistant Hans Poukert ‘Juggler of Notre Dame’, the title of a chapter (‘Paul’), and no doubt the other names have also devoted to him in L'Autre patrie. Note that been changed. Gourfinkel uses a slight disguise, referring to the

NINA GOURFINKEL

Nina Gourfinkel was born in 1898 in Odessa in the Russia empire, into an assimilated Jewish family. In the first volume of her memoirs, Naissance d’un monde, she describes the city of her youth, including the Odessa opera which instilled in her a taste for the theatre. She began classical studies in 1915, first in Odessa then in Petrograd. Here she experienced the February 1917 Revolution at first hand. The revolution needed to ‘know its support’ and she became involved.

‘It was three days of a big experiment, starting in exalted mood, with the proud awareness of "working for the revolution", deepened hour by hour by the unexpected encounter with reality. We...went door to door and…..entered the dwellings. [We wanted to know] the number of rooms, inhabitants, rent, age, occupation, composition of the family and number of dependents--questions that might at first Nina Gourfinkel (1898-1984) sight seem external and banal, and yet when you were on the spot, in that real life environment, the answers that came were deeply troubling. The outer boundary of Vasilievsky Island led to the port and the industrial suburbs where the population was almost entirely working class. Suddenly we petty bourgeois [students] were faced with a spectacular, brilliant and enthusiastic revolutionary scene. It revealed its true meaning, the misery in the name of which it was being made.’ [Naissance d’un monde, p.76)

A colleague urges me to listen to a new speaker who has just returned from Switzerland. He is is an extremist leader, I am told, who has elected to make his headquarters at the hotel used by the Tsar’s former favourite, the dancer Krzesinska. The government must be pretty sure of its strength to tolerate the hustle and bustle which centres on this hotel. No doubt they are right, the student explains, since in a country as poorly industrialized as Russia, the workers cannot form a bloc, and only a bourgeois republic, as conceived by the provisional government, is possible.

I listen to these explanations without giving them much thought. Up in the dancer’s balcony, briefly throwing his arm forward, is a stocky man with high cheekbones and a goatee, one of those types that reveals the presence of Mongol blood in Muscovite veins, who speaks against the senseless war and identifies its capitalist origins with terrible power and precision. Every day a bigger, more concentrated and more resolute crowd gathers in front of the….hotel. The man impresses me especially by the atmosphere he creates, and the last image that I take with me from Petersburg is this dark packed crowd, listening to Lenin in a silence heavy with threat.’ [Naissance d’un monde p.87]

In the years that followed Gourfinkel sought to find a place in the new Russia, first in Odessa, then in Moscow. It was a time of a ‘profusion of artistic and literary tendencies’: ‘I was dazzled by this exuberant activity, by the effort of the will… the determination to accept the new life without reservation.’ To make a living she taught German at Sverdlov university, which was training new Party cadres. She had the greatest sympathy for the artisans, workers and peasants studying there, from social milieux that she had never encountered, who were hungry for knowledge. But she had to obey absurd ‘directives’ in her teaching, the students made no progress, and worse still the reign of surveillance and denunciation had already begun.

‘This brought the feeling that was the spur preventing me from accepting the disastrous balance sheet [that would result from] a failed attempt at adaptation. All the living forces of my being tended to a

36 free development, rejecting a hated constraint and leveling down. I felt that I had an inalienable right to all that the thought or the hand of man had created, to all that was beautiful, powerful, subtle. To abandon this, to abdicate, to let oneself be enclosed in the narrow circle of the Soviet future, seemed to me the worst of betrayals. The world belonged to me, it was created for me, I was a participant in civilization, in all civilization, down to its smallest details, details that my limited knowledge would never glimpse but whose existence I assumed from the plenitude of my person. Because I was made in the image of God. Christian, biblical, human personalism was revealed to me in this dazzling formula that described the divinity of my essence and my inalienable rights.’ (Naissance d’un monde, p.315)

Nina Gourfinkel arrived in Paris in 1925, already fluent in French, and thanks to her gift for languages she found work as a translator and ghost writer. She published pieces on Russian literature and theatre, her central intellectual interest, and was associated with several Paris Jewish periodicals. She also worked for the Paris branch of the World Jewish Congress and at the end of the 1930s for an international press office, specialising in the documentation of Nazism.

After the German occupation of Paris she left for the unoccupied southern zone, first to Moissac, then Toulouse in July 1940, where she became an officer of RELICO, a body established in 1939 to help Jews stricken by the war, and later moved to Lyon were she worked for the Fédération des sociétés juives de France. She met AG probably in late 1940, at the Fédération headquarters, a meeting which led to a long collaboration. She was a co-founder of the Direction de Centres d'Accueil (DCA), with AG and Joseph Weill, and after the German occupation of the whole of France in November 1942 she continued to work for the DCA in a clandestine capacity, now with the adopted Gentile name Camille- Madeleine Gabelle. After the war she joined the team of COSE (later renamed COS), the organisation which AG established to provide services and homes for refugees, where she carried out multiple functions. At the same time she resumed her study of Russian literature that she had begun before the war. In 1953 she published her memoirs in two volumes, Naissance d'un monde about her life in Russia up to her emigration in 1925, and L'Autre patrie about her life in France until 1945. Her publications on Russian literature and drama include: Théâtre russe contemporain (1930); Tolstoï sans Tolstoïsme (1946) ; Constantin Stanislavski (1955); Stanislavski et la mise en scène du Mariage de Figaro (1956); Nicolai Gogol dramaturge (1956); Gorki par lui-même (1961); Anton Tchekhov (1966); Gorki (1977); Dostoievsky, notre contemporain (1994). She also published the frequently reissued Lénine (1970) Gourfinkel was highly intelligent, uncompromising, sometimes scathingly ironic about people, but always in the service of humane values, never from a position of detachment. The values of the Russian intelligentsia, she said, were deeply embedded in her from childhood--the desire to help, to serve, to remake the world. And her Jewish identity hugely magnified this purpose during the war.

Although she was from an assimilated family, she had never been allowed to forget that she was Jewish. It was not a matter of faith, nor did it take a nationalist form, but it carried a moral responsibility.

‘What was important for us was to know how and in what we were Jewish. For [those who lived in] an environment in which faith and language or at least the Hebrew tradition was preserved, or who had turned to Zionism, the problem did not arise. They rightly regarded themselves as under attack on a national level…. But others [and I was among them]…by all their ..education, their aspirations … their will, tended towards assimilation, wanting only to dissolve in the non-Jewish world. The fact that we had still not achieved it seemed to us to have causes that were external to ourselves. ...Our desire for internal and external Russification was absolute. Our language, our history, the source of our knowledge and our ideas were entirely Russian, and in spite of the Tsarist regime that made us second-class citizens, we sincerely believed that we could merge into the nation. Was this nation not itself split? On the one hand, the official, governmental Russia, the one that persecuted us, on the other hand, the Europeanized classes…that were persecuted. [We]…formed a common front and naively thought of being accepted without reserve.

Externally, our parents had ensured that their children would not adopt any specifically Jewish manner. ...The emancipation of Jews meant secularization. To enter the European world, they had to tear themselves away from a protective religion which.....[had] established a theocratic ghetto. In reacting [against this] environment, which for them represented all that was retrograde, our parents, caught up in the rationalist … current, rejected the old beliefs in their entirety. Zionism, in our circles, was looked upon with irony. We had no religious instruction, no feasts were celebrated at home, so that sometimes we were envious of practicing families, whether Jewish or Christian. Not that our parents were really antireligious, but it was a flat, neutral deism, which brought neither an illumination of faith nor a revolt against it. In this anaemic atmosphere, Moses, Jesus, or Buddha

37 were presented to us as examples of moral perfection, under the auspices of that narrow [rationalism] which the progressive bourgeoisie professed at the turn of the century.

And yet, paradoxically, while depriving us of all Judaic training, our parents forbade us to forget that we were Jews. They taught us, on the contrary, that in a country where [there were] pogroms, restrictive laws…and zones of settlement, any detachment from the persecuted, whether by baptism or [other] apostasy… was a dishonourable act. We had to proclaim ourselves Jews because the Jews were humiliated and offended and no one had a moral right to escape suffering. Such was the foundation of my Judaism, the only one I know how to formulate, wholly derived from the creed of the Russian intelligensia. (L’Autre Patrie pp.314-15)

Nina Gourfinkel died on 6 February 1984, in the ‘Divio’ house in Dijon, one of the retirement homes established by the Centre d’Orientation Sociale of which she had been such an integral part. [13]

acquaintance. A priestly skullcap was no more attractive to me than a rabbinical one. And so when, at a meeting of the Committee, Father Élie put forward his request [for a bicycle], on the grounds that he lived on the outskirts of the town and needed to make many trips, I listened with a skeptical ear.

Father Élie was tall, sturdy, graying. One might have said he was 50 yet he was only 37. His features would have seemed heavy had it not been for the extraordinary animation which lit them up, triumphing over badly shaven cheeks and a myopic gaze behind large corrective spectacles. His very old and dusty cassock bore the traces of hasty mending, and cannot very often have encountered a brush. And when, in an impatient movement, the Father began to drum with his foot, a cracked, worn shoe Nina Gourfinkel, ‘The juggler of Notre-Dame’ in appeared, with a detached sole. L’Autre Patrie (headings added) Well perhaps, perhaps…And yet I did not like his The bicycle affair manner.

It all began with the affair of the bicycle. Father As if in response to my thoughts, Father Élie Élie, who represented a Catholic charitable continued: organisation, with some impatience put in a request for a bicycle to the Sainte-Catherine ‘St Vincent quested long in order to purchase a Committee [ie the committee of the Fédération horse. The bicycle is my horse.’ de Sociéties Juifs, based at Rue St Catherine ] The bicycle was to help with his work. I had This was a striking argument, but it was above heard mention of this priest, who was devoting all the scandalized objection of those gentlemen himself passionately to the cause of refugees. that won me round.

“This is a saint, a real saint”, exclaimed the ‘But this money could be used for the poor!’ dames patronesses, with the obligatory sighs, lifting their eyes to the heavens. This reminded me of something. The supper at Simon's house. Mary Magdalene pouring Since I had little confidence in the judgements fragrant oil on the feet of Jesus, and Judas of these ladies and was not especially fond of exclaiming with holy indignation: why wasn’t the priests and saints, I was in no hurry to make his oil sold for three hundred denari, for the poor?

38 The issue [of the bicycle] remained undecided, After a few days the place became familiar to but I used the case of a refugee as a pretext to me. In the confined visiting room, I once again ask Father Élie for a discussion after the encountered the faces that I had seen at the meeting. We left together and walked along the committee [in rue St. Catherine], but here they Rhone embankment. seemed less exhausted. Refugees were joined by priests, seminarists, [Jewish] scouts, and As thick as thieves miscellaneous people of all kinds who had surfaced from I don’t know where. People came ‘They understand nothing’, the priest exploded. day and night. Sometimes a fugitive would ‘Of course, it’s important to donate money, but arrive, without papers, seeking asylum. Father not the way they do it. The key thing is to give Elie would ask few questions, then would yield refugees some security. To procure a document his bunk to the vagabond, and stretch out on for them, a right of residence. You understand, the table where, overcome by fatigue, he could, it’s a right! This is what I am doing at the he said, sleep just as well. After all, his bed was Prefecture. And yet this committee… scarcely more luxurious.

After an hour we were still walking up and down Madame Bordet’s Swiss chard by the river. On the question of the committee’s spinelessness, we were in complete agreement… When did he rest? He rose at four in the we were as thick as thieves. When finally we morning, said the first offices of the day, and took our leave, I said: then would devote himself almost without a break, until late at night, to refugees and young ‘Father, permit me on behalf of the committee people. When he happened to be at the parish to offer you a bicycle.’ at meal times, he devoured the meagre sustenance prepared with more economy than ‘Oh, but I thought you weren’t at all thrilled with art by Madame Bordet, the elderly housekeeper this idea’ who ruled over this little world. Madame Bordet suffered from Father Elie’s disorder and way of ‘Well, that’s to say..’ life. She cried out in protest at the crowds in the visitors room and the mud that they brought in. But he cut me off and roared with laughter: But at bottom, while grumbling, she harboured a secret indulgence towards the curé. In the end ‘And you know, I adore wheeling along on a she did do her household jobs and even left her cycle!’ ratatouille for him on the side. There was just one point on which Madame Bordet was La siège intractable: for some inexplicable theological reasons she thought that Swiss chard was the The next day I went to see him. Father Élie was ecclesiastical food par excellence, and she the second curate, in one of the poorest prepared it almost every day. Now it happened parishes in the Lyon area. The very small church that the two curates had a horror of chard. But of Saint-Alban was clean but shabby-looking, ...Madame Bordet continued to inflict it on them with no pretensions, and seemed to have been without pity. thrown randomly onto a wasteland where a few modest little houses had also sprung up. Father Anselme

You had to pull on a rusty bell at the gate, pass The other curate, Father Anselm, was less of a through a tiny gravel garden.... and then via worry to her, though he had enough imagination anicy visiting room into a narrow, bare cell… to get along with Father Élie. Tongue in cheek, [with] a table overflowing with a chaos of this son of a grocer would say: papers, a cupboard with half open doors that could hardly restrain its miscellaneous contents, ‘I am descended from a noodle, but I am not and a bed covered with a grey military blanket. one!’ Apart from these furnishings, the room could fit just one chair. The visitor thus had to sit on the His skullcap pushed down over his occiput, bed, and felt the springs groaning through the Father Anselm, a former army chaplain, straw mattress. On the wall was a large charcoal continued to serve at the military hospital. He drawing: a young woman hugging a baby in a was a fighter, detested the Germans and gesture of defence, but also of defiance, ready constantly chose bellicose themes for his to take on the whole world, a strange Virgin to sermons, to the great indignation of his parish accompany this strange priest. priest.* ‘It was a German artist who gave it to me’, he explained. ‘He fought in Spain, in the Though he did not take an active part in the international brigades, and it was a Spanish extra-parish activities of his colleague, Father mother who sat for him as model.’ Anselm helped [Father Élie] immensely by saying Vespers and Compline for him whenever

39 refugees detained him somewhere far away, and that in itself would not have been enough. The by taking on the pious old folk eager to confess curate also masterfully exploited the quandary to the sins that they would so much like to have of the hesitators, those who had not yet chosen committed. between Vichy and the resistance. They were in But Father Elie held on jealously to his role as two minds, sometimes adhering to one party, chaplain for the morgue. sometimes the other… It was an insurance policy against the eventual winner, a double “What good social lessons we learn from the game which appealed to those who sought parents, friends, neighbours who come to see safety, and Father Élie made skilful use of this these corpses....[people] who don’t die quietly psychological pendulum. in their beds but suffer an accidental death or commit suicide, maybe in a state of rebellion or He was always full of mysterious news, not so hatred against society. They are simple folk but much invented as adapted according to the they understand things. I talk to them, I do my needs of the moment. He would roam the job as a priest, try to soothe them, yet it is they offices, whisper scarcely coherent information to who teach me about life.” one person or another, would blink behind his big spectacles, emit a satanic little laugh - and Paul in the most natural fashion would make the most extravagant requests, flagrantly out of line Father Élie had an assistant in his work, Paul, a with the Vichy decrees. young Austrian refugee whom he had gathered from a hospital bed. Paul was not very sure why Though tormented, the officials thought they he had left Vienna. Neither his political ideas nor understood: he is strong, very strong, this his Catholicism was very specific, and still less priest, they said to each other, and if he allows militant. This slim, likeable, well-educated young himself to be so brazen, that must be because man was also in appearance as unlike a priest he knows that he has support. as possible. And yet, despite their difference in origins and formation, the two men understood The patched cassock and the shabby briefcase one another perfectly. They were both intuitive, bursting at the seams with out-of-date spontaneous and disordered, and hated passports and residence orders, only impressed bureaucratic obstacles. them the more, like some ingenious transvestite costume of an occult power. And what they Paul was the son of a high official who had might have refused out of a sense of public rallied to national-socialism, and no doubt left duty, they would allow through timidity, because because his whole nature protested against Nazi they were [playing a double game]… regimentation. Though he was unwell and had no money, he responded with fierce refusal to Among these pale flunkies a man of intelligence the appeals of his family who tried to win him might appear who understood that the priest back, and faced with tempting offers of an easy was ‘trying it on’, and would enter into his life he preferred the exhausting work alongside game. And though Father Élie was very pleased the curate. to have been able to help his protégés, he exulted even more that his sleight of hand had He was touching in his understanding and come off. patience. This frail boy would listen for hours on end, tirelessly, to the refugees’ stories, finding ‘A peddler’, the very intellectual Jesuit Fathers with astonishing facility a common language said about him disparagingly. Well yes indeed! with ladies driven to hysteria or with bearded Father Elie was a ‘peddler’ for people who old Jews. Next to the impetuous curate, who possessed little, and for little gain: to get a was always pressing to get to a conclusion, to discharge notice relating to detention or a fine, get on with the action, Paul seemed more like a to acquire a modest piece of paper which yet confessor or spiritual director. They for that person brought relative freedom, the complemented each other admirably. chance to emigrate, to avoid being thrown onto the street or into a camp, to remain with his The juggler at work family. All these matters were on a small scale but with several dozens a week over two and a I was amazed to discover what their work half years, they brought relief to many people. consisted of. Father Élie had many friends in the administration, in the Prefecture, in the Police (I Meanwhile the Reverend Fathers took the fight learned later that many of these connections to higher levels. The curate was not thinking of were due to their belonging jointly to a posterity, glory, or reward. He was careless of clandestine resistance network), and several those things and went about his modest tasks times a week he would go to them to submit without keeping a register. files on refugees. In individual cases, he would demonstrate to an official that it made no sense to adopt a standard strong-arm approach. But

40 Bringing some order into chaos committee.Thereafter I moved my headquarters to St Alban, to the great indignation of my ‘co- That aspect was even alarming. When I entered religionists’ who treated me like a renegade, the strange parish dispensary, I was amazed by whilst benefitting from my Catholic friendships. the clutter on the table. I gently suggested that For months, the 'important people’ made long an elementary file classification would make the faces at me and some even worried about the work easier. The curé and Paul nonchalantly supposed perdition of my soul. One dame approved. And so I introduced some order, even patronesse of the Lyon branch of the society, a if it meant having to repeat it several times a silky Jewish lady, proceeded very diplomatically day. Then, emboldened, I returned with a to invite me to a service at the synagogue, and dishcloth and a broom, taking care to hide from when I refused, she asked gently, had I gone the irascible Madame Bordet. I even tidied up over to ‘the other side’? the cupboard with its hotch-potch of rags, old ‘Oh no, madame’, I replied, ‘thankfully the papers, cans of food, identity papers, Catholic God has more than enough Jews certificates, jewels, currencies, gold coins, already’ entrusted to the curé by his clients. How this cupboard, which would not close and held The good lady never forgave me this quip. millions, was never burgled, was a miracle of Notre-Dame. I was especially disapproved of by a group of young rabbis, very worldly and bright, who Rebellion showed their spirit of reform by shaving their cheeks, wearing trimmed goatee beards and From now on the curé and I formed a united affecting the countenance of clergymen. That front against ‘the scribes who liked to parade in did not prevent the 'progressive synagogue' their long robes and be saluted in public places’. from jealously guarding its influence and seeking A furore soon broke out over the case of the to be a spiritual director, in the Christian mode. blockhouses. There had been a 'rebellion' in a labour camp in the Lyon region: a group of One of the rabbis was responsible for receiving foreign refugees, assigned to the hard labour of people at the committee. He submitted to this earthworks, had protested against the daily obligation with bad grace, limiting his sessions ration of nothing but rotten turnips with 200 to two per week with a limit of four ‘applicants’ grams of brick-like bread. The whole group had in each session. And they should be neither too been thrown into the blockhouses of Fort Paillet. explicit nor too insistent. When his office next When the curé returned, still quite upset by the door opened, I would see him slumped in his cold and humidity of the tiny basement cells armchair, well-groomed and clean, his pink face where the 'rebels' were shivering, he demanded exuding an inexpressible boredom, as he that the Committee urgently take the case to listened to some 'unfortunate' while manicuring the authorities and in the meantime ensure that his nails. Towards me he showed the greatest the detainees received a decent supply of food. contempt, which I returned in full.

The president [of the Committee], a wholesale trader who thought himself bold because he ‘Keep doing what you are doing’ had agreed to preside over charitable workdealing with foreigners, did not tolerate And yet I found favour in the eyes of another insubordination. But it was not easy to get the rabbi, the head of a strictly orthodox better of the curé. The president finally community. In the committee, I stood a little proposed a compromise: parcels would be sent apart from this dry man with bushy beard and to those who had been incarcerated, but he ascetic looks. But one day he came to the would refrain from taking any steps to support parish. While we were waiting for the curé we them. And he used this unfortunate phrase: talked about this and that, and I was astonished to find so much warmth and good humour in this 'After all, what harm will it do, they’ll sit in man whom I had imagined to be a fanatic. prison for a bit, they are used to it.' After he had explained his business to the curé, 'So what's the point of the parcels?' I cried, we all left together. It was a dark and damp ‘they'll get a little hungry, they're used to it!’ Lyon night. We walked in silence along the And I left slamming the door, followed by the deserted suburban street. At a crossroads, when curé. he parted company with us, the orthodox rabbi lifted his hand slightly and pronounced a phrase Moving to St Alban in Hebrew.

This gentleman did attempt a reconciliation, ‘It is a phrase of benediction’, he explained, and explaining that there had been a translated. Of this translation I remember only ‘misunderstanding’, but I was only too glad to the words: ‘Keep doing what you are doing.’ But have a pretext to finish with the it was enough. How often have I repeated it

41 during times of doubt and deception! Keep doing Father Élie came from far. He was born on that what you are doing. Continue. Despite strip of the continent where, between the Black everything. Who knows, perhaps this active and Baltic seas, Russia had stopped the frontiers benediction protected me along the dark and of the West; where Europe and Asia had come dangerous paths of our work. together in a mixing of races; where over millennia Mongols had mated with Germans and The two rabbis ended up being deported. I had Slavs; where in more recent times, amidst fires news of the first from a friend who returned and the clamour of pogroms and rapes, Jewish from Auschwitz. He told me about the zeal and blood had flowed, fermenting eternal anxiety. devotion of the former worldly priest during his deadly ordeal, but also of his intolerance, which Elie summed up the intense vitality, the distanced him from anyone who did not return explosive power of this tormented soil. He to the religious fold. carried within him its seeds, its hopes, moderated but not extinguished by a French I know nothing of the other rabbi’s end. But I ecclesiastical training. His tonality ranged from imagine him helpful, indulgent, humane to the changing the world to the humble joys of a last, and no doubt, like that Jewish chaplain of Franciscan. He was spontaneous to the point of which Barres spoke, ready to present the cross anarchy, yet submitted unreservedly to the to a dying Christian soldier. discipline which he had voluntarily undertaken in becoming a priest. The prolific tsaddik Many were disconcerted by him and wondered The story of the case which had brought the about his manner of being a Christian. He never elderly orthodox rabbi to our parish, also spoke of it, and yet his faith was certain. There deserves to be told. It concerned a miraculous was nothing canonical about it, nor yet anything Polish rabbi and his family from the occupied mystical. I think that he loved Christ in a very zone, 19 persons in all, seeking permission to direct way, beyond sterile devotions, stay in Lyon. conventional constraints and insipid charity. He loved him fraternally, one might say even ‘Goodness! He is prolific, your tzadik’, socially. It was the Judeo-Slavic part of his soul. commented the curé, reflecting on the difficulty of the request. The Father Superior of the Seminary where Élie carried out his studies accepted this turbulent ‘Yes, he is a man of family virtues’, the visitor yet sincere spirit, the student who asked too modestly conceded. many questions.

By dint of his resourcefulness, Father Elie was ‘It is good for our house to have a student like successful. But once the family had settled in you from time to time’, he said to the young Lyon, we discovered that in fact it was not man. 'You prevent us becoming complacent. But nearly so numerous, and that most of these so- what a calamity if we had two of you!’ called blood relations had paid large sums to gain the temporary benefit of belonging to it. Father Élie was not troubled by any temptation The curé was incandescent and hastened to the to sainthood. He burned, yet with a clear and rabbi to reproach him for his trick. But the other bright fire, constantly unburdening himself only smiled. through activity. He felt alive only in action, and for him this was achieved in the social sphere, or ‘What do you expect’, he said, ‘had I told you failing that in sociability. Human nature the truth, you would have refused to deal with fascinated him, and when he was not immersed so many people at one time, whereas now you in various initiatives it was hard for him to have saved all their lives. And what does it tolerate solitude. He would gladly engage with matter to you whether or not they were my his interlocutor until another appeared. Then the children? As for me, I have gained the first, charmed that just now so much interest wherewithal to maintain my kitchen for a had been lavished on him, would realise with month!’ some resentment a sudden loss of attention ...

Understanding Father Élie The man was full of flaws and he displayed them ingenuously. This graying priest, who held in his My prejudices were shaken. Increasingly I hands so many destinies, had no sense of discovered that the cramped parish cell was the economy or ownership. He adored small flashy site of infinitely bigger ideas than those objects, ingenious little mechanical things - professed by the so-called free spirits. This was pens, lighters, pencils, charms, which he would without doubt due to the personality of Father angle for or even spirit away shamelessly. If he Élie, with his unexpected, unconventional and had had the time, he would have enjoyed even contradictory features. playing with slot machines for hours, like a child or an American. But he was indifferent to money

42 and jewels. Like a thieving magpie fascinated by This is why, in his best moments, one was shine, he preferred the gleam of copper to the struck by something light-hearted, something patina of gold. Besides, no sooner had he dance-like in the curé. And depending on acquired these toys than he would lose them. whether or not people had the gift of imagination, they were either charmed or He was naively vain, with a vanity that was irritated by it. easily fulfilled yet also easily disappointed, because it was intolerable for him to see that I saw many young people in St Alban: priests, someone might lack sympathy for him. Yet the seminarians, scouts, companions of St Frances, slightest compliment or sign of friendship would girls and boys, workers and bourgeois sons in relax the tension. search of a better life. They would find their way to the modest parish, where they would engage Though he was neglectful of his person, I saw in endless discussions. What brought them him run from one mirror to another on the day together was a social rather than a religious when, his cassock having turned to rags, a rich concern. The cure and his friends would reshape lady offered him a new one. Yet while he was the world according to a generous but vague unassuming enough to keep his old clothes till ideal, inspired by every kind of utopia and they were completely worn out, he was also reform. They were not burdened by any mischievous enough to exploit to the full the convention, they borrowed from all systems. On effect that this created. When, two days after closer analysis, their reasonings did not stand up he had put it on, his beautiful new cassock very well, but Father Elie won supporters began to display tears and spots, he was not in through his ardour and the emotional way in the least troubled. which he approached questions, which earned him the confidence of the young. The cure had plenty of minor faults, but he avoided capital sins, with the exception of ...... gluttony. And this…he would indulge with all his heart, though that did not prevent him from [One morning] at the grey and uncertain hour calmly accepting meagre days, cold meals and which prolongs the Lyon dawn, I took the first even Madame Bordet’s chard. tram to the little church of St Alban. It was weakly lit by a few candles. Two or three elderly The cure hated high-flown words and dramatic women of the neighbourhood picked off their sentiments. All his faculties were geared towards rosaries and moved their lips. In front of the extracting people from a mess, whether a stupid altar stood a small group of young fighters [who administrative mess, or a financial or moral one. were leaving for Spain, from which they would For, although he did not create any sense of go on to join the free French forces]. They were drama, he was fond of these people caught up in about to receive their last viaticum. Their difficulties whom he could help with his jugglery. backpacks were hidden behind a pillar. From a Theories, doctrines, and charity came only dark corner, I followed the soft mass spoken by afterwards, as a tedious justification for Father Elie. Then he delivered a brief sermon. spontaneous action, in which there was much His address to those heading for the great straight Christian feeling and a good dose of adventure, for the reconquest of liberty, was socialist ideals, but which in the end came down inspired by a verse of Saint Paul: 'Oh, please to a game to the glory of God. endure a little madness on my part!'

43 NOTES [8] L. Lazare, L’abbé Glasberg (1990), pp. 50-51

[1] Helpful general studies on Vichy France [9] Madeleine Comte, ‘L’abbé Glasberg au secours include Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard des Juifs’ in Christian Sorrel ed. op cit. p.42 and New Order 1940-1944 (1972); M.R.Marrus and R.Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (1995); [10] This is the picture that emerges from Nina Michael Curtis, Verdict on Vichy (2002) Gourfinkel’s description in her memoir L’Autre Patrie, which is quoted at length at the end of this [2] On French immigration policy see Anne Gryn- chapter, and which evidently informed Lucien berg, ‘L'accueil des réfugiés d'Europe centrale en Lazare’s description of Alexander Glasberg’s skills , Les cahiers de la Shoah France (1933-1939) n° in dealing with Vichy officialdom. 1, 1994 (Les Éditions Liana Levi, 1994); Timothy P. Maga, ‘Closing the Door: The French Govern- [11] The ‘Joint’ was established in 1916 and in its ment and Refugee Policy, 1933-1939’, French early years brought support during the famine of Historical Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Spring, 1982), 1920-22 in post-revolutionary Russia. Joseph pp. 424-442 Weill comments: ‘Examining the infinite variety of the activities of the Joint, the geographical reach [3] Anne Grynberg, Les camps de la honte (1999) of its assistance, the evolution in the life of the collectives which it supported, it is no [4] Lidia Bocanegra, ‘A short history of the exaggeration to say that this great organisation republican exile: the big exodus of 1939’ was a Jewish U.N.N.R.A avant la lettre….In http://www.exiliadosrepublicanos.info/en/history- France, the Joint funded the great majority of exile Jewish charitable works, collaborating in addition with inter-faith and non-faith bodies by means of [5] Anne Grynberg, op.cit substantial contributions.’ J. Weill, Contribution a l’histoire des camps d’internement dans l’Anti- France [6] Christian Eggers, ‘ L’internement sous toutes (1946), pp.88-89 ses formes : approche d’une vue [12] Ruth Schatzman, ‘Nina Gourfinkel (1898- d’ensemble du système d’internement dans la zone de Vichy’, Revue d'histoire de la Shoah. Par- 1984), Revue des Études Slaves, LXIII/3, 1991, is, no. 153, jan.-avril 1995, pp.7-75. It was esti- pp. 705-723. mated, at some point in 1941, that of 60,000 people taken into the GTE, about 20,000 were [13] The material in this entry is based mainly on Jewish, the rest Spanish refugees. M.R Marrus R. Schatzman, op.cit. and R. Paxton op.cit., p.171

[7] This report is reproduced in Christian Sorrel ed. Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981 (2013) pp. 149-159

44 Chapter 4 From assistance to resistance: the Direction des Centres d’Accueil (1941- 1942)

The abbé visits Gurs camp had been built very quickly and crudely— the construction was completed in 42 days—not The ‘juggler of Notre Dame’ was able to intervene expected to last beyond a few months. [1] It was successfully on behalf of many refugees who 1400 metres long, 200 metres wide, covering an sought his help in Lyon, but he was working in an area of 70 acres. The only road spanned the environment haunted by the internment camps. length of the camp, with sectors (îlots) of 200 by In late 1940, not long after embarking on his 100 metres on each side, each îlot containing 30 work with refugees at St Alban, the abbé visited barracks and separated from the road and from Gurs, the largest of the camps, and this was to be other îlots by barbed wire fences. The barracks a turning point. It led to a bold initiative: to look were of a type devised for the French army for a way to extract a certain number of internees during the First World War, intended to and move them into reception centres that he accommodate soldiers for a few days while they would administer. Before describing this waited for their trench assignment. They were development it will be useful to say something assembled from thin planks of wood and covered about Gurs itself and about the relief agencies with tarred fabric, with no other insulation and no which sought to help the Vichy internees. This will windows. They offered no protection from the help to explain the significance of the abbé’s cold, and the fabric quickly deteriorated, allowing initiative. rainwater to enter. Internees slept on sacks of straw placed on the floor. Each barrack was Gurs 25 square metres, yet at peak times had to accommodate up to 60 people. As mentioned earlier, the Gurs camp in south- western France was set up in spring 1939 to hold Each îlot had primitive toilets, with additional Spanish refugees, then in 1940 after the toilets on platforms 2 metres high, accessed by departure of the majority of the Spanish, it steps. Pieces of wire that had been stripped of became a place of internment mainly for German their barbs were placed between the barracks and and Austrian Jews. At its peak 18,000 men, the toilets and used like the railing of a staircase, women and children were crammed into a to maintain balance on the unsteady ground. [2] territory originally intended for 15,000 men. The

Gurs Camp

45 The atmosphere was not that of a Nazi the scarce and insufficient camp fare—all concentration camp. The wire fences were two helped to create dreariness and desolation.’ [5] metres high, were not electrified, and there were no lookout towers with armed guards. Hence a Assistance from relief organisations very few people with enough money and contacts outside the camp were able to escape and survive. But the vast majority were in no position The awful conditions in the French internment to attempt this. And conditions were grim, with camps prompted a number of welfare and relief perilous shortages of food, very poor sanitation agencies, French and international, to take steps and hygiene, inadequate clothing, very little to improve life for the internees, to provide heating and light, and very few medical supplies. material and moral support: food and canteens, In addition, clay soil and high rainfall in Gurs medicines, blankets and clothing, libraries and brought pervasive mud in winter. games, musical instruments. And in a striking act of solidarity, some agencies set up resident In late October 1940 Gurs received a contingent missions within the camps themselves. In of 6500 Jews who had been expelled by the Nazis addition certain organisations were able to from Baden and sent from Lyon to Gurs (a further arrange for the release of children, placing them 1100, expelled from the Palatinate and Saar, in institutional homes or private families, and were sent to the camp at Saint-Cyprien).[3] This assisted a small number--those with the put intense pressure on the already drastically necessary contacts abroad-- to emigrate. stretched facilities, and during the winter of These heroic contributions limited to some degree 1940-41, around a thousand Gurs internees the dismal impact of Vichy policies on the refugee died—from typhoid and dysentery and hunger- population, but they were still not enough to related conditions—out of a total population of guarantee a bare minimum to the internees, as [4] about 13,500. The authorities recognised that one prominent relief worker acknowledged. [6] they were unable to sustain even a minimal level And they could not prevent the subsequent for survival. horrors of deportation of foreign Jews from the Donald Lowrie, the American head of the YMCA in unoccupied zone in the summer of 1942. the unoccupied zone, visited Gurs in autumn Numerous agencies provided services to the 1940 and in a memoir described the scene thus: camp populations in the early Vichy period, working legally, accepted by the Vichy regime. ‘A vast expanse of swampy plain in the shadow The following were of particular importance in of the snowy Pyrenees, row after row of low relation to abbé Glasberg, because they impinged wooden barracks sitting in a sea of mud. The on his own activity: soil was pure clay that the autumn rains had turned into a glutinous mass, almost (1) American Joint Distribution Committee impassable, except for the central roads and (known in France as ‘le Joint’). Founded in 1916, some narrow paths made of gravel from the this was an expression of the solidarity of river valley below. Built of uncured lumber, the American Jewry with the Jews of Europe, a vital windowless structures had never known paint, funding agency for many initiatives in support of and the shrinkage of raw boards had left cracks refugees. In France it subsidized a great deal of which were stuffed with paper to keep out the Jewish relief work, and collaborated with non- wind. The trap doors in the roof were for Jewish agencies. It was largely due to ‘le Joint’ ventilation, but they had to be closed whenever that the relief activities in the camps took on it rained, and then the only light was what such a wide scope. [7] filtered in from the single door at each end of the building. (2) Comité Inter-Mouvements Auprès Des Evacués (CIMADE): an umbrella body for …it had rained for days and the camp’s brown Protestant youth movements, set up in 1939, clay soil had become a morass; it took when war was imminent, to provide assistance tremendous effort to move any distance. If a to people who were evacuated by the French man fell down, he was almost like an insect government from the Alsace and Lorraine frontier caught on flypaper—without someone to help, areas to the departments of Haute-Vienne and he could not get up. This was particularly Dordogne. Following the armistice in summer painful for the thousands of old folk. The gravel 1940 most of these evacuees returned home, paths leading to each barrack were negotiable, after which CIMADE devoted its considerable but all the surrounding earth was so sticky that energy to helping Jewish refugees. The Secretary for days on end refugees were confined to the General, appointed in May 1940, was the dark and humid interior of the [barracks]. indomitable Madeleine Barot. [8] Another unintentional cruelty resulted from the fact that the crude shacks of latrines were set (3) Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE): atop five steep and unrailed steps, risky enough established in St Petersburg in 1912 under a for a sound-bodied man and especially different name, to promote the health of the treacherous for…the old people. The mud, the Jewish population in Russia.[9] It did important everlasting rain, the lack of beds and bedding, work with refugees during World War I and

46 following the Russian revolution. In 1923 it moved its base to Berlin, and in 1933 to Paris, concentrating now on the provision of homes for children in response to the big increase in the Jewish refugee population in France. By the end of 1942 OSE managed or financially supported 14 homes, with responsibility for some 1400 children. About half of these had been separated from parents who had remained in central Europe, or were orphans. The others had been extracted (with great difficulty, overcoming many bureaucratic obstacles) from the camps and received in homes run by OSE or partner agencies (in particular the Quakers and Secours Suisse). [10] In addition, alone or in collaboration with other agencies, OSE provided food, clothing and medicine for internees.[11]

(4) ORT (Society of Handicrafts and Agricultural Work among Jews), which worked more or less Madeleine Barot, Secretary-General of closely with OSE, was another organisation of CIMADE, 1940 pre-revolutionary Russian origin, established in 1880 to develop craft, factory and agricultural work amongst the Jewish population. After CIMADE had decided to focus its efforts to begin moving its headquarters to France, ORT with on Gurs. Barot recalled how, in autumn specialised in educational and retraining facilities 1940, it started: for Jewish refugees, and opened farm schools, homes and workshops, including facilities in a ‘In the southern zone, the most important [12] number of internment camps. camps was Gurs. How to get in? I heard that there had been many births; I presented myself (5) Service social d’aide aux emigrants at the gate with a packet of baby clothes and (SSAE): a branch of the International Migration managed to distribute them myself. This was Service, set up in the early 1920s by the YWCA, enough to convince me that our place was in the Protestant youth organization, and estab- the camps themselves. The YMCA had been lished in France in 1926 as the Social Service for forbidden entry, so we decide not to make an Aid to Emigrants. In the unoccupied zone it was official request but to [stay in] ….a led by Marcelle Trillat and established a presence neighbouring village and get admitted in twos, in the camps. [13] A key figure in Gurs was Ninon little by little. The guards got used to our daily Haït, a member of the SSAE team and of visits without asking too many questions…. Éclaireurs Israelites de France (Jewish Scouts). Suddenly one day in October we heard that Other groups that made important contributions 7000 Jews from the Palatinate and Baden had included the American Society of Friends been arrested, transported to France and were (Quakers) (supplied food and clothing; helped just about to arrive in Gurs. We were some internees to emigrate and liaised with astonished, the camp was already very full. The families abroad) [14]; the YMCA (provided newcomers were crammed 80 to a barrack. cultural facilities in special barracks, including Winter was coming. libraries, games, musical instruments and reading rooms, which went some way to combatting the The supplies office was quickly overwhelmed by demoralisation of the mass of internees); all that was expected to enable this population Secours Suisse aux Enfants (supplied food, of old men, women, children simply to survive. and participated in the management of children’s It was no longer a question of whether or not homes); the Unitarian Service Committee we had permission to enter the camp. We were (delivered pharmaceuticals and dental aid, helped already part of it. The daily trips to the nearby in setting up kindergartens and elementary village of Navarreux, 7 kilometres away, took [15] too much time. When the management finally schools in the camps). discovered our existence, Jeanne Merle d'Aubigne and I had already taken possession Resident missions of a barrack and we decided not only to have an office, a base, but to stay there, in short, to live Some organisations set up resident missions behind the barbed wire. It was too late to get within the camps. In Gurs these included rid of us. CIMADE, OSE and SSAE (a team of five led by Ninon Haït). The first to succeed in establishing ….We had a clear duty. Anti-Semitism was such a mission was the Secretary General of taking hold in Vichy. Arrests and internment CIMADE Madeleine Barot. camps were multiplying. All racism is

47 unacceptable from the Christian point of view. We had to give tangible signs of this conviction, to alert the public opinion, to protest to the responsible authorities, to mobilize the Protestant forces, and especially to help those who were suffering the most… David Donoff Of course, our presence was not a complete 1920-1944 identification with the internees. From time to time we could go out, have a good meal, warm ourselves by a stove in the nearby cafe, get in touch with the outside world. This was essential to keep up the strength necessary to provide effective help….[16]

Following this experience CIMADE teams were installed in other camps (in Rivesaltes, Brens, Récédébou, Nexon) using the Gurs precedent, and Barot travelled from one camp and team to The Nimes Committee another to make contact, bring news of the outside world and create a spirit of community The work of the relief agencies was supported among the teams. [17] Meanwhile representatives and coordinated by the so-called Nimes of other relief organisations, in particular OSE and Committee. Following a proposal by Donald SSAE, established themselves in Gurs. A number Lowrie of the YMCA, some thirty organisations, would later join forces with abbé Glasberg: Dr with the prominent participation of international Joseph Weill, a medic who headed OSE in the bodies, came together in Nimes in November unoccupied zone and served as a doctor in both 1940 to form a coordinating Committee for Gurs and Rivesaltes (he was among the 3000 Coordination of Assistance in the Camps. [19] This Jews expelled from Alsace in July 1940), and a was endorsed by Vichy, no doubt inspired by the team from SSAE including Ninon Haït, David very bad publicity which the camps were Donoff and Theo Bernheim. [18] generating in the international arena, and the Committee met every month over a period of two years. The aim was to keep a record of what was happening in the camps, based on personal visits by members, to support the volunteer residents, to alert the authorities to various issues that came up, to devise schemes for improvement.

A list of organisations represented at the first meeting is included in the box on the next page.

The Nimes Committee was impressively ecumenical, bringing together religious and secular groups, different Christian denominations, and Jewish agencies. In his memoir Donald Lowrie highlighted especially the Christian-Jewish links: Joseph Weill 1902-1988 ‘one of the outstanding achievements of the Nimes Committee was the complete and sympathetic collaboration of Christians and Jews. The majority of all refugees, inmates of internment camps or living outside, were Jews, but of the twenty five organisations meeting in Nimes only six were Jewish. Despite religious differences, the services coordinated by the Nimes Committee were available to all refugees, without distinction. And in frequent cases where it seemed diplomatic for a Jewish organisation not to appear in the picture, some special project would be turned over for execution to the French Protestant Cimade or to the Quakers, the Jews simply providing the necessary funds.’ [20] Ninon Hait-Weyl 1911-2007

48 camps and in effect propping up the regime. Alliance Universelle des Unions Chrétiennes de Joseph Weill was touring the camps and his evi- jeunes Gens dence was overwhelming. By June 1941 the gen- American Friends Service Committee eral position was described as catastrophic: American Friends of Czechoslovakia shortage of food, dismal hygiene and sanitation, American Joint Distribution Committee proliferation of fleas and rat bites, inadequate clothing and practically no medical supplies, all CIMADE leading to serious physical disorders. In such cir- Commission centrale de organisations Juives cumstances how could the relief agencies not d'Assistance en France continue to help? Commission des Camps des Œuvres Israélites There was also the dilemma that in order to d'Assistance aux réfugiés maintain its ‘status and influence’ in relation to Comité d'Assistance aux Réfugiés Vichy, the Committee studiously avoided political Comité Unitarien de Secours discussions and pronouncements. This enabled Croix Rouge Américaine the chairman Donald Lowrie to meet with ‘anyone Croix Rouge Française in Vichy we thought it useful to interview.’ [22] Yet Croix Rouge Polonaise the effort to maintain influence by cooperating Église Catholique de France with Vichy ensured that the Committee would ultimately have very little. Fonds Européen de Secours aux Étudiants Fédération Protestante de France HICEM Institut de Recherche d'Hygiène RELICO Secours Suisse aux Enfants Service Social d'Aide aux Émigrants Service Social pour les Émigrés de Belgique Société ORT Union des Sociétés OSE Union Chrétienne de Jeunes Filles (YWCA) Union Chrétienne de Jeunes Gens (YMCA) Y.M.C.A. Polonais.

Donald Lowrie Abbé Glasberg was a regular presence at the 1889-1974 Committee, and to judge from Lowrie’s description, made a strong impression within a In her memoir Nina Gourfinkel, who represented very diverse group: RELICO at the Committee, spoke of her frustration at the moderate nature of the ’At a meeting the group around the long table proceedings, the ‘tone of goodwill and universal might include from twenty-five to forty persons, forgiveness which reigned at Nimes’, and the of the most varied types. There was Abbé G of tendency to abstract from the grim reality of the Jewish origin, now one of the leading Catholic camp experience: social workers in France. Among the official representatives of the American Friends Service ‘In Nimes we lived in a world full of metaphor. Committee were a Danish lady and a Russian All these good people were very high-minded. princess; there was a former ambassador and During our work on feeding the camps, it was a an ex-consul general. The representatives of question of undernourishment, deficiencies, the Jewish organisations were equally varied. insufficiencies, hypovitaminosis, cachexia, but There was a young American, baffled and the common, naked, brutal word hunger was frightened by his first experience of a strange never spoken. At most there was 'hunger country and still more by the anti-Semitic sickness'. .. atmosphere in which he had to work…there was also one of the outstanding authorities on We did not talk about food but about calories. jurisprudence of imperial St Petersburg, a grey- Have you noticed that we start to talk about bearded veteran of many battles for social calories when they are vanishing? These justice…’ [21] fleeting units lend themselves admirably to pretty rows of columns, formulas and figures, to The Nimes Committee faced a big dilemma. On statistics, to scholarly calculations. It would the one hand it proclaimed that its primary objec- have been an unpardonable vulgarity to say: [23] tive was to see the camps completely empty. the internees are starving! On the other hand its role was to bring improve- ... ment in conditions wherever possible, thereby reducing the costs to the state of maintaining the

49 No one, no one in this polite audience of well- camouflaged in a cassock? For quite a while I intentioned people, had the courage to shake remained suspicious. Was this Father Glasberg off the sedative effect of abstract terms, to really a priest? The more he came to the camp, bang their fists on the table, to scream out as the more I admired him. He had a lot of ideas you would scream out on the high road when and communicated with all the camp Rabbis assaulted by brigands: In the name of God, it is much more easily than me. Our suspicions were not existence in the camps that we should be allayed by his exceptional qualities, his helping, it is the existence of the camps that we comradeship, his effectiveness ...’ should be combatting! The abbé resolved on an initiative that would Alas! These eminently respectable people were have major consequences for his role during the too cultivated. And that's how they ended up rest of the war and beyond: to find a way of playing the Vichy game. [23] bringing some internees out of the camps.

We do not have a record of the abbé’s own In her interview for Bertuccelli’s film Madeleine thoughts about Nimes, but it is safe to say that Barot commented: he felt the dilemmas of the Committee very strongly, and that he fully shared Nina ‘It was obvious that, in a sense [helping in the Gourfinkel’s sentiments. camps] was cooperation with Vichy. This prevented Vichy from going too far in its Setting up the Direction des Centres neglect of the internees. ...[this] was one of d’Acceuil (DCA) abbé Glasberg’s main points and it gave us much food for thought. And at the beginning he Alexander Glasberg visited Gurs in late 1940, was the only one who said, “we must arrange to authorised to do so as cardinal Gerlier’s delegate get people out of the camps”...’ to to the Comité d’aide aux refugiés. [24] Here he The upshot was a project which led to the met Madeleine Barot, the CIMADE Secretary creation of La Direction des Centres d’Acceuil General and volunteer introduced above. Some (DCA), initiated by AG in early 1941. The aim was fifty years later, interviewed for Julie Bertuccelli’s to get official agreement from Vichy to extract a film about Alexander Glasberg, Barot recalled her certain number of internees, in particular from encounter with the abbé: Gurs, and to house them in a number of reception centres, each to accommodate 50 to 60 residents until the end of the war when they could return to normal conditions of life and work. They would retain the status of internees but the centres would be managed by people who were not part of the official structure.

It was an implausible scheme which faced many problems. In the words of Alexander Glasberg’s 1944 report:

‘The preparatory work was slow and difficult, which had much to do with the slowness and hesitations of officials, fearful of the political meaning that lay behind this humanitarian enterprise, which led to all sorts of difficulties as a result of the lack of facilities that were Madeleine Barot during an interview for [25] Julie Bertuccelli’s film c. 1994 essential to set up the homes....’

However, the plan received the support of ‘I was at the Gurs camp with two friends. One Cardinal Gerlier, a key factor because of his day a Catholic priest came to our barrack. We influence with the administration, and the project had seen the local village priest several times. was finally endorsed by Vichy in June 1941. He was supposed to be the camp chaplain. He came to say Mass, but otherwise we never saw Madeleine Barot was amazed that the proposal him. He came, said Mass, and left. And now got through: suddenly here was a Catholic priest who said: ‘I’ve come to see how you do things here, ‘Vichy accepted! I would never have dared to because we should really organise a life in this try, but abbé Glasberg did dare! And this, for camp’. hundreds of refugees, was salvation.’ [26]

I was immediately very intrigued by this priest. He spoke Yiddish. Imagine a French Catholic priest speaking Yiddish! Was he a Jew

50 ‘Defense contre (les) Allemands’ direct attack, Father Elie put his wavering accomplices [in Vichy] up against the wall. No Nina Gourfinkel, who would play a key part in the manoeuver could have served better than this scheme, was herself very sceptical when the abbé ardent sincerity. As a result the priest had on first spoke of it: his side both the true patriots and the most clear-sighted specialists of the double game. ‘[The abbé said:] The main question is, how to For the first, his action, although limited, had get people out of the camp…’ the merit of bringing honour to the country; as for the second, the fact that it was limited, that ‘But that’s impossible !’ all in all it was happening on an extra-political plane, that it offered a moderate compromise, ‘All the more reason to try…’ was reassuring. Hence some backed the priest from conviction, while others gave him their And that is how it was done. And the more support to ensure, without much risk, what difficult the challenge, the more ingenuity and Dostoevski called “an entry ticket to the doggedness he brought to bear on it. The idea Kingdom of Heaven”. came to him suddenly. At first sight it seemed incredible, but when I pointed out how fantastic Thus in a few months Father Elie created, not a it was, the curate took hold of my objections, movement, this would be an exaggeration, but turned them round and used them to fill out his a wave of opinion in Lyon and Vichy, which plan. I was running out of steam and stopped, allowed him to establish an organization artfully exasperated by such recklessness, when I baptised Direction des Centres d’Accueil! heard him exclaim joyously: No minister was found to clearly endorse it; no ‘According to the logic of things you are right. guarantees were given to the new body, no So now let’s get on with it!’ promises made….[there was only] an unofficial letter signed by an underling of a senior official, And that is how, contrary to all the reality of which properly speaking did not authorize Vichy, in that sombre year 1941 when the anything but stated in imprecise terms that the harassment and discrimination were getting opening of reception centres, aimed at installing worse, the curate began to extract people from temporarily interned foreigners, was not the concentration camps. opposed. No specific limit was mentioned but the centres should not exceed one per As he conceived it the project went far beyond department, and the priest was personally a simple humanitarian action. Without doubt responsible to the Commissariat for the conditions for the refugees were improved, but Maintenance of Order. In other words, we were the priest’s big concern lay elsewhere : in treated as auxiliaries of the police, which was a addition to the ignominy of arbitrary prerequisite for doing anything under Vichy. internment, he felt painfully the shadow which this ignominy cast over the good name of Only a period of complete confusion could have France. … led the various authorities - prefectorial, administrative and even military - to take such Like all those who attack the root of the evil a vague document seriously. The name and not only its consequences, he saw the big Direction that we had used, contributed to the picture. His love, his 'thoughtful passion’ for the illusion. Only then did we realize that the initials land which along with so many others he had of the new organization were D.C.A. We saw in freely chosen as his own, endowed him with a this an auspicious sign and read them as clear-sightedness which is often the privilege of [27] those who convert to an idea, a religion, a “Défense contre Allemands”’. homeland, not having received them from birth. Their sensitivity is not blunted; they relish their The deal was hedged with many constraints, new condition and defend it ardently, even if it without which there would have been no deal. incurs the ironical contempt of the habitués. But Each candidate for inclusion in the scheme had to the curate was indifferent to irony. Indeed, he get a triple authorisation from the Ministry of was convinced of the importance of showing, as Interior and prefectures of the releasing and far as the world of public opinion was receiving département; assurance that he/she concerned, that Laval and Xavier Vallat did not would be supported by a relief organisation and sum up France, that against whatever odds the that the centres could be set up with minimal great tradition of respect for the person investment costs; the residents would be on remained, that the concentration camps were ‘restricted leave’ and would not be permitted to not a French fact but only imposed on France, travel beyond the borders of the commune. and that France, though disabled and corrupted Furthermore the management would be by petainism, retained enough moral strength accountable to the authorities for maintaining a to combat them. number of strict internal rules which included: roll calls on rising, at bedtime and at meal time; The time for games and tricks was over. identity cards and ration cards to be withheld to Switching now from movement by stealth to a deter escape; use of radio prohibited; no access

51 to newspapers, periodicals and books without ‘In order to speed up the formalities of transfer, management consent; prohibition of political which were slow and complicated, it was activity; a ban on involvement in the black decided to choose most of the residents of the market, inside or outside the premises, on pain of proposed reception centres from one camp, the return to the camp; no meals to be served most important: Gurs (Basses-Pyrénées). The outside the specified hours unless on the selection was made by a Team from the Service recommendation of a doctor; games with stakes Social d’Aide aux Emigrants (SSAE), comprising forbidden. [28] Ninon Haït, head of the Team, David Donoff and Theo Bernheim, who were volunteer residents DCA project presented to the Nimes in the Gurs camp. Following that direct Committee involvement, these three joined the DCA team.’

Choices had to be made. There would be no The project, already off the ground, was distinctions based on nationality or faith, but it presented to the Nimes Committee on 3 was decided not to focus on the weakest. The December 1941. Alexander Glasberg was named most acceptable approach would have been to as director, assisted by Nina Gourfinkel, focus on the elderly and the sick, whose high representative of RELICO (Relief Committee for mortality rate was a burden to the camp the Warstricken Jewish Population, based in authorities. However, as Alexander Glasberg Geneva, New York, Lyon) and Doctor Joseph Weill explained in his report to the Nimes Committee: of OSE, based in Montpellier. They would work in collaboration with SSAE and in particular its team ‘Our aim is not to give refuge to the elderly or at Gurs directed by Madame Ninon Hait. to those with terminal conditions, but to save the lives of the healthy, those who could give The DCA would be based at the presbytery of something to society…we decided to select men Notre-Dame de Saint-Alban, Lyon, while each and women generally between the ages of 20 centre would have a French treasurer familiar and 45 from the liberal professions or manual with accounting and supplies, who would occupations, or those known for their social represent the centre in relation to the local [31] authorities. As to the internal organisation, ‘our activity [in the camp]’. thinking is that it would be most rational to leave this to the residents themselves, forming a Or, in the starker words of Nina Gourfinkel in her management committee drawn from the more memoir: ‘Above all we refused to establish places qualified and representing the three faiths: of refuge where one could only await death. “Let the dead bury the dead”. This terrible and Catholic, Jewish and Protestant.’ [29] brusque saying resonated in our hearts. We were there to help people to live, not to die, that was Nina Gourfinkel’s commented in her memoir: the subversive sense of our action.’ [32] ‘The DCA team always remained limited in size. On the management side…were Father Elie This approach was shocking to some, and [Alexander Glasberg], his secretary Paul [Hans incurred the disapproval of some charitable Poukert] and me, and at some remove a doctor agencies who wanted the DCA to take the elderly friend [Joseph Weill] whose wise counsel, and the infirm. But abbé Glasberg persisted, and numerous connections and material help proved got his way. infinitely valuable. On the side of the camps, we found enthusiastic support from some social Funding assistants [SSAE workers] who, after more than Compromises were however made in regard to a year working behind barbed wire, were the choice of residents, for financial reasons. The desperate because they felt the futility of their plan was that the more able-bodied, with no efforts. The charitable organisations were funds of their own, would form two thirds of the multiplying their contributions, but the people residents and would come free of charge. The who shared the life of the internees had remaining third was to be made up of people with understood that you could achieve nothing on financial means (often thanks to relations in such compromised terrain where the most Switzerland or the United States), who were generous initiatives became damaged. Our typically elderly or in poor health. These latter proposal to work towards a “liberation” of the would pay not only for themselves, but also cover internees, even in the inauthentic form of the costs of two other residents. Each would controlled reception centres, appeared to them contribute 2,500 francs a month. Being a paying a way out of the impasse. Thus the first to join resident would not confer any advantage, and all us were Nicole [Ninon Hait], Dodo [David residents were expected to participate in [30] Donoff] and Tony [Theo Bernheim].’ housework as far as they were physically able. The purpose was to maintain as far as possible Choice of residents the financial independence of the centres. In the words of Alexander Glasberg’s 1944 report: The 1944 report explained the process of selecting candidates:

52 ‘We were in disagreement with the [charitable] is alone, deaf and powerless, dragging out her Committees on methods of funding, wishing to pitiful days. Please receive her, allow her to put the dignity of those we were helping in the finish her life in a bed, under a roof ... “ forefront. Hence, in order to safeguard all our The assistant was a thousand times right: these freedom of action, the DCA refused to ask for misfortunes were the responsibility of the grants from the existing organisations. In regime under which we lived. But there was an particular, bearing in mind that despite its infinite number of cases like this woman’s. They interdenominational character we were in the had all lost everything: home, family, wealth. nature of the case addressing a primarily Jewish But in addition the elderly had the shortcoming clientele, the DCA, foreseeing an extension of of being elderly, of having no future before racist policies, did not want to compromise the them. Clenching my teeth I replied no. I tried to effectiveness of its action in any way by explain, but my correspondents did not accepting Jewish grants. On the contrary, the understand, they returned to the attack, and DCA often served as a screen for these then, impatient and encumbered by a huge and organisations and especially OSE, one of whose futile postbag and because I had so much to do, leaders, Dr Joseph Weill, joined [the DCA] as a I abandoned diplomatic formulations. 'We can director.’ do nothing for your widow,' I wrote to the social There was also another motive for this search for worker who could not do other than what she independence: had done. The more deaf and weak she is, the less she fits our criteria. Can you not see that ‘The DCA had to be all the more cautious since we are looking to save people for life, and that apart from its immediate humanitarian aim, it we set aside the elderly, unless…’ proposed another, less obvious [purpose] : its Then came the terrible qualification which discreet methods of work enabled it to engage immediately rendered me abominable in the in a sort of sounding out thanks to which it eyes of this brave girl: 'Unless they or their could distinguish friends and enemies. However parents have enough money to pay for the tiny was the assistance that it gave to refugees accommodation of three people, themselves in relation to their overall numbers, the and two other residents of our choice. ' movement generated by the DCA nevertheless had a political scope which allowed it to detect For the astute stratagem that the curate clandestine and then active sympathies among devised to provide us with the funds meant the mass of Vichy officials, testimony to the receiving into each of our reception centres a third of elderly people who in order to redeem survival of the great French tradition.’[33] their sad degraded condition had to cover, in The DCA did receive some initial help from the addition to their own accommodation, that of Commission des oeuvres juives (50,000 francs to the other ‘viable’ two-thirds. A principle which, I be contributed for each centre) and later ‘thanks must admit, was rather repugnant, but which to the help of Dr Joseph Weill [of OSE], the was imposed by circumstances and which did Quakers of Toulouse, the Unitarian Service of not after all hurt anyone, even if it violated Marseille and Swiss Parcels, the DCA was able on certain bourgeois market norms. But what an numerous occasions to obtain clothing and food outcry there was among the charitable bodies! What lessons we received in “Christian charity”! for the residents.’ [34] But AG’s novel method of funding gave the DCA a freedom of manoeuvre The enrolment of the elderly fully proved itself. which it would otherwise have lost. We were assailed by their French relations or, through the mediation of the charities, Dilemmas American or Swiss relations. A surprising Getting the rich to pay for the poor was a number of people were prepared to pay for their pragmatic device, but AG also justified it also on accommodation (which even when tripled was moral grounds. In his report to Nimes, in a not at all excessive, since we were not taking statement omitted from the official record, he advantage), while the “viable” people with declared: ‘Happy are those who hunger and whom we were concerned, lacked any relations thirst, because they will be filled. Unhappy the or friends ready to help them… [35] rich, because all will be taken from them.’ However, the search for the two thirds in whom Yet this did not avoid painful decisions, as we were interested was difficult, because we Gourfinkel recognised: had to take responsibility for our choices. Like Lycurgus, we proposed to offer help to the ‘The requests for admission were pouring in. On strongest, accepting implicitly the loss of the all sides we were told of 'especially important others. But how could we establish a criterion, cases' which, of course, were entitled to our since we were firmly convinced that all, whether attention but which our plan did not include. good or bad, capable or less capable, had inalienable rights to that minimum of dignity “I would like to point out to you the tragic and well-being which we were able to provide? situation of a seventy five year old widow” wrote a social worker. “Her husband and her It is not surprising that our choices often proved sons were killed before her own eyes, she has unjustified…’ [36] just lost her last daughter at the camp, now she

53 Five Centres L’Auberge de la Roche d’Ajoux, Chansaye

Five reception centres were opened between The first centre to open was in a disused hotel, winter 1941 and summer 1942, purposely in the Auberge d’Ajoux in Chansaye in Poule-les- isolated rural localities or mountainous areas, Echarmeaux (Rhône). A group of 57 internees away from urban centres. The plan was for each from Gurs arrived in November 1941, to house 50 or about 60 residents, but since accompanied by David Donoff who had been a many records were lost, since there were changes voluntary internee in Gurs and had joined the in the population of the centres and those DCA team. In May 1942 a further group of 20 numbers were not necessarily adhered to, it is came from Noé camp. [37] very hard to say how many were received in the course of the war--perhaps three or four hundred Amongst the first group was Hanna Schramm, in all. one of the many German anti-fascists who entered France to escape the Nazis, but when The centres were located in: France declared war on Germany were interned in Gurs as nationals of an enemy power. Schramm’s -L’Auberge de la Roche d’Ajoux, a former account of the background to her departure from hotel in Chansaye in the commune of Poule-les Gurs is reproduced in the box on the opposite Echarmeaux (Rhône department) page -L’Hotel du Pont de Manne, in the commune of Saint-Thomas-en-Royans (Drôme department) In a memoir of her time spent in Gurs Hanna -Lastic centre in the commune of Rosans Schramm recalls being chosen by Ninon Hait as (Hautes-Alpes department) one of the small group of Gurs internees chosen -Hotel Touring in the commune of Vic-sur-Cère for the Chansaye centre under abbe Glasberg’s commune (Cantal department) scheme. After more than a year in Gurs she and -Chateau du Bégué, commune of Cazaubon her friend Annelise were longing to find a way (Gers department) out, when one day a remarkable opportunity arose: Setting up these projects required a great deal of negotiation and cooperation from those willing to ‘Ninon Haït, director of the social service, and rent out their premises and from the various her collaborator, Manou Gommès, who were in authorities involved, and all this would have charge of our îlot and went indefatigably from tested Alexander Glasberg’s negotiating skills and one hut to another to see how things were persuasive powers to the full. going and to ask how they might help, visited us frequently. In the summer of 1941 they told So far as the limited information allows, there us about a certain abbé Glasberg in Lyon, who follows a description of each of the DCA reception had intervened on his own initiative in order to centres during the early months of their obtain the release of about 40 men and women existence. Chapter 6 will look at the next stage, in Gurs and take them to the countryside. when these centres, like all places of concentration of Jewish refugees, had to deal with the traumatic impact of the round-up of foreign Jews in summer 1942.

Abbé Glasberg at Roche d’Ajoux

54 Chansaye (Rhône)

Cazaubon (Gers)

Saint- Thomas-en- Rosans Royans Vic-sur-Cère (Hautes-Alpes) (Drôme) (Cantal)

Location of the centre of the Direction des centres d’accueil

55 Our departure was set for five in the morning. We set out at four, accompanied by several friends despite the nocturnal hour. Then there was a search of our luggage and we climbed into a truck covered with tarpaulin where not a ray of light could penetrate. We could only imagine the moment when the barrier would be lifted.’ [38]

The opening of the Chansaye centre was celebrated in some style, as Nina Gourfinkel recalled:

‘what a beautiful victorious day that was, that 27th of November 1941 ... there was an almost festive air at the station, when the welcoming group crossed the quays to the siding where, guarded by gendarmes, they had put the special carriage that had brought our first fifty seven residents from Gurs. There were flowers, speeches, tears, embraces with strangers. Then, in a specially cleared part of the station buffet, still under the eyes of good-humoured but bewildered police, a tea of welcome was offered to the internees, a touching and absurd Sarah Schramm: document signed by the cup of tea, with bags of sweets handed to head of the Gurs camp, 27 April 1941 bearded men and exhausted women.

“I have put you both on the list. Does that suit The special carriage clung to the little Paray-le- you?” asked Ninon one day of Hanna and her Monial train which began to climb the slopes of friend Annelise. Beaujolais, its various metal parts whimpering and grating. At each turn of the track, strewn “It's too good to be true”, I said sceptically. “On with tunnels and viaducts, the panorama what possible grounds might we be released? widened: green valleys with wooded sides, We have no family in France.” shrouded in mist; rapids punctuated by cirques and small mountains with bald peaks forming “That’s just where the abbé’s wonderful idea almost regular cones touching at the base. comes in! You will continue to be internees, but you will be able circulate within a radious of five From the compartments of the train, amazed kilometers.” shouts:

That was completely absurd, I thought, it would "Trees ! look, trees! " be impossible to implement such a project! But at that time I did not know that abbé Glasberg These people had come from desolate could move mountains to help others. He was wastelands from where, for long months, they the first Catholic to intervene in a serious way had seen only the blue crests of the Pyrenees in on our behalf and it was his own initiative, the distance. without support from Catholic organizations or other charitable bodies. "Are we allowed to walk about? "

At the end of August, Manou Gommès let us "As much as you want, within five kilometers" know that abbé Glasberg had been given permission by the Vichy government to go "Five kilometers! " ahead with his project. Not long afterwards, Ninon came to see us. She had found a possible They discovered the spaces of the world. home: it was a disused hotel in Chansaye, a small village near Lyon, was set among fields, An unlikely assortment of carts, trolleys and meadows and wooded hills. diligences were waiting in front of the little station. But anyone who could, preferred to Abbé Glasberg soon appeared in Gurs, but we walk through the meadows and woods. managed to speak to him only briefly. I had the impression of a very lively and intelligent man. The old rustic inn at the foot of Roche d'Ajoux, "I do not accept conversion below the age of facing a vast alpine landscape, was only three” he said in an almost threatening manner, partially modernized. Built of wood and light and that pleased me. bricks, it was endowed with that limited comfort to which the French accommodate so easily

56 accommodates so easily when they are on The residents were a mixed of able-bodied and holiday. But that day there were no criticisms. the elderly and infirm. In his report to the Nimes Our guests could not contain their joy. committee in December 1941, AG had explained that each centre would have specialist staff. At "A roof, a real roof over your head! " Roche-d’Ajoux, which had already opened when he gave his report, these comprised a doctor and "You cannot imagine what it means to be able two nurses (taking into account the elderly and to come in and out, to close a door behind you infirm), a dentist, two cooks, a gardener, a ..." carpenter, a poultry farmer, a dress-maker, a tailor. This was to allow the team to organise a "What, a bathroom? We’ll have hot water? " kitchen garden, and workshops for carpentry, dress-making, and repair of used items. "You know what, I've been to the toilet six times in the past two hours, just so as to pull The original aim was to entrust the internal the chain!" organisation of the centre to the residents themselves, encouraging them to elect their own In the days that followed there would be leaders. The initiators of the DCA imagined that recriminations, complaints, accusations of the communal experience of the camps would unfairness or favouritism. But on this public promote a community spirit among the ex- holiday there was pure joy, and our first meal internees. However once the first flush of with the liberated appeared as a thanksgiving, enthusiasm had passed many difficulties ensued, celebrated in the sad darkness of this month of which Nina Gourfinkel, who managed the centre November when no light seemed to appear on in its early days, reflected on in her memoir: the horizon. ‘[The residents] had come out of a state of Over dessert, for despite the heavy restrictions arbitrary detention, but [the centre] lacked that we had tried to do things well, Father Elie feature which makes for a community: a union explained to the guests, simply and briefly, of freely consenting comrades animated by the what he expected of them. same spirit, sharing the same goal. We imagined, oh Lord! that fifty or so people who "This home is yours," he said, "and for our had experienced the same ordeals and who experiment to succeed, you must feel that it is could now enjoy an existence which if not very yours until the day you are allowed to return to comfortable was at least acceptable, would do your homes. You have a home: this means that their best to get along, to fulfil the minimum you can relax and have trust, but it also conditions demanded, and become the nucleus requires a great effort of fraternity in work and of a phalanx ready to work for a better future. in the running of the home. We will not impose Yet we were only permitted to gather a random a director manager on you. You will just have a group of men and women gravely damaged by treasurer, who will provide you with food and the evil of the camps […] To allow for a represent you in relation to the authorities. As recovery each resident would have needed far as managing the home is concerned, the solitude.’ [40] distribution and flow of work, listen to each other, elect your own management committee In order to house the greatest number possible, and do the best you can. On our side we will the residents were placed in dormitories, and the assure you a modest but adequate crowding promoted a charged atmosphere. The accommodation and provision of food, in paying guests, Gourfinkel recalled, balked at difficult conditions. All we ask is that you doing the work that was asked of them, and observe the rules that have been imposed on tended to regard the others as their domestic you, which are reasonable: do not go beyond servants. Meanwhile tensions also arose over the the radius of five kilometers that has been laid rules against black market activities. On one down, do not undertake any paid work for the occasion a denunciation was sent to Cardinal farmers, which is strictly forbidden, and above Gerlier by the mayor of Chenelette, a Beaujolais all do not engage in the black market. You are commune close to Chansaye, in which he protected against hunger, therefore facilitate complained about “deplorable abuses which have our task. Never forget that the very idea of such so exasperated the population” (16 May 1942)— a reception centre hangs on your conduct: if namely black market purchases by the residents this first experience satisfies the authorities, in the countryside.[41] Glasberg intervened and more people can be released. May the nothing serious came of this but it highlighted the establishment of Roche d'Ajoux mark the delicate balancing act which the DCA had to beginning of a movement towards greater maintain in order to keep on the right side of the justice and freedom. No matter that it is a faint Vichy authorities. trickle in an ocean of hatred, it is the existence of this trickle that counts. It is up to us to work As a result it was hard to establish a climate of to turn it into a river. In the name of this great confidence between the residents and the DCA river of the future, I today salute this tiny staff, the democratic goals that inspired the community of La Roche d'Ajoux!”’ project at the beginning had to be abandoned and

57 Residents transferred from Gurs to Chansye on 25 November 1942

Gustav Abraham, 48, German, Jewish, arrived in France in September 1933, and Karl Abraham (on list of those who have not yet clearly decided on Chansaye) Simon Bloch, 77 and Melanie Bloch, 75, German, Jewish, arrived in France from Freiburg in October 1940. Hans Bosak, 35, et Catherine Bosak, 35, German, Catholic, arrived in France without papers in 1940. Leo Breuer, 48, German, Catholic, arrived in France in 1940. Richard Durban, 28, stateless German, Protestant, ex-combatant in Spain, arrived from Belgium in 1940. Annelise Rosa Eisenstadt, 38, German, Jewish. Victor Eliasberg, 32, and Eidel Eliasberg, 30, Jewish, arrived from Belgium in 1940, with Nansen passports and Belgian identity cards. Emmy Ettlinger, 59, Jewish, German identity card, arrived in France October 1940. Hedwige Falkenstein, 67, German, Jewish, arrived in France October 1940. Leopold Gunzburger, 84, and his daughter Hermine Gunzburger, 52, German, Jewish, arrived in France October 1940. Fanny Haberer, 54, German, Jewish. Irma Herrnstadt, 21, Austrian passport, Belgian identity card, arrived in France from Belgium in May 1940. Laura Hess, 55, German, Jewish, arrived in France October 1940. Kathe Hirsch, 49, German, stateless, Jewish. Josef Jacob (Can commit to 500 francs a month but will only leave with his wife and daughter. On list of those who have not yet made a definite commitment to Chansaye) Siegfried Kahn, 57, and Hilda Kahn, 54, German, Jewish. Heinrich Kersten, 25, German, Protestant, arrived in France in May 1940. Frida Kleefeld, Jewish (on Swiss list) Joseph Klotz, 63, German, Jewish, arrived in France October 1940. Fritz Koref, 57, German, Jewish, and Gertrude Koref, 52, German, Protestant. Rosa Kraemer, 36, French by birth, German by marriage, Jewish. Eve-Rose Kuttner-Dyck, 23, German, Jewish, arrived in France in 1933. Max Lingner, 53, German, Protestant. Adolf Mendelsohn, 54, ex-Austrian, Jewish and Elsa Mendelsohn, 51, ex- Austrian, Jewish, arrived in France in May 1940. Edith Mendelsohn, 32, German, Jewish. Callel Morgenstern, 33, Statless Polish, Jewish. Abraham Nissenbaum, 38, Polish, Jewish and Ida Nissenbaum, 29, Polish, Jewish, arrived from Belgium in May 1940. Gottfried Ochshorn, 26, ex-Austrian, Jewish. Heinz Pollak, 30, Austrian, Jewish, arrived in France from Belgium in May 1940, and Hilse Pollak, 22, German, Protesant. Their daughter Suzanne Leo-Pollak spent the first year of her life in Chansaye. Friedel Reifenberg, 47, et her daughter Charlotte Reifenberg, 27, German, Jewish, arrived in France in 1939. Siegfried Rosner, 47, ex-Austrian, expired passport, Protestant, in France since May 1940. Helen Ruben, cannot decide before receiving a response from her children in America. On list of those not defini- tely committed to Chansaye. Johanna Schramm, 45, expired German passport, Protestant. Otto Spitz, 44, in France since 1936, and Strephanie Spitz, 44, in France since 1939, ex-Austrian, Jewish. Betty Steiner, cannot decide before receiving a response from her children in America. On list of those not defini- tely committed to Chansaye. Martha Stern, 60, German, Jewish, in France since October 1940. Emile Weil, 69, and Ida Weil, 65, German, Jewish, arrived in France in October 1940. Else Weiss, 42, ex-Austrian, French identity card. Iwan Wittgenstein, 63, Theodore Wittgenstein, 42, Gertrude Wittgenstein, 25, German, Jewish.

(Source : Anonymes, Justes et Persécutés durant la période Nazie dans les communes de France, AJPN.org)

58 a more authoritarian form of management I would add that the persons received in these established, with the treasurer Boris Bezborodko private centres are subject to the strictest rules [42] taking the role of director. and are directly supervised by the police service of the department.’ For the DCA staff the most painful thing was to be regarded as ‘them’, to be identified with the Reply of 11 March 1942 from the Commissar persecuting authorities whose demands they had General on Jewish Questions to the to enforce. Once again in the words of Nina Secretary of State, Ministry of the Interior Gourfinkel: (Direction de la Police du Territoire et des Etrangers). ‘The very fact that we had succeeded in getting [the residents] out of the camps paradoxically turned against us, made us suspect, because it In response to your letter No 773 of 6 March allowed them to suppose a power, an influence, 1942 concerning the opening of two centres connections. Hence, if we had not done better, under the patronage of Cardinal Gerlier, for the it was because we were unwilling or because we reception of refugees currently in the camps of did not realise [the power we had]: we were Gurs and Rivesaltes, mostly of Jewish origin, I either treacherous rogues or suckers. The fact have the honour to inform you that the that we insisted on observing police rules – realisation of the project would raise no because we were personally responsible for all objection in principle on my part if this gesture infractions committed by the residents—made by the archbishop of Lyon did not risk us in their eyes almost complicit with the police. appearing as a backdoor form of protest against Our insistence on prohibiting any barter, any the anti-Jewish laws of which he might not have black market, appeared ridiculous or approved. hypocritical’ [43] It seems to me that these these reception Gourfinkel’s disappointment is understandable. centres would be better left in the hands of the Yet one should not forget that the conditions were Union Générale des Israelites de France which incomparably better than in Gurs, and above all is specially authorised to deal with all charitable that the residents of the Auberge d’Ajoux were assistance to the Jews.’ given chance to survive the war. It will be remembered that the Union Générale The next stage des Israelites de France was the organization created in November 1941, following German The second and third centres, in Saint-Thomas- pressure, to bring all Jewish agencies into the en-Royans and Lastic, received separate body of the state, both in occupied and ministerial authorisation in March 1942.[44] This unoccupied France. Had Vallat’s advice been was despite the misgivings of Xavier Vallat, followed, the DCA centres would have been director of the General Commissariat for Jewish subject to direct interference by Vichy. The advice Questions(CGQJ). The respective letters are was not followed and the centres retained a vital reproduced below. measure of independence.

Letter of 6 March 1942 from the Secretary of State for the Interior to the Commissaire Pont-de Manne, St Thomas-en-Royans General on Jewish Questions The abbé’s second centre opened in May 1942, at Concerning the opening of reception centres for the hotel Bitsch in Pont-de-Manne on the banks of a certain number of refugees currently residing the river Bourne in the commune of Saint- in the camps of Gurs and Rivesaltes Thomas-en-Royans (Drome).[45] A group of 52 were transferred from Gurs, mainly Jewish ‘I have the honour to inform you that M. Abbé refugees, but also some anti-Nazi ‘politicals’. The Glasberg, delegate of H.E. Cardinal Gerlier for abbé contacted the proprietor Monsieur Bitsch in his charitable work with foreign refugees, has early 1942 with a view to renting his hotel, expressed the wish to set up two reception aiming to house 60 people of both sexes, aged 40 centres: one in Pont-de-Manne near Saint- to 60. An Egyptian, Henri Zagdoun, was placed in Thomas-en-Royans (Drôme) will be reserved for command, and the proprietor moved into an 56 foreigners currently in the camp of Gurs; the outbuilding with his family. other, in Hautes-Alpes, will serve as a centre for occupational training for about 50 young people As in the case of Chansaye, a letter of complaint who have been placed in reception camps. appeared on the desk of Cardinal Gerlier. Ten days after the arrival of the group on the 8th May, The prefects concerned have responded the curé of Pont-de-Claix wrote to protest about favourably to this request. Nonetheless, since the presence of ’58 juifs cosmopolites’ who had the majority of those who will be transferred to settled in a hotel at the extreme boundary of the these centres are of Jewish origin, I would be parish, and whose outrageous black market obliged if you could let me know if this project activities, according to local rumour, had led to a raises any objections on your part. rise in the prices of foodstuffs. The curé sent a

59 Hotel Bitsch, Pont-de-Manne The centre was in the restaurant building

similar letter a month later.[46] But little can be room]… There were the Ebbeckes (Hans deduced from this about the nature of local Ebbecke had been organist at Strasbourg cathe- feeling as a whole. dral, the Peters (he the principal tenor of the Berlin Opera), the Gaucks (politicals), Mr. Blu- CIMADE knew about the Pont-de-Manne group menfeld, Mrs. Marx and her daughter, who form and took a special interest in some of the part of a group from Gurs which Cimade has residents. Pastor E.C. Fabre, who lived locally, been following. What do you say, what do you was alerted by CIMADE to their arrival and paid a do, when you are 'in life', and the others are 'in number of visits, which he recalled in a death'? You stay still, you watch, watch, listen, contribution to a set of reminiscences published listen again…. by CIMADE in 1968, Les clandestins de dieu. The list of residents had been lost but he recalled I remember the look of the Ebbeckes: he is those with whom he felt a special connection. here to be with her, without her he would not Here are some moments from his description of be here, because she is Jewish and he is not. the centre as he remembered it soon after the She is alarmed by the sickness that is already new residents arrived in May 1942 afflicting him, and which will defeat him. I see the Peters again, she gazing at him with ‘Through the activities of abbé Glasberg and his admiration…he who is fearless before a crowd friends, this hotel had been rented to serve as a yet intimidated by her, when apart from her he refuge for some people freed from Gurs and has so little else…. other camps. The abbé’s committee had put an Egyptian in charge of the house, and the owner I see the Gaucks once again, he…. a social- had agreed to live with his family in outhouses democrat of steel, yet watching over his turtle- that they had quickly fitted out. How did these dove so gently, while she trembles and devotes people choose to come here? We were never herself to whatever task comes to hand. able to penetrate the mystery, no one talked about it. I see Mr. Blumenfeld again, the delicacy of his look and his voice… It was at the beginning of summer 1942 that Cimade informed me about the presence of sev- I see again the look that Mrs. Marx casts on her eral refugees from Gurs in Pont-de-Manne … daughter, her young girl, a look without ro- They included Jews and anti-Nazis. The total manticism, without illusion, yet such a tender residents were about 50. They seemed secure. look, and with such a sense of ‘why’, why did .. she enter the world to be here? And the girl’s gaze in which there are flashes of joy aimed at In those first hot days of 1942, a buzz of life her mother, while the movement of lips and rose from the meadows, copses and forests, forehead cannot hide the struggle against fear. suddenly delivered from the grip of cold. After hearing the news I went to Pont-de-Manne to I see again so many others whose names I meet the guests…It was a small room in the have lost, oh! shame on my memory. Forgive lodge [and] almost all the refugees were there. me for not being able to name you, but to have Those who were absent were in a state of de- written your names down was to risk delivering spair. Some of these had stayed in their rooms, you… while others tried to find distraction in any way We meet in the lodge… I feel rather like a they could. They had to avoid thinking, looking, magnifying glass in the sun. I receive and listening. But the others were present [in the

60 concentrate some rays of hope and suffering…..After the turmoil of the camps you The commandant of the Hautes-Alpes GTE M. will have some days of respite, but you must Laurent, who took on this role in April 1942, have no illusions… looked upon this project with a jaundiced eye. He deplored ‘what was being done for these people What will happen now? We wait. Often I come [young foreign Jews] when the number of French down from Vassieux or La Chapelle-en-Vercors youth who lacked the basic necessities is growing by the Grands-Goulets road, and stop each time by the day.’ to take stock of the threat. Nothing.’ [47] During the first weeks, the residents were busy If there was nothing to threaten the calm of Pont- refurbishing the building, then a number were de-Manne in May 1942, this would soon change assigned to farms in the vicinity. Agricultural abruptly, with the round-ups of the summer, as work was not included in the original project, but we will see in chapter 6. Jules Gueydan recommended, in order to protect the youth from risk of deportation, that they be Lastic centre, Rosans, Hautes-Alpes placed at the disposal of local farmers. He proposed that the Lastic residents should work in The Lastic centre, a former preventorium for neighbouring farms during the day, returning to children from Marseille, situated some distance the centre in the evenings. Jules Gueydan sent a from Rosans, was set up for the purpose of report to the prefect indicating that ‘since the occupational training of youth. In May 1942 it 25th June all these youth have been placed at the received 45 young males (13-20 years old) from disposal of farmers of the region…[and] up to the Gurs and 11 instructors (aged under 30, mostly 20th July they have completed 2050 hours or 200 German) seconded from a GTE (Foreign Labour days of work, with the work increasing during the Battalion). harvest period and meeting with the farmers’ satisfaction.’ He added that ‘in the 1943 season Alexander Glasberg had been in contact with two this labour force will be used at maximum militant Catholics from Gap, Marcel Arnaud and capacity, especially since there is a risk that the Jules Gueydan, who had sheltered a number of Spanish workers [of the GTE] will leave.’ He Jews in Agnielles (a village in Buëch) on the concluded by arguing that the youth of the centre abbé’s initiative. It was Arnaud and Gueydan who should be kept since ‘they constitute one of the suggested setting up a reception centre near few stable resources for the agriculture of the Rosans. As a result in a letter of 20 January department.’ 1942, the DCA made a request to the Hautes- Alpes prefecture for authorisation to establish a The Lastic experiment seemed to satisfy local centre: officialdom, because in a report of 29 June the Chief Superintendant of Security (commissaire ‘This centre will be aimed at young people of principal de la Sûreté) was well-disposed towards 15-19 years of age, who will receive a complete the young residents: ‘As a whole they have professional training, for a manual occupation created rather a favourable impression on the which will be useful to the industry and [50] agriculture of the nation, in a spirit of love of population. They are well-behaved and polite.’ work. The training will be carried out by Yet within two months, during the round-ups of specialised staff whose moral qualities are August 1942, the population of the centre would be decimated.(See chapter 6). beyond question.’ [48]

According to Alexander Glasberg’s 1944 report:

‘The alpine location was particularly suitable for restoring the health of the youth and a great effort was made to ensure a rich diet. OSE covered the costs of maintaining the centre, while ORT installed an excellent carpentry workshop. There were courses in woodwork, photography, together with general instruction and language courses’ [49]

The centre was managed by two members of the DCA team, Ninon Haït (director) and Theodore Bernheim (treasurer). It was organised on the basis of the rules that had been agreed with Vichy: identity and ration cards withdrawn from The Lastic building in modern times residents on arrival; roll calls day and night; movement restriction to the boundaries of the commune; prohibition of radio and political discussion.

61 Vic-sur-Cère, Cantal parents in France, and who were therefore considered to be abandoned. This status of Vic-sur-Cère was a spa centre about 20 abandoned child allowed one to be considered kilometres from Aurillac, capital of the for a reception centre such as Vic-sur-Cère. department of Cantal. It had prospered in the What did ‘without parents’ mean? It meant that summer months because of its spa facilities, but their parents had been deported. In other cases after France’s entry into the war and defeat, the Amitié Chrétienne, which could not secure the hotels became vacant, and this made it possible release of the parents, encouraged the latter to for refugees to settle there. delegate parental authority. Thus, among the In May 1942 the abbé made an approach to the children considered abandoned there were quite Cantal prefecture under the auspices of Amitié a few who still had at least their mother in the Chrétienne, an inter-faith body set up in 1941 in camp.’ [51] which the abbé was closely involved. On 11 July the prefecture authorised the establishment of a A first contingent of thirteen girls (Hungarian, centre. This was a joint initiative with OSE, which Czech, German, Polish), travelling from provided the funding and also took responsibility Rivesaltes and Gurs, arrived on 13 July, 1942, for managing it. It was housed in the Hotel accompanied by Henriette Malkin, the first Touring, a solid four-storey building with the director of the centre, who brought her own two capacity to take 70 residents. children. She had been interned in the camp of Agde and later transferred to Gurs. Her husband Isaac would join her on 28 September, 1942. He had qualified in medicine but was not able to practice as a doctor because of the rules brought in by the Vichy government. The first group included Hannelore Kahn. She was born in Offenburg in Germany on September 11, 1925. She was one of the several thousand Jews from Baden, expelled following the arrests of October 1940 and taken to Gurs. In August 1941 she was transferred to Rivesaltes, along with her parents Adolf and Bertha. Here they remained until 11 August 1942, when Hannelore’s parents were taken from Rivesaltes to Drancy. Their names then appeared on the deportation list of convoy No. 19 of 14 August 1942, along with other parents whose children were brought to Vic-sur-Cère. Some weeks before they were taken from Rivesaltes, Hannelore’s parents surrendered parental rights to Amitié Chrétienne. Hannelore embraced her parents forthe last time on July 13, 1942, then took the train to Vic-sur- Cère along with 12 other girls. Suzanne Gibersztajn was 11 when she arrived in Vic-sur-Cère, and recalled her experience of Hotel Touring, Vic-sur-Cere the former Touring Hotel in an interview at the age of 80, on the occasion of a commemoration of the rescue of Jewish children in Vic-sur-Cère The aim was to accommodate girls aged 15 to 20, during the Second World War. Suzanne was born who were to be transferred from the camps of of Polish Jewish parents in August 1931 in Gurs and Rivesaltes. They would ‘first study the Besançon, in the occupied zone. In July 1942 her French language, then raise vegetable crops and older sister Christine, aged 17, was arrested. Her do farmyard work.’ As in the other reception mother then sent Suzanne and her younger sister centres set up by the abbé, there were strict for protection to a cousin in Lyon: house rules and the residents were responsible for cleaning and cooking and the maintenance of ‘We left in a sealed train and crossed the line at the building. Vierzon before reaching Lyon, where railway- men took us to this cousin's house. But the lat- A contribution to the Jewish Traces website, ter, who was due to leave for Switzerland, then based on Cantal department archives, and the entrusted us to abbé Glasberg, who had estab- source of most of the information in this section, lished this reception center in Vic-sur-Cère un- describes the background: der the aegis of "Amitié Chrétienne”. When we ‘These were foreigners, whose release was arrived at the "Touring Hotel", there were only authorized following the decision of a screening girls who came mostly from the east and spoke commission. The process was as follows: the French poorly. But soon, other children, boys social workers attached to this commission and girls, arrived.’[52] would identify the children who no longer had

62 This development was to save the lives of We left Vic-sur-Cère on 29 January 1943 (I Suzanne and her younger sister, but her mother have a letter sent to my father on that date), and older sister were deported to Auschwitz and and were received in an OSE home in Poulot- did not return. zat-sur-Condé in Haute Vienne.’ [53] Following the first contingent of foreign refugees, the centre expanded with the inclusion of French The children at Hotel Touring were well-looked nationals, and received a number of young after so far as circumstances allowed. Dr. Delort children of both sexes from Lyon, including the was recruited to attend to their health, which was Eiss children (Ela, 14, Adolphe, 13 and Fernande poor when they arrived. A medical card was 12), who arrived on 21 August 1942. drawn up for each child, monthly checks were Some of those who came from Lyon had been carried out, and Delort was summoned ‘at the sheltered with the support of Amitié Chrétienne slightest ailment’. They slept in common rooms, and OSE. This was the case with Sara and Berthe the older children in threes, the younger in fours. Stopnicer, daughters of Izrael Stopnicer and There were straw mattresses but not enough Estera Stopnicer. The parents had left Poland to straw and Delort deplored the fact that requests live in Belgium, then in 1931 settled in Paris for additional allocations of straw were regularly where three daughters were born. Until refused by the Vic-sur-Cère authorities. The November 1941, Izraël worked in the leather blankets were faded and the sheets could not be industry. Then fearing internment by the adequately cleaned because of the lack of soap. occupying authorities, he left Paris with his eldest The canteen, study room and infirmary were son, Jayna, 17. On 28 November they crossed heated in winter but for the rest there was not the demarcation line to take refuge in the nearly enough coal. unoccupied zone, moving to Saint-Didier-au- These were traumatised young people, wrenched Mont-d'Or then to Limonest to the north of Lyon. from family--Suzanne Gibersztajn recalled that In summer 1942 they were joined by Estera and some of the youngest had forgotten their own the three daughters aged 8, 5 and 3. Sara and names-- and the conditions were spartan. Yet Berthe were then taken to Vic-sur-Cère, arriving great efforts were made to provide a supportive on 14 August in the company of other children environment. As one former resident, Hélène from Lyon, and joined the children from the Turner, said: "in Vic, at the Touring-Hotel, we internment camps. They never heard from their were were not so badly off. We had a bed, we ate mother again. at a table. We had found a semblance of normal Sarah-Renée Célémencki was seven when she life." [54] arrived with her sister in Vic-sur-Cère. She is now 84, in good health and living in Paris. Château de Bégué, Cazaubon (department of Gers)

The Chateau du Bégué centre opened in August 1942, but it seems started to receive people somewhat later. It would take in a certain number of residents legally transferred from the camps, but the majority, as Alexander Glasberg explained, had fled from the occupied zone, or Sarah were escapees from the camps, or young men Celemencki who had avoided recruitment to compulsory Bergher labour in Germany. [55] All the residents would Paris 2018 acquire ‘Aryanised’ documents. It was managed by Victor Glasberg, Alexander’s younger brother who had adopted the name ‘Vermont’–the French translation of ‘Glasberg’ (‘glass mountain’).

The choice of the Bégué mansion as a reception She recently recalled: centre followed negotiations between the DCA and Monsieur and Madame André, who had ‘my sister and I arrived in Vic-sur-Cère on 20 purchased it in 1941. The initiative was supported October 1942 from Lyon (OSE file), to which we Monseigneur Théas, bishop of Montauban. During had been taken by smugglers after being ‘lifted’ the First World War he had been billeted at Auch from a UGIF hostel in Paris. We were taken and at that time made the acquaintance of there by the Paris police on 12 July 1942 after Fernand Sentou, soon to become mayor of the arrest of our mother in Belfort, where we Cazaubon (1919-1946). In 1942 Théas, very were living. We were…under the dual control of likely prompted by Alexander Glasberg, solicited the German and French police, held in reserve the help of Sentou, who recommended Château in case needed to fill up the trains leaving for du Bégué, recently purchased by the André the extermination camps. family, as suitable for a reception centre. It had

63 not been fully refurbished but was usable. Also it and as we have seen in the case of Vic-sur-Cere, was thought that thanks to the variety of local the DCA. [59] crops, it would be possible to assure a sufficient supply of food. There was a rent to pay but is was All these initiatives testified to the energy and a nominal sum, the house was in reality a gift. [56] commitment of a number of remarkable people, including not only the leaders of relief Unlike the other four establishments under the organisations but also many others who provided umbrella of the DCA, which began their active life support and education to the Jewish children who during the Vichy regime, Chateau Bégué was found themselves in strange environments, properly established at the end of 1942 when the orphaned or otherwise tragically separated from whole of France came under German occupation. their families. A striking case in point was the We will therefore take up the story of Bégué when help offered to refugee Jews amongst the discussing the fate of the DCA centres in the post- Protestant communites in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon Vichy period. and the surrounding territory of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon. [60]

The arrests and deportations of foreign Jews in summer 1942, and still more the German occupation of unoccupied France, brought a new phase in the rescue effort, in which it was only by Aryanising and hiding vulnerable Jews that they could hope to find protection. That development will be taken up in chapter 6.

NOTES

[1] A. Grynberg, Les camps de la honte, p.49

[2] Wikipedia article on Gurs, edited 29 August 2017 Chateau du Bégué, Cazaubon [3] A. Grynberg, op.cit., pp 143-145

The release of internees: the wider picture [4] M. Marrus and R. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, p.176 The Direction des Centres d’Accueil was one of a number of initiatives to help internees to leave [5] D.A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (New York the camps during the two and a half year period 1963), pp.61-62 of the Vichy regime, though it was distinctive in providing help for able-bodied adults as well as [6] J. Weill, Contribution a l’histoire des camps children, the youth and the elderly. d’internement (Paris 1946), p.94

Apparently influenced by the abbé’s example, [7] Weill commented: ‘When one examines the Madeleine Barot of Cimade inspired the opening of infinite variety of activities of the Joint, the geo- several reception centres in spring 1942: Coteau graphical extent of its assistance, the evolution in Fleuri near Chambon-sur-Lignon, Mas du Diable the life of the collectivities in which it was in- near Tarascon, Vabre in the Tarn, and Foyer volved, the volume of its help, the exceptional Marie-Durand in Marseille. [57] These were based continuity of its action, it is not exaggeration to on a similar model to the DCA: the centres were say that with its great work since 1916 it has con- accredited to receive internees so long as they stituted a Jewish UNRRA avant la lettre ... ' Ibid., remained under regular police supervision. pp.88-89 Meanwhile Oeuvres des Secours aux Enfants made a huge effort to extract children from the [8] Barot’s own account of the role of Cimade in camps, providing refuge for them in a number of the camps is in Madeleine Barot, ‘La Cimade: une presence, une communauté, une action’ in Les homes in unoccupied France. [58] Just before the clandestins de dieu (1968), pp. 29-30 mass arrests of foreign Jews in August 1942, 816 children (130 over the age of 16 and most at risk [9] The original Russian acronym was OZE because they were old enough to be deported) (Obshchestvo zdravoochraneniya evreev [Society were being housed by OSE, the great majority for the Health of the Jewish Population]). The German, Polish and Austrian Jews. By the end of children looked after directly or indirectly by OSE 1942 OSE was managing or financially supporting were however only a fraction of displaced Jewish 14 homes, with responsibility for some 1400 children, most of whom were in run-down hotels, residents. Partner organisations included the refugee centres or internment camps. Hillel Jewish Scouts, the Quakers and Secours Suisse,

64 J.Kieval, ‘Legality and Resistance in Vichy France: [24] D.Lowrie, op.cit., p.89 the rescue of Jewish children’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol.124, np.5 [25] N. Gourfinkel, op.cit., pp.214-216 (Oct 10, 1980), pp.339-366 [26] The exact date is not clear, but Barot did not [10] J.Weill, op.cit., p.91 enter the camp till autumn 1940, while the decision to set up reception centres was made [11] ORT was the Russian acronym for early in 1941 (it took 6 months of negotiations Obshchestvo remeslennogo i zemledel’cheskogo before the plan was finally accepted by Vichy in truda (Society of Handicrafts and Agricultural June 1941). Work among Jews). Hillel J.Kieval, op. cit. [27] ‘Rapport sur l’activité de la Direction des [12] Lucienne Chibrac, Assistance et secours auprès des étrangers — Le service social d'aide centres d’accueil’, p. 153 aux émigrants (SSAE) 1920-1945. [28] Interview for Julie Bertuccelli’s film. http://theses.univ- lyon2.fr/documents/lyon2/2004/chibrac_l [29] N. Gourfinkel, op.cit, p. 247 [13] J. Weill, op.cit., pp. 89-90; OSE in [30] Instructions to this effect were posted up in collaboration with the Quakers was instrumental the DCA reception centres eg Le centre d’accueil in arranging for the emigration of 311 children to de Vic-sur-Cère, Jewish Traces website, 6 march the United States between May 1941 and May 2012 1942. H.J. Kieval op.cit., pp. 351-2 [31] J. Weill, op.cit. p.162 [14] J. Weill, op.cit., p. 92 [32] N. Gourfinkel, op.cit., p.247

[15] Madeleine Barot, op.cit., pp 30-32 [33] J. Weil, op.cit. pp 160-161

[16] Ibid., p.33 [34] N. Gourfinkel, op.cit., p.248

[17] ‘Rapport sur l’activité de la Direction des [35] ‘Rapport sur l’activité de la Direction des centres d’accueil, 1941-1944’ in C.Sorrel ed centres d’accueil’, pp. 151-152 Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981, pp.149-159 [36] Ibid., p. 154 [18] Donald A. Lowrie (1889-1974) graduated in [37] These remarks were included in a report in 1910 from Wooster College, Ohio. He joined the the departmental archive, but omitted in the Young Men's Christian Association in Cleveland and was sent to Russia to help prisoners of war in official record (reproduced in J.Weill, op.cit., World War I. During World War II he headed the pp.158-163). C. Eggers, ‘L’internement sous YMCA in unoccupied France, based in Marseille, toutes ses formes : approche d’une vue and after the German occupation of the whole of d’ensemble du système d’internement dans la France continued his relief work from YMCA offic- zone de Vichy’, Le Monde Juif, no. 153, jan.-avril es in Geneva. He described his work during this 1995 period in his memoir Hunted Children. In 1946 he was appointed director of the Y.M.C.A. Press in [38] N. Gourfinkel, op.cit. pp. 248-249. Paris, which published books in Russian. He was chairman of the commission for revision of the [39] ‘Rapport sur l’activité de la Direction des Russian New Testament. On retirement from the centres d’accueil’, p.153 Y.M.C.A. in 1952, Lowrie became executive secre- tary to the United States Committee for the Unit- [40] N. Gourfinkel, op.cit., pp.250-252 ed Nations Children's Fund, and director of the East European Fund. [41] Ibid., pp. 253-254 [19] J. Weill, op.cit., pp. 109-110 [20] Lucienne Chibrac, Assistance et secours au- [41a] Archives du diocèse de Lyon [ADL], Fonds près des étrangers — Le service social d'aide aux Gerlier, c 8 J, letter of 16 May 1942, cited in M. émigrants (SSAE) 1920-1945, http://theses.univ- Comte, ‘L’abbe Glasberg au secours des Juifs’ in lyon2.fr/documents/lyon2/2004/chibrac_l (in- C. Sorrel ed. op.cit., pp.46-47 cludes a summary of Alexander Glasberg’s De- cember 1941 report to the Nimes Committee) [42] Boris Bezborodko (1918-2005) was born in [21] D.Lowrie, op.cit., p. 85 Czestochowa in Poland and came to France with his mother and siblings (his father had died when [22] Ibid., p. 87 he was four) in 1928. He joined the Jewish Scouts of France (EIF) and at the time of the declaration [23] J. Weill, op. cit., p.177 of war with Germany he was working with the Scouts helping stateless refugees. In November 1939 he was mobilized in Brest for military

65 service in the colonial infantry. After the German Gueydan himself. This measure to assist a return invasion he was interned in Saint-Just-en- to the land became paradoxically a nursery for Chaussée (Oise), and put to work mining non- recruitment to the maquis, because refugees ferrous metals. He escaped at the end of October from Alsace-Lorraine, STO evaders and Jews 1940, fearing that he would be sent to Germany, were employed on the land in this way. P.Hanus, and made his way to Lyon. He worked as op.cit.,p.87 treasurer in Chansaye for a year and half, from late 1941 to July 1943, when a Gestapo raid [51] ibid. forced him to vanish. In 1943 he took the false identity of Georges Bousquet. He was arrested [52] ibid. by the milice in January 1944 in Lyon, imprisoned [53] ‘Le centre d’accueil de Vic-sur-Cère’, Jewish then transferred to Drancy, and was deported on Traces, 6 mars 2012. 3 February to Auschwitz where he worked in a munitions factory. After the evacuation of [54] Interview with Suzanne Gibersztajn 2012, Auschwitz he was sent to the camp of Gusen, http://www.lamontagne.fr/vic-sur-cere/armee- whence he was liberated in May 1945 by the conflit/2012/05/02/suzanne-gibersztajn- American Army. USC Shoah Foundation Witness temoigne-de-son-passage-a-la-maison-denfants- Biographies de-la-commune-cantalienne_1157180.html

[43] N. Gourfinkel, op.cit., p.255 [55] Conversation with Sarah-Renée Celemencki- Bergher at an evening to view Julie Bertuccelli’s [44] The letters are in J. Weill, op.cit., p.165 Le Mystère Glasberg at the Patronage Laïque Ju- les Vallès, Paris, in May 2018, and a subsequent [45] ‘Rapport sur l’activité de la Direction des communication. centres d’accueil’, p.153 [56] Cited in ‘Le centre d’accueil de Vic-sur-Cère’, Jewish Traces, 6 mars 2012. [46] Archives du diocèse de Lyon [ADL], Fonds Gerlier, c 8 J, letters of 18 May and 22 June [57] ‘Rapport sur l’activité de la Direction des centres d’accueil, 1941-1944’, p. 153. Glasberg 1942, cited in M.Comte, op.cit. gives August 1942 as the date when the Château du Begué began functioning, while Madame [47] Pasteur E.C. Fabre, ‘Le Pont-de-Manne-en- André recalled contact between her husband and Royans’ in Les Clandestins de Dieu (1968), ‘probably abbé Glasberg’ in October (‘Le château pp.154-157 du Begué à Cazaubon’, Jewish Traces, 2 juillet 2012 http://jewishtraces.org/begue/). [48] Philippe Hanus, ‘Les centres d’accueil pour juifs etrangers de Saint-Thomas-en-Royans et de [58] Jewish Traces, ‘Le château du Begué à Rosans (1942-1944)’ in Un siècle de réfugiées Cazaubon’, op.cit dans la Drome (2017) [59] These centres were established with financial support from Sweden and the [49] ‘Rapport sur l’activité de la Direction des Ecumenical Council. Madeleine Barot in Les centres d’accueil’, p. 153 Clandestins de Dieu, p.33.

[50] Those who were employed in agriculture [60] L’œuvre de secours aux enfants, Le could avoid being enlisted and sent to Nazi sauvetage des enfants juifs pendant l’Occupation Germany as forced labour for the German war dans les maison de l’OSE 1938-1945 (Paris 2008) effort, under the STO (Service du Travaille Obligatoire) regime. This was because during the [61] Hillel J.Kieval, op.cit. war there had been a haemorrhage from the countryside, and many French farmworkers were [62] Caroline Moorhead, Village of Secrets. still held as prisoners of war in Germany Defying the Nazis in Vichy France (2014); Patrick (farmworkers were about a third of French Henry, We Only Know Men (2007) POWs). As a result a Mission de restauration paysanne was created by Vichy, and the head of the Hautes Alpes branch was none other than

66 Drawing by a friend of Nina Gourfinkel, dated August 1949. It is based on Gourfinkel’s memoirs and depicts, left to right, Abbé Glasberg, Ninon Weyl and Theo Bernheim. The drawing conjures up the barbed wire of the Gurs camp, the bicycle which produced such a fuss at the Fédération des sociétés juives, and the small car which replaced it after the war. The plane is a reference to Alexander Glasberg’s trip to Tehran in 1948 to pave the way for the exit of Iraqi Jews.

The symbolism refers to Joan of Arc’s description of her banner during her trial in Rouen: ‘Above, it appeared to me, were written these words: Jesus-Maria, and the banner was fringed with silk.’

The banner which Jehanne la Pucelle had made in Tours to reflect the voices which had inspired her

‘Bayard’ on the third banner refers to a legendary magic bay horse in the chansons de geste, famed for its spirit and its supernatural capacity to adjust to the size of its riders.

67 68 Chapter 5 The round-ups, Amitié Chrétienne and the drama of Vénissieux

A Turning Point

The summer of 1942 saw a fateful change in the role of the Vichy government, which moved towards a deeper collaboration with the occupier as the Germans demanded the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews from occupied and unoccupied French territory: the French contribution to the Final Solution of the Jewish Question adopted by the Nazis in January 1942.

This change was assisted by a renewal of the Vichy leadership. In April 1942, at the insistence of the German authorities, Laval took over from Darlan as vice-president of the Council, in May René Bousquet was appointed General Secretary Round-up of Vel d’Hiv, Paris July 1942 of the Police, and in the same month Xavier Vallat, head of the Commissariat General aux Questions Juives, was replaced by the more extreme anti-Semite Darquier de Pellepoix. [1]

The result of a German-French agreement in early July was the arrest of 13,000 foreign and recently naturalised Jews, including 5000 children, in the ‘Vel d’Hiv’ round-up in Paris on 16 and 17 July, conducted by French police after searches of homes, businesses and public establishments. Once arrested the victims were taken to assembly points and holding centres and then to Drancy, a deportation camp outside Paris set up in August 1941, whence they were taken to ‘work camps’ in the east—to Auschwitz. Deportees taken to Drancy Over the two year period from summer 1942 to summer 1944, some 75,000 Jews were transported from French territory, the great the Vel d’Hiv arrests in July, round-ups followed majority (67,000) from Drancy. About 2,500 in August in the southern zone. The Vichy survived. [2] authorities provided the police force to carry out this operation, which was helped by a population Vichy attempted without success to conceal what census carried out in December 1941, and by the was happening, and when challenged protested concentration of foreign Jews in internment that French Jews were being protected in the face camps or labour battalions or living in places of of intense German pressure, since Laval had ‘assigned residence’ under police supervision. [3] insisted that the operation should be restricted to Jews who had arrived in France after 1 January The round-ups were prepared by a strictly secret 1936. instruction of 5 August from the Ministry of the Interior to all regional prefects. The circular, The numbers arrested never matched German signed by Henri Cado, Bousqet’s deputy in the expectations, because many were forewarned of police secretariat, ordered regional prefects to impending arrests, and some French police prepare to send all foreign Jews who had entered resisted carrying out their hideous task. But the France since 1 January 1936 to the occupied participation of the Vichy regime in the zone. These were to include Germans, Austrians, deportation of Jews from French territory has left Czechs, Poles, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, an indelible stain on the reputation of the French people of Danzig and the Sarre, Soviet citizens state during the German occupation. and Russian refugees. There were eleven categories of exemption, including: the elderly Round-ups in the southern zone over 60, unaccompanied children under 18 months, those who had served in the French As part of the deal with the Germans, Laval army or the Allied army, pregnant women. (The agreed to release 10,000 foreign Jews from the full list of eleven exemptions is in the circular 40 departments of unoccupied France, and after reproduced below) [4]

69 Sunday 23 August, a letter which became quickly known thanks to its diffusion across France and in the international media. This was followed a week later by a still more strongly worded letter from by Mgr Théas, bishop of Montauban, to be read at every mass in every church of his diocese on Sunday 30 August. [8]

Letter of Monseigneur Saliège Archbishop of Toulouse.

My Very Dear Brothers

There is a Christian morality, a human morality which imposes duties and recognises rights. These duties and rights belong to the nature of our humanity. They come from God. They cannot be violated. No mortal is allowed to override them.

That children, women, men, fathers and mothers are treated like a vile herd, that members of the same family are separated from one another and sent to an unknown destination, it is only in our time that we are witness to such a sad spectacle.

Why do we no longer have a right of asylum in Police directive on exemptions our Churches? Why are we defeated? 5 August 1942 LORD, have pity on us. Several transports departed from internment camps in early August--from Gurs, le Vernet, les OUR LADY, pray for France. Milles, Noe and Recedebou-- taking some 3,400 internees to Drancy. The majority were then sent In our diocese we have seen heart-rending on to Auschwitz--the first ‘delivery’ of foreign spectacles in the camps of Noé and Jews from the unoccupied zone. [5] These Récédebou. Jews are men, they are women. All transports were in freight cars with practically no is not allowed against these men and women, facilities. On 11 August the Chief Rabbi Kaplan against these fathers and mothers. They are witnessed a heartrending spectacle in Perrache belong to the human race. They are our station in Lyon, where a train carrying 400 brothers like many others. Christian cannot deportees had stopped. They were in a pitiful forget it. condition and Kaplan made an urgent appeal to France the beloved country, France which Cardinal Gerlier to intervene with Pétain to call a brings the tradition of respect for the human halt to the operation. person to all its children, The result was a communication from Gerlier to France the chivalrous and generous, I am sure Pétain, which according to one commentator that you are not responsible for these errors. displayed an ‘astonishing moderation’. [6] Gerlier asked ‘that they be spared, if possible, these Be assured, my Very Dear Brothers, of my miseries and sufferings’ and worried about affectionate devotion. ‘everything in the material organisation of the convoys which ignores the essential rights of all Jules-Géraud Saliège human beings and the basic rules of charity’ [7] Archevêque de Toulouse

A much stronger protest was made by the To be read without comment next Sunday, 23rd archbishop of Toulouse, Mgr Saliège, one of the August 1942, in all the churches of the diocese. very few in the Catholic hierarchy to take a public stand against the deportations. Apparently alerted by a social worker from Gurs, he instructed that a letter be read, without comment, in all the churches of his diocese on

70 Jules-Géraud Saliège Archevêque de Toulouse (1870-1956) Pierre-Marie Théas 1894-1977

Amitié Chretienne Letter of Monseigneur Théas Alexander Glasberg’s life was immediately and Bishop of Toulouse deeply affected by the changes of summer 1942. They posed a direct threat to the Direction des ON RESPECT FOR THE HUMAN BEING Centres d’Acceuil, to be described in the next My Dear Good Friends, chapter. They also brought to the fore another association in which the abbé played a very active Some sad and at times horrible scenes are part: Amitié Chrétienne. This body was being enacted in France, for which France is established in Lyon in May 1941 under the not responsible. patronage of Cardinal Gerlier and Pastor Boegner, following a proposal by Gilbert Beaujolin, a young In Paris, dozens of thousands of Jews have Lyon industrialist. [9] It brought together Catholics been treated with the utmost savagery. And and Protestants, local officials and professionals. now our regions have been witness to a A constituent general assembly was held in heartbreaking spectacle: families broken up, September 1941 and an office established at 12, men and women treated like a vile herd and Rue Constantine. sent to an unknown destination which heralds the gravest dangers. Like the Nimes Committee, Amitié Chrétienne had the approval of the Vichy government. In order to I give voice to the Christian conscience, and gain recognition, the foundation statutes carefully I proclaim that all men, Aryan and non- avoided saying that the main concern was with Aryan, are brothers, because created by the Jewish refugees. The association 'is inspired same God: that all men, whatever their race above all by Christian principles' and ‘aims to or their religion, are entitled to the respect relieve by all means the moral and material from individuals and states. suffering of French subjects, foreigners, stateless people or those with uncertain nationality, who Yet the current anti-Semitic measures show have been placed by circumstance in the position contempt for human dignity, they are a of refugees or have been reduced to poverty’; ‘in violation of the most sacred rights of the case of need to create individual or collective person and the family. refuges for these people, to ensure the provision of meals through refectories and restaurants, the May God comfort and strengthen those who distribution of clothes etc;’ ‘ to bring to these are iniquitously persecuted, and grant the same people all possible moral support by world true and lasting peace based on justice seeking out their families, their property and to and charity. assist them in the defence of their rights.’ [10] Pierre-Marie Théas Nonetheless it was clear that the aim of Amitié Bishop of Montauban Chrétienne was to come to the assistance of foreign Jews, and it provided a convenient screen for Jewish involvement, in particular the To be read without comment at all masses in involvement of Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants. It all the churches of the Diocese, Sunday 30 was in reality a Judeo-Christian association. And August 1942. as the threats to Jewish refugees intensified, Amitié Chrétienne, never with explicit approval

71 from Gerlier, moved beyond its legal framework. alongside other important figures of the Catholic It began to act as a cover for clandestine activity, resistance in Lyon. These included Père Pierre since the only way now to protect foreign Jews Chaillet and Jean-Marie Soutou, who are briefly was to create false identities and find places of described in the separate entries below. Many shelter for those under threat of arrest and others were involved [11], but Chaillet and Soutou deportation. are singled out here because of their close relationship to abbé Glasberg. Earlier in 1942 abbé Glasberg had moved the offices of the Direction des Centres d’Acceuil to the Amitié Chrétienne address in Rue Constantine. He was a key person within it,

Jean Marie Soutou Père Pierre (1912 -2003): a Chaillet (1900- radical Catholic who 1972): a Lyon- joined the team of the based Jesuit who journal Esprit in 1934, inspired the after meeting the clandestine editor Emmanuel periodical Cahiers Mounier who du Temoignage profoundly impressed Chrétien, him as ‘an inspired published man and a free spirit’. between Soutou was a self- November 1941 taught intellectual who started out as a and August 1944, radio technician, then became a key figure a passionate in Esprit, which was for him ‘a university’, voice against a ‘place of study’. Through Esprit Soutou fascism and met the Spanish diplomat Semprun y antisemitism. (The first issue was entitled Gurrea. Soutou helped the Semprun "France, beware not to lose your soul") He family to leave Spain after the republican had spent time before the war in Germany defeat, and in 1941 married Semprun’s and central Europe where he became acutely daughter Maribel, thus becoming the aware of the dangers of fascism. In 1939 he brother-in-law of the writer Jorge published a short work entitled L'Autriche Semprun. souffrante, in which he denounced Nazi anti- Semitism and which brought him to the After the French defeat, Soutou was in attention of the Gestapo. Commenting on the Lyon and became part of the Catholic passivity of the Catholic Church in France, resistance there, while remaining close to Chaillet wrote : ‘Up till now, despite certain Esprit. He was a key figure in Amitié commedndable efforts, but very scattered Chrétienne, close to Alexander Glasberg, and without coordination by the catholic Père Chaillet and Germaine Ribière, and Church, one notes with sadness that the work played an important part in the rescue of of material, social and moral assistance in the the children of Vénissieux described in this many ‘hosting camps’ and in relation to lone chapter. He was also involved in the refugees in the cities, is for all practical manufacture of false papers for purposes provided entirely by the big ‘undesirable’ foreigners and for résistants. Protestant and Jewish committees in liaison He was arrested by the Gestapo in with the foreign committees for aid to January 1943 and spent three weeks in fort Montluc prison. While there he was [12] refugees.’ But Chaillet himself became interrogated by Barbie, head of the very active in support of ‘undesirable’ Gestapo in Lyon, who tried to extract foreigners, and was a key figure in Amitié information on the whereabouts of abbé Chrétienne. He played an important role in Glasberg, who had by then gone into the rescue of children from Vénissieux in hiding under a pseudonym. Soutou was August 1942, and in refusing to divulge their released after an intervention by cardinal hiding places. Following his arrest by the Gerlier and escaped to Switzerland, where Gestapo in January 1943, he was released he was he was an exterior representative after pleading that he was a poor village of the Mouvement unis de la Résistance. priest from the north who had been wrongly In this context he met Georges Bidault, taken. He then moved to Italian-occupied which influenced him to embark on a France whence he continued to work for the diplomatic career after the war. His first Resistance. [13] post was in Zagreb, while Tito was establishing power, which reinforced him in his opposition to communist regimes and commitment to the Western alliance. [14]

72 Amitié Chrétienne enters the fray [21] and on the memoirs of Jean Marie Soutou, Despite the secrecy surrounding these decisions, who was closely involved in the events, side by news of an imminent roundup was leaked to side with Alexander Glasberg. [22] Amitié Chrétienne. As Jean Marie Soutou recalled: ‘The Vénissieux camp was not, in August 1942, ‘At the beginning of August, we learned from our a camp..where people remained, but a place of accomplices inside the Vichy administration itself triage…One anonymous OSE witness who was (abbé Glasberg was a master at infiltrating the present at the camp, recalls that the internees administration, bearing in mind that under Vichy were placed in numbered barracks where they a cassock was a kind of talisman which allowed could sleep on straw. There was water in the you to go anywhere) that foreign Jews from the courtyard and a canteen where they could eat. southern zone were to be rounded up in a former barracks in Vénissieux in the suburbs of Lyon, Jean Adam reports that the personnel of the camp were made up of regular personnel, which had been turned into a camp.'[18] extraordinary personnel, faith groups and medical service people. The regular staff comprised some Indochinese groups performing the main services of provisioning, cooking and cleaning. There was also a colonial commander and his second who formed the cadres of the MOI. The extraordinary personnel, in the context of this round-up of foreign Jews…were concerned with the detainees and comprised gardes mobiles, gendarmes and a few people sent by Vichy.’ [23]

The screening commission was headed by an official from the prefecture, but the volunteer Vénissieux barracks in 1917 helpers who came in under the umbrella of the Amitié Chrétienne played a critical role in the Amitié Chrétienne also knew that provision had process, arguing the case for exemption for been made to exempt certain categories from numerous internees. The officials on the spot, deportation, which meant that those taken to whether civil or police, were very hard-pressed, Vénissieux would be subject to screening to did not know foreign languages and had a poor decide who would and would not be deported. grasp of the changing rules concerning the status Taking advantage of Gerlier’s patronage, Amitié of foreign Jews. The Amitié Chrétienne volunteers Chrétienne obtained emergency authorisation to were thus able to make themselves indispensable send a team of social assistants to Vénissieux to to the commission, whose officials were incapable of carrying out a rigorous examination of each help with the screening process. [19] This team case, and perhaps willing to be persuaded included, amongst others, Abbé Glasberg and because some of them some undoubtedly hated Jean Marie Soutou on the Catholic side, Madeleine what they were doing. Gilbert Lesage of SSE was Barot on behalf of the Protestant CIMADE, while also influential in this regard, pushing the volunteers for OSE included Georges Garel, commission towards reliance on one circular Charles Lederman, Claude Gutmann, Lili Garel, rather than another, helping to maximise the Elisabeth Hirsch and Helène Levy. Père Chaillet number of exemptions. It was a chaotic scene, assumed overall responsibility for the Amitié and in the words of Soutou, ‘we took advantage Chrétienne involvement. Other key assistants in [24] the screening at Vénissieux were the young medic of the mess’. Jean Adam, and Gilbert Lesage of the Service Sociale des Etrangers, an eccentric Vichy official The car with yellow wheels who managed to provide much support for foreign Jews from within the administration Abbé Glasberg and Jean Marie Soutou, together itself—indeed he may be have been the source of with Soutou’s wife Maribel, arrived at the camp the leak to which Soutou referred. The story of on 26 August in a car loaned by a Lyon Lesage, which justifies his description as a industrialist, a member of the executive Amitié Chrétienne ‘vichysto-résistant’, is outlined in a separate entry committee of . It was driven by below. Soutou. This car, a black front-wheel drive Citroen with yellow wheels, happened to be The screening process identical to the cars of the prefecture. The sentries, assuming it was an official car, What is known as the ‘Night of Vénissieux’ in fact presented arms! As a result it was able to come and go freely, without passenger checks. This was took place over two nights and three days, 26th- a critical circumstance over the next two days th 29 August. The account that follows is based because a few of the detainees, whose faces or mainly on the work of Valérie Perthuis-Portheret dress allowed them to be mistaken for social

73 Gilbert Lesage defeat in June 1940. He went to Vichy to see if (1910-1989) he could make himself useful. There he met someone whom he had known before the war and who had just been appointed to a post in the Ministry of the Interior. Thanks to his support, Lesage embarked on a civil service career, and in February 1941 was appointed head of a newly created agency which in November became the Service social des étrangers (SSE). This body, headed by Henri Maux, was part of the Commissariat de la lutte contre le chômage, set up in October 1940 to combat high unemployment. The SSE grew from a staff of 14 in July 1941 to 350 by 1944.

As head of the SSE Lesage was charged with developing material and psychological support to internees, in particular through reception centres set up for the families of internees who had been enrolled in Foreign Labour Battalions (GTE). Lesage also had special responsibility for centres opened by the Polish Gilbert Lesage (1910-1989) came from a Red Cross for its nationals. Normandy petit bourgeois background on his father’s side and a bohemian milieu (the island Lesage was also notable for the support that of Rénunion) on his mother’s side. At first he he brought to Jewish refugees threatened with found it difficult to find his way after a ‘chaotic arrest, on several occasions providing and emotionally deprived childhood’. He took warnings of imminent police action, and he several university courses, worked in a encouraged Jewish organisations in the number of different occupations, and travelled establishment of a clandestine network of across Europe. In 1929 he became a Quaker, hiding places for children. He played an appreciating its openness of spirit and freedom important role during the Vénissieux episode of thought. in late August, described in this chapter, helping to ensure a maximum number of Despite his pacifism, he undertook military exemptions from deportation. His role was service in 1931–2. In late 1932, as a supporter noted by the director of the investigation and of Franco-German rapprochement, he joined control section of the Commissariat General the Quaker association Entraide européenne, aux Questions Juives, who complained about and worked for it in Berlin for several months, protection of Jews by the SSE, saying that helping children affected by the German social Lesage ‘does not hide his sentiments and and economic crisis. In spring 1933 he was facilitates the Jews with every means at his arrested and expelled by the Nazis, who had disposal in his important position.’ recently gained power. There were no immediate repercussions for On his return to France he worked in a Lesage but later he was reported to the voluntary capacity for various associations in occupying authorities. He was arrested by the the service of refugees: Spanish republicans Gestapo in April 1944 and interned at the defeated in the Spanish civil war, and anti- Caserne des Tourelles, Paris, but freed in Nazis who had fled the Reich. On the autumn 1944. All this justifies the description declaration of war he enlisted despite his of Gilbert Lesage as a ‘vichysto-résistant’. [20] pacifism but was demobilised after France’s

74 assistants, were able to make their escape in the official, who was amazed to discover that details car. The freedom of movement was also vital in of the exemptions were known. liaising with contacts outside. [25] This meant that members of the team had to The tale of the prefect’s briefcase plead with each family in turn, passing from one hut to another. This traumatic process went on Soutou recalled that when the Amitié Chrétienne for a night and a day. The scenes at Vénissieux volunteers arrived, a prefecture official explained were heartrending, yet with the exception of one to them that there were certain exemptions, but Polish couple who refused to give up their young in a manner which suggested that information son, all the parents, evidently aware of their was being withheld. This suspicion inspired desperate fate, finally agreed to let their children Soutou to find a moment to remove this official’s go. ‘These mothers and fathers knew…where they briefcase to see what further information it might were going. Would they otherwise have entrusted reveal: their children to us, to these people who were so unknown?’ ‘It seems to me that it was because we had the feeling that they were hiding things that I Madeleine Barot recalled, many years later, in her decided to seize the briefcase of the prefect's interview for Julie Bertucelli’s film, the terrible representative. I had noticed that in the general nature of the task which the team had set agitation, when he went to see what was themselves: happening at the other end of the camp, which was relatively large, he left his briefcase on a ‘We rushed into the huts, where families were chair that he simply pushed back under the grouped together, and explained that we could table. He left and I grabbed the case ... .I took prevent the children being taken, if the parents the case, put it in the boot of the car, said gave us power of attorney, which would give us nothing to anyone and left ... I parked in a the legal right to take their children. It was vacant space and read what I could find in this absolutely awful. Horrible. To have to say that case, I took shorthand notes on a piece of to parents, and still worse for the parents to paper, came back to the the camp and found have to accept the immediate departure of their the abbé struggling with the representative of children. But since many of them didn’t think the prefect who was looking for his briefcase. they would survive anyway, they preferred to The eyes of the abbé told me that he was take the risk….’ thinking, this is a coup by Jean-Marie and I got him to understand that I had put the case in a Many parents accepted with courage and dignity corner. But it was absolutely essential to return and this left an especially powerful mark all those it because we were acting in a legal capacity involved. Yet much persuasion had also to be and Gerlier would not have supported us used, and in haste because there was so little otherwise. The abbé put on an act, saying: "Ah time to complete the process. Abbé Glasberg, finally! Finally! Dear friend! Here it is, your who spoke Russian, Polish, Yiddish and German, briefcase! ... " and the representative of the was especially effective, as Soutou recalled in a prefect seemed more happy to have avoided tribute after the abbé’s death in 1981: trouble than anxious to find out why his '[He] was everywhere, forced decisions to be briefcase had disappeared. I am sure that he made, put his hand on a shoulder, said a few could never imagine that I had taken it out! words in Germanic or Slavic languages and Following this episode, I explained to the abbé dialects, then moved on to another family that I had found a list of exemptions in the curled up in their hut, shoulder to shoulder, briefcase: there was an exemption from arms knotted. Only one refused to separate deportation for children under 8, but there was from her young boy '[27] an ambiguity in the text…which said "unaccompanied children under 18", not As the process went on time became very short, "children without family", and there was a big and the efforts to persuade the parents all the more urgent, as Madeleine Barot recalled: difference.'[26]

Persuading the parents to release their ‘time quickly became too precious to continue children asking the parents if they wanted to entrust their children [to us]. Sometimes the mothers The Amitié Chrétienne team then took the released their children with dignity, but other courageous but agonising decision to ask the parents could not…Some of us had to become more authoritarian, to ‘drag’ the children away.’ parents to release their children by delegating [28] parental rights to Amitié Chrétienne, so that they could now be classed as ‘unaccompanied children The OSE volunteers were also active. Georges under 18’. Abbé Glasberg urged that the children Garel described his experience thus : be quickly assembled, and Soutou recalled that the abbé’s manner intimidated the prefecture ‘I was aware that the fate of these people would be quickly settled. But we could not say

75 brutally: you, you are condemned to die, at driven in a different direction, towards Saint- least let your children survive. So we decided to Priest railway station. The buses passed each persuade them while saying the minimum other and parents, faces pressed against possible about the fate of the parents. But windows, tried desperately to spot their children [there was a] blackout, and we could not locate for a last time. [33] the barracks with the families [that we still needed to speak to]... Also our task was made The children were taken to a former Carmelite difficult by the fact that we were constantly convent in Croix-Rousse (montée des interrupted ... Seeing the time passing, we Carmelites), which had been used as premises by became more authoritarian and told the the Jewish Scouts. It was a huge building and parents: 'We will come to fetch your children.' particularly useful because, in the manner of Some families complied. But this [approach] buildings in old Lyon, it had not just one exit but was not always enough…and in some cases we four or five via traboules, so that you could leave had to remove the children from the parents the building several hundred meters away on the against physical resistance. When a mother opposite side to the entrance. [36] The children clung to her child, we had to pull the child from could not remain there, because the prefecture her in as civilized a way as possible’ [31] would soon discover that the telegram cancelling the exemptions for under-18s had been ignored, It also happened that parents asked if they could and the children would be quickly found. After a sign the delegation of parental authority not just few hours they were therefore removed to other for a child under the age limit, but also for a child convents and safe houses, taking advantage of a over the age limit. There were two sisters, one network of refuges which Amitié Chrétienne and under and one just over the limit. To enable both OSE had already begun to put in place. [37] The to escape deportation, Garel turned them into rescue thus depended not only on the feverish twins by tampering with their identity papers. But activity of the screening commission in the he could not attempt also to save their brother, Vénissieux camp, but also on the courage of aged 20, for fear of compromising the whole people outside acting as go-betweens and group. Faced with the desperate entreaties of the sheltering the children. family, Garel had to tell them that it was categorically impossible. When it was time for the children to leave, the two girls were ‘veritable statues of despair’, they had no more tears to shed. [30]

Georges Garel 1909-1979

Montée des Carmélites, Lyon

The children are driven away

Finally around 5am on 28 August, 85 children assembled with their bundles in the refectory to be driven away. Valérie Porthuis-Portheret was able to establish this number on the basis of the forms that had assigned parental authority to Amitié Chrétienne. To these she added four more children who were known to have passed through the camp and escaped, making 89. [31]

The children were then driven away in buses, ‘three gazogènes which the abbé had managed to procure thanks to relations about which he told Traboules in the Croix-Rousse district of Lyon us nothing.’ [32] Just as they were leaving in one direction, a group of adult deportees were being

76 Adults rescued hut, and Adam gained agreement to use a second hut for this purpose. In addition to the children, some 380 adults were also saved by the use of exemptions. These ‘Each night we had to fight to keep them. Each included people who had fought with the former night lorries or buses would stop at the doors of Allied armies, former Foreign Legion combatants, the barracks to take on… the detainees who had parents of children under five, and a few Aryans already been declared deportable. And every who had been picked up from the Groupements day there were suicide attempts….new crises of des Travailleurs Etrangers. Furthermore many despair….’ internees were sick and thus ‘non-transportable’. Each case had to be argued separately: ‘it was specified that not one Jew must remain in the camp after boarding. Several times I was ‘The commissioner [for the prefecture] was given this formal order: “Remove the sick who installed in one of the barracks and each are in bed”…the number of my sick quickly detainee (even most of the sick) had to go to exceeded 100…Appealing to insurmountable his headquarters, for the secretaries to draw up material difficulties, appealing to pity, I information sheets. As each internee passed succeeded in keeping my protégés until the through, the confessional groups sought at all departure of the last convoy…. It was thus that costs to demonstrate to the ‘judges’ that this or our situation became very vulnerable and that prisoner was not deportable…. Joseph Weill dangerous. The Vichy orders in no way recalled the night when Charles Lederman authorised this loss, especially in such (assisted by Alexander Glasberg), Andrée proportions. The commissioner appointed to Salomon, Georges Garel, Lili Tager (future wife organise the deportation had to empty the of Georges Garel), Helene Levy (chief nurse of camp at all costs. Because of my situation as an OSE), Denise Grunwald, Alice Szalbuk of SSAE, unqualified medic and the way the roles had and Gilbert Lesage of SSE, tenaciously argued been assigned, my medical decisions had no each file before the screening validity. Well! I managed to protect all these commission…referring to more or less fictitious men, all these women, despite several specific clauses and circumstances…’ [36] threats. I took on the responsibility of declaring them unfit and untransportable. It was an Lili Garel remembered above all the role of abbé abuse of power, even a usurpation. How would Glasberg: the authorities on whom I depended in a professional sense react? I telephoned Vichy, to ‘especially l’abbe Glasberg who juggled with the management of my service. Two days the records with amazing dexterity to enable passed. Would they cover for me? Have me the use of versions of the law that were most arrested? Deport my sick people in another advantageous for the internees, [bearing in convoy? I did not for one minute abandon mind that] the administrative people were very them.’ particular about applying official instructions. To me [abbé Glasberg] seemed a magician in ‘What agonizing hours! On the third day I dealing with each case.’ [37] telegraphed Vichy again, for the sake of appearances…. I then received a visit from the The Amitié Chrétienne team benefitted from the medical director. I don’t remember his name, fact that they had drawn up a questionnaire, but I know that later he had trouble with the which was quickly mimeographed. The screening Gestapo. This courageous Frenchman signed a officials had made no provision of this kind and so hospital order for all these sick people. 120? the questionnaire was adopted by them. Also 130? I no longer know. I then ensured that they representatives of the SSE and SSAE managed to would be taken as quickly as possible to various conceal certain records, so that not all could be Lyon hospitals.’ [39] examined in time, and this may have brought salvation for some. In effect, in the words of Jean In addition to the various adults who were saved Adam, a ‘small resistance movement was created by the battle over exemptions, a certain number in the camp of Vénissieux so that as many people of young people above the age threshold escaped as possible would fall under the conditions of thanks to the use of the car with yellow wheels exemption.’ [38] which was identical to the cars of the prefecture. As Jean Marie Soutou recalled, ‘I took advantage A large group of adults, around 120, were of [the car] during those days to come out exempted on grounds of sickness. The sick were carrying young refugees whose faces or clothing in the care of Jean Adam, a not yet fully qualified allowed them to be mistaken for our colleagues.’ medic. There was supposed to be a team of [40] Furthermore about a dozen young girls over medics but two doctors did not materialise. The the age limit escaped by playing the role of ‘medical struggle’ then rested on Adam, who was escorts in the buses that took the children out of at pains to ensure that both the sick and the the camp. [41] ‘pseudo-sick’ would be classed as ‘non- transportable’. They were housed in an infirmary

77 The search for the missing children the children were not found. As a result, for Soutou, the cardinal did not emerge badly from The regional authorities quickly realised that the these events: police directives of late August had been ignored during the screening at Vénissieux, and made ‘Concerning Cardinal Gerlier…To be sure this urgent efforts to retrieve the missing children. On was not an extraordinary heroism... but ‘what 30 August the intendant de police came to the we did we would not have done had Gerlier not Amitié Chrétienne office and demanded to know covered us. We did not tell him [about the their addresses. As director of Amitié Chrétienne, clandestine side of our activities] so as not to Père Chaillet took responsibility for refusing. He cause alarm, but in the case of the Jewish explained that Amitié Chrétienne had made children at Venissieux, it is clear that he commitments to the parents, and to accept the supported us... cancellation of exemptions now, to divulge the whereabouts of the children, would pose a grave The current image about [my role in the problem of conscience. The demand was refused, Venissieux episode] is false. It has been said and Chaillet paid for his refusal by two months of [on several occasions] that I refused to hand house arrest in Privas in the Ardèche. [42] over the addresses of the children to Cardinal Gerlier because I distrusted him. I took issue At the same time the Rhone prefect Angeli put with that. We did indeed refuse the addresses, pressure on Cardinal Gerlier who, in his capacity but I did not think for a moment that if we had as honorary president of Amitié chrétienne, passed them on he would have betrayed us. summoned a meeting on the same day, which However I was afraid of his naïveté. He was included Glasberg and Soutou, and asked them capable of being duped by an official, and since to produce the addresses. At a conference of he made a big distinction between a German reminiscence about the French Resistance in promise which he did not accept, and a promise October 1980, just a few months before his by the Vichy government which he was ready to death, and 38 years after the event, abbé accept, I had no desire to give him those Glasberg recalled: addresses.’ [44]

‘... the police learned that the children had left A gesture of defiance from the military the camp and that it was the people of Amitié Chrétienne who had taken them. The police The ‘small resistance movement’ in the Vénissieux demanded that they be returned. Soutou and I camp was followed by another obstruction, now went to see Cardinal Gerlier. You may believe within the military. On Friday 29 August the this or not, I myself would not believe it if intendant de police instructed General de Saint- someone else were to tell me, and yet it is true. Vincent, military governor of Lyon, to put several Cardinal Gerlier said to us: "Give me the companies of the garrison at the disposal of the addresses where you have hidden these police so as to maintain order during the children. I have the Marshal's promise, he will embarkation of trains taking deportees to the not give them up to the Germans. We must occupied zone. The General flatly refused: ‘I will trust the French police, they will not go looking never make my troops available for such an for them, but they want to know where they operation.’ Within 48 hours, he was sacked by are. They will on no account be handed over to the Vichy War Minister General Bridoux. His the Germans, please let me have these dismissal was announced in the press, addresses " unexplained. [45]

I did not know how to react, but Soutou, who A bitter success was much more clear-headed, said, "You’re your Eminence, here they are" The events following the round-up of foreign Jews in the Lyon region in August 1942 testified to the On leaving, I said to Soutou: "Do you realize currents of resistance within the Vichy what you have done?” He replied, "You don’t administration, and were a success for Amitié think I gave him the real addresses! I had Chrétienne, in which Abbé Glasberg played a prepared a false list. " major role. But it was a bitter success: 545 foreign Jews were transported to occupied Well, the police came to all these fake territory, including the parents of the children addresses - where, of course, they did not find who had been rescued. 475 left Drancy for any children ... ' [43] Auschwitz in convoy 27 on 2 September 1942, 58 in convoy 30 on 9 September, and only one In his memoirs Soutou does not say anything returned. [46] about false addresses, and it may be that in the reminiscence above the abbé’s memory was at fault. The full story about this meeting with Gerlier thus remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that Amitié chrétienne did not divulge the addresses, Gerlier did not press the point, and NOTES [23] V. Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit., p.45, citing CDJC, CCXIII 116 ; Docteur Jean Adam, Archives [1] Valerie Perthuis-Portheret, Août 1942. Lyon Départementales, 31J, B113, feulliet 2-3 et 4 contre Vichy (Editions Lyonnaises d’Art et d’Histoire 2012), Introduction. [24] Soutou, op. cit., p.32

[2] Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Caxton, [25] Ibid., p.27 Vichy France and the Jews. (Stanford University Press 1981), p. 252, 343 f [26] Ibid., p.28

[3] Ibid. p. 258 [27] Tribute after the death of abbé Glasberg in April 1981. Archives Soutou, cited in M. Comte, [4] Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit., p. 37 op. cit., p.54

[5] Donald Lowrie, letter to Tracy Strong, General [28] Reminiscence recorded by Perthuis- Portheret, op. cit., p.54 Secretary YMCA, 17 September 1942 [29] Reported by Annie Latour, La Résistance [6] François Delpech, cited in Marrus and Caxton, juive en France (1940-1944) (Stock 1970), p. 59, cited in Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit., p.54 op. cit., p. 271 [30] Témoignage de Georges Garel, CDJC, [7] Cited by Lucien Lazare, op. cit., p. 12 DLXXII-7, cited by Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit., p.54 [8] The texts of both these letters are in René [31] V. Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit., p.154. A Nodot, Mémoires d’un juste. Résistance non- figure of 108 children is often mentioned in violente 1940-1944. (Editions Ampelos 2011), pp. connection with the Vénissieux screening, but it is 169,171 not clear what this is based on. [9] Patrick Cabanel, Histoire des Justes en France [32] Jean-Marie Soutou, op. cit., p.29. The (Armand Colin 2012), p. 153 children were accompanied by a number of [10] Archives du Diocèse de Lyon, Fonds Gerlier, volunteers: Hélène Levy, Georges Garel, Claude C8, carton J, cited in Madeleine Comte, ‘L’abbé Gutmann, Charles Lederman and Elizabeth Glasberg au secours des Juifs’ in C. Sorrel, op. Hirsch. Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit., p.54 cit., pp 49-50 [33] Témoignage de Georges Garel, CDJC, [11] P. Cabanel, op. cit. especially chapter 3 DLXXII-7, cited by Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit., P.55 [12] P. Cabanel, op. cit., p.135, citing Renée Bédarida, Pierre Chaillet. Témoin de la résistance [34] Jean-Marie Soutou, op.cit., p.28 spirituelle (Fayard 1988) p. 125 [35] V. Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit., p.61 [13] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Chaillet; [36] Ibid., p. 47 Renée Bédarida, Pierre Chaillet (Fayard 1988) [37] Cited in Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit, p. 50 [14] See Maître Bertrand Dupin, ‘Hommage à Jean-Marie Soutou’, Revue de Pau et du Béarn, [38] Ibid., p. 48 2008, no.35 and Paul Thibaud, obituary article in www.la-croix.com/Archives, 1 october 2003 [39] Ibid., p.49

[15] Marrus and Caxton, op. cit., p. 256 [40] Jean-Marie Soutou, op.cit., p.27

[16] M. Comte, op. cit., p.53, citing Serge [41] V. Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit., p. 50 Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz. Le role de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France [42] Ibid., p.69 1942. (Paris, Fayard, 1983) [43] Prémices et essor de la Résistance : Edmond [17] Porthuis-Portheret, op. cit., p. 50 Michelet (Vie Colloque d’Aubazine). Editions S.O.S. 1983, p.91 [18] Jean-Marie Soutou, Un diplomate engagé (Editions de Fallois 2011) p.25 [44] Jean-Marie Soutou, op. cit., pp 22-23.

[19] M. Comte, op. cit. p.52 [45] V. Perthuis-Portheret, op.cit. p.59

[20] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Lesage [46] “To our knowledge, Erich Altmann was the only survivor of Auschwitz among the 545 adults [21] Valerie Perthuis-Portheret, op. cit deported following their internment in Vénissieux.” Ibid., p.57 [22] Jean-Marie Soutou, Un diplomate engagé. Memoires 1939-1979 (Editions de Fallois, 2011) ch. 1

79 80 Chapter 6 The Reception Centres in Crisis (1942-1943)

A large proportion of residents in the centres of the DCA were foreign Jews who had entered France after 1 January 1936, and were therefore subject to arrest and deportation when the order went out to deport foreign Jews from unoccupied France. In the event, three of abbé Glasberg’s homes were targeted by the police in the summer of 1942: those in Chansaye, Pont-de-Manne and Rosans. The Vic-sur-Cère centre escaped police raids, while Chateau Bégué in Cazaubon was not then implicated because it became fully operational only in the autumn.

The impact of the 1942 round-ups on the DCA homes varied. It depended on the degree of protection from local officials, the amount of warning about impending arrests, and the willingness of the Vichy police to do their job. It also depended on the ability to find places of shelter in the surrounding area. As a result of these various expedients the great majority of DCA residents, though tragically not all, escaped deportation.[1]

Roche d’Ajoux, Chansaye

Most of the residents in La Roche d’Ajoux, which received a total of 84 people (57 from Gurs in November 1941, 20 from Noé in May 1942, and 7 Spanish republicans), survived the round-ups.

The Roche d’Ajoux centre was warned about an impending raid and most of those threatened with deportation were quickly dispersed into the (the treasurer of Chansaye) were able to save 14 local area, supported by the local population. At a of the 29 people singled out for deportation.’ [3] It commemorative event held in 2012, a plaque was is very likely that the ‘29’ was a mistake in put up in honour of five residents in the centre transcription of the original text, and that this (Fanny Haberer, Siegfried Kahn, Hilde Kahn, Elsa should have read ‘19’. This would make it Mendelsohn, Adolf Mendelsohn) deported to consistent with the plaque. It would then also be Auschwitz, ‘murdered by the Nazis and their consistent with the account given by Nina accomplices’, and in honour of David Donoff, the Gourfinkel, who spoke of ‘about 20’ residents director of the centre, who was assassinated by targeted for deportation, while explaining that it the Gestapo in a Lyon street two years later. The was not possible to hide them all: plaque lists the six victims and then reads: ‘Abbé Alexandre Glasberg, delegate of Cardinal Gerlier, The authorities anticipated our desire to shield Primate of the Gauls, archbishop of Lyon, our residents from deportation (about 20 out of succeeded in extracting seventy seven Jews and 50 were destined for it) and reminded us of our seven Spanish republicans from the Gurs camp commitments. Reprisals against us would risk and accommodated them in this house ... with indirectly affecting our residents. the protection and the help of the local and regional population and organizations ... This But we could not think of hiding them all. In the active solidarity enabled seventy-nine of them to first place, this would compromise too greatly avoid being tracked down by the Nazis and their the security of the others. But also, they did not accomplices. "[2] all lend themselves to the operation. The elderly or those who spoke practically no The information on this plaque is different from French could neither be ‘placed in nature’ nor the printed version of abbé Glasberg’s 1944 housed with farmers, and their report, held in the Archives du Centre de incomprehension of their situation prevented documentation juive contemporaine, which says: any disguise. Attempts of this kind failed ‘With the tacit complicity of the Lasure (Rhône) miserably: not only did these people betray gendarmerie, David Donoff and Boris Bezborodko themselves through clumsiness, they failed to

81 keep the secret, they would confide in someone of all the residents, but it was all the same to and chatter wildly. They were their own worst him, the key thing was to respect the numbers. enemies. Only those who were suited to it could Ivan and Lina Moos thus managed to escape. be camouflaged. They first went to the neighbouring town of Saint-Jean-en-Royans. Later Ivan made contact On the eve of the fatal day fixed for with his nephew Georges Moos, who had settled deportations, having been warned by our in Geneva in 1939, and who organised their friends the gendarmes, we arranged for the escape [to Switzerland].’ able-bodied young men and women to disappear. They were taken in by farmers or by The upshot was that the Pont-de Manne centre convents and lived a secret life for two years, a survived the raids of August 1942, but in a very life of silence and work, until the Liberation depleted form, while a certain number of came to restore them to the world.’ [4] residents found refuge in the local area. [9]

Pont-de-Manne Lastic

Most of the Drome department archives of the The August 1942 raids had a devastating impact period were destroyed, and little information is on the Lastic centre, which had received 45 available, but we know that the Hotel Bitsch in young men from Gurs and 11 teachers sent from Pont-de-Manne, which received a group of 52 the Groupes de Travailleurs Etrangers. The internees from Gurs, was a target during summer purpose was to give the youth vocational training, 1942. In his 1944 report abbé Glasberg was very but they had also been assigned to agricultural critical of the behaviour of the director: work in order to provide, it was hoped, protection against deportation. The deportation [of August 1942] severely tested Pont de Manne, whose director, captain Following the 5 August police directive on the Henri Zagdoun, on this occasion revealed his round-up of all foreign Jews who had entered cowardice; not only did he not help the 31 France after 1 January 1936, the Hautes-Alpes targeted residents to flee, but, fearing that the prefecture drew up a target list of 33 residents of Prefecture might hold him responsible for any the Lastic home, including trainees and trainers. escapees, he handed over to the gendarmes Philippe Hanus, drawing on an investigation by three residents who had managed to hide, Serge Klarsfeld [10] , tells the story thus [11] : together with two young Travailleurs Etrangers who happened to be at the centre and were not '[Father Glasberg], aware of the imminence of on the list at all. We were able to extract three the raids, deployed great energy in order to [Pont de Manne residents] from the triage save his protégés. He went to Rosans, probably centre at Vénissieux, and David Donoff enabled on August 17, and ... met the prefect. Invoking a fourth to escape. Unfortunately the difficulties the high patronage of Cardinal Gerlier, he asked of the time prevented the immediate removal of that these young agricultural workers be Zagdoun, though this was imperative.’ [5] removed from the deportation lists. The prefect was persuaded but had to refer it to regional It is hard to assess this judgement, but the prefecture, which was responsible for the testimony of the Moos family, who were involved, "regrouping operation in relation to foreign throws light on what happened when the local Jews". The latter insisted on implementing the gendarmes descended on the Hotel Bitsch on 26 orders and on immmediate arrests…. August. This testimony is summarised by Philippe Hanus [6] : On 19 August evening, Theo Bernheim [Lastic treasurer] received a telegram asking him to present himself the next day at the ‘That morning at 5am, the gendarmerie of gendarmerie of Aspres-sur-Buech, together Saint-Jean-en-Royans came to the centre, with nine adult foreign workers [from the GTE], [7] armed with a list of 40 names. After the for a ‘short-term transfer’, the purpose of which names were called out, the people on the list was not explained. Three of them found a had to take their place aboard a truck. Edith pretext for not going and disappeared. When Moos was called and complied. [8] Then Lina the other six came to Aspres, they learned to Moos was called but did not react to the order their dismay that they were to leave for Livron, and stayed back next to Ivan [Moos], who was whence a convoy would take them to Paris. not on the list. The gendarme called her several They were allowed to collect their baggage from times. It was then that a young woman with an Lastic, and managed to escape by jumping from unknown surname took her place on the the small truck that was transporting them. The vehicle, wanting to join her friend whose name gendarmerie brigades of the region began an was on the list and who was already in the immediate search, but only two were arrested truck, not realising that this was a death the next day in Nyons. Another unfortunate sentence. The head of the centre, Jacques- young man, who had escaped from Rivesaltes Henri Zagdoun, noticed this exchange of to meet up with a friend in Lastic, was also identity, but said nothing. He knew the names arrested. The others found refuge thanks to the

82 networks of Arnaud and Gueydan [the and one of the travailleurs étrangers, would résistants from Gap who had recommended the survive. [15] Lastic centre to the abbé]. M. Laurent, the zealous commandant of the GTE, was furious Vic-sur-Cere with this failure, and directed a “veritable siege of the centre” [12], according to the abbé, in Unlike the Lastic centre, which was badly hit, the order to prevent any attempt at flight. residents of Hotel Touring in Vic-sur-Cere were not targeted in summer 1942, despite the Jewish On 24 August, the regional prefecture ordered the composition of the centre, including the director “complete liberation of our region from all foreign Henriette Malkin and her husband Dr. Isia Malkin. As a result the home remained intact, with a Jews.” [13] All the gendarmerie brigades in the population of 35 youth at the end of October Hautes-Alpes were mobilised on the night of 25- 1942, including 18 French, 7 German, 2 26 August, following the orders of the Veynes gendarmerie responsible for the operation in Hungarian, 8 Polish, and one Czech. [16] The Rosans: hotel survived intact throughout the period od the German occupation, from November 1942 to “We the undersigned, Chief Marshal Feraud, August 1944. It seems that the centre was senior sergeant, gendarme at the residence of protected by the department (Cantal) and Veynes […] acting on the instructions of regional (Auvergne) prefectures, since although it Monsieur the Prefect of Hautes-Alpes, dated 25 was known to the French and German police, August 1942, prescribing the round-up, arrest there were no arrests. Indeed it took on further and transfer to the Milles camp (Bouches-du- residents so that at the Liberation in August 1944 Rhone) of 33 foreign Jews resident at the there were about 100 residents, including 23 boys ‘Lastic’ centre, Rosans commune (Hautes- (the youngest 20 months), 64 girls (the youngest Alpes), by order of our section commandant, we born in May 1944) and a certain numberof adults, went to the location. After taking the necessary mostly women, of whom the oldest was 37.[17] A precautions to prevent any attempt at flight, list of residents who stayed there for longer or accompanied by the overseer of the residential shorter periods is included on the next page. centre, we entered the establishment which sheltered the interested parties. We then called However, not all went well between Hotel Touring out the latter and after verifying their identity, and the locality. The mayor, Monsieur Bonnet, notified them of the administrative measures complained that he had not been consulted about affecting them.” [14] the establishment of the centre which, he said, had a ‘dreadful reputation.’ And the situation was Thirty three residents were called out one after complicated by the fact that there were other another, boarded a requisitioned bus and were outsiders in the commune, French and foreign, transported under the escort of 6 gendarmes to occupying the greater part of the local spa hotels. the Milles camp. On 2 September, seventeen of There were complaints about their ‘idleness’ and them were taken to Drancy and deported to involvement in black market activity, after which Auschwitz. Five young people who had family in the local prefecture ordered an investigation by Rivesaltes were first transferred there, then the Renseignements Généraux. The inspector deported on 11 September via Drancy. Only 11 of Gillet submitted a report on 25 November, as the Lastic centre residents managed to escape described in a contribution to Jewish Traces, deportation. Only three of those arrested in Lastic based on Cantal departmental archives: (two residents Robert Kohn and Raphael Lewin, ‘Concerning the Amitié Chrétienne centre, he stated that children are "without means for the most part, they are dressed rather poorly” and …”have neither the opportunity nor the funds to engage in the black market.” According to him, "from all the information we have gathered, it appears that the discontent of the population of Vic-sur-Cère is caused not so much by the Jewish youth centre as by the presence of many Jews who keep coming to settle in the village. Especially since most of them have pecuniary possibilities which allow them to buy different foodstuffs on the black market and to rent apartments well above the normal rate. Most of them are without an occupation and their general attitude towards the government as well as the inhabitants of the village is not always correct.” He concluded that the constant influx "of Jews… who occupy most of the hotels will be very detrimental to the industry and commerce of Vic-sur-Cère, as a spa and tourist Plaque to the memory of the young people deported from Lastic

83 resort.” He added that "it would be good to put In fact a new director, Suzanne Jacquet, who had a stop to this because the influx of Jews to the been working for the Marseilles branch of Amitié territory of the commune causes [...] a general Chrétienne, had already arrived. She came with a discontent among the healthy part of the group of children who had been living in the “Vert population."’ Plan” reception centre in Marseille, a centre sheltering Jewish children who had been taken It is not uncommon for inspectors' reports to be out of internment camps. The premises were full of comments about public opinion, the requisitioned by the Germans when they occupied manifestations of which are feared. The anti- the southern zone on 11 November, after which Semitism of the inspector is evident. "The Jacquet hastily gathered up children and brought healthy part of the population" speaks for him. them to the Hotel Touring, where she assumed However, with regard to the centre, the responsibility for the home in association with inspector found nothing to reproach it with, [20] except to note that the management should be OSE. provided by a French and Aryan couple. '[18] A year later the centre was subject to another attack. The complaint was now in connection with At the time of this report Madame Malkin was still the level of care, concluding with a director of the centre. Abbé Glasberg was recommendation that the Hotel Touring centre be conscious of the risk which this represented, and closed down. This episode is summarised in sought to reassure the local authorities: Jewish Traces, on which the account below is ‘In a letter dated 12 December 1942, he based: explains that Madame Malkin was appointed on ‘At the beginning of 1944 a youth delegation a strictly provisional basis and that this came to inspect the centre: although the situation had persisted because he could not children could not be charged with black market find anyone suitably qualified and prepared to activities or idleness, the centre was attacked take up this post. However he added that he for lack of proper maintenance. (At the time of would address this himself during December in the visit by the delegation) . At this moment order to install a new director and “re-establish Suzanne Jacquet had returned from an absence [19] order in the house.” ’ of twenty days during which she had undergone surgery, and in her absence the centre had become disorganized.

Residents at the Touring Hotel 1939-1945 (with date of birth if known) Adler, Ilse, 02/03/1925 ; Amar, Émilienne; Appel, Suzanne, 25/06/1931 ; Badier, Rose, 22/02/1925 ; Baumerder, Betty; Becker Bruck, Joséphine, 04/01/1926 ; Berger, Catherine, 07/12/1919, and Madeleine, 09/05/1923 ; Boeticheimer, Liselotte, 04/02/1927 ; Borach, Colette; Brodereich, Lotte , 12/09/1922 ; Bruck, Joséphine, 04/01/1927 ; Byck, Suzanne ; Cavalier, Danielle, 09/01/1926, and Suzanne, 02/12/1927 ; Celemencki, Sarah, 28/08/1935, and Arlette, 6/02/1938 ; Chaimowitz, Frédérique, 25/09/1927, and Suzanne, 06/08/1931 ; Chalom, Stella; Cymermann, Jeanette, 12/08/1929, and Odette,03/01/1933 ; David, Lisa, 12/08/1922 ; Drob, Marie, 31/10/1930 ; Dufay, Bernard; Ehrenberg, Anna, 25/12/1931, Hélène, 28/03/1928, Inge, 15/09/1927, and Ruth, 20/07/1925 ; Eiss, Hélène, 23/11/1927, Adolphe, 04/09/1928, et Fernande, 18/01/1930 ; Felsenthal, Liselotte, 09/04/1924 ; Fogelman, Paul; Frajler, Ida ; Friedmann, Renée, 04/11/1932 ; Froidefond, Jacques; Gaba, Pierre, 22/11/1926 ; Goldman, Marie ; Goldstein, Fernande, 09/07/1929, and Jetty, 09/08/1927 ; Grabart, Jacques, 10/07/1940, and Paulette, 31/01/1933 ; Greiffenhagen, Hannelore, 28/03/1926 ; Greilsheimer, Suzy, 24/10/1926 ; Groner, Chaja, 15/12/1924, Chana, 10/11/1926, Charles, Jacques and Maurice; Gurman, Tauba, 26/06/1923 ; Gutfreund, Dora, 06/03/1932, and Berthe, le 28/08/1923 ; Gutman, Tauba, 26/06/1923 ; Haber, Sonia, 22/12/1925 ; Hartmayer, Marianne, 14/09/1922 ; Himmelfarb, Ryna, 17 ans ; Hirsch, Rachel, 12/11/1926 ; Honig, Arlette, 14/10/1938 ; Jacobi, Benjamin, Daniel and Lina née Korn ; Jacquet, Jean-Michel, 10/03/1929 ; Jankelewicz, Rachel, 01/08/1919 ; Kachaner, Sophie, 15/09/1925 ; Kahn, Hannelore, 14/09/1925, Irène, 04/03/1929, et Laure; Katz, Lore, 21/05/1924 ; Kaufman, Herta, 22/02/1922 ; Kellener, Francisca, 10/12/1926 ; Keller, Thérèse, 20/12/1928 ; Kirschner, Manfred; Klein, Roland; Kleniec, Paulette, 1907, Albert et Jacques; Kohen, Hélène, 04/02/1937 ; Kolhman, Trudel, 20/12/1928 ; Lebhar, Laurette, 22/03/1929 ; Lentschener Turner, Hélène, 28/11/1924 ; Lilly, 08/12/1922 ; Liveraut, Berthe, 14/04/1927 ; Maier, Margot, 07/09/1924 ; Malkin, Isia and Henriette and their children Marianne et Joël; Manasse, Seuta, 20/12/1926, and Irène, 18/06/1923; Markiewiez, Berthe, 12/08/1936, and Georgette, 13/09/1939; Meier, Amalie, 09/12/1926 ; Moray, Sophie, 15/09/1926 ; Neuman, Margit, 05/12/1925 ; Niedermann, Paul, 16; Oehlbert, Théa, 23/08/1920 ; Ondet, Francoise, 10/03/1926 ; Pajec, Willy, 25/12/1927 ; Pappo, Jacqueline, 19/04/1938 ; Piekarski, Jeanine, 17/10/1930 and Salomon, 12/02/1928 ; Puccio, Georges and Yves; Radoin, Jean, 16/07/1932, and Marcelle, 29/03/1929 ; Reis, Théodor, 19/03/1928 ; Rosenbach, Cécile, 09/01/1928 ; Rosenbaum, Ruth, 31/12/1924 ; Rosenzweig, Anna, 29/03/1938 ; Saadoun, Gaston, 01/04/1935, Léon, 02/09/1932 ; Sidi, Joseph; Sjagez, Lilly; Spielvogel, Gisèle, 05/04/1922 ; Steg, Albertine, 26/12/1926 ; Famille Stopnicer, Sara, 12/012/1933, and Berthe, 14/07/1935 ; Strauss, Ruth, 14/09/1926 ; Szuchendler, Bernard, 25/03/1932, et Ginette, 06/02/1928 ; Topor, Joseph and Léon; Trajlerer, Itta Mirla, 10/01/1926, and Marie, 08/07/1935 ; Tron, Marthe, 19/03/1922; Tzodikbvitch, Félix, 18/05/1936; Unikowski, Michel, 1942; Waingrod, Claude, 22/05/1928, and Janine, 26/08/1923 ; Wajzuen, Félix, 21/07/1932 ; Wallenstein, Liselotte, 08/08/1926 ; Wasjberg, Léon; Wasserman, Erna, 27/11/1926 ; Wetscher, Dorothée, 10/06/1925 ; Wrobel, Charles, 25/11/1932, Maurice, 06/08/1935, et Henri,12/02/1930 ; Zessler, Jacqueline, 11/08/1927 ; Zilberberg, Annie, 10/02/1932, and Paulette, 25/10/1929 ; Zylberstein, Anatole http://www.ajpn.org/sauvecache-2-13.html (Site d’Anonymes, Justes et Persécutés durant la période Nazie

84 In a report of 3 February 3, 1944, the delegate private homes or religious institutions, sometimes wrote: “We are not concerned about the race of moving people from one centre to another. these young people of different nationalities, but is essential that this centre maintains a In autumn 1942 the business of creating false basic level of hygiene and comfort”. He identities was still in its infancy—it would become criticized the soiled sheets which were much more developed during the German “certainly washed very rarely”, the inadequately occupation of the south in 1943-1944—yet heated rooms, the fact that “children from 2 to according to Nina Gourfinkel the early 24, regardless of gender” live together. He counterfeits were surprisingly effective: criticised the management and questioned the “moral training” of these young people, ‘The first counterfeits started to appear, timid and supposedly in the hands of three “chiefs” whom crude and yet effective, to the surpise of their he was unable to meet. He added that “the own creators.’ [23] youngest go to school very irregularly; most of the rest can hardly speak French.” One beneficiary of the abbé’s involvement in this activity in its early phase was Sophie Weiser, He considered that “such uncleanliness is a dis- interviewed in Bertuccelli’s film. She was not a grace for a collective[…] it is absolutely inadmis- DCA resident, but was caught up in a raid in 1942 sible to let an establishment, even if occupied by in Lyon, and found help from AG almost by Jews, to operate in such deplorable conditions.” If chance. She does not mention the date but it nothing was done to improve the situation, “we seems that it was in November or December can expect the worst from every point of view”. 1942, since it was after the German occupation He was referring to epidemics and he was (German officers were involved) and abbé amazed no cases had been signalled by any doc- Glasberg was still in Lyon (he would leave at the tor. Finally, he suggesed that failing improvement end of December). Her moving story is told [21] the centre should be closed down.” below.

Doctor Delort, the medic who served the home, Abbé Glasberg under attack responded vigorously to these charges, pointing out that the level of care would improve if the In October 1942 the abbé was attacked in the home were better supplied by the local authority. anti-Semitic press. His clandestine ventures were At the same time a placatory letter from Amitié known, as revealed in an article in Au Pilori, a chrétienne promised that measures would be virulently anti-Jewish weekly. This piece, with adopted: absolutely no regard for factual accuracy, denounced Alexander Glasberg (misspelt ‘On 20 April Doctor Delort wrote to the Cantal Glassberg) for his illegal activities and Cardinal Prefect to respond to these attacks point by Gerlier for indulging him. The clouds were point. He conceded that there had been a gathering: certain laxness, but pointed out that this was at the time of the illness of the director when she had to absent herself. Since her return “the « Il y a bien peu de temps, quatre petites centre has functioned normally” but added that années pour préciser,--un juif crasseux, “it would be desirable in order to deal with tête basse et œil glaireux, quittait son these difficulties if the centre were to receive ghetto de Pologne pour rejoindre la greater supplies of fuel, soap and straw.” The nouvelle Terre promise. following day the inspector general of Amitié Voici Glassberg en France. Un petit Chrétienne also wrote to the prefect. He took entr’acte, au cours duquel, noyé dans la up each of the points in contention and masse de ses coreligionnaires, l’on perd sa described the improvements which had been trace. made. To testify to his goodwill he informed the Nous sommes au lendemain de l’Armistice. prefect that the personnel who had been Et tout à coup, pfft ! d’un coup de baguette negligent during the absence of the director had magique, surgit à Lyon…L’abbé Glassberg. been replaced and an extra chieftain employed and he had “prescribed several measures to Nouvel entracte, beaucoup plus court, strengthen supervision of the children.” He told celui-là. Et nous retrouvons l’abbé the Cantal Prefect that as a result of these Glassberg confident du Cauchon des temps measures the centre “will be safe from all modernes, Gerlier-le-Traîteur. [22] criticism.”’ Une œuvre catholique lyonnaise de l’enfance n’a plus de président. Qu’à cela Clandestine methods and false identities ne tienne. L’abbé Glassberg est tout indiqué. The summer of 1942 was a turning point for the DCA because from now on the abbé and his team A l’abri de cette œuvre d’apparence could hope to protect the vulnerable residents of anodine, voici que s’ourdit la grande the centres only by clandestine methods: creating conspiration : faciliter par tous les moyens false Aryan identities, finding places of refuge in l’évasion des Juifs étrangers des camps surveillés.…

85 Wanted by the Gestapo Ainsi, grâce aux généreuses distributions de fausses cartes d’identité faites par le On 11 November 1942, following the Allied complaisant abbé, au cours de sa visite landings in north Africa (Operation Torch), the charitable, la loi est bafouée, sous l’œil German army swept south to the Mediterranean complaisant du Cardinal. coast and occupied the whole of France. The ...... Vichy government was still in place and officially sovereign, but very little autonomy remained and Il faut abattre l’arrogance de Gerlier, ennemi the occupiers took command of the police public no.1 de la France, du Maréchal et de la apparatus. As a result abbé Glasberg could no Révolution. » longer benefit from the relative immunity that he Pierre Vigouroux, Au Pilori, 22 Octobre 1942 had enjoyed before as a priest under the

Sophie Weizer’s (ex-consul of Poland in Toulouse, 1945-46) story as told in Julie Bertuccelli’s film:

‘As you know, in Lyon in 1942, major raids began. One morning, as usual, I was the first one out, to collect…I typed essays for students, I had bought a little machine and typed essays for students. I came home, and the concierge signalled to me to stay away. Indeed, someone had denounced us, and the pilgrimage began, because we could no longer return home. I was waiting for my husband to warn him not to go home, yet I had nowhere to live.

What could I do? I didn’t know where I could sleep. I wandered through the streets of Lyon, I had no ideas and couldn’t think of where to go. Suddenly, like a sign, I saw Rue de Constantine. I walked into Rue de Constantine, which I had never visited. And then I saw ‘Amitié Chrétienne’. I stood in front of ‘Amitié Chrétienne’ for about 5 minutes, wondering if I could avoid going in. But anyway I went up to the first floor and there I met Nina Gourfinkel. I was in a terrible state and started to cry. She comforted me a bit and said: ‘we’ll arrange something. Leave me your papers. We’ll do what needs to be done’. Meanwhile she suggested that [my husband and I] stay the night with a Vietnamese man. Of course, we went. Then the next day we both came back, and met abbe Glasberg himself as well as Nina Gourfinkel. They were both waiting for us. He said: ‘here, your papers are ready, but you must leave Lyon’. I hugged him, when he gave me the money and papers, but especially the papers. Because I was nourished and fed, that was enough for me at the time.

There were raids at that time in Lyon. They took me three times, I don’t know by what good fortune…the last was the worst, they rounded up maybe 2000 people. When it was my turn to present myself before a German officer, I went in and showed him my passport. My name was Gryzolet, and he was giving me an opportunity, I’m sure about that, but I didn’t dare look him in the eye. And then I said to myself “I’ll do it”. I looked him in the eye and said “Gryzolet”. [I said that] my parents had gone to Poland, I was born in Poland by chance. “But you are French, aren’t you?” I said yes, yes I am French. I had the papers...... those that Father Glasberg had given me. He saved my life, quite simply he saved my life. I can say it, and thank him, if he can hear me now. He literally saved our lives.’

86 patronage of Gerlier. A report reached the Father Chaillet and Jean-Marie Soutou archdiocese that a Gestapo file had opened on arrested him, and that he had been condemned to death in absentia by a German military tribunal in Lyon. The arrangement with Amitié Chrétienne allowed He stayed in Lyon for a few more weeks, but at the work of the former DCA to continue, but the end of 1942 was persuaded to go into hiding Amitié Chrétienne was weakened by the under an assumed name. ‘Declared “public departure of the abbé from Lyon at the end of enemy no.1” by the Gestapo, the Abbé December 1942, and then by the loss of two nonetheless tried to continue his activity despite other key people. On 27 January 1943 the the danger, but at Christmas time 1942 on the Gestapo descended on the offices of Amitié advice of several Lyon police functionaries, he Chrétienne and arrested Père Chaillet and Jean decided to disappear.’ [24] Marie Soutou, on suspicion of providing refuge to wanted Jews. Klaus Barbie, Gestapo chief in Lyon, Equipped with an authorisation from Cardinal was directly involved in these arrests. Soutou Gerlier releasing him from his curacy and from his remembered it thus: role as the Cardinal’s representative, the abbé was received a few days later at the bishop’s 'They had information on all of us. It was Barbie palace in Montauban in Tarn et Garonne. Mgr who arrested us, Father Chaillet and myself. We Théas appointed him curé of the small rural were taken to the hotel Terminus, the parish of Honor-de-Cos under the name Élie headquarters of the Gestapo, we were put face Corvin. Here he would remain from the beginning up against a partition wall in a waiting room of of 1943 until the Liberation of France in August Barbie’s office. During this interminable wait, I 1944. His time as abbé Corvin will be described in saw Chaillet's neck—his back was turned to me- Chapter 7. - and I realised that he was chewing all the clandestine Amitié Chrétienne papers which he The DCA hands over to Amitié Chrétienne had under his cassock… Thank God, I had no clandestine documents on me.' [27] In summer 1942 the abbé had been planning to set up more reception centres in addition to the Chaillet was released that evening after pleading five that had already been established, but such that he was a poor village priest from the north plans came to an end with the arrest and who had been wrongly taken. He then took refuge deportations of August, and after the German in Isère which remained under Italian occupation occupation the DCA ceased to function under that until September 1943, where he was out of reach name: ‘The development of the DCA was halted of the Gestapo. Here Chaillet continued his by increasingly repressive police policies and the resistance activites. authorities’ distrust. The extension of the German occupation to the southern zone made its official Meanwhile Soutou was imprisoned in fort Montluc existence impossible.’ [25] for three weeks. He was interrogated by Barbie, and questioned on the whereabouts of abbé In order however to protect the activity of the Glasberg: DCA, on 20 December 1942 an agreement was signed transferring responsibility for the centres ‘ Barbie tried to get me to say where abbé to Amitié Chrétienne, which could operate more Glasberg was hiding and I replied ingenuously safely because it appeared to be an Aryan that I could not imagine that he had gone into association. Though functioning under the hiding because he was incapable of any auspices of Amitié Chrétienne, the centres at wrongdoing. He must be in his parish carrying Chansaye, Pont de Manne and Cazaubon would out his ministry. The tone then became harsher still managed by members of the DCA team: and the dialogue took the following turn: Boris Bezborodko in Chansaye, Zagdoun in Pont de Manne and Victor Vermont (Glasberg) in “But you know very well that he is a Jew!” Cazaubon. David Donoff was responsible for liaison and Nina Gourfinkel for overall direction. “But that’s impossible, he is a priest!” Of course The Lastic home was now managed by the I was playing the idiot… Quakers, and the centre in Vic-sur Cère by Amitié Chrétienne. Funds would now be supplied by the ”If you doubt it, when we’ve arrested him we’ll Joint Distribution Committee since the paying take you to see him and you can confirm that residents could no longer receive money from he is a Jew” (gesture indicating circumcision). abroad. The funds did not go directly to Amitié Chrétienne, but they were distributed under its “I know for sure that he is Catholic, it was he umbrella and their Jewish source was kept secret. who married me and my wife in his parish.” [26] Barbie addressed his secretary in German: “What an imbecile! We can’t do anything with this idiot!”’ [28]

87 Soutou was eventually released after an policy and the fight against the Resistance during intervention by cardinal Gerlier, then escaped to 1943-1944. [31] Switzerland. [29] The continued existence of the reception centres The reception centres under the occupation was thus precarious. In July 1943, Chansaye was raided by the Gestapo. They had singled out Boris As well the cover provided by Amitié Chrétienne, Bezborodko, who was obliged to disappear. [32] other factors made it possible for the former DCA centres to survive under the occupation, and indeed take in new residents. The widespread use of false identity documents and ration cards was critical, as was the support of brave families and religious establishments who were ready to Boris shelter the most vulnerable residents. These Bezborodko arrangements were used by all the organisations (1918-2005) sheltering Jews in the formerly unoccupied zone. about fifity years later ‘We were entering the period of camouflage. The arrests, deportations and executions became widespread, our team could no longer hope to save the people we had taken under our charge except by scattering them, under false identities. The number of our protégés The Pont de Manne centre received visits from the continued to grow, since the population of these milice, and some people were taken to an centres was constantly changing, other refugees unknown destination. [33] Pastor Fabre de settled in the neighbourhood and appealed to Romans, the CIMADE representative who came to us, to which were added [some who] had the centre in summer 1942, made further visits in escaped or were in hiding. In the case of all 1943. He recalled that a day after some arrests, a residents capable of work we made efforts to number of residents were hiding in the place them [in private homes], preferably with surrounding woods, others were sheltered by farmers, in small settlements. It should be said M.Bitsch, still others found refuge with Elysee that we found much understanding and goodwill Payre, the mayor of La Motte-Fanjas, a in these milieux. The farmers were, in general, [34] very content with our people, and though they neighbouring commune. Pastor Fabre himself had little training in the tough work of farming, accompanying some residents to the territories of goodwill on both sides smooth things over.’ Vercors and Diois, where they were able to take advantage of protestant support networks. [35] Some of the youth were placed in boarding The Pont de Manne home was not able to survive schools and colleges, others hidden in convents, these ordeals, and closed down in May 1943, factories, private houses etc. We had to Abbé Glasberg himself advocating its closure. maintain contact with each of them, supply Some of the remaining residents were dispersed them every month with vouchers, tobacco, in homes in the surrounding area, while others pocket money, and above all to keep up their were moved to the centre in Cazaubon under spirits, make them feel that they were being false identities. [36] monitored and supported. Such was the enormous work accomplished by David Donoff Meanwhile Lastic, which had suffered so badly in and, for the refugees dependant on Chansaye, August 1942 and which been taken over by the by Boris Bezborodko, over a period of a year Quakers, survived in a diminished form. In and a half’ [30] October 1942 it officially housed only three refugees: a Spaniard, a catholic Pole and a In addition there was continued protection from protestant Czech. In the weeks that followed it some local authorities and gendarmes. The took in some Spanish children, and later received German police were in overall command of the a number of Jewish children through clandestine police apparatus, but they were very thinly routes. [37] spread in the south. They still had to depend on the French police, who became decreasingly The abbé and Amitié chrétienne reliable as enforcers of German policy. Abbé Glasberg was very critical of the role of The Gestapo was nonetheless able to use its Amitié chrétienne once Chaillet and Soutou were power selectively and the German authorities no longer there to direct it. The replacement were helped by the creation of a new pro-fascist leaders, the abbé said, lacked proper knowledge French police force, the feared milice, established of the centres, tried too hard to stay on the right by Vichy in January 1943, which became an side of the law, failed to understand the need for important arm in the enforcement of anti-Jewish manoeuvre and thereby put the residents at risk. The abbé was not on the spot, since ‘he was obliged to remain in hiding, far from the [DCA]

88 homes’ [38], and in the absence of further false identities, to Bégué, though not without information it is hard to say how fair the difficulties caused by Zagdoun.’ [39] accusations were. Nonetheless we cite the abbé’s comments at some length as testimony to his Chateau du Bégué thinking: The life of the Chateau du Bégué centre ‘… in May 1943 Amitié chrétienne, under a new highlighted both the remaining opportunities and leadership, took over the management of the the dangers during the German occupation. centres, installing its own employees, under the Bégué opened officially in August 1942, under the pretext that none of the members of our team auspices of Amitié chrétienne, but was not fully could act in an official capacity. The new launched until November. It was different in directors of Amitié chrétienne (its president, the character from the other centres because not doyen Garraud, was in no position to involve many of the residents were legally transferred himself in the details) were ignorant about the from internment camps. Most were Jews who had centres and its refugees. Their formalistic fled from the occupied north, or had been in attitude, fear of illegality, acceptance of Vichy internment camps but found their way to Bégué methods, which became evident despite the through a clandestine route, yet others had raison d’être of the organisation, posed a evaded enlistment in the Service du Travail serious danger for our protégés who could only Obligatoire, the deeply unpopular system hope to survive on the margins of the Vichy established in February 1943 which compelled legislation. This required a dangerous and French citizens to be available for work in difficult game for which however we assumed Germany. Practically all these people—a total of the responsibility and the risks. But to introduce 125 is mentioned by Nina Gourfinkel—relied on unfamiliar, poorly informed and timid people false documents and were supplied with suitable into this environment was to compromise the identity and ration cards. whole of our work. The Joint, in the persons of MM. Jacques Jefroykin, Maurice Brennet and It was an extraordinary and diverse population, Joseph Fischer, understood this and, despite the which Gourfinkel describes with her customary insistence of Amitié chrétienne, continued to élan, once again honest about how difficult it was send monthly subsidies directly to us for the to create a sense of community under these three centres that we continued to look after. conditions.

If the Amitié chrétienne had fulfilled its role of ‘Once again profiting from the weaknesses of administrative representation and proper the administration in the so-called free zone, in financial control in the way we asked, we would summer 1942 we began establishing a new have ceded on the matter of handing over home in Gers, and despite the difficulties and funds, but very quickly circumstances justified complications which this entailed, we were able our [concern]. Hence on 12 July 1943, following to bring the task to a successful conclusion. But a raid by the Gestapo on Chansaye, Boris our ideas had evolved considerably. Bezborodko, who was personally targeted, was …. obliged to disappear, and the Amitié chrétienne The Gers house offered us an excellent hiding replaced him with a director and treasurer of its place. As new categories were hunted down by choice. The muddled and self-serving those supplying Auschwitz or the Atlantic Wall, management by these two men did much harm we would make people disappear, even if it to the centre and we were able to rid ourselves meant telling the police that they were of the treasurer only with great difficulty. escapees. The administrative chaos helped and Though complicit, the director remains at this was of less and less consequence. Chansaye, but since we disposed of the finances, we were fortunately able to entrust Our people might disappear in the Rhone or in the whole financial side to a new treasurer who the Drôme, and reappear in Gers, equipped had proved his worth, M. Eanaud. with new identities. Of the one hundred and twenty-five residents of the centre, I think At Pont de Manne Zagdoun was sure of his there was no one who kept his real name. impunity, put his personal interests first and … bullied the residents. We insisted on the closure The life of the castle was adventurous. The of this home and asked Amitié chrétienne to region, now more than ever devoted to take control, since Zagdoun’s attitude was too monoculture, provided very few food supplies. threatening for one of us to risk seriously We recommended workshops, vegetable checking his accounts. But the Amitié gardens, work in the fields, but it was not easy chrétienne also avoided taking this risk, and the to get along with our heterogeneous public who closure, in May 1943, occurred in deplorable were quick to mention forced labour. The conditions. Zagdoun did not release any of the disparity in ages, origins, languages, wealth, main stock of provisions and wood, and left resulted in the formation of many groups, leaving a series of unpaid debts. The residents hostile to each other, which exacerbated of Pont de Manne dispersed, and those who had political dissension…. Those forced to live in this nowhere to go were moved clandestinely, under feeble community included former industrialists

89 and traders and future lieutenants of the internees (German socialists, Spanish France-Tireurs et Partisans, not to mention republicans, Jews from across the world) were more or less needy small profiteers who only taken out of the camps, and served as cover for sought to gain cover.’ [40] this subversive enterprise.[41]

Gourfinkel also gives us a glimpse of the director of the centre, Victor Vermont, the abbé’s younger brother (‘Glasberg’ = ‘glass mountain’= ‘Vermont’). He was very different from Alexander, inward-looking and much less conspicuous. Yet he was a key figure in the life of the home which he managed, very protective of his residents and fully engaged in the clandestine nature of the whole enterprise. In addition Victor had a particular project: to train up a group of people for a future life as résistants, though according to Gourfinkel ‘only a few of the young residents took the training and the exercises seriously.’ Here is Nina Gourfinkel’s view of Victor, informed by a Russian literary reference (the Brothers Victor Karamazov) which both she and he would have Vermont understood very well.

‘Victor, the director of our centre, a former sergeant of the Colonial army, was of course part of the conspiracy. Scarcely thirty years of age, he was a restless soul, scrupulous, demanding, yet unsatisfied... He was of Slavic origin and was intoxicated with “Dostoevskyism”, even rather priding himself on what he called his “Karamazov side”. He wanted to incorporate all the infamy and all the sanctity of this cursed family, the sacrilegious and sinful side of the older brothers, and the pure ecstatic side of the younger brother, the young monk Alyosha.

Having arrived in the west, Victor developed the need for a form of life which would enable him to fulfil these vague yearnings for torment Château du Bégué and joy. After trying out successively a number of institutions of learning, he thought he had found a framework in Catholicism. But it had to Bégué was built on a strong network of local be all or nothing: he entered a seminary. Yet he complicity which included the mayor of Cazaubon was too imbued with literature, and his morose Fernand Sentou, his wife Yvette Sentou, and Mme pleasures did not sit well with the rigours of Ducasse, the town hall secretary, and the local theology. He needed a more tangible setting, gendarmes were also in on the act. The town hall something more materially secure. From the provided vital assistance with the supply of false seminary he went straight into the army. identity and ration cards [42], as did the abbé’s comrade-in-arms Ninon Hait (Nicole under her Again, he wanted the ultimate. We find him at assumed name) who was very active in this the military camp of Frejus where he languished domain.[43] in expectation of departure for Indochina, unfulfilled. He was passionately interested in ‘Everyone around us was more or less in on it : the task that we had set him and entered into the mayor, his secretary, the school teacher, the game with all his unused ardour. the gendarmes. A knowing complicity made it Anticipating our plans, Victor saw his house not possible to constantly modify the residents’ as a refuge for the 'able-bodied’ but as a documents, so that in the end no one in the training centre for future combatants. He was in village knew just who was living in the château.’ liaison with the résistants of Auch, and was [44] supported by Nicole [Ninon Hait] who put an apparatus of camouflage at his disposal. There Maintaining the centre required elaborate security was a group of young foreigners around him, provisions. Gourfinkel explained: soon to be joined by French escapees [who had dodged compulsory recruitment to the French ‘…. In the interest of security, the refugees workforce sent to Germany] Some older were committed to “their quarters”. What

90 recriminations there were about such a “camp 'After escaping the Vel' d'Hiv raid, on 16 July in system”! And yet this measure was to prove Paris, my sister (15) and I (17) managed to salutary. ……. obtain false papers and thanks to a smuggler we crossed the demarcation line and reached Little by little, under the influence of Victor, the unoccupied territory. On 13 August we were in castle was turned into a fortress, of which there Lyon (en route to Grenoble where we were to are so many in this country, in which over join our elder brother) and were arrested by the centuries the population has never ceased to French police for "use of false documents." wage war. We were taken immediately to the magistrate. A complicated system of warning signs was set The latter unleashed a violent diatribe, calling up throughout the building, triggered at the us wops, anarchists, communists ... and had us entrance where, from dawn to dusk and dusk to interned, me in St. Paul prison, and my sister in dawn, there were men on guard. We anticipated St. Joseph prison. We stayed there for two and at any moment the sudden appearance of the a half months. On October 27, 1942, we Germans or the milices. The park would then appeared before the judges. provide the residents with shelter to cover their escape. Twice a week at least Victor organized The court, after a brief deliberation, dismissed rehearsals of the alarm system during which the the case and we were released the same day. castle residents were supposed to carry out a Thus, unlike the magistrate the judges, within retreat with suitable skill and speed. During one the same jurisdiction, courageously interpreted of my stays, the bell rang in the middle of the the legislation of the time on Jews not against night. With a cloak over my shoulders, I raced us like the magistrate, but in our favour! down the great staircase. Around me, shadows in shirts or pyjamas were performing a fantastic We were taken in for a few days by friends who round. At the rear facade, looking out onto the were also hiding in Lyon, and they advised us to park, windows opened with a din, getting ready "to go and see abbé Glasberg". He was one of for a perilous jump. But despite all the the leaders of Amitié Chrétienne, alongside precautions, rehearsals and explanations, most Cardinal Gerlier. The abbé welcomed us warmly of the residents had rushed into the hall, in and immediately took care of us. After a few front of the large glass entrance door, just days, he provided us with "real false papers" where the danger would be coming from. and sent my sister to a refuge ino Vic-sur-Cère (Cantal), and me to the "castle" of Bégué, in In the general disarray the only ones to stick to Cazaubon in Gers. In the train that was taking the rules were Victor himself, Hans Hafner, an me to Toulouse, then to Auch, I saw the old German socialist with a white beard and columns of German soldiers heading south. It blue eyes, for whom instructions were was indeed on that day that the Germans equivalent to a divine commandment, and invaded the whole country. It was the end of Volodia [45] who was on guard and had not the "unoccupied zone"’. [47] moved….

But already the secondary school graduate Albert, the second sentinel, had begun talks with the nocturnal visitors, our nice local cops.

“We have an order to take Albert Grègue, 18 years old”, they announced.

“He cleared off a long time ago”, Albert himself calmly retorted, presenting the third or fourth identity which he had acquired in his scarcely seventeen years.....It all ended amicably around little glasses of Armagnac. The gendarmes were only half-convinced, but they were good-natured and when they left promised not to inflict any more nocturnal frights on us.’ [46] Ady Steg with his sister and brother before his arrest Routes to Bégué Hannelore Trautman found her way to Bégué by a One of the former residents of Bégué, Ady Steg, different but equally dramatic route: provided a vivid reminiscence of how he arrived in the Cazaubon centre. In 2004, at the posthumous ‘In October 1940, Hannelore Trautman, a presentation of the medal of the Righteous to seventeen-year-old German Jewish girl from Alexander Glasberg, he recalled: Karlsruhe, was interned with her parents and her younger brother at the Gurs camp in the

91 Pyrenees. Subsequently, the family was My memories, a little distant but still very transferred to the Rivesaltes camp near the present: Spanish border. Hannelore, her brother and her friend Renee Stein were released after 20 --The cries of an animal. A very strong man months thanks to the Jewish organization OSE. would sometimes killed a pig They were sent to a farm school at Charry, near --Some of the occupants, very worried at the Moissac, under the auspices of the Jewish slightest unusual noise, went down in the small Scouts of France. It was there that they learned hours of the night to escape that their parents had been deported to the - My mother Lucie Batton worked in the kitchen camps in the east. A few months later, they with a girl who was very attached to my brother were warned of a forthcoming raid by the local and me. Later they told me that they had made gendarmerie and fled to a nearby forest. They 100 pancakes with one egg! spent several weeks there, exposed to cold and - Sometimes, at the foot of the trees, they rain, before finding refuge at the Château de lavished on us some rudiments of schooling, Bégué in Cazaubon (Gers). The establishment, and we were encouraged to sing. [49] under the patronage of Amitié Chrétienne, welcomed young Jews from the French camps ... [Later] the three young people had to flee again. They were temporarily accommodated by Fernand Sentou, mayor of Cazaubon, who provided them with false identity papers thanks to which they could find less dangerous lodging. Fernand and Yvette Sentou had taken great risks in giving asylum to young fugitives at a time when ... surprise checks were increasing.'[48]

Eliane Grison’s path to chateau Bégué was different again, ending with an apparently legal transfer. Eliane survived the war and is now living in Paris. In an interview she described her family of origin and brought up distant but vivid memories of Bégué:

‘I am French by birth, born of parents who emigrated in the nineteen thirties. My father, a Yugoslav Jew, was arrested in 1942, interned in Drancy then deported to Buchenwald where he worked until 1945. He died there of exhaustion 15 days before the arrival of the Americans.

My mother, a Greek Jew from Salonika, with my brother aged 5 and myself aged 8, tried to cross the demarcation line at Chateauroux. We stopped there by the French milices. After transfer to various camps - Nexon, Rivesaltes - we were interned at the camp in Gurs camp, waiting for ... I don’t know what.

Amitié Chrétienne was alerted to our case and ... we were able to leave Gurs and join the residents in chateau Bégué in early 1943.

Bégué was a beautiful house, in a beautiful park with trees.

I think there were about a hundred of us there, people from very different backgrounds. German Jews, Spanish refugees and others ...

It was a communal life in Bégué, each participated in daily life in accordance with their Eliane Grigson with her mother and brother abilities. It was located near the village of at Chateau Bégué 1943, and in Paris 2018 Cazaubon (Gers) and the castle enjoyed the complicity of the authorities and local people and the owner of the house.

92 Ady Steg’s meeting with abbé Glasberg It seems that this is a case of embellishment for extra dramatic effect. It is understandable, since While at Bégué Steg met abbé Glasberg, and in after all Steg was honouring the man who had his interview for Bertuccelli’s film remembers a saved his life. But one may be forgiven for moving moment when the abbé responded concluding that the earlier version of the story sympathetically to Steg’s orthodox Jewish was closer to the reality. Steg arrived in background: Cazaubon in November 1942, and towards the end of December abbé Glasberg went into hiding, …I got to know Glasberg, although not too well where he remained until August 1944. Following because he came rather rarely. All the same he the German occupation any visit by the abbé to did come, staying only for a very short time. Bégué from Lyon would have been fraught with We had a relationship that was almost risk, which is no doubt why he kept it short, and affectionate... He never mentioned his Judaism in the space of about a month there would not or his Christianity. He insisted on saying that have been time for ‘several visits’. Yet the the Christian fellowships which he led were, as important point is that there was a meeting at he said, ostensibly Christian. There’s no doubt which Steg ‘judaised’ with the abbé and that this about that. But he knew I was from an made a deep impression on Steg. If there was orthodox Jewish family and there was a certain one meeting not several, and short not long, this closeness.. One Friday night, the Sabbath, we does not diminish the drama of his story. were sitting at a table, I must have mentioned what Sabbath was like at home, and he said: Victor Glasberg’s arrest ‘sing me the zemirot’, that is those songs sung during the meal on Friday nights, which are Victor was very conscious of the risks inherent in completely traditional. I quietly hummed to him running the Bégué home, and the worst a little. He was pensive and so was I, and that happened when on 16 August 1943 the Gestapo was that. This was the only time we ‘judaised’. arrived. The background is not clear, but it There was never the least attempt to…convert appears that it was the result of a tip-off by me. Not at all. He was always very clear, he someone on the outside, probably a result of acted respectfully towards us. He was rather a Victor’s military training exercises. jovial man, you would have thought him a Mediterranean, because he was talkative and The Gestapo may also have known about Victor’s extrovert. I say that because by comparison his relationship to the abbé, although some care was brother was exactly the reverse.’ taken not to publicise it. Ady Steg, for example, did not know, ‘which goes to show that he [the abbé] didn’t say anything. He could have said that [Victor] was his brother, but the word ‘brother’ never came up. It was Father Glasberg who came and went, and the Lieutenant who was here’. [51] If the Gestapo were aware of Victor’s relationship to the abbé, Victor may have been targeted for that reason also, but this is speculative, even if abbé Glasberg himself thought that in the eyes of the Gestapo ‘the activity [of Victor Vermont] in the Résistance was aggravated by his origins and his relationship with the abbé’ [52]

Concerning what happened on that day, the accounts by Ady Steg and Nina Gourfinkel are consistent. Both reported that Victor had said: if Ady Steg during an interview for Julie ever they came to arrest me I will not flee, Bertuccelli’s film, c. 1995 because this will endanger the residents. And both reported that on the day the Gestapo came to Cazaubon Victor was warned in good time, Some ten years after this interview, in his because the Gestapo first went to the town hall to address at the Righteous award ceremony in check on his address. The town hall secretary 2004, Steg recalled the same meeting but the Mme Ducasse said she had no idea, then warned surrounding detail had changed. In the film Victor over the phone that the Germans were interviewm the abbé’s visits were ‘rather rare’ looking for him. As soon as he heard this Victor and ‘very short’, but now: ‘Abbé Glasberg often told the residents to disperse into the surrounding came from Lyon to make sure that everything area, but himself refused to move. He simply was alright at the Centre, both from a material [53] and a security point of view, and in addition he allowed himself to be arrested. spoke to all of us. I had several long conversations with him.…’ [50]

93 Nina Gourfinkel described it thus: After this arrest the Bégué centre was broken up, the youth went to join the Tarn maquis, ‘One time during the course of a conversation others left for Limoges to link up with places Victor had said, calmly and without a change in where false papers were being manufactured. tone: “If they ever come looking for me, I will My mother, brother and I and no doubt other not try to save myself. I am too afraid of residents were received by local farm families. compromising the residents. They would take hostages.” I thought no more of it. But on 16 We then went to the village school with the August 1943, at noon, a hasty call from the children of the farm. mayor’s secretary warned Victor of danger: the Gestapo had come to the town hall to make I still remember the harvest festivals… enquiries about him. He had a quarter of an hour. He did not jump out of the window that After the liberation of Paris we were able to looked out onto the park. He was surrounded return.’ [55] by his combatants who were distraught to see him motionless--he remained seated in his Following Victor’s arrest the Gestapo showed no office, his eyes half-closed. Was he praying? interest in the residents, which suggests that Was he concentrating on the sacrifice to which Victor was indeed alone the target. Victor was in the depths of his being he had been called? first held in Agen, then for six months in Cherche- Midi prison in Paris. In the words of Nina The fifteen minutes passed. The small car of the Gourfinkel: Gestapo of Agen stopped in front of the glass door where now no one stood guard. Victor ‘In Agen, at the entrance to a sinister building allowed himself to be taken without a word, as with closed shutters, reinforced by wooden if in a strange sleep-walking state. [54] slats, they would accept neither parcels nor cigarettes for him. But by a providential chance, The arrival of the Gestapo was witnessed by I came across Victor on the quay of the station: Eliane Grison, then 9 years old, and in an he was flanked by two German soldiers, interview 75 years later still had vivid memories standing by the Paris train. He was very pale of the event: but shaved. Our eyes met, remained locked for a moment. Then he smiled and climbed onto ‘My task—I was the oldest of the children and the train. knew how to ride a bike—was to go and collect milk from the neighbouring farms, which they A month later we found him in the Cherche-Midi donated to the community. During these prison [in Paris]. A French woman friend, collections, I remember a childish fear: there passing herself off as a member of the family, were boys were hiding in the thickets waiting to took care to bring him packages which were surprise me and make me fall, I think it was allowed by the regulations every fortnight, and just a childish trick for them, played on to bring back his clean linen. These exchanges someone (a girl !) of their age. continued all winter. Two or three times we found, in a jacket, a tiny piece of coiled up It was once when I was returning from such a paper on which a febrile hand had traced the collection that I saw a black Citroën car in front words: “I regret nothing. I am happy. I pray for of the castle, synonymous for me with the you.” Gestapo. I was conscious of the danger but wanted in a childish reflex to join my mother After 6 months the controllers at Cherche-Midi and my brother and went back to the Chateau. indicated brutally to our courier that it was futile to come back: our detainee had left “for My mother and other residents had left for the an unknown destination”. We heard no more surrounding countryside, thinking that they about him. But it is certain that his notes told were about to be arrested. the truth: Victor had found his truth in sacrifice. He was at peace.’ [56] I was taken into the girls' room. I remember the words that I then heard: "you stay with us, Victor was deported to Auschwitz on 7 March and on no account say anything because there 1944 and never seen again. are weapons under the floor"

Had the young men fled to join the résistance maquis?

The Germans arrived that day with the French milice, undoubtedly thanks to a denunciation, they had a discussion with Victor Vermont and ended up taking him. When getting into the car he said: "Better me than one hundred". There was little news of him after that, but it was surely a tragic end.

94 [11] P. Hanus, op. cit., p. 87

[12] ‘Rapport...’ In C. Sorrel op. cit., p. 87

[13] ADHA, 370 W 15 043/1, préfecture régionale de Marseille, ordre de regroupement des israélites étrangers du 24/08/1942, cited by P. Hanus, op.cit., p. 91

[14] ADHA, 30 W 782/1, brigade de gendarmerie de Veynes, procès verbal de l’opération de regroupement du 26/08/1942, cited by P. Hanus, op.cit., p. 91

[15] Serge Klarsfeld, op. cit. p.58

[16] ‘Le centre d’accueil de Vic-sur-Cère’, Jewish Traces, 6 mars 2012. http://jewishtraces.org/vicsurcere/

Plaque by the side of the road from [17] Ibid. Cazaubon to Barbotan, unveiled in 2014 [18] Ibid.

NOTES [19] Ibid.

[1] ‘In summer 1942 the DCA had four fully [20] ibid. functioning reception centres and was setting up Ibid. a fifth in Gers, when the deportations began.’ [21] Nina Gourfinkel, op.cit., p.257. [22] Ibid. [2] On the question of numbers of DCA residents [23] Nina Gourfinkel, op.cit., p.280 affected by the deportations, abbé Glasberg wrote that 25 from the Lastic centre were deported, and [24] ‘Rapport…’ in C. Sorrel op. cit., p. 155 about 35 others ‘among the elderly whom it was Historique du COSE impossible to hide.’ , mai 1952 [25] Ibid., p. 154-155 (Archives du COS), p. 4 [26] Ibid., p. 155 [3] ‘Rapport…’ in C. Sorrel op. cit., p. 154 [27] Jean-Marie Soutou, op. cit., p.37 [4] Nina Gourfinkel, op. cit., p. 279 [28] Ibid., p.29 [5] ‘Rapport… ‘ in C. Sorrel op. cit., p. 154 [29] M. Comte, op. cit. p.56-57 [6] Philippe Hanus, « Les centres d’accueil pour juifs étrangers de Saint-Thomas-en-Royans et de [30] ‘Rapport…’ in C. Sorrel op. cit., p. 155-156 Rosans (1942-1944) » in Un siècle de réfugiés [31] M. Marrus and R. Caxton, Vichy France and dans la Drôme (Archives départementales de la the Jews, p.335 Drôme, 2017), p. 85 [32] ‘Rapport…’ in C. Sorrel op. cit., p.157 [7] Moos (Klara) : http://my.informedia.de/, cited by P.Hanus, ibid. [33] Robert Serre, De la Drôme aux camps de la mort. Les déportés politiques, résistants, otages, [8] Edith Moos was transferred from Drancy to juifs, nés, résidents ou arrêtés dans la Drôme, Auschwitz on 2 septembre 1942 (convoy No. 27), 1940-1945 (Valence 2006), p.96, cited by Hanus, op.cit. p.90 P. Hanus, op.cit., note 29 [34] Interview with P.Hanus, Ibid., p.90 [9] See p.39 of this chapter [35 ] Cited by Hanus, Ibid., p. 86 [10] Serge Klarsfeld, Une tragédie juive à Rosans (Hautes-Alpes). La Liquidation du centre de Lastic [36] ‘Rapport…’ in C. Sorrel op. cit., p.157 par la police de Vichy le 26 août 1942. (Paris AFFDJF, 1999)

95 [37] ADHA, 30 W 782/1, renseignements [46] Ibid., pp. 290, 293-294 concernat Lastic au 14/10/1942, cited by P. Hanus, op.cit., p. 88 [47] « Allocution du Professeur Ady Steg » op.cit., p. 14-15 [38] Historique du COSE, mai 1952, p.4. COS archive [48] https://yadvashem-france.org/les-justes- parmi-les-nations/les-justes-de-france/dossier- [39] ‘Rapport…’ in C. Sorrel op. cit., p.157 4828

[40] Nina Gourfinkel op. cit., p.288 [49] Eliane Grison, interview with the author, July 2018 [41] Ibid., p. 289 [50] ‘Allocution du Professeur Ady Steg’, op.cit., [42] ‘Allocution du Professeur Ady Steg ‘ in p.15 Remise de la médaille des justes des nations à l’Abbé Alexandre Glasberg par l’Institut Yad [51] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film Vashem (Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine, Lyon 5 mai 2004) [52] ‘Rapport… ‘ in C. Sorrel op. cit., p.157

[43] Letter of Abbé Glasberg, COSE 25 juillet [53] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film 1953, COS archive [54] Nina Gourfinkel, op. cit., p. 294 [44] Nina Gourfinkel, op. cit., p. 290 [55] Eliane Grison, interview with the author, July [45] A fervent young man from Smolensk, who 2018 was deported to Germany after the German advance on Russia, escaped and found himself in [56] Nina Gourfinkel, op. cit., pp. 294-295 Lyon. ‘This boy of 18 years was sent to us by a social assistant who found him wandering the streets, completely devoid of documents, scarcely dressed, famished and incapable of explaining himself in any language.’ Ibid., p.291

96 Chapter 7 Curé and résistant in Honor-de-Cos (1943-1944)

The account below is greatly indebted to the work How this arrangement came about is not certain, of Norbert Sabatié, who has drawn together but not long before, cardinal Gerlier had been personal testimony and written sources relating to invited to Montauban for a big Church event. abbé Glasberg’s time in Honor de Cos and his role ‘[Gerlier] had been bishop of Lourdes from 1929 in the Resistance in the department of Tarn-et- to 1937 and the bishop of Montauban, appointed Garonne in 1943 and 1944. [1] The results of this to his seat in 1940, invited him on 8 October research are summarised in Sabatié’s contribution 1942 to a solemn inauguration of a facsimile of to Alexandre Glasberg: Prêtre, Résistant, Militant, the grotto of Lourdes, built in the garden of the and I have quoted from this a great deal. I am bishop’s palace, in the presence of 12,000 also very grateful to the present mayor of Honor- faithful.’ [2] This meeting may have provided the de-Cos, Michel Lamolinairie, for his warm soil for the transfer of abbé Glasberg to Honor- welcome during a visit to Honor-de-Cos in 2018, de-Cos a few weeks later. and for permission to use material in the local archive.

As we have seen, abbé Glasberg was in imminent danger of arrest following the German occupation of the south in November 1942, because of his known activities on behalf of foreign Jews. Up until then he had enjoyed a certain immunity because of his relationship to cardinal Gerlier, but after the occupation this no longer counted, and at the end of 1942 he was persuaded to disappear.

Élie Corvin

Abbé Glasberg’s disappearance was arranged in the following way. He was discharged from his St Alban parish and stepped down from his responsibilities in the DCA. He found refuge in the diocese of Montauban where he was appointed under the name Elie Corvin to the parish of Léribosc in the commune of Honor-de-Cos in the department of Tarn-et-Garonne. The appointment was made by Mgr Pierre-Marie Théas, bishop of Thursday 8 October 1942, Montauban Montauban, famed for his pastoral letter Great Marian Festival on the occasion of the denouncing the deportation of foreign Jews from inauguration of the Grotto of Lourdes in the unoccupied zone in summer 1942--one of the Garden of the Bishop’s Palace very few in the Church hierarchy to protest openly against the actions of the Vichy regime. Abbé Glasberg arrived in Montauban at the end of December 1942, was received by Mgr Théas, and in January 1943 took up his position as Elie Corvin, curé of Léribosc, some 14 kilometers to the north. He would no doubt have been encouraged by the proximity of the courageous bishop, as well by the history of the city, since refugees had been welcomed in Montauban in the 1930s and after the fall of France in 1940.[3] He retained his alias until the Liberation of France in August 1944.

Curé of Léribosc

Leribosc is one of five hamlets that make up the commune of Honor de Cos. The hub of the commune was, and still is, in the hamlet of Léribosc. It comprised the mairie and school (housed in the same building), the church, the presbytery (built up against the mairie and Mgr Pierre-Marie Théas school), and the residence of the Lamolinairie family which was also an auberge—all in very close proximity.

97 The presbytery (abbé Corvin’s residence) in The residence and auberge of Caroline the foreground, the town hall and school at Lamolinairie and her family the back Charles Mounié, mayor of Honor-de-Cos at the time of the interview around 2005, had served as an altar boy for Corvin:

‘[To begin with] we didn’t talk, we were very distrustful. That’s the way country people are until they get to know someone. But he quickly changed our attitudes and we all got to like him, because he was very simple, he rode around the countryside on his bike, wearing an old cassock, old shoes and a straw hat. We nev- er knew where he came from or what he did, some even said he was a fake priest, because he didn’t know how to say Mass, or not too well. We helped him along because we more or less knew it. At the time Mass was said in Latin and he didn’t know a word of Latin....well, he spoke German, he spoke lots of languages, we saw him do it, but he was not able to speak Latin. We heard him humming (sort of blah, blah, blah) Nobody could hear it [clearly] be- cause in those days [the priests] didn’t face the The Church of Saint-Étienne congregation... But then we understood and people laughed about it.’ The villagers would undoubtedly have found the new curé, with his foreign accent and confident disregard of convention, a strange sort of priest. Sabatié’s description rings true:

‘The parishioners might immediately have been struck by his shabby appearance. A cassock, which to tell the truth was never terribly clean, enveloped a body of huge aspect, resting on a pair of large dusty shoes, while two very thick lenses stood out from a face topped with a straw hat or a biretta, the peaked black hat often worn by priests. His voice had a pro- nounced accent, betraying a foreign origin. His manner was pleasant enough, but the abbé had great presence and would not be easily fooled.’ [4]

In her film Julie Bertucelli interviewed two local Charles Mounié during an interview for people, Charles Mounié and Charles Landou, who Julie Bertuccelli’s film looked back over more than 50 years and brought up vivid childhood memories of the abbé. They thought of him with amusement but affection.

98 Charles Mounié’s other vivid memory was the really shocked us children. And then he said... encouragement that the abbé gave him to “you know, Jesus didn’t like money!” And since succeed: then we haven’t had another altar boy to thank us at mass at Aussac....!’ ‘you know, young man, there is a maxim that is always true: “to a brave heart, nothing is The abbé also surprised his Léribosc parishioners impossible” He said to me: ‘Remember, by choosing Roger Fauré as an altar boy, since whatever happens to you in your life, say to the Fauré family were not church-goers: yourself: “to a brave heart nothing is impossible”’. Strangely enough that year—we ‘When the abbé was told that Roger had did not play football, we had no balls to play attended a free school—in fact, two years at with, no games, he gave me a football and said Saint-Jean Villenouvelle in Montauban—he to me: ‘... practice against this wall and you’ll summoned him, asked if he could serve mass, see, you will learn, you can even become a and employed him straight away. This surprised good player.’ I admired people everywhere who the parishioners, since the Fauré family were played football, and I set myself to learn. And I certainly not church goers. Some therefore was chosen Best Player in the South-West two asked Roger: ‘How come you are serving or three years later. That’s the best memory I mass?’, to which the boy naturally replied have of him, this ability he gave people to want ‘Because the abbé asked me!’ [6] to excel.’ Suspicions dispelled Jesus didn’t like money! Judging by these few details it is not surprising The second local interviewee for Bertuccelli’s fim that abbé Corvin was at first regarded with was Charles Landou, from Aussac, one of the scepticism. But it seems that suspicions were hamlets of Honor-de-Cos. The abbé would go gradually dispelled, helped by the simplicity of his there on Thursdays ‘for lunch and to provide what life (he lived frugally and went about on foot, he called a pseudo-catechism, since in fact he let bicycle or a horse-and-cart, the horse-and-cart [5] a parishioner do the work.’ belonging to a local résistant, Roudil). [7]

Irénée Bordaries, a Léribosc resident, was warned by the cantor of Léribosc church, his future father-in-law, about the new abbé, but Irénée learned to trust him:

‘At the church of Léribosc, the cantor was the father-in-law of Irénée Bordaries, who reckoned that the new curé was quite incapable and asked his father-in-law to be vigilant— ‘Goodness, don’t trust that curé! Watch what you say!’ —and to beware in case they had a spy on their hands. But Bordaries would devel- op good relations with Corvin, especially after showing Corvin a photo of Mongols taken pris- oner at Stalingrad. When he was a student he had worked as a nurse and a tank driver, then he was despatched to Vienna, later to Stalin- Charles Landou during an interview for grad, where he contracted typhus. He returned Julie Bertuccelli’s film in late 1941 or early 1942 to Lyon, before find- ing his way to Honor-de-Cos. What is more his wife was a jaciste (member of Jeunesse Agri- The abbe’s first visit caused a great stir: cole Chrétienne (JAC)) so the atmosphere was congenial to Corvin, who often came to share a ‘The day he arrived, it was winter, and... we glass or a cigarette. Corvin was present at their had a live nativity scene, there was the donkey marriage in Honor-de-Cos, on 29 January 1944, and everything. And ....abbé Corvin didn’t like also attended by abbé Rapeau, chaplain to the money. In the middle of this nativity scene we JAC, and abbé Verines, professor of mathemat- had a an altar boy with an urn which said ics at Saint-Theodard, later curé of Ardus. Since “thank you” each time a child put a coin in it. It the latter was known to be a Vichy supporter, was fun for the little children and I still Mgr Theas’ pastoral letter was not delivered to remember my mother carrying me in her arms him. However the wedding meal was not spoilt so that I could put my coin into [the urn] and by any partisan quarrels.’ [8] hear the little altar boy say “thank you”. Abbé Corvin arrived, there were several of us children There is little oral or written testimony about the there in front of the nativity scene. He took this abbé during his time in Honor-de-Cos, but the statuette and shattered it on the ground. That

99 Marriage of Irénée Bordaries in Honor-de-Cos, 29 January 1944. The abbés Glasberg, Rapeau (chaplain to the JAC) and Vérines (teacher of mathematics at Saint-Théodard then parish priest of Ardus) are in the centre impression which emerges is that he was sociable that he was hiding, we noticed what was going and well-liked. The abbé’s love affair with food on, but since he was not talkative and we had also contributed to social contact because it made been told not to talk, we never said anything him open to invitations. In the words of Charles about this situation, and he always managed to Mounié: get out.’ [10]

‘His gluttony was extreme and he got rid of what he did not like by sliding it onto the plates of the youth sitting next to him. He participated of course in farm work, and was easily able to feed himself, at mealtimes, by visits to families such as the Monfrays (one of the two sons, Pierre, was a maquis lieutenant, then became prefect, and the other, Jean, an army commander), or at Mounies, and especially at the Lamolinaires who had a hostel in the centre of the village…

It was easy to establish a relationship with the abbé because despite his striking appearance he was very friendly and…readily made contact with everyone. His enthusiasm was constant and he never seemed to get angry. [9] One of these two vaults in the cemetery of Nonetheless there was gossip about him, and on Léribosc served as a hiding place for abbé occasion he behaved very strangely, as Charles Glasberg Mounié recalled:

‘We were often in the vestry, because we But it appears that no one in the village realised accompanied him there and then left the church that Corvin was an alias, or knew that he was with him. And whenever a stranger came to wanted by the Gestapo: church he disappeared. Once twice, three times, we noticed that he went out of the '... no mention of a connection with anyone vestry window and hid in a vault. We realised came through: abbé Corvin remained a secret

100 person ... During the sermons from the pulpit, Etienne’s overnight stay at the presbytery was he would praise courageous action, kindness also memorable: towards the poor, highlight the notions of responsibility and engagement, everything that ‘In the film of my memory I see, at the top of favoured the good, but there was never a word the presbytery steps, the parish priest of of politics. ' [11] Léribosc welcoming me…He was roughing it, it was more like camping, in complete disregard There was in Alexander Glasberg’s nature always of any comfort. As for me, I slept fully dressed a secretive side, but in some contexts this served on the couch that was offered to me by the lady him very well. who acted as housekeeper. "How did it go?” Mgr Théas asked me on my return. "It was very Abbé Etienne comes to help interesting but I didn’t understand in what language he was cursing the mayor for Abbé Etienne, a teacher of literature in a small delaying work on the church (it was in seminary in Montauban, met abbé Corvin not Yiddish!)”’ [14] long after his arrival in Honor de Cos, when Mgr Théas asked him to help abbé Corvin during the The Résistance three-day Easter festival. Not long after his arrival in Honor-de-Cos Abbé '[Etienne’s] first meeting left him with the Corvin joined the local resistance network, where impression of “a force of nature, messily he was known as ‘Élie’. dressed”, as he put it, or again “a very sturdy sort of bohemian, short-sighted but endowed At this point a few words about the Résistance with very good hearing.” After a quick oral may be helpful by way of background. [15] The exchange in which they introduced each other, word résistance has acquired different layers of Etienne repeated the name Corvin and said that meaning in French discourse about the years of this made him think of a hero of the Hungarian the German occupation and the Vichy régime. resistance against the Turks. “You should have There was civil resistance, which meant any seen Corvin’s face!” It was by chance, but this activity that flouted the decrees of the German comment reminded the abbé of his eastern occupier or the Vichy regime: for example, origins and..of his activities!' [12] protecting people who were subject to arrest because of their ethnicity or nationality or politics, creating false identity documents, publishing anti-Nazi and anti-collaborationist material.

Then there was la Résistance, with a capital R, which referred to armed resistance to the German occupation forces and their French collaborators. This began in the north in 1940-42 as more or less isolated acts of sabotage, but it was in 1943-44, after the German occupation of the south, that it evolved into the paramilitary activity commonly known as la Résistance. Units of armed men and women emerged, under the authority of diverse organisations with different relationships to the wider military and political Abbé Lucien Etienne (1915-2012), over 60 struggle. In rural areas these units acquired the years later. He was approaching 30 when he name maquis, which referred both to the remote met abbé Corvin in Honor-de-Cos territory where the units were based, and to the units themselves, while members of the units were maquisards. They were socially and Etienne recalled this Easter episode in a piece for politically mixed, including workers and farmers, La Dépêche du Midi in 1990, on the publication of professionals and aristocrats, liberals, Lucien Lazare’s book about abbé Glasberg. communists and conservatives. Etienne had met abbé Glasberg again eighteen months after the Liberation, and Glasberg had The development of these combat units was said: ‘I really thought, last year, that you had greatly influenced by the creation of the Service discovered my identity!’ [13] du Travail Obligatoire (STO) in February 1943, which compelled Frenchmen born between 1920 and 1922 to leave France to work in German factories for two years. It was deeply unpopular and thousands evaded recruitment. Many of these réfractaires joined the résistance, thus swelling the ranks of the maquis.

101 The Résistance evolved in a complex and Résistance activity included attacks on German uncoordinated way, which led to various efforts at personnel, sabotage of power lines and unification. In January 1943 three major telecommunications networks, destruction of ‘gaulliste’ Resistance groups in the southern zone transport facilities. It involved receiving arms and (Combat, Libération-Sud and Franc-Tireur) came concealing them. There was an underground together under Mouvements Unis de la press and false documentation, and support from Résistance, and the military wings of these the local rural population was critical: for food, groups were brought into the Armée secrète, for security, for information. Military and civil established in September 1942. Then in May resistance were thus intimately entwined, as 1943 the three groups united with other highlighted in the examples below. movements (the press, trade unions, and political parties hostile to the Vichy regime), to form a Conseil National de la Résistance.

The story of a réfractaire: Jean Vignoboul In February 1943, Jean Vignoboul, a young résistant, received his summons from the STO. Thanks to the mathematics degree for which he ‘The importance of civil resistance: the was studying in Toulouse, he obtained a deferral “anonymous" people who chose to help others. of several months. But he knew that he would In the train deporting us there were two be called again. He then entered into contact peasants arrested for supplying the maquis with a school teacher from Maubec, whose anti- who has set up in their area. These women Vichy ideas he knew about and whose son was knew nothing of Nazi ideology. What they in the same situation as Jean Vignoboul. Jean rejected was the the occupier and his took refuge with this farming family, going out methods. Not everyone could engage, plunge only at night as a precaution for himself and for into clandestine activity, carry out the armed those who were giving him secret refuge. After struggle. But without the help of people like that the hiding places changed. The two these two women, the Resistance would not refractaires left by bicycle for Tarn, near Gaillac have been possible. [...] another example: an where Jean Vignoboul’s parents lived. They Allied paratrooper drops into a field and is stayed there for about three weeks then injured. What is the farmer who is in the field returned for a few days to Maubec. Jean to do? He has a choice. Either he denounces Vignoboul later found refuge in Faubourg the paratrooper or rescues him. He does not Lacapelle in Montauban, at his mother-in-law's hesitate and thus enters the chain. He house. Here he made contact with the summons his son to help him transport the underground communist party with a view to injured man to the doctor - who has also made joining the maquis. But he was turned down a choice. The paratrooper is taken to hospital. because the existing maquis had serious The chain continues, despite the danger. When problems with the supply of weapons and food. he is better, people search for a way to He would have to wait and hide again. After the repatriate him to England. At that point, what allied landing on 6 June, 1944, Jean Vignoboul is called organised resistance begins, with its refused to go on like this and finally joined the networks and branches. All these people were maquis. In this capacity, he and others hijacked human beings for whom it would have been an barrels of petrol near Castelsarrasin, to be used indignity to hand over a wounded man. They by maquis vehicles. By these means he and acted in their own way, using their own words. other résistants were able to ensure a quicker And they remained anonymous.’ passage to Albias or Réalville, where they conducted sabotage of railway lines and Geneviève de Gaulle-Antonioz, revue Le electricity pylons to counter the occupation Patriote résistant de décembre 1994. troups. Jean Vignoboul made clear that none of this would have been possible without the complicity or help of farms in the surrounding area. Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation – Ville de Montauban, 2007 7

102 Elie and the maquis in this country. Her strapping sons obeyed her every wish and she led the men of the village Such was the broader context of Elie’s too, with a firm hand but with good humour. involvement in the résistance. In August 1943 three maquis in Tarn et Garonne, were brought When, very soon after he came to the village, under the command of the ‘gaullist’ Armee Father Elie began to weave the still tenuous Secrète: Ornano (4th company), Bir Hakeim (7th threads of the Resistance, Caroline was his ally [18] company); and Arnaud (6th company). These and confidante from the start.' were combat units mainly made up of réfractaires, volunteers who had signed up to a code of military conduct. Another unit in the local area, the Louis Sabatié maquis, came under the authority of the communist Francs Tireurs Partisans. [16]

From a military point of view Tarn et Garonne was relatively quiet during the earlier part of the Caroline German occupation of the south. But the ground Lamolinairie was being prepared in 1943, and as elsewhere in France, activity intensified in 1944 as the wider military struggle developed.

A group of résistants in Honor de Cos belonged to 4th company. They would meet in the Lamolinairie residence and auberge in Léribosc, just across the road from the presbytery. As well as a meeting place it was a stopping off point for Caroline réfractaires (for connection with various branches by the of the maquis) and a letter box, and it became a auberge centre for resupply of the Company. The probable origin of the group is explained by Sabatié :

‘In Honor-de-Cos the resistance was apparently organised after the arrival of Gras, a postman from Montcuq who had been wounded in 1914- 18, and expelled from Lot for resistance activities. The members of the resistance would gather near the church at the auberge run by Caroline, Mme Lamolinairie mère. Her two sons Roger and Gaston lived there, and two Spanish refugees, dedicated communists and resistance fighters, one answering to the surname Fabregat, the other to the first name Jean. With Roger Fauré, this brought to seven the small group of regulars’ [17]

Elie got to know Caroline Lamolinairie and Gaston frequented the auberge, and no doubt it was Lamolinairie through this connection that he was initially drawn into the local network.

Nina Gourfinkel, the abbé’s faithful collaborator who continued to work for some of the former DCA homes during the occupation of the south, came on a visit to Honor-de-Cos and in her memoir wrote a paean of praise to Caroline:

The main personage of the place was Caroline, a woman approaching sixty but whose energy seemed inexhaustible. She ran an auberge, Roger very rustic if the truth be told, but where she Lamolinairie served her own foie gras and it was amongst the most perfumed, sweet, and most lovingly infused with truffles of any that one might eat

103 Parachute drops containers. The containers were large cylinders, 1 meter high, weighing 200 kilos, carrying Through his Léribosc contacts Elie established a machine guns, grenades, submachine guns ... [19] relationship to the Ornano maquis , and to etc. All the containers were picked up by the other maquis in the region. The Ornano was one designated parachute team and were then of the units responsible for receiving parachute transported to the maquis ... '[21] drops in 1943-1944—its symbol was a parachute with a container of arms, dropping above a map The details of Elie’s activities are not very clear. of France—and the abbé made a particular contri- They were necessarily concealed at the time and [20] bution in this arena. at no point in his life was he driven to write a memoir about his time in Honor de Cos. However, some recollections by veteran résistants, recorded by Sabatié, highlight the help that he gave in connection with parachute drops, identifying hiding places for people and for arms, transmitting information, liaising between headquarters and the locality and between different maquis:

‘Charles Couchet, one of the leaders of the Louis Sabatié maquis (maquis of Saint- Antonin), could testify, as Marcel Maurières, a former resistance fighter, told me personally: "Abbé Glasberg supplied us with machine guns. I knew him well. He had joined the maquis. He Flag and insignia of gave us a lot. It was the Secret Army that the maquis asked him to store some in his presbytery. It d’Ornano was Roudil who let us know; Roudil helped us to create a maquis for supplies; he was a good resistance fighter, a driver for abbé Glasberg. This abbé was a sensational guy, he spoke all languages. A Jesuit!.... He would say: "We must beat the Germans; after that we’ll see... "’

‘Jean Vignoboul, former resistance fighter, knew about a relationship between Glasberg The drops were carried out by the RAF in and Robert Pélissier, better known under the conjunction with the UK Special Operations name Ricou, Occitan diminutive for Henri, who Executive which was conducting espionage, was the commander of the maquis FTP (Francs- sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe Tireurs and Partisans) Saint-Antonin , Verdun on behalf of the Allies, and assisting local and Lauzerte. Here is what Vignoboul said: resistance movements with the supply of arms. "Glasberg had contacts with Ricou: they would meet up on the road leading to Honor-de-Cos. The maquis, in the sense of specific locations, Information was thus provided to the maquis were remote spots that could provide protection about caches of weapons, mainly machine guns and would be suitable for parachute drops of and explosives. It was one of the few methods materiel and sometimes personnel. Each place of passing information on airdrops in the most was codenamed and supplied with radio discreet manner possible."’ equipment, and coded messages were broadcast by the BBC to alert resistance units to imminent ‘Paul Saint-Martin, former baker of Honor-de- drops, using a letter of the alphabet, the territory Cos, confirmed that Corvin served as liaison code and a phrase, for example ‘the cherry trees between the maquis of the region: it was he are in flower’. who was au fait with the parachute drops and who was charged with warning those who had The system was described by Roger Lamolinairie to collect. In the case of one of the drops he as follows: received the news by telephone one night when he was a guest at a wedding. He went ‘The parachute drops were done in a simple immediately to Mirabel, apologising to his way. The territory was indicated with signals, it hosts.’ was marked out and always at night. (a) the planes made a first run (divisions of 12 planes ‘Roger Fauré has other memories. Once, the for each parachute drop), after which a secret group went to assist with a parachute drop at code was given (b) the planes made a second Montaigu-de-Quercy, with the Lamolinairie van, run, and if all was quiet three lights were lit up to help carry and camouflage cases of arms and on the ground to give the signal (c) the planes ammunition. On the way back, there was a then made a third run and dropped the breakdown which forced Roger, the youngest,

104 Château de Piquecos

to run through woods to Lauzerte to find a coil youngest thought it wise to “lift” the elder), and that could fix it. Another time, at the request of did not want to bring further troubles on the Glasberg, Roger had to get on a bike to take a family. It was just as well since one day two message to the maquis of Montaigu-de-Quercy, German officers came to check this commanded by Vincent. In the event of a underground passage, where an internal problem, he had been given a six-bullet pistol: collapse stopped them from going any further, five for the Germans and one for himself!' [22] to the Piquecos chateau, where the conduit was supposed to lead according to the cadastral Other résistant contacts map.' [24]

In addition to the veterans mentioned above who As a result of this connection, Elie would later, had memories of Elie’s activities, three other con- during the final stages of the occupation in tacts are worthy of special mention: August 1944, recommend the château as a site for the command post of the North Garonne Jean Bayrou, a primary school teacher from region: Puycornet near Honor-de-Cos, who played an important part in the local resistance network, ‘Berthet, sent by the Region to command the with whom Elie was in touch and with whom he North-Garonne area, gave the order to the made an interesting expedition to Toulouse to- general staff to leave Montauban and set up wards the end of the occupation: base to the north of the city; the command post was transferred to Mirabel (in fact to Aussac) ‘Glasberg had a direct relationship with this from 16 August. On 15 August Berthe had school teacher from Puycornet. Under his established his command post Chateau pseudonym Labeur, he provided a link with the Piquecos, the site having been found by abbé Résistance. Among his memories was a comic Corvin, “Elie”, but he kept that site for only 24 episode in June 1944 when Bayrou was hours. The command post remained at Mirabel disguised as a curé in order to accompany (Aussac) until 19 August 1944.’ [25] Glasberg to the Grand Hotel in Toulouse, a headquarters for the Occupation. Naturally they had a drink, during which time the army majors Marie-Rose Gineste, a Catholic social worker were discussing possible routes of retreat : so who became celebrated for her role in copying much information that the polyglot Glasberg and delivering Mgr Théas’ letter of protest about could understand and communicate.’ [23] the August 1942 deportations. Gineste was based in Montauban and was in communication with the François de Nerciat, owner of the Chateau de Ornano maquis via abbé Corvin—a good example Piquecos, near Honor de Cos: of the way in which the abbé’s status as priest was exploited in liaison:

'[De Nerciat] states that abbé Glasberg was a ‘Marie-Rose Gineste [said]: “In the case of the regular and that he stayed there, reassured by Ornano maquis, which had withdrawn to Honor- the fact that there was a hiding place, a recess de-Cos, I established liaison between the with a box, above the bed in the king's room. general staff of the Secret Army and abbé De Nerciat’s father Baron de Nerciat, a diplomat Glasberg, alias Corvin, on behalf of captain on unpaid leave from 1942, organized with Maison or captain Didier (Pierre Pruet and René abbé Glasberg a smuggling network to Spain. Andrieu). And the young Monfraix would come After the Liberation, Gaston Palewski, General regularly to my Secretariat office to pick up the de Gaulle's chief of staff in London, was clandestine Témoignage chrétien, for himself received at Piquecos.’ and for abbé Glasberg.” [26] ‘Glasberg had heard about an underground passage which started from the woods on the Fauré property, and Glasberg wanted to use it as an arms cache. Roger Fauré dissuaded him, since he had two brothers in Germany (the

105 They collected one drop successfully but then, probably as a result of a tip-off, were suddenly surrounded by German troops. Machine gun fire and orders shouted in German proclaimed the start of a pitched battle. Six maquisards were killed and the positon was captured. The rest of the group, as well as a parachuted agent, Marie-Rose Gineste escaped. [27] A monument to this tragedy was Montauban 1943 later built at the La Bouriette site.

Following the attack Elie played an important part, along with Caroline Lamolinairie, in finding refuge for those who had escaped: ‘He received and “hid” some of the Ornano maquis (who were The Ornano maquis attacked dispersed after the 21 March 1944 attack) in his parish and neighbouring areas.’ [28] The Ornano Receiving parachute drops was a risky affair and maquis had now lost its base, but its remaining the territory of the Ornano maquis was taken by th the Germans on 21 March 1944, on a night when members re-formed later, still as part of the 4 the unit went to pick up two parachute company, in the territory of Saint-Amans. [29] consignments. The Ornano were based in an area between Montricoux and Saint Antonin on a limestone plateau in the commune of Penne, The Comité Départementale de Libération where they occupied two abandoned farmhouses, (CDL) and the FFI (Forces Françaises de La Bouriette et Lantanel. l’Intérieur) After the Normandy landings in June 1944 the maquis were integrated into the larger military structure of the FFI. At the same time departmental liberation committees were set up to give civil/political representation to the Resistance forces: 'It was the interior resistance forces which put in place these new regional and local authorities. The Departmental and Local Liberation Committees were created on national soil and with the participation of all the movements, in the image of the Conseil National de la Résistance. The Comités Départementales de Libération took on the direction of the insurrection against the enemy and assumed power at the local level.’ [30] Monument to the Ornano Maquis at the site of La Bourette. The abbé was present at the first clandestine meeting of the Tarn-et-Garonne Comité Text of the plaque Départemental de Liberation on 17 June 1944, in the Saint-Amans wood in Mirabel, and was The first military maquis of the Secret Army of [31] Tarn-et-Garonne, founded on 23 August 1943 at selected as a member. He was later appointed Garhan-Penne for the struggle against the chaplain to the Tarn et Garonne FFI, with the Germans, for the defence of the independence and grade of captain. [32] liberty of the country, received important parachute drops of men and arms. The main purpose of this first meeting was to 21 March 1944 choose a head of the local FFI group. Colonel During a fierce but unequal fight of 29 men against Langeron (Larzac) was selected but there were the SS on the territory of Volcan and at La tensions over his selection, and Elie was Bourette, six patriots died a glorious death. instrumental in resolving them, as recorded in the 6 May 1944 – an engagement at Montaigu-de- testimony of Pierre Pruet: Quercy 16 August 1944 – an engagement at Perches On 17 June 1944 the first meeting of the 19 and 20 August 1944 – fought for the liberation of Montauban and of Tarn-et-Garonne clandestine CDL (Comité départemental de Pursued the struggle for complete liberation of the Libération) (Departmental Liberation territory with the 3rd Hussard Regiment. (Vosges- Committee) took place; this was the first time Alsace) the term was used. Pruet was surprised by the large numbers who attended [including] abbé Honour to those who sacrifced their lives for liberty. Corvin (Glasberg). The aim of the session was Glory to those who died that France might live. to appoint an FFI chief. Abbé Corvin intervened in support of Langeron while showing

106 consideration for Duplan (Nil)’s sensitivities […] up in the wooded area of Saint-Marc, between Contact was soon made with the FTP (Francs- Léribosc and Lafrançaise. [34] Tireurs et Partisans) via Couchet. Through the mediation of abbé Corvin (who no doubt had The auberge is targeted links with the FTP through Roudil), the FTP made a request for some of the arms of the As suggested by Langeron’s account above, the Ornano maquis which were ‘hidden’ and not auberge in Léribosc continued to play an then in use. Corvin ‘Élie’ spoke about it to important role as a meeting place and point of Pruet, who agreed to give six machine guns.’ [33] liaison among the local maquis in the summer of 1944.

The auberge was also mentioned by Cabrit, assistant to Guiral:

‘We left Saint-Amans and arrived in Puycornet where my friend Bayrou welcomed us warmly. This new residence has the advantage of bringing us closer to Léribosc where Dupont and Remi still are […] Tuesday 13 June—our Léribosc friends have not forgotten us: Roger and Gaston Lamolinairie, Saint-Martin and abbé Corvin are completely committed. I make the acquaintance of other maquisards: Charly, a sixteen year old German Jew, Fabregat known as Cabaliero, who fought in the Spanish war, It was in this farmhouse in the bois de Guy from Montauban, a defector from GMR Pauly, which has now disappeared, that the (Groupes mobiles de reserve) in Quercy and Comité Départemental de la Libération met Pierre Monfraix [railwayman of the Rail- on 17 June 1944 Resistance]. [35]

This description is consistent with colonel Holding the auberge together was Caroline Langeron’s account in his memoir : Lamolinairie, who not only provided a haven for résistants, but also nursed the wounded, and ‘It was at the beginning of 1944 that the French contributed a milieu of intense discussion, as Nina Liberation Corps (Corps francs de la Libération, Gourfinkel described: CFL) was created. I received a letter from Guiral, delivered by Mme Rivière. Gustave At the time of the maquis battles, she turned Guiral gave me a rendez-vous at Léribosc, herself into a nurse, welcoming the wounded to where the curé Glasberg, alias Élie, was to her auberge and caring for them like a mother. provide us with refuge. We were to be under She knew how to silence the gendarmes who the protection of the 4th joint Company of the were concerned about what was going on, and Ornano maquis, in hiding in Saint-Amans […] firmly awaited an eventual visit from the Germans. The nights we spent at her home After arriving in Léribosc and making contact were not all restful. But what good people with Élie, I lodged at Mme Lamolinairie’s, a around her table, what ardent, endless dropping off point, letter box and resupply discussions, with the refined young bourgeois centre, while waiting for Guiral who had gone from the property nearby rubbing shoulders into hiding in Bioule from Léribosc. Then Guiral with officials and intellectuals from the and I went together to take cover with the department capital, with the wheelwright, the Saint-Amans maquis, who had settled in an blacksmith, the school teacher and the young réfractaires. abandoned farmhouse in the wooded valley of So long as they were there they all Pauly […] It was in this same wood that the first got along very well, jovially presided over by meeting of the CDL of Tarn-et-Garonne took Caroline and the curé who, although born not place on 17 June 1944. It was an agitated far from the Dnieper, felt perfectly at home the session, with a charged atmosphere and a very banks of the Tarn. '[36] lively discussion, and finally, after a calming intervention by Élie (Glasberg), which seemed to bring harmony, we voted for an FFI chief. Yet the role of the Lamolinairie residence in Léribosc was known, and on 24 June 1944 it was With the exception of Duplan and Lambert, raided by milices from the nearby village of there was agreement on the appointment of Lafrançaise. Those in the house at the time Larzan […] Guiral and I stayed with the Saint- managed to escape, but Roger Lamolinairie was Amans maquis and, on 19 June evening, the injured in the ensuing struggle: Saint-Amans maquis broke camp […] then set

107 ‘The arrival of the milices at the auberge, de Libération, and after the war secretary to the provoking the flight of the Lamolinairie sons, Commission d’histoire de l’Occupation et de la was related by Irénée Bordaries, who with his Libération de Tarn-et-Garonne. He wrote of the family witnessed the flight as far as the wheat abbé: ‘After arriving in Tarn-et- field where he set up bundles (javelles). Garonne…[Glasberg] made contact with and Gaston, who was tall and thin, hid under the cooperated with the bodies and groups in the little bridge below the town hall, while his Tarn-et-Garonne resistance which would form the brother fled along the stream as far as a walnut MUR and the FFI, and with Témoignage chrétien, tree. “Surround the walnut tree!” shouted a NAP etc.’, and identified the following aspects: milice, and Roger was wounded in the calf from a burst of fire, but still managed to escape. The ‘—after his arrival [abbé Glasberg] explored Bordaries crept through the bushes back to possible places that could serve as “hideouts”. their home and remained silent, fearing the --in July 1944 he made contact with colonel worst.’ [37] Berthet, head of the FFI in the North-Garonne zone and investigated territories for parachute Following this raid, the résistants who had been drops. using the auberge were in the sights of the --he organised and put in place a team of the milices and had to find other places of refuge. 4th Company which operated together with the Gaston Lamolinairie was one of those 8th Company on the terrain of Manioc: two immediately affected and later wrote: ‘I was parachute drops in May and June 1944. pursued by the Milice, I wandered from one --he ensured transport and camouflage of arms hiding place to another, always maintaining for the 4th Company. contact with the Résistance chiefs : colonel --he received and « hid away » a part of the Ornano maquis after the attack of 21 March on Langeron, captain Rivière, Monfraix’. [38] the Garrige plateau, in his parish and in neighbouring areas, and assisted the Bir- The auberge could now no longer serve as a Hakeim maquis after the attack of 2 May 1944. th dropping off and supply point for the 4 company --he maintained a constant liaison in his and in the period that followed, the Léribosc presbytery with the chiefs of the Secret Army presbytery took over this role: and with the Organisation of military resistance. --on 17 June, in the Saint-Amans wood, he in this period of dispersion, the unity of the participated in the clandestine meeting of the company was ensured by the presence of Comité Départementale de Libération. Colonel Langeron, hidden in the woods of St --after the milice attack in Léribosc par on 24 Marc, by the activity of Renouard, hiding in June, he replaced captain Rivière who had Puycornet, and by the dedication of the Léribosc disappeared. parish priest, abbé Glasberg, wanted by the --during the Liberation he helped to maintain Gestapo and camouflaged under the false order in Montauban, together with captain identity of "Corvin". It was he who provided Didier, head of the FFI 2nd Bureau. supplies and ensured liaison with the General --he was appointed maquis chaplain with the Staff. The presbytery became the main drop-off grade of captain. point. Another drop-off point, providing a letterbox and accommodation (replacing the To summarise, despite knowing that he had Lamolinairie house) was on the Pyucornet road been condemned to death and that the Gestapo at Pizquardal, at the postman Frédéric Boyer’s was looking for him, he created through his [39] place.' activity in Léribosc in the commune of Honor- de-Cos a centre of resistance and one of the A summary main meeting points of the Résistance in Tarn- et-Garonne.’ [42] Elie continued his close association with the local résistance until the Liberation in August 1944. Parting gestures Since the testimony is so sketchy, it is difficult to create a detailed narrative of his involvement, but Abbé Corvin left Honor-de-Cos after the liberation the various moments described above testify to of Montauban in August 1944. Before departing the importance of his contribution. They justify he said his last mass at Léribosc, and for the first Sabatié’s conclusion that ‘the abbé was a time made known his affiliation by wearing the constant presence, indicating his deep tricolor armband of the FFI, which surprised the [40] involvement in the local résistance network.’ parishioners: ‘My God, the curé is a maquisard!’ [43] Some aspects of abbé Glasberg/abbé Corvin/Elie’s activity were summarised in October And Charles Landou, interviewed in Bertuccelli’s 1951 by Albert Ressigeac (‘Rémi’ in his résistance film, retained a vivid image of the curé because identity), another of the abbé’s contacts. of another dramatic parting gesture: Ressigeac was the departmental head of the NAP (Noyautage_des_administrations_publiques)[41], ‘I remember the last day, when we said a fellow member of the Comité Départementale goodbye to him. Father Corvin, that’s what we

108 called him, we lined up in front of the additional information on the story of the cure church…he left in 1944, after the liberation of of Ardus and the parachute drops at Fau. At Montauban, we lined up to say ‘goodbye, Father Montauban, on Sunday, May 23, 1971, he Corvin’. When he got to me, he slapped me attended the conference of the CDL and twice across the face. I was astonished and proposed that Mgr. Théas be nominated said: ‘What have I done? But I didn’t do Honorary President of the Committee. The day anything wrong!’ And he answered ‘Exactly! before, as a former member of the CDL, he held And that’s why you will remember me all your a press conference, in a room at the Hotel du life’. And it’s true, I have never forgotten him!’ Midi, in the presence of people who had held important positions in the departmental Honours Resistance. The same day, at the end of the conference, he paid a visit to his friends at Along with his fellow résistants in Tarn et Honor-de-Cos. Perhaps he came at other times, Garonne, the abbé was duly honoured by the in his customary discreet manner. But that is postwar Provisional Government for his not so important: his imprint has been strong contribution to the struggle. In October 1945 he enough to remain engraved in our memories, received the Médaille de la Résistance Française. thanks to the testimonies of those whom he [44] Then in November 1948 the commune of knew and those who were involved in his Honor-de-Cos was awarded the Croix de Guerre, activity.' [45] in recognition of its role in the Résistance, for which abbé Glasberg could take his share of The memory of the abbé’s résistance activity credit. would be sustained also by l’Association nationale des anciens combattants de la Résistance Abbé Glasberg leaves his mark (ANACR), of which he was vice-president for some ten years, up until his death in 1981. In The abbé returned to Honor de Cos on a number 1989, following a recommendation by the ANACR, of occasions after settling in Paris at the end of the commune of Honor-de-Cos honoured abbé 1944, and he left his mark on the commune. Glasberg by naming a square in Léribosc after him. The sign stands just metres away from the ‘He returned to the department at least twice as former presbytery, the church, the mairie and the vice-president of the National Association of Lamolinairie house which had played such an Veterans of the Resistance (ANACR). In Caylus, important part in Alexander Glasberg’s life during on Sunday, March 16, 1975, he provided his sojourn in Léribosc.

Résistants of Honor-de-Cos, 1945, at a picnic to commemorate the site of the final clandestine meeting of the Comité Départemental de la Libération du Tarn et Garonne. Alexander Glasberg is second from the left

109 Place de L’Abbé Glasberg in Léribosc Ministry of the Interior, Medal of the French Resistance, awarded with a rosette to ‘Elie Glassberg’, 17 May 1946 Then twenty years later, on 17 May 2009, the commune once more paid its respects to the Résistance and to abbé Glasberg in particular, in the presence of many invited guests, including the bishop of Montauban and civil and military authorities. [45]

Sunday 27 February 1950, Honor-de-Cos is awarded the Croix de guerre for its Resistance activities. Photo of the event reprinted in Dépeche du Midi, 16 May 2009

Reportages de la presse locale sur les cérémonies du 17 mai 2009

Christiane Saint-Martin, daughter of Paul Saint-Martin, baker of Honor-de-Cos and résistant, presents the cushion with the Croix de Guerre, 27 February 1950

110 The invitation by Michel Lamolinairie, then mayor and still mayor today, reads as follows:

‘By a decree of November 2, 1948, the Croix de Guerre was awarded to the commune of Honor- de-Cos for its resistance activity during the Second World War. As in most towns and villages in France, the Resistance was the work of many people, sometimes anonymous, who often paid for their heroism with their lives. In Honor de Cos and in the surrounding communes, in this historical context, some figures stand out especially, abbé Glasberg known as Elie Corvin and his partner in combat Jean Bayrou.

It seems to me that it will be helpful if we can use these examples, which are part of the Michel Lamolinairie, mayor of Honor-de-Cos, memory of the commune and its close son of Roger Lamolinairie and grandson of neighbours, to spread the word about the Caroline Lamolinairie, in front of the building Resistance to the whole of Tarn et Garonne, to which once housed the auberge that was so remember the very many acts of heroism and important in the history of the Resistance in for our children, perhaps, to learn from Honor-de-Cos. September 2018 them.'[46]

NOTES [7] Reminiscences of Charles Mounié, during a [1] Norbert Sabatié, « L’Abbé Glasberg et la meeting at the mairie of Honor-de-Cos, Résistance dans le Tarn-et-Garonne », dans C. 3/11/2005, notes taken by Norbert Sabatié. Sorrel (dir.), Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981: Archives de la mairie de L’Honor de Cos. Prêtre, Résistant, Militant (2013) [8] N Sabatié, op. cit., p. 61 [2] It was thought that documentation about this event had been lost, but Norbert Sabatié has [9] Reminiscences of Charles Mounié, during a recently unearthed the publicity mentioned here. meeting at the mairie of Honor-de-Cos, 3/11/2005, notes taken by Norbert Sabatié. [3] Well before the Second World War, Archives de la mairie de L’Honor de Cos. Montauban had received antifascist refugees. In early 1935, after the unification of the Saar with [10] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film. The Nazi Germany, numerous Sarrois moved to windows had bars, but they were movable. N France. The French authorities then directed Sabatié, op. cit. p.62 many of them to the South-West and a number came to Montauban. As shown in the large [11] Reminiscences of Charles Mounié, during a municipal archives relating to refugees, the city meeting at the mairie of Honor-de-Cos, was a place of welcome for foreigners: Germans, 3/11/2005, notes taken by Norbert Sabatié. Austrians, Poles, Italians, Spaniards, Belgians, Archives de la mairie de L’Honor de Cos. Swiss, Luxemburgers, Dutch, Czechoslovaks. With the occupation of France Tarn-et-Garonne [12] N Sabatié op.cit., p. 62. At the end of the became a gathering place for many antifascist 16th century, Corvin was King of Hungary, taking refugees. « Montauban et le Tarn-et-Garonne : the name Mathias the First and his son Janos, terres d’accueil de réfugiés ». Musée de la called Corvin, was governor of Croatia and Résistance – Ville de Montauban Dalmatia.

[4] N Sabatié, op.cit. p. 60 [13] La Dépêche du Midi 17 juin 1990

[5] Ibid., p. 61 [14] Bulletin Catholique (Diocèse de Montauban), 7 avril 2004 [6] Ibid., pp. 60-61 [15] The Wikipedia article on the resistance is very useful. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Résistance _intérieure_ française

111 [16] « Avant que Mémoire ne Meure » pp. 164- [29] It was later integrated into the 3rd Hussard 165; « Cinquantenaire de la Libération de regiment (8 September 1944), which took part in Montauban et du Tarn-et-Garonne », pp. 37-64, the Vosges and Alsace campaigns up until the dans « La résistance en Tarn-et-Garonne ». liberation of France. http://resistance82.fr/ [30] « Contre l’oubli. Plaques et stèles de la [17] N Sabatié, op. cit. p. 63 résistance et de la déportation en Tarn-et- Garonne»,p.148-149, in «La résistance en Tarn- [18] N Gourfinkel, op. cit., p.335. She does et-Garonne ». http://resistance82.fr/le-comite- mention a date, but since she speaks of departemental-de-liberation/. The Comités de parachute drops , her visit was probably in the Libération were created by the Mouvements Unis summer of 1944. de la Résistance and the Forces Françaises Libres in London directed by General De Gaulle, in order [19] For information on the Ornano maquis, see to give political representation to the resistance http://www.caussanel.fr/mapage3/index.html forces fighting in France.

[20] Of 32 parachute drops in 1943-1944 (a total [31] The composition of the Comité of 554 containers), 15 were prepared for O.R.A.- Départemental de Libération (CDL) at 24 August C.F.P (Organisation de Résistance de l’Armée- 1944 : Messieurs Allamelle (CGT), Barreau, Corps Franc Pommiés), 15 for the A.S (Armée Blanchi (PCF), Irenée Bonnafous, journaliste Secrète), 2 for Libérer et Fédérer. The FTP (Parti radical), Costes, pharmacien (Parti (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans) did not take any démocrate-chrétien), Foussard (MLN), Alexandre parachute drops. « Cinquantenaire de la Libéra- Glasberg, Catholic priest, Gustave Guiral, retired tion de Montauban et du Tarn-et-Garonne », pp. magistrate, S. Jordan, pastor the Reformed 30-34. La résistance en Tarn et Garonne. Church, Albert Ressigeac, teacher, Rouère (CGT), http://resistance82.fr/operations-militaires/ H. Serres, avocat (MLN), Tournou (SFIO), Mme Gaubil. Changes on 1 December : Mlle Marie- [21] Document in Archives de la mairie de L’Honor de Cos. Rose Gineste, secretary to Œuvres sociales (CFTC), is appointed to the CDL by a prefectoral decision ; M. Alexandre Glasberg (known as abbé [22] N Sabatié, op. cit., p.63-64 Corvin), after being called to Paris by the provisional Government, leaves Tarn-et-Garonne. [23] Ibid., p. 65 Archives de la mairie de L’Honor de Cos [24] Ibid., p. 64 [32] Report of 13 octobre 1951, by Albert Ressigeac, Archives départementales de Tarn-et- [25] Ibid., p. 65 Garonne, 1188 W 7, cité par N Sabatié, op.cit., p.67 [26] Gineste travelled by bicycle to avoid the Vichy censors, and ensured that the letter would [33] Archives départementales de Tarn-et- reach all the parishes in the diocese (except one Garonne, 1188 W 7, cité par N Sabatié, op. cit., which could not be trusted), in time to be read p.65-66 from pulpits on Sunday 30 August. She was active, in coordination with Bishop Théas, in [34] Ibid., citing the reminiscences of colonel finding shelter for Jewish children and adults at Langeron. various religious institutions in the region and Ibid supplying them with false identities and ration [35] ., citing Cabrit’s diary. The Groupes cards. Arkheia, No. 263, février-juillet 2000 mobiles de réserve were paramilitary units created by the Vichy regime during the Second [27] Those who lost their lives : Henri Granier, World War, developed by René Bousquet, director Élie Labrousse, René Lartigue, Bernard Martel, general of the French national police in Vichy; the André Rigobert, Albert Tristschler. A description Résistance-Fer was a movement composed of of the attack can be found in « Le Maquis French railwaymen. It concentrated its activities d'Ornano », website to the memory of Georges on reporting German troop movements to the Caussanel, Louis Olivet et André Aribaud. Allied forces, and on sabotage of the railway http://www.caussanel.fr/mapage3/index.html. infrastructure and rolling stock. See also [36] N Gourfinkel op. cit., p.335-336 https://vanessafrance.wordpress.com/2011/11/1 0/a-story-of-the-french-resistance-during-world- [37] N Sabatié, op. cit., p.63 war-ii/ [38] Gaston Lamolinairie, Homologation des [28] Report of 13 octobre 1951, by Albert Services Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur. Archives Ressigeac (known as Rémi), departmental head de la mairie de L’Honor de Cos. of NAP (Noyautage des Administrations Publiques). Archives départementales du Tarn-et- [39] Esquisse Historique de la 4e Cie A.S par la Garonne, 1188 W 7, cited by Sabatié, op.cit., p. Commission d’Histoire, p.4. Archives de la mairie 67. de L’Honor de Cos.

112 [40] N Sabatié, op. cit.,p.67 [44] In an accompanying letter, the Tarn-et- Garonne prefect, Rouanet, wrote: ‘I would like to [41] Report of 13 October 1951, by Albert warmly congratulate you on the occasion of this Ressigeac, departmental head of NAP (Noyautage award and it gives me pleasure that it recognises des Administrations Publiques). Archives the spirit of sacrifice and self-denial which you départementales du Tarn-et-Garonne, 1188 W 7, have contributed to the Country and to the cause ibid., p.67. The Noyautage des administrations of liberty in the course of the Resistance against publiques was a resistance organisation launched the occupant.’ 27 October 1945, COS archive. in 1942 with the mission of infiltrating the [45] Robert Guicharnaud et Norbert Sabatié, administration of the Vichy regime on behalf of « L’abbé Glasberg dans la Résistance », Confé- the Free French. The main intelligence missions it rence du 2 avril 2007, Académie de Montauban, carried out were ‘professional’ sabotage, p.9 provision of false papers and preparing for the seizure of power after the liberation of France. [46] Hommage à Alexandre Glasberg, curé de https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noyautage_des_adm Léribosc et résistant—17 mai 2009—L’Honor-de- inistrations_publiques Cos 2010

[42] Report of 13 October 1951, by Albert [47] Michel Lamolinairie, letter of invitation to a Ressigeac, Archives départementales de Tarn-et- day of commemoration of the Resistance, 17 May Garonne, 1188 W 7, cité par Sabatié, op.cit., P.67 2009 at Honor de Cos. Archives de la mairie de L’Honor de Cos [43] Ibid., p.63

113 114 Chapitre 8 Centre d’Orientation Sociale

After the Liberation in August 1944, abbé Elie to Alexander Glasberg’s death in 1981. The Corvin left Honor de Cos and returned to Lyon, account is sketchy because the organisation left once again as Alexander Glasberg. He stayed few records during these years, and there are few there briefly, then asked cardinal Gerlier for a former COSE/COS employees now able to provide transfer to Paris, which was readily granted. [1] testimony. Nonetheless there is sufficient written He settled in the capital, where he remained for and oral evidence to show the extraordinary the rest of his life. energy of the founder, his pioneering spirit, and the power of the ideals which he promoted. He now devoted himself to projects which evolved in a seamless way from his work on behalf of Establishing the Centre d’orientation sociale refugees during the war. Together with his des étrangers comrades-in-arms during the Vichy years, Ninon Haït and Nina Gourfinkel, he established the When he went into hiding at the beginning of Centre d’Orientation Sociale d’Etrangers (COSE), 1943, abbé Glasberg handed over the a not-for-profit association with headquarters in management of the DCA centres to l’Amitié Paris. The name reflected the purpose: to assist Chrétienne. In October 1944 he signed a new refugees who wished to remain in France to find agreement whereby two of the centres, in Roche- their bearings, to achieve a meaningful place in d’Ajoux and Cazaubon, were returned to the DCA. their adopted country. It started with intensive In December 1944 the DCA took the name efforts to help returning deportees to acquire Service des étrangers, and in February 1945 the identity papers and rights of residence. From this Centre d’orientation sociale des étrangers several strands of social work emerged: (COSE). For the first two years the new placement of refugees in jobs or in training association was based at 65, Avenue des schemes; establishment of residential homes for Champs-Elysées, then in September 1947 set up those who were beyond working age; headquarters at 52 rue de l’Arbre Sec, in the area rehabilitation and special occupational training for of Les Halles, where it remained till 2012.[2] those in poor physical or mental health; and residential support for young people who had become cut off from society. In each case the attention was on people who found themselves on the margins: refugees, the elderly, the disabled, the socially disconnected.

The great majority of COSE protégés were foreign nationals or in some cases ‘apatrides’, but in 1960 COSE dropped ‘Etrangers’ from its name. This was triggered when Algerians sought help from the association and COSE was told that since Algerians were French (Algeria did not achieve independence until 1962), they fell outside its remit. The organisation then changed its name to Centre d’Orientation Sociale (COS), to allow people of any nationality to seek its support, though by 1960 some French citizens 52 rue de l'Arbre Sec were already using certain of its facilities.

As to funding, for the first year or two after the The COSE team was directed by Alexander Liberation COSE continued to benefit from the Glasberg. It included two key figures who had American Joint Distribution Committee which had collaborated with the abbé during the war, Ninon financed the abbé’s reception centres during the Haït and Nina Gourfinkel, together with Henri occupation. Then United Nations agencies became Mayeux and Olga Aisberg. an important source, together with grants, loans and social security payments from the French COSE was one of a number of organisations that state and local government. Eventually COS responded to the huge problems faced by would rely almost entirely on public funding of ‘displaced persons’ in the aftermath of the war one sort or another. It was a private association and the Holocaust, at a time when millions of carrying out a public function, and we shall see refugees were seeking a new life across Europe. that for abbé Glasberg this was very important in defining the nature of COS as an organisation. As Axelle Brodiez-Dolino notes:

What follows is a brief description of the various ‘After the Liberation, the influx of refugees, services developed by COSE/COS from 1944 up deportees and internees, as well as the scale of

115 misery caused by deaths, destruction and and their families who benefitted from privileges poverty, brought about a real flourishing of understood by the Hitlerite terms associations. Cimade extended and reoriented “Reichsdeutsche” or “Volksdeutsche”; Poles its activity in favour of victims of the conflict, belonging to the Anders group; Yugoslav the Secours populaire francais was (re)born in “chetniks”; Franco-ist Spaniards; neo-fascist 1945, and the Secours catholique (centrale Italians; in general, all those people who fought generaliste) and the Petits Freres des pauvres or worked in military or paramilitary (in support of the elderly) were set up. In the organisations alongside the Germans or Italians.’ particular field of aid to deportees, there was a [5] proliferation of organisations, some rooted in the Resistance and others in Judaism. The Etudes xenologiques creation of the Service aux étrangers by Glasberg was at the junction of these In support of its work COSE set up a research études xénologiques movements.’ [3] group entitled , which in early 1946 brought out a work entitled A la recherche d’une patrie. La France devant l’immigration. [6] This was conceived as one of a number of studies in ‘xenology’, which Glasberg defined as an ‘objective study, without hatred and passion, of the historical, sociological and moral implications of the issues raised by the inevitable presence of foreigners in the body of the nation, both for the organs of state and for the civic and intellectual conscience of a nation.’ [7]

Nina Gourfinkel and Ninon Haït-Weyl

In 1945 the abbé defined the COSE project in general terms:

‘Its aims are the following. Aid and support for foreigners residing in France, without distinction of nationality, religious faith or political orientation, in order to give them the opportunity to occupy a place in social life, a place which should not only suit their abilities, but allow them to play a useful part in the French community’ [4]

There was however one exception to the policy of A la recherche d’une patrie was in fact written by welcome for all, mentioned in a ‘Note de Service’ Nina Gourfinkel, but for unknown reasons it was three years later: agreed that her name would not appear in the published book, though she was to receive a ‘Given the current influx in France of refugees [8] of all kinds and all provenances, we are obliged proportion of the royalties. In the preface to limit the categories with which we are Alexander Glasberg wrote: concerned, or to put it more simply, with which we do wish to be concerned…we must not ‘The pages which follow, the criticisms, hopes forget that it was during the Resistance that our and proposals it contains, are the outcome of work began, and that this was a democratic the experience of our team, after five years of resistance to Hitlerism and fascism. We strive work with foreigners in France. We set to work to remain faithful to these principles in refusing in 1940 in the particular conditions of ‘Vichy to offer our services to those who worked for legality’, and today, in the full light of struggle the Germans, for the establishment of fascist for democracy, we remain more than ever governments or who in whatever form acted faithful to the spirit which animated us at the against France.’ start. We believe that the many disappointments and the rare successes that we Members of staff of COSE would have to make have experienced in our work can always be their own judgement about who to exclude, but traced to the same causes: we fail by the following categories were specified: Germans ignorance, idleness, opportunism; we succeed

116 when we take as our starting point a respect for who now needed help in acquiring civil status, the human being. before we could help them to find work….[Thus] the most active section, during the immediate …We hope that this book will help to overcome post-war years, was the section for the incomprehension that foreigners encounter, administrative and legal support. Specialist not only among the general public, but also lawyers … prepared files for the Prefecture of often among those whose work puts them in Police, because the officials were lost in all this. contact with these outlaws: emigrants, refugees, stateless people, whose destiny Naturally alongside this work was assistance to encapsulates the torments of our cruel epoch.’ refugees in drawing up applications for French nationality and dealing with the administrative Alexander Glasberg was an émigré who knew maze that this entailed.’ [11] from his own experience what it meant to seek recognition in another country. He had left the territory of the Russian Empire in 1920 at the age of 18 and had lived in Austria, Poland, Germany and Yugoslavia before settling in France. Now he was intent on establishing roots in his adopted land, while constantly fighting for the acceptance of the ‘other’. And he thought that France, with all its faults, with all the anti-semitism displayed during the war, had the capacity to embrace foreigners in this spirit and to confront xenophobia. As Nina Gourfinkel remarked in a passage quoted earlier in this narrative, he set up his reception centres during the war not only to benefit a number of internees, but as a form of witness: Theo Klein during ‘apart from the ignominy of arbitrary an interview for internment, he felt painfully the shadow which Julie Bertuccelli’s this cast over the name of France…his love, his film, circa 1994 “reflective passion” for the country which above all others he had freely chosen for his own, endowed him with a clarity of thought which is often the privilege of those converted to an idea, a religion, a country, without having acquired them by descent….he was convinced that it was very important for him to show, to what remained of public opinion, that there was more to France than Laval and Xavier Vallat, that opposing these winds and tides there Henri Mayeux, continued the great tradition of respect for the Guide Pratique person….’ [9] de le Naturalisation Civil status Française 1947

The first challenge for COSE was to help its protégés to establish an identity and rights of residence, in communication with the Ministry of Olga Meier, one of the members of the first COSE the Interior and the Prefecture of Police. The team, at the time Olga Aisberg, spoke in the immigration legislation was complex and even same vein during an interview for Julie French speakers could get easily lost in the Bertuccelli’s film: labyrinth. Hence the recruitment of lawyers to assist in this task, including Henri Mayeux and ‘It was a matter of getting the deportees back Théo Klein, who had been a member of the on their feet. They arrived in a terrible physical resistance network of the Éclaireurs Israelites state. Many had been evicted from France (Jewish Scouts) during the war [10]: before or during the war. For one reason or another they didn’t have residence permits, ‘The first and most urgent task facing the they had no papers, they were in a physically Centre after the Liberation was to regularise the deplorable state, they needed to acquire rights status of refugees…both those who had arrived as citizens, to get back into shape….’ en masse from German camps or who had fled their countries of origin where war was raging, and those who had been in France under camouflage, had lived with false papers and

117 Georges Garnier later recalled his involvement with the centre in Beaumont-de-Lomagne:

‘I became personally acquainted with the abbe in February 1945 and I began working in COSE on 1 March. The only basis on which he had engaged me was that I had escaped from Germany at the end of 1941 at the second attempt.

The project was to create a reception centre in Beaumont de Lomagne in Tarn-et-Garonne, in order to receive foreigners who had survived the Nazi internment camps. It was a matter of “restoring” them, feeding and clothing them and taking the necessary steps at the level of Olga Meier during an interview for Julie the headquarters in Paris to allow them to get Bertuccelli’s film, circa 1994 their lives back, either in their country of origin or in a country of their choice that would The funding for this work came from the receive them. American Joint Distribution committee, which continued to support abbé Glasberg during the The abbe chose to create this centre in Tarn-et- early postwar period. Garonne because of the many acquaintances and support which he had found in this Winding up the DCA centres department during his time in the Resistance, both within civil authorities (at the prefecture of A second challenge was to decide on the future of Montauban and at the Commissaire de la the two centres that had returned to the DCA République in Toulouse), and also in relation after the Liberation, Roche-d’Ajoux (Rhône) and with Monseigneur Théas, Bishop of Montauban. Cazaubon (Gers). These were now housing This centre functioned until the end of elderly refugees who had managed to escape September 1946, when its purpose had been deportation, and younger refugees who had completed.’ returned from places of shelter in the local area or had spent time with the maquis. In order to The abbé, Garnier remembered, was full of reduce costs these centres were closed and new energy and ideas: arrangements put in place: ‘…the Abbé was on extraordinary form at this ‘Since at this time we were supported time, with the end of the war and the prospect financially only by the American Joint of building a new life for all, following the Distribution Committee, we had to reduce our horrors of before. He was full of ideas and expenses, to bring together in our homes only action despite his poor vision which impeded those who could neither work nor leave the him a little, but in no way detracted from his country. And this was done. dynamism and enthusiasm! He had always been gourmand and gourmet, and he …we had to regroup and reorganise the possessed an extraordinary capacity for reception centres, whose residents were recuperation ; he could sleep anywhere and changing. Some emigrated, others joined their under any conditions, including when travelling families. But many remained who had nowhere by car, in a front-wheel drive, along the bad to go and knew nobody. It was also an urgent rough roads from the Auvergne to Paris, where matter to give refugees who had returned from he would arrive refreshed, ready to take up his deportation or had suffered in France, the activities once more.’ [13] opportunity to rest and gather their strength before embarking on work. Hence two new The homes at Beaumont-de-Lomagne and establishments were set up, specifically as rest Warluis were intended to be temporary and were homes, in Warluis close to Paris (Oise) and in brought to a close in 1946 and 1947. The home Beaumont-de-Lomagne (Tarn-et-Garonne). at Dun-sur-Meuse, providing for refugees who These functioned in 1945-1947. had nowhere else to go, survived for ten years as a residential centre for the elderly and for the As for the elderly who had remained in the convalescent. In May 1956 the elderly were reception centres during the occupation and transferred to another COSE centre which the who had nowhere to go, they were installed in abbé had established in Hyères (see below). The our new home in Dun-sur-Meuse (Meuse), convalescent group remained, with the lease on which is still [ie in 1952] functioning. Here the home transferred to the local social security there are about forty refugees from every sort department. [14] of background.’ [12]

118 Placement and Reclassement decrease over time…On average the enterprise would thus cover about half of the grant for the A huge task, which would occupy a great deal of apprenticeship…the remainder of which was the energy of COSE/COS during the 1950s and funded by the IRO…These contracts were 1960s, was to help refugees to find work. This monitored by the Service de reclassement des was the route to ‘enracinement’ and social diminués physiques of the Ministry of Labour.’ integration. That function was carried out by the Service de Placement et de Reclassement. COSE After completion of training there remained the conducted methodical searches for job openings task of finding work: for people with employable skills, focussing especially on companies managed by foreigners, ‘… we still had to find work for them. Both for who were expected to have a more open attitude those receiving training and for those who came to refugee workers. to us with a qualification that could be used in the French labour market. Our Service de But many of those who came for assistance did Placement au Travail carries out a methodical not have such skills and the challenge was then search of opportunities in many branches of the to find training schemes that would accept them economy. It holds a supply and demand job file and allow them eventually to enter the labour both for Paris and the provinces, and deals in market. particular with the placement who are changing their occupation and who confront many ‘[one] vital task was to place refugees in work psychological problems.’ [18] and, little by little, our organisation specialised in this particularly tricky field. The fact was that COSE preserved few records, but there is a report the refugees for the most part came from a in the COS archive which gives an idea of the non-working class background, when the scope of this activity during 1955. In that year economic possibilities in France offered above 1,304 people asked for assistance from the all manual work. It is extremely difficult for Service de Placement et de Reclassement. The someone from an intellectual background, a Service was able to find jobs quickly for 562 of member of the liberal professions, to find work these, after going through the usual procedures. in France without a change of occupation. The 332 were directed to reclassement et problem had two aspects: on the one hand we l’apprentissage, either in Ministry of Labour had to help young people, those who still had schools or private enterprises or in schools the time, to get a training in order to acquire attached to various oeuvres sociales. 68 were an independent skill ; on the other hand, in the hospitalised, while in 342 cases nothing could be case of members of non-manual professions found : « we could not find a suitable solution for who were still able-bodied, we needed to find these, it was impossible.»[19] jobs. Hence: reclassement and orientation [15] professionnelle…. The work of placement et reclassement, along with other forms of support for refugees who The COSE Bureau de Placement conducted this came for advice to the Paris headquarters, activity in close association with the Ministry of continued during the 1950s and 1960s, influenced Labour, which gave COSE access to a network of by new waves of immigrants escaping from public sector technical schools. In establishing authoritarian regimes in eastern Europe, western this link the abbé was able to take advantage of Europe, Africa and Latin America. former résistant contacts in the Ministry of the Interior, which in turn led to contacts in the An observer offered the following description of Ministry of Labour. [16] The abbé’s legendary the COS headquarters in 1966: powers of persuasion no doubt also played a vital part, as they did at every stage of his life. ‘Five people in a private apartment turned into an office, receive refugees and help them to Another major initiative was the contrat resolve the multiple problems posed by life in d’apprentissages dans les entreprises, again in an unfamiliar environment. Whether it is a collaboration with the Ministry of Labour, with matter of personal or legal advice, verbal help from the International Refugee Organisation encouragement, language-learning, or more (IRO), which was an important source of funds for substantial help such as a housing grant, COSE until the IRO closed in 1952, to be replaced assistance in the case of illness, placing an by the UNHCR. [17] This apprenticeship scheme older person in a home for the elderly, and took into account the special needs of the COSE above all the search for a job, they are present, clientele: ready to help….The cold war has brought with it thousands of refugees from communist ‘… once the candidate had undertaken a medical countries, who for many years have become and psychological test, a contract was refugees par excellence. Poles, Czechs, established with an entreprise which would Romanians, Yugoslavs, and above all the accept the candidate as an apprentice and Hungarians who came in such large numbers in provide part of the funding, which would 1956…

119 In the work of COSE/COS, the force of personality of the abbé and his many contacts remained essential. The story told below by Jorge Semprun during an interview for Julie Bertuccelli’s film, though it does not concern a refugee in searcjh of work, offers a vivid reminder of the ability of the abbé to move things on.

Jorge Semprún Maura (1923-2011) was born in Madrid. His mother was Susana Maura Gamazo, daughter of Antonio Maura, who was several times Spanish Prime Minister. His father José María Semprún Gurrea, was a liberal politician and governor of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish civil war. After the defeat of the Republicans by Franco, the Semprun family settled in France, then in the Hague where his father was a diplomat in the mission of the "Spanish Republic in the Netherlands » When the Netherlands officially recognised the Franco government at the beginning of 1939, the family returned to France as refugees. During the German occupation of France Semprún joined the Resistance group Francs-Tireurs et Partisans - Main-d'Œuvre Immigrée, then in 1942 joined the Spanish communist party. In 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp. He dealt with this experience in his books « Le grand voyage » and « Quel beau dimanche! » He survived and returned to France in 1945, where he became an active member of the Spanish communist party in exile (PCE). From 1953 to 1962 he was an organiser of the clandestine activities of the PCE in Spain.

In 1964 he was expelled from the party because of "differences over the party line" and from then on concentrated on writing, producing several novels, plays and scripts. From 1988 to 1991 he was Minister of Culture in the government of Felipe Gonzalez. Jorges Semprun’s sister, Maribel, married Jean-Marie Soutou in 1942. The events related below took place at the time of his expulsion from the PCE, which brought to an end his clandestine activities in Spain..

‘Before I got to know him personally and spoke with him, he was a sort of legend. Abbé Glasberg was a part of my family conversations, because my sister Maribel and my brother-in-law Jean Marie Soutou had known him in Lyon, in 1941 I think, and they told me a lot about the creation of Amitié Chrétienne, and abbé Glasberg of course appeared in all these stories... as something of a legendary figure. And then I got to know him at my brother-in law’s, we had lunch together several times. It was rather complicated at that time and I had to be careful, because most of the time I was in Spain clandestinely, in the ant-Franco resistance, and I could not tell the abbé everything, even though I had complete confidence in him. But I remember one time we were speaking about Spain—he had connections with Spaniards because of the persecution, because of the refugees, the political exiles etc—and he looked at me closely for a while and said : you know Spain as if you go there !

And then one day I needed him because in 1959 my 10-year identity card had expired (I wasn’t in France, I was in Spain), I did not renew it and a few years later (when I was expelled from the Communist Party) I had to renew it, so that I could live here, carry on writing etc. And Jean Marie Sotou said to me : go and see the abbé, he will be able to sort it out. I then found rue de l’Arbre Sec, where the association which he had created was based…and I think he saw me straight away. There was a reception room where there were people of many nationalities..from exiled Europe, from persecuted Europe. And it was miraculous : the abbé telephoned in my presence, and gave me a letter for the director of the service for foreigners at police headquarters. I went there on the appointed day. Abbé Glasberg had said to me: look, it’s not worth burdening her with a truth which might disturb her. Just tell her that you were deported—which was true—and once deported it was all a bit difficult, that you forgot the renewal date of your papers, it was rather by accident. The director had requested my file from the Prefecture. It was half a metre high ! She said to me, you understand, I can’t examine this just like that, it will need weeks. Yet in a quarter of an hour, I had a new residence permit for 10 years!... starting in 1959 (this was 1962 or 1963). After that I said to abbé Glasberg that he had a magic touch, because this was miraculous ! So it is thanks to him that I became once again a “normal” person, with papers in order, paying taxes, writing books… ‘

120 …the Centre concerns itself with all who are in The French language tuition evidently continued need, whether or not they have the status of during abbé Glasberg’s time as director of refugees. Furthermore, it intervenes on behalf COSE/COS, since at the time of death in 1981, of some in order to gain… that status. 337 refugees and asylum seekers, of 45 nationalities, were registered for these classes. …In a strange fashion it seems that almost all [24] nationalities have their occupations of choice. Hence it is amongst the Poles, Portuguese and COSE creates its own training Romanians that one finds most of all establishments people...from the liberal professions. Spaniards work in construction and carpentry, and in In addition to the facilities for placement et construction there are also many Portuguese reclassement, in the late 1940s COSE set up four and North Africans. The car industry attracts training establishments of its own. Abbé Glasberg Yugoslavs. The second generation Poles work had high hopes for these initiatives and they primarily in the mines of the North, while Polish achieved some successes, but for various reasons Jews do tailoring for men. the challenges proved too great and the schemes were short-lived. The abbé outlined the In order to find work for everyone, the staff of experience thus: the Centre use the “empirical” method. They consult a special list of job offers, read the Ecole des Chemisières de Mulhouse which classified ads, apply to the Chamber of Trades, functioned from 1947 to 1950 next to a large use the telephone directory, and finally gather garment factory and which trained the young the addresses of companies likely to give work daughters of refugee families, or young women to certain people supported by the Centre. without families, as shirt-makers. They lived in About 400 are received every month, half of a family atmosphere in a small house whom have not yet found work, while half have transformed into a hostel, learning the trade as lost the jobs that they had. Every morning well as household skills, under the direction of a except Thursday, the refugees gather in one of very warm-hearted woman. In all about thirty the three rooms of the Centre, around a completed their training and went on to work in member of staff who telephones any company the same factory. Others were able to find work where a job opportunity has been seen ... and if in Paris or the provinces. this approach is provisionally crowned with success, and if the nationality of the candidate Meublutil, Ecole de menuiserie in Paris, does not bother the future boss, the refugee is which ran from 1949 to 1951, and where given the address of the company and can go qualified instructors trained dozens of there. Sometimes it "works" right away: the carpenters. We conceived this this school in the refugee is hired. But often he has to go back to form of a work-based cooperative with the Centre several times before getting a job. vocational training, which made it possible to Some, after several failed attempts, do not reimburse the students’ salary and social come back, and the assistants do not know students (by IRO) to repay their salary and what has become of them.'[20] welfare costs, in a regressive way, that is to say that as the students gained qualifications and Language classes began to work, the IRO contributions were reduced. Learning French was vital to improve work prospects and to promote social integration, and Unfortunately the crisis with French wood and in 1946 COSE started to offer evening language the closure of the IRO forced us to stop the classes at its Paris headquarters, funded by the operation of this cooperative. Ministry of Population. [21] The numbers and staying power of the students varied, but in the Ecole de transformation de matières 1950s two or three hundred registered each year, plastiques in Paris. The school was originally placed in several groups according to level. [22] In managed by the Ministry of Labour but 1955 it was reported: abandoned for lack of funds, and we took it over. It is the only school in France for adults ‘It was only the workers who needed to know training in plastics. It is one of the few branches French, in order to keep their jobs or indeed to where there is no unemployment, and almost achieve a higher grade and salary. all of our students, after a nine-month training Our courses were regularly attended. Taken as during which they are on a subsistence grant, a whole the results were very satisfactory. If are placed in enterprises. one takes into account that our students were adults and sometimes even of a certain age, the Each 9-month training period has 60 trainees. effort required of them was considerable. The There are also places reserved for French good results are due mainly to the excellent people for are funded by the Ministry of Labour method, simple and direct, developed by our ... This school continues to function [in 1952]. teacher, Madame Schuster….during recent years.’ [23]

121 In 1950 and 1951 we were able to mount a these special homes for elderly foreigners, very fine watchmaking school in Valence, because the French authorities wanted to place next to a French cooperative which provided us them in French refuges (asiles). Abbé Glasberg with instructors. One year of training was made enquiries across France and planned with integration into production demonstrated that the conditions of hospitalized cooperatives. Students could settle in the area care in French refuges were unsatisfactory, that with their families. Their professional they lacked sufficient places, and that it would qualification and their future employment were be better to establish new comfortable homes assured. that would…take into account the tastes, customs, languages etc of the refugees ... [26] Unfortunately, incomprehension by the administration and a spirit of intrigue halted the functioning of this excellent initiative. Only some thirty refugees could complete their studies and integrate into the cooperatives.’ [25]

Hotel Beauséjour

Beauséjour was jointly funded by the IRO (which covered development costs) and the Ministry of Health and Population (covering costs of care), and housed 115 refugees of diverse nationalities, including many Spanish republicans. George Garnier, who had managed the Beaumont-de- Lomagne centre, was asked to take on Hyères, and commented later: 'The creation of this establishment did not encounter special difficulties in relation to the Var Prefecture. Here Valence too the dynamism of the Abbé and his School of connections greatly facilitated matters.’ [27] Watchmaking 1950 The facilities were modern, and the arrangements ground-breaking at a time when it was normal practice to segregate the sexes in homes for the elderly. At the official opening, it was said, people ‘chattered about the “luxury” and comfort of the Homes for the elderly facilities, amazed by the fact that the residence did not isolate the sexes and even included rooms Beauséjour, Hyères for couples.’ [28] Some of the COSE clients, described as the Hard Core, were elderly refugees who were in no position to work, and it was to contribute in this domain that the abbé embarked on a new project: to provide residential facilities for the elderly. The first of his retirement homes was ‘Beauséjour’ in Hyères (Var), a former hotel, launched in 1950:

‘[it was a matter of dealing with] many elderly people, without resources and now deprived of subsidies. We embarked on the foundation of new homes aimed at the Hard Core of elderly who were not a fit state to work.

It was thus that in 1950 we opened a home in Hyères, near Toulon, for 110 refugees. We had to wage a big battle to ensure the opening of The new Beauséjour

122 Beauséjour was quickly filled and a few years create this new section, as well as to the later an extra wing was added with an additional Regional Directorate of Social Security, and all 50 beds, new kitchen and dining room, thanks to that this implied: plans, studies, quotes, further energetic démarches by the abbé. The markets, financing etc. etc. extra wing was funded by an A.E.R.E grant [check] and a loan from the Crédit Foncier de Everything was complete in time for this new France and completed in 1956. The high level of section of 100 geriatric beds to open at the demand continued, encouraged by the generous beginning of 1960. This meant that within ten rooming arrangements: ‘The fact that we had years the capacity of the centre had increased been able to provide individual rooms in the new from 100 to 250 beds, apart from the building brought us very many applications for residences were built on the site to admission. We were not of course able to satisfy accommodate staff: doctors, nurses and them all.’ [29] others.'[30]

The inauguration of the new Beauséjour building Abbé Glasberg et colleagues Hyères 1957 George Garnier (director of Beauséjour), M.Valentin Smith (président du COS), Abbé A further big extension, in the shape of a Centre Glasberg Gériatrique, opened in 1960, again with Hyères 1964 assistance from the A.E.R.E. Beauséjour had been set up as a retirement home, with minimal medical support, and the new building was a In October 1965 an enthusiastic article in a local response to the challenges that arose, as George journal described conditions in the Centre Garnier explained: Gériatrique under the heading ‘an experience of social therapy for the Third Age’, noting that ‘[The first building] remained a retirement ‘the organisation of the home follow two home and there were no medical facilities. principles: to create a centre that would operate There was just one resident nurse and one, as rationally as possible, adapted to the needs of later two temporary doctors from the city who the residents, and to the maximum extent to came on request. In the case of more serious humanize the life of the residents.’ The medical illness the residents were sent to Hyères service (two full-time doctors) was especially Hospital. This had two drawbacks: firstly for the impressive : ‘The most novel aspect of the residents who felt ill at ease and out of place conception is the organisation of its medical outside of Beauséjour, and for the service. Although the term “full time” is on management who had to keep rooms available today’s agenda, one should note that this is the during the course of long periods of first time that a service for the elderly has hospitalization. benefitted from this formula.’ [31] COSE was again at the forefront of developments in residential None of this escaped the Abbé and Ninon, and care. the idea arose of creating medical facilities to enable sick residents to sign into a section of approved care, to be called "Geriatric Services" ... Hence new approaches were made to the prefectural services to gain authorization to

123 Château d’Abondant

In 1952 COSE opened a second residential home for elderly refugees, the Château d’Abondant (Eure et Loir), following an agreement with the Prefect of the department. It was acquired by the ‘Château d’Abondant Association’, was renovated to a high standard thanks to development funds provided by the IRO, and launched under the management of COSE.

The setting was impressive: ‘A park of 10 hectares, part lawn, part wooded, with hundred year old cedars, adorned with flower beds and a pond, beckoning one to relaxing walks, far from all noise and traffic.’ By 1954 there were 130 residents, mostly Ukrainians and Georgians, Abbé Glasberg, Mme Eskul (Georgian though it seems that people in the locality were refugee), Nina Gourfinkel not too discriminating since it was known as the Abondant ‘the Russian house.’ In 1970 it began to take in French citizens and in the 1970s another wave of refugees, this time from South-East Asia. By La Colagne, Marvejols 1982, just after the death of abbé Glasberg, it housed 136 residents (48 able-bodied and 88 A third residential home for the elderly, with 80 requiring medical services), of whom 46% were beds and medical facilities, opened in Marvejols foreigners, 40% from Paris and its environs, and (Lozère) in 1964. The choice of Marvejols came 14% from the Eure et Loir department. They were about when the abbé met and befriended Gilbert housed in single or double rooms, in the château de Chambrun. De Chambrun was a former itself, in the orangerie and in a refurbished résistant and an official at the Ministry of Foreign outbuilding (les Marroniers). The refugee Affairs, who also served as mayor of Marvejols residents in Abondant were financed by the State, from 1953 to 1965 and 1971 to 1983. The abbé others by departmental social security, though intended to open another home for the elderly someresidents had to contribute because social and De Chambrun recommended a suitable security payments did not cover all their care property in the town. costs. [32]

Chateau D’Abondant Gilbert de Chambrun in 1972

The first director was M. Nicolas Obermeyer, a ‘defrocked’ priest. He and his wife Eliane became acquainted with the abbé in the late 1950s, through Nina Gourfinkel, and Nicolas was invited to join the COSE team at its Paris headquarters, where he was employed finding work for refugees. The abbé then proposed that he take on the job of director of the new Marvejols home. In an interview in 2018 Eliane Obermeyer recalled:

124 ‘My husband said to him, you know I don’t have abbé Glasberg wasn’t just anybody. So he said: the skills for this, and the abbé replied : “you “Sit down, abbé, and let’s try and discuss the don’t have the skills, but you will learn them, matter. Why do you need a nurse?” And abbé you have the mind for it, that is what counts!”’ Glasberg said: “to take care of people!”’ [37] [33]

Nicolas Obermeyer directed the home from 1964 to 1983, working closely with Eliane, who took over as director from 1983 to 1993. The conditions were again advanced: it was the first retirement home in the department of Lozère with private rooms for the residents. In the early 1960s retirement homes were still typically thought of as places where people went to die, there was usually no privacy, and the sexes were separated. [34] Nicolas commented: ‘Don’t forget that this was in 1964, 65, 66, and during that period…men were separated from women. And ….when [abbé Glasberg] spoke of creating a retirement home in Marvejols, where there would be couples and there would be rooms for couples…they said: ‘We knew you were crazy, but we didn’t know how crazy.’ [35] Eliane and Nicolas Obermeyer, during an interview for Julie Bertuccelli’s film, c.1994

In the early days all the residents were refugees or in a few cases apatrides. There were retirement homes for foreigners elsewhere in France—dedicated facilities for Russians, Spaniards or other national groups—but the peculiarity of Marvejols, Eliane says, was the mix. The abbé wanted to put people together. In the 1960s there were Spaniards who had left Spain because of the Franco regime, and Russians who had fled Bolshevism, there were Ukrainians, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians. Later the home received Laotians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, and Chileans. The abbé was against ghettos, the aim was to get different people to live together. The arrangement worked, but it did require separateness as well as sociability, as noted by Eliane Obermeyer: L’abbé Glasberg and Ninon Haït-Weyl ‘ [the] mixing of populations….was intentional. La Colagne, Marvejols 1964 Why? Because Glasberg was against ghettos. Already there was a ghetto in the sense that they were all elderly…[but he] thought people The abbé worked hard to establish a different should mix, get to know each other, even tear model and to get the necessary funding. strips off each other, they should brew Relations with the Direction départementale des together… There were white Russians who had affaires sanitaires et sociales (DASS) were been princes, and there were Ukrainians who sometimes strained but the abbé was persuasive. had been penniless peasants in their He visited Marvejols regularly and would go to countries…. Of course it had to be arranged [for the DASS in search of additional funding. He was, them to mix], but what helped was the Eliane says, very determined: ‘he was structure of the home, where everyone had tenacious !...when he wanted a grant, he would their own room, where they could recreate their stay in the director’s office and would say: I am own little universe, and this helped everyone to not moving until I get satisfaction!” [36] And live peacably and to accept others’ [38] Nicolas recalled: ‘…once [the DASS] wanted to cancel a nurse position…Abbé Glasberg gets up During the time of the Obermeyers La Colagne and says: “There’s no point in even discussing began to take in French citizens also, at that time this if we can’t have a nurse. I’m putting on my drawn from ‘the excluded’: elderly people who coat and leaving. Good-bye, gentlemen.” And the had become severely isolated, had lived as prefecture representative was rather afraid of this clochards, were surviving on miserly pensions, man from Paris, who had a certain reputation, had suffered serious family breakdowns. However

125 in the early days the home took very few converted to provide rehabilitation for victims of residents from Marvejols itself, since to begin traffic and work accidents and for people with with it was not well-received in the locality. chronic disabling conditions. Thus réeducation People spoke about it derogatorily as une maison fonctionelle was added to the facilities for d’apatrides, rather than a home for refugees from réeducation professionelle. This change was Russia, Spain, Romania, Poland or Hungary. And administered by George Garnier, who directed there was gossip that the place was run by ‘a Yid Nanteau between 1974 and 1977. He wrote: priest, and a defrocked priest’. Yet attitudes did change, and gradually the home became an ‘In 1974 we had to convert the Centre in accepted part of the community.[39] Nanteau-sur-Lunain, which was no longer needed because of new medical techniques for the treatment of tuberculosis, which led to the closure of sanatoria and therefore the post-cure establishments.

Rééducation fonctionelle was chosen as a new medical activity, with activities compatible with the physical and intellectual capacities of the new residents.

.... I went frequently to Paris to government departments and to the COS headquarters in order to agree with the Abbé and Ninon the measures needed to carry out this big project, involving the construction of a new building with 70 beds, including a full medical service with physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and occupational therapy, as well as buildings for occupational training, ranging from painting to television repair. Eliane Obermeyer during an interview with the author September 2018 This Centre is now one of the best known in this field at the European level ... it is an achievement of which the Abbé was very Rééducation professionnelle : Nanteau-sur- proud.'[41] Lunain

Soon after the opening of Beauséjour in 1950, the abbé embarked on a different sort of project: a Centre of post-cure and occupational training for people with stabilised tuberculosis, launched in 1951 at Château Nanteau in Nanteau-sur-Lunain (Seine-et-Marne), set in an impressive territory of 23 hectares. The development funding came from the IRO, while the cost of care was met by the French government and Social Security.

Nanteau was a 120-bed residential facility for men aged 16-45. It was intended primarily for foreigners, but also took in some French citizens. It provided medical facilities, general educational subjects, rehabilitation (adapting to the application of effort) and ‘occupational retraining’ to enable people whose lives had been disrupted by poor health to learn a skill, to enter the Chateau Nanteau workforce and integrate into the French economy and society. In 1957 there were sections for training in milling-turning, industrial design, Helping the socially isolated watchmaking (assemblers-terminators), and electrical fitting. The results were judged Another dimension of activity began in September excellent, both from a medical and professional 1955 when COSE opened a 20-bed hostel in point of view: all former trainees could be placed Cachan in the southern suburbs of Paris, [40] in work. intended to receive men who had been discharged from hospitals or sanatoria etc., who When tuberculosis was more or less overcome, at had no resources and were unemployed, as well the end of the 1960s, the TB post-cure unit was as refugees who had just served prison

126 sentences, though only those who had work (2) the development of vocational training contravened regulations on foreigners’ residence and, as far as possible, worker advancement in France. These refugees could stay at the (3) readaptation to social life. Centre for a maximum of 6 months during which time we help them to adapt to physical and moral It was difficult work, but demands of work and placed them in jobs.’ [42] ‘[the director] must never forget that if, at a The house was leased to COSE by AERE, for 9 certain point in their lives, these residents have years at a nominal rent of 1 franc a year. AERE found themselves in difficulty, the fault lies granted 1,100,000 francs working capital, and primarily with the social disorder in which we one million francs for purchase of furniture. To live, and only then, in certain cases, with their this the Ministry of Public Health and Population personal attributes ... Our centres are called added a grant of 250,000 francs, while the daily upon to remedy, albeit with some delay and rate was covered by the prefectural social only in part, the failures of which we are all assistance.[43] The abbé commented : jointly responsible.’[45]

'It seems to us that this work of recuperation of In 1967 Cachan was replaced by a larger and a problematic workforce is essential: only a better equipped centre, ‘Les Sureaux’ in work of orientation and rehabilitation, at the Montreuil in the eastern Paris suburbs, with a same time monitoring these first efforts ... can capacity of about 50. Here the residents included stop people of the kind with which the Cachan migrant workers who had escaped from centre is concerned, becoming the responsibility authoritarian regimes in Europe and the Third of society, and especially of the State’. [44] World. COS could provide residential facilities for very few such migrants, but many more came to The purpose was to create the headquarters in Paris seeking advice and support. One of the migrant residents, a young ‘(1) a way of life suitable for workers: without Portuguese who had avoided the draft so as not luxury but providing a level of comfort and to fight in a Portguese colonial war, was the hygiene which are today indispensable; a subject of a 1968 documentary film by Maurice healthy and ample diet to restore strength for Failevic, ‘L’histoire de Joaquim’, for which abbé Glaserg was interviewed. [46]

‘Every day many foreigners come to France attracted by the tradition of hospitality and welcome in our country and by the hope of finding work here.

The majority are disoriented on their arrival in France. They do not know where to go, what to do. If they not find the hoped-for work they are prey to the severest distress. This was the case with a young Portuguese worker of 22, Joaquim, who wandered the streets for three months before finding a refuge…This refuge was the Centre d’Orientation sociale, 52, rue l’Arbre-Sec in Paris, directed by abbé Glasberg who supported him.

After these three months of wandering, Joaquim landed at the Sureaux hostel which had recently opened in Montreuil. There he found what he needed: a roof, a bed, friends. He was able to get his breath back before setting out once more on more solid and healthier foundations, in search of a job that would finally bring him joy in living.’

The story of Joaquim

127 Rééducation fonctionnelle: the ‘Divio’ centre rehabilitation, then the person can walk again, in Dijon and live a full normal life for several more years. But if no one takes care of her then the COS opened the ‘Divio’ centre in Dijon in January outlook is frankly pessimistic. This is a problem 1968. This was a new 140-bed centre for the that we have only very lately confronted, and elderly for the purpose of rééducation specialized centres such as the "Divio" are fonctionelle. The choice of Dijon originated from a urgently required. At a time when we seek in suggestion by a member of the COS board, Pierre every way to prolong life, would it not be Meunier, a former résistant who had been close to criminal (the word is abbé Glasberg’s) to admit the résistant leader Jean Moulin during the that the elderly…should be reduced to an occupation. Meunier was a regional councillor in existence unworthy of a human being? '[48] Côte-d’Or and also a financial controller in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, and Guiding ideas: dignity, autonomy, inclusion recommended Dijon as a suitable city for the project. It would benefit from collaboration with The approach to residential care in the COSE/COS the university hospital, geriatrics was of centres was based on a strong commitment to increasing interest to medical science, and neither certain ethical ideals: absolute respect for the Burgundy nor its neighbouring regions had such a dignity of the person, the promotion of as much facility for rééducation fonctionelle designed for autonomy as possible, and social inclusion— elderly people.’ [47] encouraging links between the residents and the world outside.

This meant creating retirement homes which were considered lavish at the time, with private rooms and facilities as well as communal services. As the abbé explained in a TV interview in 1969:

‘OK, you asked me about today’s retirement home, how it will be, what should it be? Well, first of all as much independence as possible, toilets, kitchenettes, bathrooms, the possibility Pierre to receive visitors in one’s room, and at the Meunier same time the possibility of contact with the 1908-1996 people living outside, in order to break this isolation, this ghetto.’

The approach was also innovative in removing the segregation of the sexes and accepting couples. The construction of Divio was financed by the And the abbé insisted that staff show respect United Nations High Commission for Refugees residents by using ‘vous’ not ‘tu’: ‘You know, in (25% of the cost) and by grants from the Ministry hospices and even in hospitals, in certain wards of Social Affairs, from Social Security and from they address people in familiar terms, like the city of Dijon. The most needy could in addi- children. For us that is cause for dismissal.’ [49] tion benefit from free medical assistance. 'Divio' received French citizens as well as refugees. Respecting the dignity and favouring the autonomy of the person were intimately In an interview for the local paper 10 months connected, summed up in a maxim which after the opening, the abbé explained the Alexander Glasberg was very fond of and which inspiration behind the project. As reported by the today can be found prominently displayed in COS journalist who interviewed him: centres around France: ‘tous faire pour la personne, ne rien faire à sa place.’ (‘Help 'Why, you will ask, the rééducation fonctionelle people in every way, but never act in their of the elderly? Well, simply because place.’) establishments of this kind are quite rare in France and those that exist give preference to The standards adopted by abbé Glasberg do not people who can be rehabilitated for work. There now seem remarkable, since they would later is nothing or almost nothing for the elderly. become the norm for retirement homes in France, Elderly people who need rehabilitation and do but at the time they were pioneering. Similarly, not receive the care that their state of health the ethical values which the abbé so strongly demands, are doomed to become powerless, promoted might now be taken for granted by soon finding themselves dependant on their anyone involved in social care. But they were not family with all that this entails, or else in an old much in evidence when the abbé embarked on his people’s home. Let's take the example of a projects, and still today need constant septuagenarian victim of a classic fracture of reinforcement in the face of the financial and the neck of the femur. If we ensure that it is other constraints of daily practice. dealt with, at the price of a few months of

128 It would be difficult to pursue a travail constructif in the domain of residential homes for the elderly, but a travail curatif was possible, so that people might live out their lives in dignity and with as much engagement as possible—a challenge which was even greater for foreign residents than for French citizens:

‘for elderly foreigners, the question of old age is even more difficult and painful than for a French person…a French elderly person does have links with the country, with neighbours, friends, with The medal her family. But someone who has been given today uprooted and has reached a certain age, who as a does not have big savings ... her situation is retirement much more difficult ... we (try) to address this gift to the problem. staff of Beauséjour, ... we are one of the first to embark on this and a photo activity, at a time when we (as a society) are taken during not taking care of the elderly ... At most we put a visit by the them away in a home ... saying that this person abbé to is bedridden and incurable. But is it unworthy of Beauséjour in present-day medicine and the progress that we 1957 know, to speak of the incurable and bedridden ... Of course there are diseases that we cannot cure in a definitive way, but we can always improve the situation... and we do it for the young, but for the elderly, (we think ) it's not Three dimensions of social work worth it ... '

Alexandre Glasberg thought a great deal about In the case of the centres in Nanteau and the role of social work, to which he devoted most Montreuil, the concept of travail constructif did of his life after the war. In a long interview in however apply: 1968, conducted by Maurice Failevic as background to his 1968 film ‘L’histoire de '[The establishments] are there to make it Joaquim’ (only brief extracts from this interview possible for people to avoid getting into a were broadcast), the abbé distinguished between difficult, abnormal, pathological situation, ... palliative, curative and constructive action: ... we have a post-cure home for the physically disabled where we train people in a new trade, In social work there are three ... different compatible with their state of health, and we aspects ... there is palliative work which when have the Montreuil centre which takes ... people all is said is temporary repair ... we have who have broken off from society, who have not someone in a difficult situation, we try to get worked for a long time, or who have fallen into him out of trouble very quickly, even if it is a very difficult situation ... the aim of this only a provisional solution, in fact it is always centre is to integrate them into social and provisional in that sort of situation ... economic life ... The purpose of these establishments ... is to prevent someone from Then there is healing work, when someone who getting into difficult situations, when they have has fallen into a certain situation ... and you to go begging or seek urgent help ... which is need to give him the means to escape from it only a palliative. ... you could say it is a form of healing... I do not deny the importance of the first two And finally there is the third aspect, which I aspects of social work, but it seems to me that think is the most important, which I call the most important ... will allow us one day, constructive work (travail constructif), that is to when we have a more balanced society, to say preventative work ... (this means) to create avoid the need for the first two.'[50] the conditions and the means to avoid the situations that require healing or palliative Social justice not charity work…you see that I am using terms that are almost all taken from medicine, because if you Abbé Glasberg insisted on many occasions that want to cure a sick body, you have to treat it his work was not a matter of charity, but of social taken as a whole…that is to say, take in relation justice. to society… And so there is a certain analogy ‘we try to struggle against charity which is not between the work of the doctor and that of the an idea for our times and which is indeed a social worker.’ hindrance to all social work. Social work is

129 carried out in the name of justice, which Good Works. Today it’s called the Office of charitable activity tries to reduce to …pity, the Social Assistance. The name has changed, but pity to which one gives the name charity. The the name is not everything. It’s the spirit. name changes, but not the thing.’ [51] To give you an example. Not long ago, a few months ago, I was in a city Social Assistance ‘One helps someone not because they are in office, and I received a pamphlet ...[which] distress, no, one helps because this person began with the following words: “Social must obtain that to which they have a assistance is not a right.” That was it. But this right…This applies as much to French citizens as forgets that all citizens, young or old, have social rights and that society has its obligations to foreigners.’ [52] towards them. What does social work consist of? To help society fulfil its obligation. And the ‘The State supports us, but we must in turn be social worker is there, a bit like a lawyer, capable of carrying out our task. To fulfil our [56] vocation we must respond on the one hand to helping people obtain their rights.’ the needs of society, on the other hand to the personality of our residents. We are thus at the ‘Here I am not a priest!’ service of society in the first instance and, indirectly, at the service of the individual. Our Along with the rejection of ‘good works’, activity is specifically social, and if we introduce Alexander Glasberg insisted that his role in COS a spirit of good works, we risk compromising was entirely secular and that his identity as a priest had nothing to do with it. They were this. [53] entirely separate spheres: ‘I am here in the capacity of social worker and I am a priest in Social provision of the kind offered by COS was a [57] duty of any civilised society, a duty of the state, church.’ and the services offered by COS were an extension of that provision in the private sphere. Eliane Obermeyer commented: For this reason public funding was vital and the abbé avoided dependence on private donations. ‘We used to call him “abbé”, but we could just COS was thus very different from Christian as well have called him Alexander or Glasberg. organisations such as CIMADE, Secours We never talked of the Church or of Catholique or Emmaüs, which relied above all on Catholicism. Yes, he might mention it now and then to [my husband] Nicolas, because they private donations. [54] The abbé explained: had a similar background, but not when it came to work….it wasn’t because he was Catholic or ‘We have grants from Social Security, from the Christian that he did what he did, I don’t think government…from international organisations, so. I think that his faith was something to the but we have a principle that we never appeal side, but what he stood for was the rights of for private donations, precisely so as to avoid [58] these charitable gifts, and furthermore in order human beings…’ to protect our independence. We remain always in the territory of social work, we do not depend In similar vein Olga Meier, a member of the first on particular people, nor on benefactors who COSE team in Paris, said: might impose their point of view, nor on any organisation pursuing a confessional or other ‘I never thought of [him] so much as a priest, aim who might similarly impose their point of to tell you the truth. It was natural for him to view.’ be there, but I never thought of his religious roles. He never spoke about them. I There was however the danger that public discovered, I can’t remember how, that every funding itself might take on the flavour of morning, before coming to the office, he would charitable works, and the abbé resisted this also. said Mass. …[but] I [just] accepted him Hence the comment by Marie Barreau, who immediately as he was. He was a priest, he had worked in COSE in the early years: ‘We wanted to a Jewish name, he was a Jew, he spoke help people stand on their feet. I think the abbé Yiddish….OK, so what? He was the abbé!’ [59] hated the idea of charity in the sense of alms, of help that comes from on high to those below. The abbé earned a salary as director of a secular That is rare …I have become very familiar with body, a position which he occupied from the social services I can tell you that it’s very rare..’ Liberation until his death in 1981. Furthermore he [55] was detached from the Church after the war, he Hence also the abbé’s own comments: had no ecclesiastical function and no church funding, and had no need to account to the ‘Unfortunately this action, which is a social church for his activities. In the words of Marie action, is not yet well understood in France. It Barreau: is not only in the area of the elderly, [though] this is the saddest example. We have kept the ‘Abbé Glasberg gained his freedom through notion of ‘good works’. Only two years ago the secrecy…. He compelled the Church to accept city social agency was still called the Office of and never to interfere in what he was doing. He

130 never allowed the Church to have a say in his ‘The director must show an absolute objectivity social work, and he never asked permission to in the spiritual sphere. Let us remember that do what he wanted to do. That’s all. He got his the aim of our centres is based on a complete way, great big teddy bear that he was, [always] liberty of conscience. The director of the centre going forward, never asking anyone if he had will resist any intervention in the domain of the right to do so.’ [60] faith; he will show no preference for this or that confession, avoid any act which might be One may then ask why abbé Glasberg continued considered as expressing such a preference. He to use the title ‘abbé’, which he retained will manifest the same sympathy and above all throughout his life once he was ordained. He the same understanding for every resident, whether the resident has religious convictions or not. His attitude will never give rise to the suspicion that he favours one resident over another for confessional reasons.’ [62]

Hence the abbé’s comment in his 1969 interview:

‘... in some hospitals, especially the private ones the nurses think they have the right, when someone is dying, to summon a priest: “Poor thing, he doesn’t know what’s going on.” The priest gives the sacrament to a person in a coma. Here, that is forbidden, here we teach the staff to have the greatest respect for the residents, in every sense, both materially and spiritually’. [63]

Marie Barreau during an interview for Julie The spirit of Alexander Glasberg and the Bertuccelli’s film, circa 1994 spirit of COS

Listening to former members of the COSE/COS stopped wearing a cassock in the late 1960s, but team, vividly present in Julie Bertuccelli’s film, continued to sign himself ‘abbé Alexandre one gets an impression of the spirit that animated Glasberg’, and everyone around him knew him as this collective, and the impact of the abbé’s the abbé. On this Luc Dubrulle makes a personality upon it. Two things are especially convincing observation: striking. First, although Alexander Glasberg was idealistic and on the political left, although he had ‘Everything leads one to think that this priestly strong ideas about how his establishments should identity was useful to him in his different be run, he was not an ideologue. He impressed relationships, both to promote a certain by example, by action, not by promoting a set of consensus around his authority, and to facilitate ideas. Nina Gourfinkel noted that ‘he felt alive his link with various government departments only when he was in action’ and that he ‘hated which, it is not unseemly to suggest, might high-flown words and spectacular sentiments’[64], respond more favourably to Glasberg as abbé and Marie Barreau made a similar observation: Glasberg. This aura of abbé was the more effective because he himself denied that it had ‘He acted, but he did not preach about it. All [61] a religious significance.’ those ideas we are talking about, which clearly he lived, I never saw him explain them, but I If this is right, then we have the interesting always saw him creating organisations, and paradox that it was precisely his identity as abbé, doing all that was necessary to promote those together of course with his gifts of persuasion, ideas. There too he was very special, because that enabled Alexander Glasberg to pursue his most people talk a lot when they are doing secular projects with such success. something. He spoke very little and explained very little about what he did, but he did it.’ [65] Liberty of conscience Secondly, what emerges is the cooperative spirit Consistent with the separation of his secular role within the organisation. Alexander Glasberg was from his identity as a priest, abbé Glasberg by no means a paragon. He had an authoritarian insisted on complete neutrality in his homes in streak, he could be short with staff and others, relation to matters of faith. and sometimes arrogant and dismissive if not getting his way. This was acknowledged by This was brought out in an address to the Sylviane de Wangen, who worked with the abbé Fédération des centres d’hébergement in 1962. in the 1970s in France Terre d’Asile (see chapter He was speaking here about reception centres for 11): vulnerable people, rather than homes for the elderly, but the same principles applied:

131 ‘He could be very disagreeable, because he did And then there was the food. Alexander Glasberg have enemies… we loved him and it was a great was a gourmand in the sense that he loved and loss when he died. But he [could be] very appreciated food, and it did not need to be annoying, he had a way of talking during refined food, as Eliane Obermeyer recalls: meetings to interrupt people who didn’t please him, and tell them to be quiet. It was quite ‘When he came [to Marvejols], we ate all difficult.’ [66] together here [at the centre] at noon...then in the evening he would come to our home, and if It is worth remembering also Nina Gourfinkel’s it was the Spring he would say : ‘« Eliane, this observations in her memoir, cited earlier: the month it’s the pis-en-lit! [dandelion] »...this is abbé, she remarked, was ‘naively vain, with a a springtime salad, but very rustic, we collect vanity that was easily satisfied, easily them in the meadows, he adored that, he would disappointed also, because it was intolerable for eat and eat!’ [71] him if someone lacked sympathy towards him. Yet the least compliment, the least sign of The standard of cuisine in the COS friendly feeling would bring a relaxation.’ [67] establishments was high, and Sylviane de Wangen, who collaborated with the abbé in the Nonetheless it is clear that the loyalty which the 1970s, said that if you visited one of the COS abbé inspired within COSE/COS was earned and retirement homes, you could be sure that you not imposed. It derived from the power of would be well fed: ‘…they always had excellent example, from his freedom of spirit which chefs, because he considered that old people in attracted other free spirits, and by his capacity retirement homes had the right to eat well. And for team-building. he chose his chefs with as much care as he chose his directors’! [72] Marie Barreau noted: ‘The abbé had the art of getting the most diverse people to work together. We already had two two pillars of COSE, Ninon [Weil] and Nina [Gourfinkel] who could not have been more different. Nina was a writer, an enthusiast, at heart a sentimentalist, of Russian origin, Ninon had all the precision of an Alsatian, they could not have been more different.’ In similar vein Nicolas Obermeyer, who had managed the Marvejols home, observed: ‘In an orchestra you need the first violins, you need the flute, you need the bass drum. Glasberg’s genius was that he found all those musicians at the same time, and knew how to make them play the music that the world was waiting for at that moment.’ [68]

An especially striking tribute was paid to the abbé after his death by Olga Meier who worked with the abbé during the very early period of the La gourmandise organisation. Her letter to COS is reproduced on the next page. [69]

What also comes across in Bertuccelli’s film is how much the COSE team in Paris enjoyed themselves:

Marie Barreau:

‘The abbé knew how to live, which made mealtimes at COSE generally very engaging. And what’s more, he often invited extraordinary people....there were discussions, there was word-play, a whole life...went on there…. it was all very avant-garde. Nina often invited writers and intellectuals, it was fascinating! I was very young and COSE was an education for me, I learned my trade there, I learned so many Mealtime at COSE 1956 different ways to live and to think.’ [70] Abbé Glasberg, Ninon Haït-Weyl, Simone Arnao

132 we were engaged in our task, everyone did everything.

First, we had to make ourselves known in the offices of certain agencies that had been much involved in collaboration, and we all embarked on this. The abbé rolled up his sleeves along with everyone else (...) The wages were the same for all, there was no hierarchy, except that of competence. And despite the tragedies that we witnessed every day, we were happy. Happy as one is when one sees the immediate result of Olga Aisberg circa 1947, and Olga Meier one’s work, happy in a complete solidarity of circa 1994 interests.

3 April 1981 Henri and I (...) quickly learned how to unravel the stories that our 'clients’ told us, starting in Dear friends the middle and garnishing them with many incidents. We came to understand the most I wonder if there are any among you who were diverse dialects, and were no longer surprised members of the old team, the very first, which by anything, until the day when an old Polish was still called COSE and which took its first Jew came to us to ask for a suitcase. That's all steps when the war had scarcely ended, on the he wanted, a suitcase. A suitcase to walk to top floor of a house on the Champs-Elysées. I Poland to try to find his people. rather doubt it, when one considers my age and not simply the freshness of my memories. It is I was somewhat flabbergasted, and went to find best therefore if I introduce myself: at the time the Abbé who, in all innocence said: 'Let him I was Olga Aisberg (…) and I was the Abbé’s come to my place, I will give him my suitcase'. secretary. We were a very small team, Nina And this was the Abbé from whom we took care Gourfinkel, Ninon Hait, Henri Mayeux, the Abbé to hide or cover up our pens, lighters and other and me. little things which had an irresistible attraction for him. This most light-fingered man was Since you have worked with him, I need not tell ready to give up his shirt! you how attached we all were to the Abbé. And yet I cannot think of him with sadness, nor can I And he was so absent-minded that he might speak of him in the past. He was the most vital, take the train wearing only long underpants the most ingenuous, the most cunning, the most under his cassock. And so, before the big generous, the most light-fingered and the most receptions of the Polish Embassy to which he unpredictable person I have ever known. was always invited, we subjected him to a close examination, brushing off the hairs and bits of It was the time of the return of the first tobacco or food which had found shelter on his deportees, and we had to bring them back into cassock. physical shape, to teach them independence, to deal with their problems of status, find them He was the freest, the least conventional person work, in short to restore them as free people. one can imagine. He, the converted Jew, never And that was apart from all the administrative referred to his religion and above all never tried issues that certainly arose, such as old expulsion to influence us. Besides, he had a horror of orders which had to be annulled, finding what converts. was left of their families, allowing them to leave for another country etc. I have not seen him for over thirty years. All I wish, all I hope for, is that he has remained During the whole of the year that I spent there, himself to the end, with his mischievousness, these problems were our obsession, the unique his goodness and his humour. I loved him very subject of our conversation when, as often much. happened, we passed evenings together. We lived very much amongst ourselves, linked as Dear unknown friends, I am sorry for you in we were by this common work which was more your orphaned state, and I send you my friendly than work, it was a path to adulthood. greetings.

It is likely that since that time you have Olga Meier developed well-differentiated services, but when

133 Légion d’Honneur. This was followed on 7 January 1972 by a letter of congratulation from the Ministry of Public Health and Social Security (Service régional de l'action sanitaire et sociale de la préfecture de Paris):

«It is with great pleasure that I learn that you have been nominated in the order of the Légion d’Honneur. I know the remarkable work that you have accomplished over more than thirty years on behalf of the underprivileged.

Your courage and initiative made possible the rescue of many children during the war. After the war, whether on behalf of the elderly or of refugees, your achievements bear the mark of Mealtime at COSE 1956 your progressive social spirit as well as an Nina Gourfinkel in the centre efficient use of public funds, both national and international.” [74]

Showing the way Although Alexander Glasberg in general shunned the spotlight, he was without question proud to The COSE/COS centres established by Abbé receive this honour, happy that the French state Glasberg in the 1950s and 1960s were radical in had recognised the importance of his initiatives. their ethos, and pioneering in the conditions they created for care of the elderly, the disabled and for vulnerable people. The abbé was well aware that the numbers involved were small, but he drew reassurance from the fact that his centres pointed the way forward. As he said in 1969:

‘There is often talk of ‘pilot’ establishments or ‘pilot’ projects. It is overused, it is trite now, but it’s very important to be a ‘pilot’ of something, because that allows you to give an example and to prove that there is a way, that the route is marked out. And then others should follow. Normally they follow, more or less rapidly, but they follow.’ [73]

Légion d’Honneur

The pioneering nature and the exceptional scope Celebration of the award of the Légion of Alexander Glasberg’s work was given public d’Honneur recognition in December 1971 when he was Nanteau-sur-Lunain 1972 named Chevalier dans l’Ordre National de la

During the course of an interview by Maurice Failevic in 1968, Alexander Glasberg comments: ‘It is very important to be a “pilot” of something....to show that there is a way, that the route is marked out.’

134 The Heritage him: work with the elderly, the disabled, and asylum seekers and refugees—a particular COS has developed hugely since 1981. In 2017 it combination of services which was unique at the was responsible for 22 residential homes for the outset and remains unique today. The elderly, of which 20 with medical facilities; 12 organisation has indeed re-emphasised the legacy establishments for the disabled (retraining and of the founder in recent times, symbolised by rehabilitation facilities, and residential care and images of Alexander Glasberg which have promotion of autonomy for people with appeared in COS establishments across France, profoundly disabling conditions); 4 reception along with prominent references to the ethical centres for asylum seekers and vulnerable people norms which inspired the organisation from its (personnes en situation de précarité). At the end beginnings. of that year COS employed 2,728 salaried staff, with additional contributions from some 1600 In 2018 COS, having been an association since its volunteers. [75] creation in 1944, achieved the honoured status of a foundation, to which it has given the name Despite this expansion and all the challenges to ‘Fondation COS Alexandre Glasberg’. which it has given rise, COS has remained remarkably faithful to the vision of the founder and to the areas of social work which preoccupied

COS establishments in 1981

In 1981-1982, at the time of Alexander Glasberg’s death, COS was managing a headquarters in Paris and six establishments, in Hyères (Var), Nanteau sur Lunain (Seine et Marne), Abondant (Eure et Loire), Mar- vejols (Lozère), Montreuil (Seine St Denis) and Dijon (Cote d’Or).

Centre d’Orientation Sociale: Situation 1981-1982 Personnel permanent 450 Budget de l’Etat: Aide Sociale et Sécurité Sociale pour fonctionnement : 85,000,000 francs

Date of origin Nom Purpose Number of beds December 1944 C.O.S. Headquarters; initiation and centralisation of activities; accounts; free lessons in French for refugees and asylum- seekers : 337 pupils in 1981, from 45 nations

October 1950 Beauséjour in Hyères Retirement home 90 February 1960 (Var) Geriatric Centre 146

July 1951 Château de Nanteau- Rehabilitation and 194 sur-Lunain (Seine-et- occupational retraining Marne) for people handicapped by work and travel accidents June 1952 Château d’Abondant Retirement home, for 136 (Eure et Loire) the able-bodied and non-able-bodied April 1964 Résidence de la Colagne, Retirement home with 80 Marvejols (Lozère) medical facilities October 1967 Les Sureaux, Montreuil Hostel for refugees, 52 (Seine St Denis) asylum-seekers, immigrants January 1968 Divio in Dijon (Côte Home with medical 140 d’Or) facilities for restoration of function of the elderly

Total 838

135 COS has set itself the goal of providing its beneficiaries with an optimal quality of care and services. Its code of ethics is inspired by the philosophy of intervention and management initiated by Alexandre Glasberg, founding President of the Centre d'Orientation Sociale. It is shared by the Board of Directors, Directors and COS staff. The values of COS are integral to its political approach and vision.

136 A NOTE ON SOURCES FOR THIS CHAPTER Following my interview with Eliane Obermeyer in September 2018, she read a draft of this book and made a number of comments. She stressed what a rewarding experience it had been to work with Alexander Glasberg, with his inspiring vision of society and of the future and his talent for bringing diverse people together. He was demanding of others, but of himself also. She highlighted the role played by Nina Gourfinkel and Ninon Haït in COS. Both were extremely important members of the team. It was disappointing for Mme Obermeyer that Ninon Hait Weyl, despite her great importance, occupied a rather small space in my narrative, though she recognised that Ninon was very modest and avoided the spotlight. I was aware of Ninon’s vital role and wish that I had been able to provide more detail, but for now I will have simply to repeat the point made in the text, that she was a pillar of COS, but that she preferred to stay in the shadows. Mme Obermeyer also wished to highlight the the role of former-priests in COS. The abbé, she said, had a particular affection for those who had left the Church. Some had left of their own volition, while others were excluded because of their involvement in the ‘worker-priest’ movement. Among those who had left the Church for one reason or another were Etienne Mallet; Jean Marie Marzio (who worked briefly at the Divio centre); a former priest (his name to be established) who replaced M. Bricos as director of Abondant; Nicolas Obermeyer at La Colagne ; Pierre Mamet, who had been a priest in Algeria during the Algerian war of independence, and after the war returned to France and worked for a time at the COS headquarters; Marcel Ranc, who worked at La Colagne and then for Pierre Olivier’s team at the Nanteau centre. There were also a number of wives of worker priests who were recruited to work for COS, including Marie Barrault, Pierrine Brenaert and Yvonne Besnard. Finally Mme Obermeyer was concerned about the amount of attention that she and her husband Nicolas had received in my narrative, when there were other COS people, now retired, who had known the abbé, could comment and deserved to be heard. She mentioned in particular: Etienne Mallet, who had directed both the Cachan and Les Sureaux centres; Rosette Toulet, who was at one time secretary at Beauséjour and then in charge of the Divio centre; Pierre Olivier who directed the centre at Nanteau sur Lunain, did a great deal to develop it was a ‘visionary in the field of care of the handicapped’; Monsieur Bricos who directed Abondant; Marie Thérèse Roulleau who played an important role in the COS headquarters; Monsieur Robert who took over as director of La Colagne in Marvejols after Eliane’s retirement in 1993. The narrative would indeed have been enriched by more interviews, but for various reasons including the age and health of the people concerned, further investigation along these lines was not pursued. I very much appreciate Mme Obermeyer’s desire to acknowledge other participants in the COS project, yet remain very grateful to have been able to borrow material from the interview with Nicolas and Eliane Obermeyer in Julie Bertuccelli’s film, and to have had the chance to meet Mme Obermeyer in 2018. One person’s testimony is just that, but Mme Obermeyer’s has been invaluable.

NOTES [7] Fraternité, 25 janvier 1945, republished in Pax, no 56, 21 novembre 1945, cited by C. [1] L. Lazare, op.cit., P.60 Sorrel, « Réflexions pour une relecture de l’itinéraire de l’abbé Glasberg » in C. Sorrel (dir.), [2] Since 2012 the headquarters have been at op. cit., P.10 88-90 Boulevard de Sebastopol 75003 Paris. [8] Accord entre COSE et Nina Gourfinkel, le 2 [3] Axelle Brodiez-Dolino, « Alexandre Glasberg mars 1945. N Gourfinkel would receive 50% of fondateur associative : une vie au service des the royalties. Archives du COS. internes et étrangers », in C. Sorrel (dir.) op. cit., p. 76-77 [9] N.Gourfinkel, op.cit., p. 246

[4] In an appeal to the I.G.C for funds, 21 [10] L. Lazare, op.cit., P.66 Septembre, 1945. Archives du COS. [11] Historique du COSE, mai 1952. Archives du [5] Abbé Glasberg, Note de Service, à remettre à COS. tous les chefs de service, 30 août, 1948. Archives de COS [12] ibid.

[6] A la recherche d’une patrie. La France devant [13] Lettre from Garnier in Hyères to Lucien l’immigration. Centre d’Orientation Sociale des Lazare in Jerusalem, 10 décembre 1986. There is Etrangers (Etudes Xénologiques) Editions Réalité, a copy in the COS archive. Paris 1946. [14] Rapport Moral sur L’activité du COSE pour l’annéé 1955, 1 juin 1956. Archives du COS

137 [36] Eliane Obermeyer, interview September [15] Historique, op.cit. 2018

[16] L. Lazare, pp. 65-66 ; Historique du COSE [37] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film mai 1952, p.7. Archives de COS ; « Quinze ans d’activité », COSE Mars 1955, Archives du COS. [38] Eliane Obermeyer, interview September 2018 [17] Historique, op. cit., mai 1952, p.5. (The IRO was established by the United Nations in 1947; it [39] ibid. succeeded the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, created in 1944 to [40] Abbé Glasberg, « Centre d’Orientation address the problem of millions of displaced Sociale des Etrangers », 5 octobre 1957, Archives persons in Europe after the Second World War) du COS

[18] Historique, op.cit., P.9 [41] Lettre from Garnier in Hyères to Lucien Lazare in Jerusalem, 10 décembre 1986. Archives [19] Rapport Moral sur L’activité du COSE pour du COS l’année 1955. Archives du COS [42] Abbé Glasberg, « Centre d’Orientation [20] Lucy Smith, ‘Une expérience d’orientation’, Sociale des Etrangers », 5 octobre 1957, Archives Esprit, avril 1966, p.644 du COS

[21] Lettre de COS au Ministère des Affaires [43] The daily rate was fixed by the Seine étrangères, 7 octobre 1948. Archives du COS. Prefecture at 790 francs. Note sur les activités du COSE 2 janvier 1962. Archives du COS. [22] There were 203 in 1955, 255 in 1956 and 268 in 1957. [44] Rapport moral, op.cit.

[23] Rapport moral, op. Cit. [45] Abbé Glasberg, Conférence de la Fédération des Centres d’Hébergement 3-4 mai 1962. [24] Résumé de COS 1981-1982, Archives du Archives du COS COS [46] The film was broadcast in the series « Il [25] Historique, op.cit., p.7-8 était une fois », presented by Eliane Victor. Mau- rice Failevic (1933 - 2016) was a film-maker and [26] Ibid., p.9-10 member of the French Communist party who made more than 50 television films and docu- [27] Lettre from Garnier in Hyères to Lucien mentaries, on social and political subjects. Lazare in Jerusalem, 10 décembre 1986. Archives du COS [47] N Haït-Weyl, general secretary of COS, interview for Les Dépêches Dijon, 5 mars 1970. [28] L Lazare, op.cit., P.68 On Pierre Meunier, see : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Meunier [29] Rapport Moral, op.cit., P.3 [48] « Ce “curé de choc” pas comme les autre, [30] Lettre from Garnier in Hyères to Lucien auquel nous devons le centre Lazare in Jerusalem, 10 décembre 1986. Archives « DIVIO » (rééducation fonctionnelle des person- du COS nes âgées) » Le Bien Public, octobre 1968 (Résu- mé des propos de l'abbé, par le journaliste Hervé [31] La Vie Collective, octobre 1965 Jouanneau)

[32] Article in a local publication (not identified), [49] Interview for a TV broadcast on the elderly 6 octobre 1982 ; Note sur le fonctionnement du in 1969 : « Les vieux. Un combat pour six COSE 20 juin 1958. Archives du COS millions. » Débat télévisé ORTF 1969 réunissant l’Abbé Glasberg, Pierre Laroque, François [33] Eliane Obermeyer, interview September Bourlière, M. et Mme Obermeyer. Interview 2018 Frédéric Pottecher, Ghislaine du Size. Cassette vidéo VHS INA. [34] For example, a retirement home attached to the Lozère hospital was arranged on the [50] Interview by Maurice Failevic, 1968. The dormitory principle, and when people were very text of the interview is in the COS archive. ill or in the last stages, there were only curtains between beds to respect their privacy. Ibid. [51] « Ce “curé de choc”… », see note 49

[35] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film. [52] Interview in 1969, see note 49

138 [53] Conférence de la Fédération des Centres [67] N Gourfinkel, op.cit., P.241 d’Hébergement 3-4 mai 1962. Archives du COS [68] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film. On the [54] A Brodiez-Dolino, op.cit., p.83. It seems that abbé’s ability to inspire teams, Serge Bernard in practice COS sometimes accepted private comments: « This concern to integrate his collab- donations, but these played a very small role in orators within a unified identity seems to me the financing of COS as a whole. symptomatic of one of the main points of coher- ence, observable throughout his career: the con- [55] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film. cept of teamwork…Alexander Glasberg indeed appears as a facilitator who forges links and [56] Interview in 1969, see note 49 builds bridges, both internally with COS and with external partners who shared the same cause.» [57] Interview by Maurice Failevic, 1968 ‘Alexandre Glasberg et le Comité d’orientation sociale : un précurseur de l’intervention sociale ?’ [58] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film (contribution to the study day devoted to Alexan- der Glasberg (1902-1981), 24 mai 2012, [59] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film l’Université Jean Moulin-Lyon 3), p. 1

[60] M Barreau, interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s [69] Lettre d’Olga Meier, Archives du COS film [70] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film [61] L Dubrulle, « L’abbé Alexandre Glasberg, une identité presbytérale entre affirmation et [71] Eliane Obermeyer, interview September négation » in C. Sorrel (dir.) op.cit., p.134 2018

[62] Conférence de la Fédération des centres [72] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film d’hébergement, 3-4 mai 1962, Archives du COS. [73] Interview in 1969 fim, see note 50 [63] Interview in 1969, see note 50 [74] COS archive [64] N. Gourfinkel, op.cit., P.241 [75] Figures for 1981-1982 : archives du COS; [65] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film for 2017: Rapport d’Activité 2017, COS

[66] Interview in Julie Bertuccelli’s film

139 140 Chapter 9 The abbé, Palestine and Israel

In the early post-war period when COSE was the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate being established, Alexander Glasberg became Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and closely engaged in another big initiative: assisting shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Jewish Displaced Persons—mainly survivors of the agency...close settlement by Jews on the land, death camps—to reach Palestine, at a time when including State lands and waste lands not the British government, which held the Mandate required for public purposes’ [1] in Palestine, was imposing strict limits on Jewish immigration. The White Paper of 1939

The abbé became a passionate Zionist during this In the favourable environment informed by this period, deeply affected by the traumas suffered commitment, Jewish immigration to Palestine by the Jewish people under fascism and increased greatly in the 1920s and early 1930s. immensely impressed by the achievements of the But as Arab interests asserted themselves and Jewish settlers in Palestine and the drive to Jewish-Arab tensions developed over land establish a new social order. It was above all the purchase, in the second half of the 1930s the socialist currents in Zionism, the cooperative British sought to contain the increase. Then in forms of work both in agriculture and in industry, 1939, following the Arab revolt during the years that inspired him, as we shall see from his reports 1936-1939, and following British failure to get on Palestine published in 1947 and 1948. agreement from the Arab and Jewish sides on British proposals for a partition of Palestine, The British Mandate and Jewish immigration British policy took a decisive turn. It was now to to Palestine be guided by the infamous (for Zionists) White Paper of 1939, which imposed strict limits on In order to make sense of Alexander Glasberg’s Jewish immigration and on the sale of land to involvement in post-war Jewish immigration to Jewish settlers. Palestine, some background is needed on British policy in the region. In 1922, following the defeat Key points in the White Paper included of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, Britain acquired the League of Nations mandate in (1) the assertion that supporting the development Palestine. The mandate—a quasi-colonial role— of a Jewish national Home was never intended to was based on a commitment, embodied in the mean that Palestine as a whole was to become a Balfour Declaration of 1917, which favoured the Jewish National Home, but that such a Home creation of a national home for the Jewish people should be founded IN Palestine. It was not part of in Palestine, in order to give recognition to ‘the the Government’s policy that Palestine should historical connection of the Jewish people with become a Jewish State, and it would be contrary Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting to obligations under the Mandate that the Arab their national home in that country’. population of Palestine should be made the subjects of a Jewish State against their will. Accordingly Article 2 of the Mandate stated: ‘The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing (2) Since the establishment of the 1922 Mandate, the country under such political, administrative more than 300,000 Jews had immigrated to and economic conditions as will secure the Palestine, bringing the population of the National establishment of the Jewish national home, as Home to 450,000, nearly a third of the total laid down in the preamble, and the development population. These numbers had been absorbed of self-governing institutions, and also for the economically, but the fear of the Arabs that such safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all an influx would continue indefinitely, until the the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race Jewish population was in a position to dominate, and religion’ had ‘produced consequences which are extremely grave for Jews and Arabs alike and for the peace Article 4: and prosperity of Palestine. The lamentable ‘An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised disturbances of the past three years are only the as a public body for the purposes of advising and latest and most sustained manifestation of this cooperating with the Administration of Palestine intense Arab apprehension.’ in such economic, social and other matters as may effect the establishment of the Jewish (3) Jewish immigration during the next five years national home and the interests of the Jewish would therefore be at a rate which, if economic population of Palestine…’ absorptive capacity allowed, would bring the Jewish population up to about one third of the Article 6: total population. This would allow the admission ‘The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring of 75,000 immigrants over the next five years. that the rights and position of other sections of For each of these years a quota of 10,000 Jewish

141 immigrants would be allowed, along with 25,000 worsened, and Mossad achieved some success Jewish refugees. At the end of the five years, before the second world war, bringing in about nofurther Jewish immigration would be permitted 20,000 people. At the start of the war these unless the Arabs of Palestine could agree to it. activities came to a halt and started again only in (4) The government was determined to check August 1945. After the war, despite the presence illegal immigration and the numbers of any illegal of some 200,000 Jewish Displaced Persons immigrants who, despite preventive measures, languishing in Allied-administered camps in succeeded in coming into the country would be Germany, Austria and Italy, Britain maintained a deducted from the yearly quotas. tough line and from 1946 set immigration at 1500 a month. (5) owing to the natural growth of the Arab population and the steady sale of Arab land to In response, in the period between the end of the Jews in recent years, in some areas there was war and the founding of Israel in May 1948, the now no room for further transfers of Arab land, Mossad organised a total of 64 ships carrying and in other areas such transfers of land must be about 70,000 passengers, many of them restricted in order for Arab cultivators to maintain survivors of the death camps. [4] Many of these their existing standard of life and to avoid the ships were leaving from French ports. A few growth of a landless Arab population. [2] managed to slip past the British patrol vessels, but most were apprehended and their passengers Response of the Jewish Agency detained in camps in Palestine. Then in August 1946 the British began to deport illegal The response of the Jewish Agency was immigrants to camps in Cyprus, making it even unambiguous: the White Paper denied Jewish harder for them to reach Palestinian soil. people the right to rebuild their national home in their ancestral country, and put the Jewish Even when the immigrant ships failed in their population at the mercy of the Arab majority; by immediate objective, the exercise served an decreeing that Jewish immigration would stop as important political purpose, to create ‘‘a link in soon as Jews formed a third of the total the minds of world public opinion and decision population, it would establish a territorial ghetto makers between a solution for the problem of the for Jews in their own homeland; the policy was a Jewish Displaced Persons…and the establishment surrender to Arab terrorism and must lead to a of a Jewish state in Palestine….to drive home the complete breach between Jews and Arabs in fact that they were yearning to come and settle in Palestine, banishing every prospect of peace; the Palestine, notwithstanding any and all hardships new regime would be devoid of any moral basis they would have to face in doing so.’ [5] and contrary to international law and could only be maintained by force; the Jewish people had no During this period, 1946-47, there were major quarrel with the Arab people, and Jewish work in international efforts to find a solution to the Palestine had not adversely affected the life and future of Palestine. An Anglo-American progress of the Arab people, indeed Jewish Committee had deliberated and reported in settlement had benefitted all of Palestine’s 1946, recommending the admission of 100,000 inhabitants; the Jewish people had shown their displaced Jews, the annulment of the land will to peace even during the years of transfer regulations restricting Jewish purchase of disturbances and had not retaliated against Arab Arab land, and proposing that Palestine should be violence; British policy would not subdue the neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state. [6] This Jewish people, who would never accept the gates came to nothing and the issue was then passed to of Palestine being closed to them nor let their the United Nations, which set up the United national home be converted into a ghetto. Over Nations Special Committee on three generations the Jewish pioneers had shown Palestine (UNSCOP) in May 1947, to make their strength in transforming a derelict country, recommendations on the political future of and would now display the same strength in Palestine. UNSCOP visited Palestine and gathered defending Jewish immigration, the Jewish home testimony from Zionist organisations both in [3] and Jewish freedom. Palestine and in the US. The Arab leadership boycotted the process, arguing that the rights of Aliyah Bet: illegal immigration the Palestinian Arab were self-evident and deserved to be recognized on the basis of the The British restrictions on immigration led to the principles of the United Nations Charter. emergence of Mossad LeAliyah Bet (literally Institute for Immigration B (illegal immigration) as opposed to Aliyah A (legal immigration)), The Report of the Committee in September established in 1939 as a branch of the 1947 supported the termination of the British paramilitary organisation Haganah, to counter mandate in Palestine, and contained a majority British restrictions by facilitating illegal proposal for a Plan of Partition of Palestine into immigration to Palestine. two independent states. The Zionist side, but not the Arab side, accepted this plan, and on 29 Illegal Jewish immigration had already begun in November 1947 the General Assembly the late 1930s as the plight of European Jews adopted Resolution 181, which followed the

142 UNSCOP partition proposals with slight to unite Jewish public opinion against the modifications. [7] revisionists. However the British had become increasingly mindful of Arab reactions, and insisted that while UN deliberations were in progress nothing in their policy should change.

AG meets Sarah Arkin-Meler

After the war there were some exceptions to the immigration ban, in particular for Palestinian Jews who had fought with the Allies, and to begin with it was in this connection that abbé Glasberg provided assistance. He met Sarah Arkin-Meler, sent to France by the ‘Beit Ha’arava’ kibbutz to assist immigration of Holocaust survivors. She recalled his contribution many years later in an interview for Julie Bertuccelli’s film:

Sarah Arkin-Meler

‘Abbé Glasberg was suspicious of new faces, but very quickly we became friends. He wanted to hear about [us], he was very interested, and Partition plan with economic union proposed very soon he told me that he was, in fact, a by the ad hoc Commission charged with convert Jew…I learned from him that people offering proposals on Palestine who had left [Palestine] to fight the war in Europe, could return to [Palestine]. He… thought that those people were probably dead. But he said it was possible to find their names While these deliberations were going on the and to certify to the Lyon mayor’s office that British government stuck strictly to its policy on they had indeed come from [Palestine] and 1500 immigrants a month. The British had an therefore they could return without needing interest in maintaining a good relationship with documents or papers. the Jewish Agency and knew that their strong- arm approach tended to undermine it. They also You must remember that this was during the knew that this approach tended to help the time of the British Mandate and they didn’t Jewish ‘revisionist’ terrorist paramilitary groups, allow immigration to [Palestine]. We later called the Irgun and the Lehu, making it harder for the it the 4th immigration, not the first, the second Jewish Agency to isolate them. These were break or the third but the fourth one. I came to him away groups who had judged the Haganah with a list of names that I found in the directory leadership too soft on the British, claiming that or elsewhere…. He had the list signed, and every Jew had the right to enter Palestine, that those people would leave for Palestine in only active retaliation would deter the Arabs, and complete legality’ that only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state. The mainstream Zionist leadership made it clear that so long as the British maintained their tough line and expelled would-be immigrants from Palestine, it would be impossible

143 The abbé, Mossad LeAliyah Bet, and a divided French government

The abbé also became closely involved with illegal Jewish immigration, establishing a supportive relationship with the Mossad LeAliyah Bet which was then based in Paris. At the same time he had friends within the post-war socialist government of Ramadier (the first Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic, January-November 1947) who were sympathetic to Zionism. Through these contacts he was able to intervene on behalf of Mossad. Most famously, he gave critical support to the Paul Ramadier Georges Bidault largest and most celebrated Haganah ship, the Exodus 1947.

There were divisions in the French government on how to respond to British pressure to prevent illegal sailings from French ports. The French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, who was sympathetic to the British position, gave a verbal undertaking to Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, that appropriate action would be taken. [8] But other members of the French administration, including the Minister of the Interior Édouard Depreux [9], Marcel Pagès, director of the Réglementation et du service des Jules Moch Etrangers au ministère de l’Intérieur [10], and Édouard Depreux Jules Moch, Minister of Transport [11] had a favourable attitude to the Zionist cause and were A Frenchman of Slavic origin, a Catholic of ready to turn a blind eye so long as the formal Jewish origin, an indefinable accent with requirements of cooperation with the British were Burgundian inflections, a lucid brain but myopic met. This was for political as well as humanitarian gaze, this strange ecclesiastic had a vocation as reasons, since they were all (except Bidault) xenologue and Good Samaritan.... members of the French Socialist Party (Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière), which had After the war, he opened an office in the a positive view of Zionism, seen through the Champs-Elysees and was busy looking after prism of socialist national liberation movements. refugees. He thereby came into contact with Ramadier was very likely himself also Pagès’ service. Many were the résistants who sympathetic, since he was one of those sought to prolong the habits they had adopted parliamentarians who refused to recognise the in the underground. Complicities would spread Vichy regime, later joined the Resistance and was step by step. But it was necessary at all costs to recognised by Yad Vashem as one of the avoid causing waves that might create Righteous for his actions in support of Jews. [12] difficulties for those in charge of [government] policy and complicate the relations of France These divisions, assisted by relationships fostered with its allies. during the war between members of the Resistance, created the political space through The wife of Jules Moch, when she learned of the which Alexander Glasberg was able to act. He Glasberg-Pagès connection, suggested to Marc became friendly, in particular, with Marcel Pagès, Jarblum, former activist of the S.F.I.O (Section who was very ready to assist. Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière, French Socialist Party), now head of Notre Parole, the In his book on the Exodus affair, the respected organ of the Zionist Federation of France, and French investigative journalist Jacques Derogy representative in France of the political describes a meeting between AG and Pagès— department of the Jewish Agency, that he might though without citation—in the following way: take advantage of this.

‘..the director of the Reglementation et du Jarblum then invited the priest to lunch with service des Etrangers at the Ministry of the Ehud Avriel at a restaurant on Avenue Kleber. It Interior, Marcel Pages, [was] a fervent reader of was during this meeting that Glasberg the Bible, his religion was clear. It was accepted, and decided to work for the Mossad. strengthened by visits from …a progressive He returned to Pages, and painted a moving curé, abbé Alexander Glasberg. He was picture of the renewed wandering of the Jews of Director of the Centre d’orientation sociale des Central and Eastern Europe, these uprooted etrangers, with an office in the district of Les masses set in motion with the sole purpose of Halles, rue de l'Arbre Sec. fleeing the scene of their nightmare, and having

144 found no other shelter than the camps for Displaced Persons…Strongly impressed…, Marcel Pages decided to lend his support to the cause so ardently defended by his interlocutor ...’ [13] Such was the context of the abbé’s role in the Exodus affair. The SS President Warfield

The Exodus 47, like a number of other Haganah ships, originated in America. It started out in 1928 as the SS President Warfield, a flagship of the ‘Old Bay Line’ which served as a luxury steamer sailing between Baltimore, Maryland and Ike Ahronovitch Norfolk, Virginia. 1923-2009

In March 1947 the President Warfield crossed the Atlantic, and from late April to mid-June was anchored in Genoa, since the original plan was to take on immigrants in Italy. When this proved too difficult, the Mossad decided to sail from the French Mediterranean coast, anchoring first in Port-au-Bouc, then in the nearby small port of Sète.

The plan was to bring some 4500 Jewish Displaced Persons from camps in the American zone in Germany to the French coast and to transport them to Palestine. The aim was if possible to slip past the British blockade and land the passengers onto a suitable beach with the support of the local population, but in the very likely event of failure, in any case to get maximum publicity for the cause of Jewish immigration and to drive home the link between the fate of Jewish Displaced Persons in Europe and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

This was a big and precarious project, for political as well as logistical reasons. The British, seeking The US government requisitioned it in 1942 and to reassure Arab interests, were applying strong loaned it to the United Kingdom as an amphibious pressure on friendly countries, in particular training vessel (it was flat-bottomed). In 1944 it France and Italy, not to allow ships carrying returned to the US Navy and became the illegal Jewish immigrants to sail from their ports. President command and control ship for the Allied invasion The movements and intentions of the Warfield fleet off Normandy Beach. The President Warfield were well-known to the British and in President Warfield was up for sale in 1946, was acquired by the mid-June, when the was Haganah and underwent extensive renovations in already on the French coast, the British Foreign Baltimore. The crew were American, young Secretary Ernest Bevin wrote to the British Jewish sailors who had little past contact with ambassador in Paris, Duff Cooper, saying that it Jewish life but were strongly motivated to help, was of the ‘highest importance’ to stop the President Warfield especially because of their experience of the which ‘has the largest refugee population in Europe during military capacity of any [vessel] at present engaged in service. Only two crew members were non- the traffic’. The US president Truman chimed in Jewish, including a 28 year old Methodist minister with these appeals, urging ’every citizen and John Grauel who was active in the Christian resident of the United States…to meticulously Committee for Palestine and wanted to gather refrain, while the United Nations is considering information and inspiration for his work in the US the problem of Palestine, from engaging in or for the Zionist cause. The ship was captained by facilitating any activities which tend further to Yitzhak Ahronovitch, known to everyone as Ike, inflame the passions of the inhabitants of who was born in Poland in 1923 but moved to Palestine, to undermine law and order….or to [15] Palestine ten years later. [14] promote violence in that country.’ But these appeals were not enough to stop the drama that was to unfold.

145 The Odyssey of the President thing. It’s just incredible, and that’s how 4500 Warfield/Exodus 47 people all arrived at the port of Sète at the same time. He was incredibly audacious.’ The extraordinary story of Exodus 47 has often been told. A brief description cannot properly convey the drama of it, but a summary is important in order to set the scene for the abbé’s involvement and for his later report on the Exodus Affair. There are many accounts but I have relied mainly on the excellent and deeply researched study by Aviva Halamish: The Exodus Affair. Holocaust Survivors and the Struggle for Palestine.

Bringing 4500 Jewish Displaced Persons from Germany to the Mediterranean coast

The Mossad bought and refurbished the President Warfield in the United States, crossed the Atlantic in March, and docked in Sète in June. They then had the task of bringing some 4500 Jewish Displaced Persons from camps in Germany Yair Tsaban to the Marseille region, as close as possible to the date of sailing, and housing and feeding them This account, like that of Lucien Lazare, is while they waited to set sail. It seems that Pagès, probably an exaggeration--the story had been influenced by abbé Glasberg’s intervention, magnified over many years of telling and arranged for the issue of 850 collective transit retelling. However the truth in it is that abbé visas in duplicate, which allowed 1700 would-be Glasberg had indeed established important emigrants to enter France legally. [16] The rest connections in the Ministry of the Interior, and it made their way to France without official is very possible that he was coopted into an documents. Lazare explains this as follows: informal role within the offices of the Ministry at this time. ‘The transit of through France of the 4,500 passengers of Exodus was by means of a The first contingent of emigrants arrived at the railway convoy from Germany, which had to end of June, staying for several days in training converge in the Sète region at almost the same camps in the Marseilles region, others were there time. The method of collective transit visas for for a shorter time (hence, although there were no so many was impractical. On the advice and Displaced Persons facilities in France, Tsaban’s with the agreement of Maurice Pagès, it was statement that there were no camps to receive agreed that for each convoy arriving at the the emigrants was not strictly true). Here they border, the police there would request received intensive training for the forthcoming instructions by telephone from the Ministry in voyage. They were organised in groups of 30, Paris. The abbé was one of the links in this each with an elected head—this was customary in chain of conspirators: he occupied an office in immigration ships, guided by the size of food the ministry and the switchboard sent him pails on board and by a suitable-sized group for communications from the border police. The transport from camp to port. system worked flawlessly and Interior Ministry Ostensibly the passengers were bound for staff realized nothing. '[17] Columbia, and each needed a personal passport with a Columbian visa in order to exit France in Yair Tsaban (Member of the Israeli Parliament an apparently legal manner. This was organised and Minister of Immigrant Absorption 1992-1996 during their stay in the camps. Then if faced with in the Government of Rabin), followed this British protests, the French could respond that all version when, some 50 years after the event, he passengers had personal passports and visas—a was interviewed for Julie Bertuccelli’s film: very important detail since the French authorities had undertaken to check the validity of collective ‘Those 4500 people came from different places [18] in Europe. They couldn’t be brought earlier but not individual visas. because there were no camps to receive them. It needed to be orchestrated so that they would Departure from Sète all arrive more or less at the same time, coming from different departure points and via many The choice of Sète as the port of departure was different border crossings. [Abbé Glasberg] opportune because Sète was in the constituency managed to install himself alone in the control of the Minister of Transport Jules Moch, who as room of the Ministry of the Interior. From the we have seen was sympathetic to the Zionist switchboard he gave instructions to various project. Moch was very familiar with the port and frontier posts, and orchestrated the whole gave advice on the best position for the ship to

146 anchor. Furthermore various employees at the would take responsibility for that. Again, once the port, including customs and border control, were ship had left harbour, warships might have been activists in the local branch of the Socialist Party, sent out to stop her, but this would take more while the regional officer was a Jew with left-wing than a warning shot. She would have to be sunk leanings, and a cousin of Jules Moch. [19] A to achieve it, and this was out of the question. difficulty arose when the time for boarding approached because just at that time there was a Once in open sea the passports with personal nation-wide strike by truck drivers. But the visas to Columbia were destroyed so that from drivers, all socialists and communists, made an then on the passengers had no nationality and no exception for the Jewish emigrants, encouraged destination. The ship was followed to begin with by British military aircraft and then by two British by a donation of 1 million francs to strike fund.[20] warships across the Mediterranean. Meanwhile Sète was therefore very well chosen. the decision was taken that once the ship was apprehended in Palestine the illegal immigrants would not be deported to Cyprus but taken back to the country from which they had sailed. Ernest Bevin was in Paris at the time of the sailing, for a gathering of European Foreign ministers to discuss the Marshall Plan. After protesting that the ship had been supplied with food and services while in a French port and had been allowed to escape, Bevin told the French Foreign Minister Bidault that the British government intended to make an example of this ship by obliging all her passengers to return to a French port. [22]

The battle

On 18 July, when the ship was close to Palestine The SS President Warfield at anchor waters, it was intercepted by British warships. Most of the work was given to four destroyers, with an additional destroyer to pull people out of British efforts to prevent the sailing the water, and a cruiser to prevent the immigrant ship from dodging her way onto a beach. These The British Embassy in Paris sent an urgent were joined by two more destroyers, making a missive to the British consul-general in Marseilles total of 8 warships used in the operation. The to see to it that local authorities did not allow the objective was to apprehend the ship quickly by President Warfield to leave, on the grounds that it placing as many British soldiers on her decks as was not seaworthy, but this message did not possible, first taking the navigation bridge to arrive until 12 July when the President Warfield control of the ship’s course. The President had already, during the night of 11 July, slipped Warfield had been prepared for a possible out of port. In his report on the Exodus affair, confrontation by sealing the lower decks and quoted at length below, abbé Glasberg entrances with fences and nets, and building up commented on this as follows: an arsenal--not firearms but piles of cans of food, potatoes, bottles and the like-- in various places ‘It has been claimed on the British side that the on board. (Up to the summer of 1946 the Mossad President Warfield was not seaworthy. In point had ordered only passive resistance by Jewish of fact the ship had a certificate of immigrants when immigrant ships were stopped, seaworthiness but not for carrying passengers. but when the new policy of deportation to Cyprus Having heard that a number of passengers had began they promoted a different approach nevertheless been embarked, the French involving stronger resistance). authorities forbade the ship to leave the port and, in accordance with regulations, refused a The President Warfield was rammed and badly tug-boat and a pilot and had the ship watched gashed and British soldiers boarded. A battle by police. The President Warfield sailed ensued which went on for more than two hours clandestinely at night, abandoning her moorings on the decks and in the nether regions of the and accepting the serious risk involved in vessel. Three people were fatally injured: William (Bill) Bernstein, 24, one of the American crew; leaving the harbour without a pilot. [21] Mordechai Baumstein, 23, a kibbutz member; and 15 year old Zvi Yakobovitz from a kibbutz By the time all 4515 passengers had boarded children’s home. Many others, including British (1,561 men, 1282 women, 1,017 youths and 655 soldiers, had lesser injuries. The immigrants then children) it was too late to stop the ship. Jules accepted defeat, requesting medical assistance Moch wrote to PM Ramadier at the end of July from the British, and the ship floated into Haifa saying that the authorities might have taken the harbour. It was at this point that the ‘Exodus immigrants from the ship by force, but that this 1947’ and ‘Haganah’ banner(s) was (were) would have resulted in bloodshed, and no one unfurled and ship publicly renamed.

147 were in Palestine to cover the UNSCOP visit. This coincidence of events helped to give the Exodus worldwide news coverage. [23]

The return voyage

The following day, 19 July, the deportation ships set sail westwards, accompanied by 25 American crew and 3 Palestinian escorts (though without an escort on Ocean Vigour).

he immigrants soon realised that they were heading for France, not Cyprus. Conditions on Exodus 47 had been crowded and tough, with just 13 toilets for 4500 passengers--though food After the battle: the President Warfield supplies were adequate because enough had becomes Exodus 1947 on its arrival in Haifa been taken on a 10-day voyage. But on the deportation ships the overcrowding and sanitary conditions were worse. The Mediterranean High Command had determined a maximum of 800 passengers on these ships, but there were nearly twice that number. And the vessels were covered in wire netting—the passengers were caged.

The Jewish leaders of the operation were afraid Bill Bernstein that if the Exodus landed in France, many would 1923-1947 not be able to hold out and would disembark. This would deal a severe blow to illegal immigration as a whole, undermining the determination of Jews still in German Displaced Persons camps to set out on the path of Aliyah Bet and ending the quiet support from the French. Thus as soon as it became known that ships were making their way westward, not towards Cyprus, Mossad began looking for Palestinian emissaries to go on board to join the passengers on arrival at a French port. [24]

To land or not to land?

The British were anxious to see the immigrants disembark in France and put pressure on the French in this direction. Meanwhile the Jewish Agency urged the French government to ban the use of force to bring the immigrants onto French soil, and the French press published announcements by the Haganah saying that the refugees would refuse to disembark.

On this issue the Zionists were once again assisted by their friends in the French administration, and one can be sure that the abbé Passengers taken off the Exodus by force was one of those making the case through his in Haifa contacts. In the event the Interior Ministry came out firmly against any use of compulsion. At a key From here the immigrants were transferred to meeting of the French government on 23 July three deportation ships: Runnymede Park, Empire there was a stormy debate about whether to Rival and Ocean Vigour, which took respectively comply with the British request. As summarised 1409, 1526 and 1494 passengers. Mossad made by Halamish: an announcement calling on UNSCOP, who were then in Palestine, to come to Haifa to witness the ‘The Government debate had Bidault on one fate of the passengers. As a result two UNSCOP side, claiming that the British request must be members, the chairman Emil Sandstrom and the complied with, both out of friendship and to Yugoslav representative Vladmir Simic, watched alleviate the suffering of the poor refugees by the transfer for over an hour. Also present was a accepting them in France; and Depreux on the large contingent of journalists, many of whom other side, informing the Government that he

148 had no intention of sending so much as a single Port-de-Bouc: the French invitation policeman to take people off the ships…The Foreign Minister was worried about the On 29 July the deportation ships docked at Port- detrimental effect the affair might have on de-Bouc near Marseilles. A French delegation carefully nurtured French-British relations, while visited Runnymede Park later that day, followed the Interior Ministry was concerned about the by Empire Rival and Ocean Vigour on 30 July, in distasteful task of removing illegal immigrants order to convey the official French invitation, in from the ships and the subsequent need to conformity with the humanitarian position agreed house and employ them.’ [25] by the government. This was read out in French and translated into Yiddish and Hebrew, which The upshot was a decision that if ships allowed for ‘interpretations’ in tone and transporting the emigrants should return to one emphasis.[28] of her ports, France would not close her doors to the refugees, nor would she force them to land. A Ministry of the Interior document dated 25 She would adopt a humanitarian position, and July, certified that M. L’Abbé Glasberg, described supply immediate aid to those who wanted to as Président du Conseil inter’oeuvre des remain on her territory. There was no further émigrants et transitaires juifs, ‘is charged with obligation: although France had undertaken not cooperating in the organisation of the forthcoming to permit illegal immigration to Palestine from its reception of the emigrants of Exodus 47.’ This shores, and the passengers had crossed French Conseil was a body set up jointly by French territory, the French government could not accept Jewish organisations in August 1946, to give help direct responsibility for their sailing since they to refugees seeking temporary French residence had come from the occupation zones in Germany, permits, until they could obtain visas from the and were in possession of valid passports with countries that would host them. [29] Columbian visas. [26] A second document, issued on 29 July by the The committee appointed to deal with the departmental police of Marseille, authorised abbé deportation ships and their passengers was Glasberg ‘to gain access to all sites that are constituted in a way that favoured the Zionists. In prohibited to the general public’, stating that ‘the particular the Interior Ministry representative was present pass is valid for Port de Bouc and for a sympathiser, who worked hand in hand with Calas.’ Marcel Pagès. [27]

149 25 July 1947. Ministry of Interior document issued to abbé Glasberg, charged with ‘cooperating in the organisation of the possible reception of the emigrants of Exodus 47’

A flyer, evidently produced by Mossad, exhorting local people to come to Port de Bouc to join a demonstration against the treatment of the immigrants turned back from Palestine Police document of 29 July 1947 issued to abbé Glasberg to give him access to Port de Bouc and Calas

150 Abbé Glasberg (centre) at Port- de-Bouc

The commentary to Bertuccelli’s film records that doubt that the passengers will not disembark abbé Glasberg went on board to translate the without the use of force.’ [31] And since the French government’s offer into Yiddish, and that Interior Ministry, which was charged with he encouraged the Exodus passengers, in Yiddish, receiving the ships, had laid down rules that not to land but to continue their resistance. This prevented the use of force, the British requests may be an over-statement, but given the official could not be met. During the course of 24 days of authorisations for the abbé it is very likely that he waiting (29 July to 23 August), which furthermore was on board one or more of the deportation coincided with an exceptionally severe heat wave, ships, and no doubt would have employed only 130 people chose to disembark, most sick ‘interpretations’ in tone and emphasis when and disabled, with the consent of the Mossad conveying the French invitation to the emissaries on board. passengers. His participation is also suggested by the image on the opposite page from the Back to Germany American documentary film Exodus 1947, produced to mark the 50th anniversary of the The British government was now approaching a Exodus affair, in which the abbé is shown on a hated decision. After a period of uncertainty small boat in Port de Bouc, evidently sailing from about other options which included Palestine, shore to ship or ship to shore. Cyprus, a British colony, or Britain itself, the decision was to take the passengers back to The Mossad, doubting the steadfastness of the Displaced Persons camps in Germany. Accordingly passengers, were anxious to ensure that they did they sailed to Hamburg, then still in the British not weaken. They were able to steal emissaries occupation zone, where they were compelled to onto the ships by means of supply boats, and disembark, with varying degrees of force being found other ways to communicate their message used. This exercise was completed on 9 (through loudspeakers, notes in food crates and September when the last of the Exodus 47 loaves of bread, and by using doctors and nurses passengers were removed to German soil. Thence as go-betweens). In the event it may be that they were taken to two camps hastily arranged to these efforts were not essential to persuade the accommodate them: Poppendorf which took passengers not to disembark. Adequate supplies 2,717 from Ocean Vigour and Runnymede Park, were however vital and here a number of relief and Am Stow which took took 1484 from Empire organisations came to the rescue. The ships were Rival. The total was 314 less than the number supplied with food and other necessities by the that had set off from Sete on 11 July. [32] Entr’aide francaise and Jewish relief organisa- tions, in particular the American Joint Distribution The close of the Exodus saga was a tragedy for Committee. [30] the passengers and brought a wave of interna- tional protest, but in the end they fared better Despite the failed attempt to reach Palestine, than the 15,000 deported immigrants still waiting despite the hugely difficult conditions that the in camps in Cyprus. About half of the Exodus passengers had endured for nearly three weeks, 1947 passengers had left Germany for Palestine their response was clear: a polite refusal to by the time of the foundation of State of Israel in disembark, thus confirming the advice of the May 1948, and the last left just one year after British consulate in Marseilles: ‘We are in no their arrival in Hamburg.[33]

151 Jewish terror advocated—no doubt naively—a transitional phase in which Palestine would be administered Exodus 47 failed in its immediate mission because by the UN and the Churches, without the of the tough position adopted by the British gov- participation of any major interested power, with ernment, yet by the same token the fate of the the intention of allowing improved social relations ship made a powerful impression on world public between Jews and Arabs to develop before the opinion as a symbol of Jewish aspirations. In par- implantation of any Partition arrangement. ticular the fact that UNSCOP was present in Pales- Rather than attempt to provide an extended tine as the drama unfolded, acccompanied by summary of this powerful report, which would dozens of media people from round the world, only lessen its impact, sections of the text are helped to spread the name of Exodus 47 world- presented in an appendix to this chapter. wide. [34] Seeking Vatican support for the Partition The immediate impact of Exodus 1947 was Plan for Palestine marred by the activity of Irgun, the Jewish ‘revi- sionist’ terror group. The Irgun had kidnapped In November 1947, following the two British sergeants and held them hostage recommendations of UNSCOP, the United Nations against the lives of three Irgun members who voted in favour of a modified Partition Plan for were under sentence of death for their part in a Palestine. In the build-up to the United Nations prison break-in in May 1947. Despite pleas the vote, abbé Glasberg played a part in efforts to Irgun activists were executed on 29 July, the day secure Vatican support, or at least neutrality in on which the deportation ships arrived in Port de relation to Partition. In the summer of 1947 the Bouc. The following day, in response, the Irgun Jewish Agency was working hard to secure the hanged the sergeants, causing indignation round two-state vote, but feared that South American the world. For a time at least, just when UNSCOP countries would oppose the resolution, and that was in the midst of its investigations in Palestine, without intervention by the Vatican the resolution this caused a shift in international public opinion, would fail. and was a big blow for the Zionist leaders, one of whom called it ‘knife in the back of the back of In his interview for Bertuccelli’s film Yair Tsaban the illegal immigration’. [35] recalled that Moshe Sneh, the head of the European department of the Jewish Agency, It is however hard to judge the longer-term effect sought help from the abbé: of this episode on the Zionist cause. The ordeal of the Exodus emigrants remained a huge symbol of ‘Quickly he called his friend abbé Glasberg to Jewish aspirations and may well have played its ask for advice. Glasberg told him they were in part in creating international support for the crea- luck because the present Papal Nuncio in Paris tion of a Jewish state, which the Jewish agency was Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who had held up as the only solution to the problem of apparently had a positive attitude to Jews.’ Jewish Displaced Person in Europe.

The Social Lesson of the Exodus Affair

In October 1947 Alexander Glasberg published a report, La Lecon Sociale de l’Affaire Exodus, which expressed his passionate support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In addition to a Moshe Sneh re-telling of the main events of the Exodus affair, 1909-1972 various strands of thought appear: Exodus 47 as a reminder of the historical role of the Jews as a people of Witness, as a symbol of the fate not only of the Displaced Jewish population but of all those Displaced during the war and its aftermath; the transformation of the ‘Jew of the Ghetto’ into an intrepid pioneer on the land; the promise of a new social order, based on socialist principles, that had developed with the Palestinian Jewish settlements; indignation with British policy on immigration to Palestine following the White Paper of 1939, a policy maintained by the post- Angelo Giuseppe war Labour Government. The abbé was not Roncalli however oblivious to the interests of the 1881-1963 Palestinian Arabs and recommended a limit to Jewish immigration so as not to create a Jewish majority in Palestine. Furthermore, while he supported a two-state solution (Partition), he

152 On 30 September Moshe Sneh and the abbé flew in this report—he wished to highlight the virtues to Rome, and on 3 October there was a meeting of the Jewish way of life in Palestine as he saw with the number two in the Vatican, Archbishop them. And those virtues, notwithstanding the fact Tardini who was in charge of foreign affairs. Yair that he abhorred violence, without question Tsaban continued: included the fellowship, commitment and courage that he found in a military setting. This is how he ‘… In time we were to discover that most of the opens his account: South American countries voted in favour of ‘In March and April 1948, I was able to make Israel. Of course the people at the Jewish one of the most surprising discoveries of our Agency had worked hard to convince them, but time: that of modern Jewish Palestine. From there is no doubt that the discussion between these hectic weeks spent among a youthful Sneh and Tardini had great influence in people living under the extreme tension of countering the Arab attempts to influence the preparation for a decisive war, I believe I have Vatican to oppose the UN resolution and to learned useful lessons for the understanding of oppose the Partition plan.’ the social struggles and searches of the present day…. The resolution in favour of Partition was adopted on 29 November 1947 by 33 votes, 13 against The maquis revisited and 10 abstentions. The plan was however rejected by the Arab side and was never ‘[It is] a country at war. You feel it as soon as implemented. your feet touch its soil. And yet, it is not the The abbé visits Palestine March-April 1948 typical atmosphere that would make you think of the word war. From the moment when our car, travelling from Lydda airport, stopped at As the UN process was coming to a head, the first road block on the road to Tel-Aviv, and tensions between the Jewish and Arab side in men from the Haganah asked for our papers, I Palestine were gathering, and Jewish Palestine felt once again the atmosphere of summer was already on a war footing. These tensions 1944: the patriots of the maquis checking our exploded into full-scale hostilities after the UN identity along the roads of France, firmly but vote in favour of the foundation of the state of not harshly…One submits to the brief Israel in May 1948. It was during this period of interrogation without resentment. It makes developing tension between the Haganah and the sense. No sooner is it over than the Haganah Arab League, in March-April 1948, that abbé men smile at us fraternally and, as a sign of Glasberg visited Palestine. He reported on his welcome, offer us the golden fruit of the experiences in Vers une Nouvelle Charte Sociale: country: delicious, symbolic oranges….. L’Espoir Palestinien (1948). On all the roads we find this warm fellowship, this shoulder to shoulder trust, as during that It was the promise of a new social order, unforgettable summer when, straining to meet reflected in the title of his report, which above all the Liberation, we felt the heartbeat of France.’ engaged the abbé. And he held out the hope—the [37] dream—that a Jewish state would not behave ‘like other states’. Here are the concluding words And in his conclusion he writes: of his introduction: ‘It is perhaps sad, but it is a fact that the ‘In our epoch there has been a disturbing newfound sympathy Israel has enjoyed for the resurgence of pagan ideas, with their sequelae: past several weeks is due to the discovery of the prevalence of brute force over the law, the the Jewish soldier. Neither the unspeakable reappearance of slavery as a form of economic martyrdom of recent years, nor the magnificent exploitation, the debasement of the person, in a Palestinian developments were able to effect word a direct struggle against Christianity. this change. But to see the Jew, intrepid and To these dark forces Palestine brings the purest strong, fighting like a lion, like a brother of human values in​​ the form of a new social Judas Maccabeus, in a few days confounding charter. It is this charter that we welcome with the romantic Anglo-Arab legend, from Vathek to the advent of a new Jewish state at the Colonel Lawrence, has moved and shaken the extreme western edge of a still oppressive world. world. But if one day nationalist exultation should make it simply one more State, a State And when all is said and done there are more like the others, then, we believe, Israel would noble reasons for this popular judgement than [36] have failed in its mission’ (italics added). the mere prestige of brute force. Perhaps it was the blood….of the warrior, shed in the name of Taken together with his account of the Exodus an ideal homeland, that was needed to wash affair, the report on his visit to Palestine in 1948 out so many humiliation. gives a vivid picture of his political thinking and his response to the developing crisis in Jewish- Once more the merchants have been driven Arab relations. He was conscious of Arab from the Temple, making room for new men: interests but he made no pretence at impartiality

153 those who stand for power at the service of They fired on us all along the route. Glasberg social justice… was seated next to me, I had a pistol and I fired also in the direction of our attackers. It The appearance of the Jewish soldier is a direct was under fire that we arrived in Jerusalem, result of the work of the Jewish pioneer. But and Glasberg contacted the Ratizbon monks such physical and moral growth was possible and other monks, Franciscans I think, and only in this country, cradle of the Old and New Dominicans, who were in the western part of Testaments and of Judeo-Christian ethics. Will the city, he went to their monasteries and the cowardice of men destroy this final hope of explained the situation to them, he convince our lost world?’ [38] them of the justness of the cause of liberating the Old city and in fact the entire city of Not only did he admire the fighting spirit that he Jerusalem because the entire city was under encountered during his visit, but he saw it at first siege. They obeyed, they became liaison agents hand when he was himself enlisted by the between the Haganah and besieged Jerusalem. Haganah to help out with a particular task. They transmitted the orders and the messages of the Haganah between West Jerusalem and This episode was recalled by Aryeh "Lova" Eliav in the Old City. his interview in Bertuccelli’s film: Glasberg fulfilled his role throughout, which was decisive. At that point David Shalgiel and the Haganah said: ‘He has completed his job now, the links are established, he can leave. A hero! A true hero! He acted like a soldier, like one of us.’

The abbé mentioned this episode, more briefly and modestly, in his report: ‘The sense of discipline is astonishing, shown in the careful organization of defense, or the surprise raids, or the convoys that were sent to Jerusalem after the blockade was broken for the first time. I had the honour of being part of one of them. There were difficult moments, such as travelling through the narrow pass overlooked by two hillsides occupied by Arab Aryeh "Lova" Eliav (Israeli politician) infantry. The 300 trucks of the convoy 1921-2010 progressed in groups, each preceded by an armoured car protected by the Haganah. These ‘It must have been April, spring 1948, the State vehicles, connected to each other by radio, had not yet been proclaimed, but the Haganah received orders from the commander in anopen was already in control of the Jewish zones, and car at the front of the convoy. Despite the Jerusalem was under siege, surrounded by the alerts the whole trip was completed without a Arab legion. The problem was how to get to hitch.’ [39] Jerusalem. And then I got a telegram from Shaul Avigur, telling me that Glasberg was He was hugely impressed, then, by the stoicism, coming to help us establish links between discipline and courage that he witnessed (‘I can Jerusalem and the Old City. Glasberg’s task was say that in the course of six weeks I never saw a to establish a connection between the monks in frightened Jew, even when the sounds of battle West Jerusalem and the Old City in the East, were very close’ [40]). But what inspired him which couldn’t be reached because it was under above all was the cooperative principle that siege. had been established in all branches of the economy. This was the new ‘social charter’ to We made preparations for the operation. The which the subtitle of his report refers: convoys left from Hulda and from Shaar Hagai. It was already a dangerous route and from ‘In twenty five years, the principle of Shaar Hagai, they were firing at the convoys all cooperation has spread in a remarkable way, the time. I explained the mission to him, and penetrating almost all the sectors of the he accepted it like a soldier. We joined the economy. convoy at Hulda. The trucks were transporting food to a hungry, besieged Jerusalem. The For us the cooperative movement is of the convoys were guarded by the Palmach Harel greatest interest, not only as an application of division, led by Yitzak Rabin. The convoy socialist forms of work, but above all also advanced inside Jerusalem. because these forms are especially well suited to the needs of rehabilitation of immigrants. It is undoubtedly extremely important to find

154 migration opportunities for displaced persons in Republic of France Europe. But in all countries they are obliged, for Ministry ofForeign Affairs economic reasons above all, to become Direction des Conventions Administratives et déclassé by integrating into a social stratum Sociales lower than that which they occupied in their 24 February 1948 countries of origin. In Palestine, on the other hand, the mixing of the residue of all social MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS groups leads to the formation not of a classless TO THE FRENCH CONSUL, WARSAW but a reclassified society. Immigrants are spared humiliating degradation, and this is I have the honour to recommend to you Mr. precisely because of the principle of cooperation Abbé GLASBERG, President of the Conseil which governs and organizes this society of InterOeuvre in Paris. workers.’ Mr Abbé GLASBERG, with whom the ‘For it is not simply a matter of resettling department is in frequent contact, proposes to displaced people by integrating them in some discuss with you the matter of the cancellation way into an already established order…….what of the visa authorizations that I sent you and people of the concentration camp age needs is which have not been used their beneficiaries. I not just resettlement but revival; they need would be grateful if you could facilitate our rehabilitation, an English term which implies a compatriot’s task, to the extent compatible with psychic renewal….. Jewish Palestine offers such your functions.’ [42] a renewal to its immigrants, thanks to the implementation of a system inspired by the His trips to Poland and his connections with the noble ideals of a socialism which is both moral Polish authorities raised suspicion within parts of and practical’ the French state apparatus. This is reflected in a report in the COS archive which raises concerns ‘As everywhere else in the world, the immigrant about the abbé’s zionism and his supposed arrives destitute, isolated, lacking necessities. connections with Polish security agencies, a The new atmosphere is unknown to him, the report which evidently originated in the French difficult climate, the indigenous population security apparatus: hostile, the soil ungrateful. He is not able to face these obstacles alone, and often what he ‘Between 1945 and 1950 Abbé Glasberg made lacks, besides experience and training, is simply known his views as a fervent advocate of the habit of physical work. immigration to Israel. From 1946 to 1948, abbé Glasberg made several visits to Poland in order This is where cooperation comes in to help, to investigate the position of Polish Jews. through the formation of communities of work…’ [41] In February 1948, he travelled once more to Poland. He had been instructed by the Haganah Further extracts from the abbé’s report, with to publicise a mobilization and to see how many more observations about the cooperative people could be recruited (following the state of principle (in agriculture, in construction, in war in Palestine and the general mobilization of provision of credit), about unionisation in Jewish Israelites in Europe decreed by Israel). Palestine, and about Jewish-Arab relations, are reproduced in an appendix to this chapter. Abbé Glasberg was also to find a way to get them out of Poland, and the result was positive, The Abbé and Poland since about a thousand people were able to emigrate. In this early post-war period the abbé was ... involved in further initiatives to assist in emigration to Palestine. He made two visits to In addition to his continued work for the benefit Poland between 1946 and 1948, the main aim of of the Zionist cause since the Liberation, abbé which was evidently to help Polish Jews to Glasberg has maintained relations with the emigrate. His presence in Poland was facilitated Polish intelligence and security services. His by a supportive attitude towards him in the commitment to these services has been French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as the letter of established, though it is not possible to recommendation below shows—though the task determine its extent and the degree of harm with which is he is charged in this letter concerns caused by this. a technical matter to do with visas, which the abbé no doubt used as cover for other activities. The abbé and the Iraqi Jews Soon after the foundation of the state of Israel in May 1948, abbé Glasberg played an important role in another initiative: paving the way for the exit of Iraqi Jews from Iraq.

155 In November 1948 he travelled to Tehran with [the situation] to them, you can count on me to Ninon Weyl. The publicly stated purpose was a have all the visas you need for those you fact-finding mission, to research the situation of manage to get out of Iraq. That’s what he Christian minorities in Iran, and AG wrote an promised me, and that’s what he did. That was article on this subject for the radical periodical AG’s greatest contribution to the success of the Esprit.[42] However the main (and not publicly rescue work.’ … The escape route thus opened stated) objective of this trip was to investigate made it possible to save 12,000 people. Later what arrangements might be made for Iraqi the 110,000 Jews of Iraq would take that same Jews, after their exit from Iraq, to pass through route.’ Iran, en route for Israel. [43] Israel at the Crossroads The abbé’s commitment to the Zionist project and his love affair with Israel continued for some years after the foundation of the new state. He paid a second visit in 1950, a visit preceded by a warm invitation from the Israeli authorities. In May 1949 a letter from the European Delegate of the Ministry of National Defence of Israel, who was based in Paris, read as follows: Government of the State of Israel Paris, 27 May 1949

Monsieur L’Abbé

I am very happy to hear that you have agreed to visit Israel next July. All your friends are The abbé and Ninon Haït-Weyl in Tehran looking forward to receiving you. There you will meet many people whom you helped to reach The abbé and Nina Weyl met up in Tehran with Palestine during the occupation, thus saving Shlomo Hillel, a young Mossad agent, who was in lives. charge of the operation to enable the persecuted Jews of Iraq to escape to Israel. Together they Let me say on this occasion how grateful we are discussed the possible crossing points between for all your tireless activity since the Liberation Iran and Iraq, and the Iranians agreed to allow in the service of the Israeli cause. You have not the Iraqi Jews to pass through Iran provided they spared time and energy to help us to organize had visas for some country other than Israel. In the rescue of Jews in Eastern Europe as well as his interview for Bertuccelli’s film many years in the Arab countries. You have accepted the later Hillel recalled: difficulty of risky journeys to Poland and Iran, where you have travelled under various pretexts to organize the clandestine departure of Jews who wished to return to their fatherland. We suspect that some people who do not understand the full significance of your activity will not appreciate your generosity, but please believe that you can count on our friendship and loyalty at any time. '[44]

One result of the abbé’s 1950 visit was a progress report entitled Israël à la Croisée des Chemins (Israel at the Crossroads), which can be found in the COS archives. [45] At this time his enthusiasm for the Israeli project was undiminished :

Shlomo Hillel during an interview for Julie “The secret of the miracle lies in the human Bertuccelli’s film quality of a handful of stubborn dreamers who, at the decisive moment, prevailed in the struggle of spirit and faith against brute force. Fifty years of sublime effort had trained these ‘And in that regard, AG brought extraordinary dreamers in a higher reality. Coming from help, for me it meant a real possibility of countries of oppression, where they were succeeding. He told me: ‘as for the visas, count treated as second-class citizens, they aspired to on me, I am ready to arrange as many visas as live as free men in their own country. However, you will need when I get back to Paris. I have what distinguished Zionism from any friends in the Interior Ministry, I will explain nationalism was the blending of the biblical

156 ideal of social justice with national aspirations. external funds, made an urgent appeal to the Zionism was first and foremost a school of country to respect its original principles: humanity in which the slaves of yesterday, ‘The Marxists might shudder at the thought, but emerging from the ghettos and the shops, one could say that it Israel’s spiritual strength came to know the creative effort, the daring, that can ensure that foreign capital goes into the brotherhood of work. This transformation productive investment. But this strength is only was made possible by their return to the land. possible if we start at the beginning, that is, While all attempts to bring the Jews back to with the Zionist basis, and that is essentially agriculture had failed on every continent, in kibbutz-ic. The men of the farming communities Crimea, South America, and Central Africa, must regain their heroic timest. Those times miracles were worked in the land of Palestine, are by no means over. Woe to Israel if in much harsher conditions. " tomorrow she is unable to revive them!’ At the same time, the abbé was aware of the Meanwhile, Judeo-Arab relations posed a huge enormous challenges facing Israel three years challenge. The abbé was keenly aware of the after its foundation: "The young state confronts misery of the Palestinian Arab refugees, while closely connected external and internal political deploring the way the Arab League exploited the problems, being threatened from outside by its situation and the fact that there was ‘no attempt neighbours and overwhelmed within by a huge to improve the deplorable conditions of their and continuing immigration ... (and) under the camps’. This issue, too, had no easy answers. pressure of these events, Israel shows more and more the desire (...) to "normalize", that is to Jewish Identities move on to concrete possibilities, based on careful calculation dictated by economics and In addition to his reflections on Israel, the abbé diplomacy, and to declare the era of wild heroism was also pondering wider questions of Jewish at an end. Domestically, a huge change was identity. This is revealed in a brief document of taking place, with an astonishing doubling of the 1953, retained in the COS archive, in which he population in three years, from 700,000 in early proposes to set up a team that would ‘clarify the 1948 to 1,500,000 at the beginning of 1951.’ different spiritual paths open to Jews today’, in These figures in themselves presented an order to deal with what he saw as a damaging enormous challenge, but there was also a social confusion about Jewish identity in different parts change: of the world. It is unclear to whom this proposal was addressed and nothing seems to have ‘... the new immigrants no longer include the followed from it, but it is revealing about the elite minority that went to the kibbutzim (...) extent of his preoccupation with the issue at that Not only is this migratory mass more diverse time. Although he does not speak of himself, than ever, but half—and soon the proportion there can be no doubt that the search for clarity will be higher-- is made up of immigrants from about his own Jewish identity influenced this Eastern countries, who are foreign to the social contribution: and socialist ideals of the European pioneers Jewish Identites (...) A Romanian or Hungarian shopkeeper ruined by National Socialism or Communism, Paris, 14 February 1953 will never adhere to the values of a former Polish student or a Russian who was “In the light of events, big and small, which are campaigning at the time of the Revolution of happening in the world, I had the idea to take 1905, nor will a merchant from Fez or stock. I would like to bring together a team Casablanca who is simply transferring his that could together clarify the different spiritual business to Tel Aviv, nor even a starving youth paths open to Jews today and to draw the lifted out of the dreadful misery of a mellah or a consequences from that. shanty town.’ I myself see only four possible and reasonable paths, which one can set against a certain Israel’s economic problems were daunting: ‘Its confusion which reigns in the minds of many treasury is practically empty, its natural Jews in various countries. To simplify somewhat resources very limited (...) its means my thinking, I would define these paths as incommensurate with the tasks that its faces. follows: And so the government is obliged to appeal to 1. The way of those for whom Judaism is a foreign capital, and in particular to American religious faith which they try to put into Judaism ... ‘ Yet foreign investment did not sit practice. Also, their national identification is well with a cooperative system which excluded something apart from their Judaism. private ownership in agriculture and gave 51% of profits to Histraduth (the Zionist Federation of 2. The path of those for whom to be Jewish Labor). means to belong to a Jewish nationality, to a Jewish territory, with a Jewish language and The social foundations of the Jewish state were culture. In other words, Israelis or those who therefore already vulnerable. In response, the propose to become Israelis. abbé, while recognizing the vital need for

157 3. The path of those who no longer find was part of the problem, as elsewhere), but with nourishment from the springs of Judaism and the ‘the Jew’s own sense of self’ draw the logical consequence: they see their future only in complete dissolution in another (2) like all Soviet citizens, Soviet Jews had an human, national, political or ideological ethnic label as well as a national identity inscribed community. They voluntarily and consciously in their passports (a system created in 1932), yet seek a thorough assimilation. They know the by contrast with the other ethnic groups in the obstacles that stand in the way for at least for Union they possessed no common culture or reli- one, two or three generations, depending on gion, no common language (Yiddish was scarcely the social milieu. in use by then), territory or shared traditions. 4. The path of those - a small number - who are (3) The vast majority of the Jewish population aware that they are Jews, aware that they after the Revolution aspired to economic and so- come from a community which for centuries cial assimilation within European Russia, and the have lived a particular life amongst other label ‘Jew’ lacked any significance. Yet this ‘small peoples. They notice that they are cut off from mention’ in their passports left Jews apart, and both the Jewish religion and from Zionism, but was the source of major social tension when from they retain an esteem for a particular set of time to time they suffered from the reappearance moral and intellectual values. Although they of anti-Semitic currents that were never far below cannot perpetuate these values in the the surface. As a result a small minority of Soviet framework of a religious, national or other Jews, disappointed in their desire to assimilate Judaism, they believe that can communicate completely, and feeling not quite at home, began them to non-Jewish milieux, and thus enrich the to turn sympathetically to Zionism. This alone Universal store of spiritual, moral and even could offer them a historical territory, a common material values. To achieve this they think it is language, a place where they could feel at home essential to break the practical or at least moral among fellow-Jews. isolation in which Jews have lived and continue to live in different countries, even where legal (4) Such a development had become a severe assimilation has been in force for a more or less irritant to the Soviet regime, since the building of lengthy period. a socialist order was supposed to erase all social Outside these four paths, all is confusion. It is tensions. Glasberg therefore proposed that the therefore a question of highlighting that Soviet authorities should allow the full integration confusion, which is the result of lazy thinking, to the great majority of the Jewish population, lack of integrity and often cowardice. The allowing Jews to choose any of the other ethnic confusion is a misfortune and explains in part at identities according to their inclination, while at least the antisemitism which reappears the same time allowing several hundred thousand periodically and often unexpectedly. It is indeed Jews to emigrate to Israel. Israel would benefit hard to explain to the milieux which these from acquiring vital technical skills, the Soviet "confused" Jews inhabit, the significance and immigrants would be in tune with the socialist purpose of the existence of a category of ambitions of the young Israeli state, thus citizens who are different from others, when strengthening the position of Israelis who resisted they themselves cannot say what this is. American influence, and it would be a major Soviet contribution to world peace. If one invokes something irrational, how can one resist a reaction that is also irrational? But These suggestions no doubt seemed Utopian at then even at the level of thought a struggle the time, yet it but it was not so long after that against anti-Semitism is paralyzed. But if Jews the Soviet authorities themselves decided to in this category say that they feel their Judaism allow a large-scale emigration to Israel so as to only when they are subject to a whiplash from get rid of the irritation caused by a dissatisfied outside, then we are in a vicious circle unless part of the Soviet Jewish population. Later, in we rethink the problem and become aware of 1997, several years after the collapse of the the lasting or temporary links between these Soviet Union, ethnic identity (the infamous ‘fifth Jews and Judaism. In other words, we must paragraph’)was removed altogether from Russian draw the consequences: we must choose one of passports, on the grounds that it contributed to the four paths above. “ ethnic discrimination against non-Russians. This The Jewish problem in the USSR was a change of which the abbé would have entirely approved. The concerns about Jewish identity which appeared in the abbé’s 1953 document found The idol falls expression also in an article on ‘The Jewish problem in the USSR’, published in the journal His article on the Jewish issue in the USSR [46] Esprit in 1956. The gist of the piece was as testified that abbé Glasberg had retained his faith follows: in Israel and the Zionist project up to that point. But as we saw above, the dream was that Israel (1) his concern with a Jewish problem in the would be ‘different’, it would behave unlike ‘other USSR was not so much antisemitism (though that States’. If on the other hand it was taken over by

158 ‘nationalist exultation’ then it would have failed in It was Golda Meir who, when Minister of Foreign its mission. Israel was indeed taken over by Affairs, had invited the abbé to attend the official nationalist exultation, and a great disillusionment inauguration of a monument in honour of the ensued. A turning point was the Six-Day War and Haganah, to take place in April 1961: « The the occupation of the West Bank, after which building of a memorial, in the form of a Israel became for the abbé a fallen idol. At the magnificent monument, is nearly complete, at the same time he transferred his attentions to the site of the house of Eliyahu Golomb, the great plight of Palestinian refugees and to finding a way driving force of the Haganah… In recognition of through in Israel-Arab relations. your dedicated contribution to the great effort of the Jewish people, we hope that you will be able The abbé’s disillusion is reflected in a [50] correspondence with one of his friends in Israël, to celebrate this event with us on 5 April…» Frédéric (known as Chameau) Hammel (1907- That invitation was apparently not taken up, and 2001). Chameau Hammel was an active member it was another ten years before abbé Glasberg of the Eclaireurs Israélites de France (Jewish visited Israel again. Georges Garnier, whom we scouts) before and during the war. In 1941, with encountered in the previous chapter and who was his wife Jeanne Weill-Oberdorfer, he set up an director of the Beauséjour centre for the elderly, agricultural school in the Rhône which received accompanied the l'abbé on this visit and several dozens of young Jews. Then, after the reminisced about it 16 years later : round-ups and deportations of summer 1942, he helped to organise shelter for them with families « [There was an] aspect of the personality of in the area and in a convent in Moissac in Tarn et the Abbé which I discovered during a trip that Garonne. He also helped young and adult Jews to he made to Israel in March 1970, to which he leave France through the Spanish border. After was invited by the Government and where I the war Chameau Hammel emigrated to Israel had the honour of accompanying him. He was with his family and settled in the Ein Hanetsiv greeted on arrival at the airport by high-up kibbutz, a religious kibbutz founded by French people, and accommodated in princely style in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The Jews, where he taught chemistry. [47] following morning an air-conditioned American There are very few Alexander Glasberg letters on car, driven by a French chauffeur-guide, was political subjects in the COS archives, but the placed at his disposal for the duration of the correspondence with Chameau Hammel is an visit, with a very eclectic programme which exception. In January 1968, in response to a new allowed him to travel from the Golan to Eilat, year greetings letter from Hammel, not in the and to visit little by little almost everything that archive, in which he apparently warned the abbé he was interested in seeing in Israel, from the against any criticism of Israel that might holy sites to the Knesset. encourage antisemitism, the abbé returned the good wishes but distanced himself from his He met many friends from various milieux, friend: spent nights in lively discussion, moving from one language to another. I realised to what “…in my view, antisemitism in France has not extent he was known and esteemed in Israel changed, it is the one we have always known, because of his action on behalf of Jews in the very circumscribed but stubborn. This course of all these years, from the advent of antisemitism does not target Israel which, on Hitler to the creation of the State of Israel, the contrary, is very popular in France. The taking in Exodus on the way. I was very happy biggest antisemites—the Right and the former [51] Vichy-ites, for example Tixie Vignancourt– and proud that he was paid such a tribute.” applaud Israel. There was, then, a serious effort to maintain Those who criticise Israel are not all antisemites relations with friends in Israel. But the by any means but, but while they retain their correspondence with Chameau Hammel was sympathy for the Jews, they find the current difficult. After another new year greeting letter policy of the Israeli leaders harmful for Israel from Hammel in December 1971 (also absent itself. That is what is new. » [48] from the COS archive), in which evidently he invited his friends to exercise patience with the Despite this cooling off, the links between the Israeli government ; the abbé replied sent a brief abbé and Israel remained intact. He was still [52] greatly appreciated there and, in 1970, and brusque reply : responded positively to an invitation to visit Israel once more. This decision may well have been « Dear Friend, because the Israeli government was now headed by Golda Meir (Prime Minister 1969-1974), who I received your circular letter of December promoted a vision of peace in the Middle East and 1971, and I thank you for your personal PS. I accepted an initiative requesting that Israel send you my best wishes for a good retreat to « secure and recognised borders » in « universal » year, as do Ninon and Nina… [49] the context of a global peace accord. [But] your text reminds me of the time during the occupation when you said that you wished

159 to remain at all costs « loyal to the advice to turn the left cheek when we have Prefecture ». I tried then, with other friends, to received a blow on the right. It is hard to explain to you that your duty was, on the conceive of such a gesture between countries contrary, to disobey the Vichy authorities and belonging to the same Christian civilisation, but even to combat them. I never managed to it is utterly unthinkable when one is dealing convince you. Also I think that all discussion on with an Islamic country. this subject will be in vain. The military calm has permitted a deterioration Chalom! in the internal situation in Israel, and this year we have seen two phenomena which are very Your Abbé Glasberg » familiar to you in France. We have had many strikes and we are also seeing a rapid inflation. This reaction clearly upset Chameau Hammel a great deal, since the following month he This latter is caused by the fact that Israelis addressed a letter to Nina Gourfinkel asking for want to be « like everyone else », to have their her advice: consumer society, they want to relax after much self-denial and many sacrifices. « Dearest Nina Since you know me, you will know that I do not If I write to you today, it is because I need your approve of this current at all, and the kibbutz is help. not a place where it makes itself felt. But can we blame these young people who have lived Twice now my new year good wishes sent to for so long under pressure ? » [54] the Abbé have provoked a rather brusque reaction which have left me with a disagreeable To this the abbé responded : impression. I would like to understand the Abbé…I do not know what he reproaches me « Dear friend, with and with what he reproaches Israel. You know the respect that I have for him and the Thank you for your letter and for your good gratitude that I owe him. You do not know that wishes for the New Year. My sincere good I attribute great importance to his opinion. wishes to you also, in which Nina and Ninon What I am asking of you is to try to explain join me. what it wrong, what has led him to respond in such an aggressive manner and to speak in Like you, I regret the turn taken by Israel, riddles, which leaves me absolutely perplexed. which has become a country not only like the … others but also Americanised more and more on As for my loyalty towards the prefecture about the economic as well as the social plane. I which you have spoken in a historical way in would go even further. I regard this as a one of your books, I suppose that the Abbé betrayal of Zionism as we knew it before and realises that I changed my view very quickly during the creation of the State. I do not forget and that the whole of my activity and attitude that Zionism had a socialist inspiration in the have demonstrated that I ceased to believe in best sense of the term. We even hoped that it… » [53] Israel would be a pioneer, a socialist example for the building of a new world. We do not know how Nina Gourfinkel responded to this appeal, but some clarification was brought One of the causes, and not the least, of this following a letter from Chameau Hammel in betrayal, is the existence of a religious current December 1972. Here are some extracts : which, aided by American influence, has transformed Israel into a theocratic society; « Very dear friends, whence the birth of ultra-nationalism, racism, (…) and the destruction of the socialist ideal. And all The year which has just passed has been this associated with a lie, since 80% of the relatively calm from a purely military point of population are non-believers. view. Israel has even demobilised a little. And yet it has been a year of violence and this time Those who, like you, have contributed to this it has taken on a more horrible aspect than state of affairs, should be self-critical. I do not military violence. To confront an enemy that say that this will reverse the situation, but it attacks you, you need a certain courage, if you could make a contribution. And so the situation are fighting on an equal footing. But how do is grave, even threatening the existence of the you fight against letters containing explosives State. or the highjacking of aircraft ? And so the year 1973 does not begin well and I I imagine that you, my dear friends, have been am very sad. » [55] indignant like us, but I have to say that what makes me even more indignant is the advice While appreciating the abbé’s honesty, Hammel that we have been given, in particular the disagreed with much of what he had said:

160 "Monsieur l'Abbé and dear friend The Abbé and the Palestinian Arabs

Good. On this occasion you have at least Alexander Glasberg's critical stance towards opened your heart with regard to what Israel after the Six-Day War was accompanied by separates us. In your letters of recent years, a growing sympathy towards the Palestinian you proceeded by allusions alone. Thank you Arabs. for your frankness. In relation to opinions too, good accounts make good friends. (‘Les bons After the death of the abbé in March 1981, his comtes font les bons amis’) former comrade, Dr. Joseph Weill, who was living and working near Besançon, wrote an obituary I have never known or tried to fathom your for La Tribune Juive (Bas-Rhin). The article was religious thought. I know what you did for us, very warm, but said in conclusion: "After the war you did as a Jew. However, what astonishes me of 67 his heart led him to the vanquished. He is that your aggression is addressed to a became an unconditional supporter of the PLO.” religious person. I always thought it was easier This change, says Dr. Weill, had led to a tacit for a religious Catholic to understand a rupture in his relationship with the abbé. [57] believing Jew who wants to rebuild the land of his ancestors. Why do you not address the These remarks about Alexander Glasberg's reproaches that you have levelled at me to the attitude towards the Palestine Liberation Israeli socialists. I am sure they will hear you. Organization greatly upset Nina Gourfinkel and Ninon Hait-Weyl, who came to know Joseph Weill To be sure, the Zionist State of today in many in the course of their joint activity during the war. ways does not resemble the dreams of the In a letter of June 1981, they appreciated the theoretical Zionists before its creation. There is warmth of his obituary, but added: a German saying that nothing can be eaten as hot as it is cooked, and you must admit that "... Only one sentence has pained us, because one could not expect anything else. it does not conform to the abbé’s position in relation to the PLO; at no time was he his If America has become a strong influence, this "unconditional supporter"! He never met the is certainly not because religious and ultra- PLO people. He hated all terrorism and showed religious nationalists have pushed the poor little his strong condemnation of terrorist acts on state into the arms of America. It is the USSR both sides. He campaigned for dialogue and which has pushed us there. And you certainly peaceful coexistence between Arabs and know this as well as me. Israelis. (...) But you can rest assured: the critical Jewish spirit will not fall asleep as a result of a supply We insist: the abbé’s sympathies were with the of capital and weapons. conciliatory left and not towards the present government. We would be pleased if you would Aldous Huxley said somewhere that if one publish a correction to your mistaken wants to fight fascism effectively, one is obliged interpretation. "[58] to introduce fascism at home: to militarize, rationalize, plan, establish authorities, and that In response, Dr. Weill said that he was delighted is what has happened to us. If the Russians to hear again from his old friends. The source of were not supporting the military regimes of our his comments about the abbé and the PLO was a neighbours, we could dispense with this luxury. letter from the abbé to a mutual friend, in fact to Chameau Hammel, which Joseph Weill had seen. And now, about socialism. You forget that I live He recalled a "a clear and strong condemnation of in a kibbutz and I am convinced (1) that we are the people, the government, the politics of Israel leading a pioneer life (2) that the kibbutz can and unreserved approval of the Palestinian indeed be an example for the new world that is "nation" and the PLO. It was not a question of being built. I am happy to observe that despite [59] its numerical inferiority, the kibbutz is still a terrorism. » significant force in Israel, and if one day we truly realize the dream of peace (which sadly Subsequently, after Joseph Weill had checked seems to me still far away) the kibbutz will be with Chameau, it turned out that Weill had an example to the youth of the country and will misremembered the letter in question. Hammel help to avoid the dangers that a civilisation of was able to confirm that although the abbé had abundance presents today to the whole world. I sometimes been combative in his know it will not be easy but I trust in it and look correspondence, he had never expressed sympathy for the PLO, let alone unconditional forward to it with all my heart. » [56] support. As a result, Joseph Weill apologized to Nina and Ninon for his mistake and proposed to publish a correction or write another article, but

161 Nina and Ninon gently replied that this would not June 1946 and 24 November 1947 (in the now serve any useful purpose. [60] administrations of Georges Bidault, Léon Blum et Paul Ramadier). In conclusion [10] Jacques Derogy, Histoire de L’Exodus. La Loi de Retour, Fayard 1969, p.102 Whatever Alexander Glasberg's view of the Palestine Liberation Front, it is true that his [11] Aviva Halamish, op.cit., P.56 disenchantment with the path taken by Israel and his growing identification with the plight of the [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ramadier Palestinians were essential aspects of his political development, even if his ties with Israel were not [13] Jacques Derogy, op.cit., p.102-104 completely broken. His great disappointment was recognized by his old Israeli friends (Arie Lova [14] Aviva Halamish, op.cit., chapter 2 Eliav, Shlomo Hillel and Yair Tsaban) interviewed in Julie Bertuccelli’s film. As liberal-minded [15] Ibid., chapter 3 people, they were nevertheless reassured by the fact that they shared the goal of seeking peace [16] Ibid., p. 47 and continuing dialogue in the Middle East. ‘Very soon,’ said Yair Tsaban, ‘we will be celebrating [17] L. Lazare, op.cit., p. 92 the fortieth anniversary of the [six-day] war, and [18] Aviva Halamish, op.cit., chapitre 4 we are still trying to find a way.’ Some twelve years after this interview and thirty eight years [19] Ibid., p.56 ; Jules Moch était député de la after the death of Alexander Glasberg, that path SFIO pour la Drôme (1928-1936), puis député de remains to be found. la SFIO pour l'Hérault (1937-1941, 1945-1958, 1962-1967). [20] Ibid., p.56 NOTES [21] Abbé Glasberg, La leçon sociale de l’affaire [1] League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, « Exodus », Centre d’Orientation Sociale des December 1922, His Majesty’s Stationery Office. Etrangers, Paris 1947, p.42-43 Cmd 1785 [22] Aviva Halamish, op.cit., p.58-60 [2] White Paper, May 1939. Cmd 6019 [23] Ibid., chapter 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_19 [24] Ibid., chapitre 10 39 [25] Ibid., p. 109-110 [3] La réponse de l'Agence juive au Livre Blanc: Ibid https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/zionist- [26] ., p.110 reaction-to-the-white-paper-of-1939 [27] Ibid., p. 116

[4] [28] Ibid., p.118 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad_LeAliyah_B [29] Julia Maspero, « La politique française à et l’égard de l’émigration juive polonaise de l’immé- diat après-guerre », Bulletin du Centre de recher- [5] Aviva Halamish, The Exodus Affair (Vallentine che français à Jérusalem, 2011,22 Mitchell London 1998), Introduction, p.xx [30] Abbé Glasberg, La leçon sociale de l’affaire [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo- « Exodus », Centre d’Orientation Sociale des American_Committee_of_Inquiry Etrangers, Paris 1947, p.46

[7] [31] Aviva Halamish, op.cit., P.119 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Par tition_Plan_for_Palestine [32] Ibid., p.219

[8] Aviva Halamish, op.cit., chapter 3 [33] Ibid., p.225 [9] Edouard Depreux (1898 -1981) was injured in a gas attack during the First World War and was [34] Ibid., pp.101-102 awarded the Croix de guerre. He joined the French Resistance and was a member of the [35] Ibid., pp.153 executive committee of the French Section of the Workers International and editor in chief of the [36] Alexandre Glasberg, Vers une Nouvelle illegal journal Le Populaire. He was elected to the Charte Sociale (1948), p.6-7 French parliament in successive elections between 1946 and 1958 and exercised the [37] Op. cit., pp.9-11 functions of Minister of the Interior between 24 [38] Op. cit., pp.61-62

162 [39] Op. cit., pp.27-28 [51] Letter from Georges Garnier in Hyères to Lucien Lazare in Jerusalem, 10 December 1986. [40] Op. cit., p.16 COS archive.

[41] Op. cit., pp.40-42 [52] Letter of 17 January 1972, COS archive

[42] COS archive [53] Letter to Nina Gourfinkel of 20 February 1972, COS archive [43] Alexandre Glasberg, « Les Assyro- Chaldeens », Esprit, fevrier 1949, p. 256-274 [54] Letter of Chameau Hammel, December 1972, COS archive [44] COS archive [55] Letter to Chameau Hammel, 2 January [45] Israël à la Croisée des Chemins. (1951) 1973, COS archive Archives du COS. The article was printed, but I do not know if it was published. [56] Letter from Chameau Hammel to l'abbé Glasberg, 2 February 1973, COS archive [46] Abbé A. Glasberg « Le problème juif en URSS », Esprit, Octobre 1956, p.583-589 [57] Dr. Joseph Weill, « Le curé des camps et de la Haganah », Tribune Juive, Avril 1981 [47] Sur Ein Hanetziv kibbutz, voir : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EinHaNetziv [58] Letter of 2 June 1981, COS archive

[48] Letter of 7 January, 1968. COS archive [59] Letter of 4 June 1981, COS archive

[49] On Golda Meir, see : [60] Letters of 14 April 1982 (Nina and Ninon to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golda_Meir policy Hammel) ; 19 April 1982 (Hammel to Nina and Ninon); 7 June 1982 (Weill to Nina et Ninon) ; 15 [50] Letter from Golda Meir, 15 March 1961, COS June 1982 (from Nina and Ninon to Weill), COS archive. archive

163 human significance of this testimony, since in our time the social is the most tangible expression of the moral. The unfortunate interference of politics distorts social trends… diverts them from an evolution that might have spared the world its torrents of blood and mire. It is politics which poisons the relationship between the ‘displaced’ and the ‘déplaçants’ by moving onto a terrain mined with explosives the questions that should be dealt with in the light of Charity. Not Charity as a sentimental and facile pity, but Charity as Strength, Understanding and Resistance which, for this reason, certain Christian artists of the middle ages personified in the features of Judas Maccabeus.

It seems that we could not find a more fitting patron to guide us through the dark mysteries of the Exodus saga.

Displaced Persons

La Lecon Sociale de l’Affaire Exodus (The Social For more than thirty years, Europe has been in Lesson of the Exodus Affair) the grip of migratory movements , spontaneous or directed, which have profoundly disrupted the Selected passages, with headings added. life of its populations: movements of armies driving hosts of refugees before them; mass The Jewish People—a People of Witness deportations of the political and racial enemies of the Reich, or the herds of slave-workers in all There are fateful names which in a few syllables the occupied countries; the transfer of entire sum up millennia of history. Each name, each populations in various regions of Europe by the event of the Scriptures is, for us whose spirit masters of the hour according to the dictates of has been shaped by the Judeo-Christian ethic, a geopolitics, and the return surge of these prefiguration of our own future. And we cannot populations with the passage of power into other see it as mere chance that the painful voyage of hands; changes of regime that condemned a group of 4500 Jews who wanted, despite all certain groups of inhabitants condemning to obstacles, once more to reach the Promised voluntary or forced exodus—all these multiple Land, appears in the chronicle of our times factors have determined displacements which under the name Exodus, after the name of the have affected some 40 million people in Europe ship that was to take them there. This name alone, or one twelfth of its population. alone sums up all the exoduses which, from the Pharaohs to Hitler, define the very history of the Since the end of the war about two thirds of this Jewish people. huge mass of people have been reabsorbed more or less adequately, but not without leaving The Jewish people--a people of Witness. This a residue which has still not found a home. This means that the history of humanity acquires its residue comprises, on the one hand 12-14 full significance for us only thanks to the eternal million Germans whom the impoverished and presence and witness borne by the Jewish shrunken western part of their country is unable people, a presence and witness which culminate to absorb, and a million people of all in the double fact which exhausts the whole nationalities, the residue of all those who were philosophy of history: it was the Jewish people ruined, deported or compelled to flee to save who were chosen both to incarnate the their lives, and who are known in modern Redeemer and to rebel against Him. terminology as ‘Displaced Persons’. The latter refuse to let themselves be simply repatriated to This is why the woeful ‘Exodus Affair’ seems to their countries of origin where, for political, us profoundly revealing of one of the most economic or racial reasons they would find difficult, most painful problems of our time: that themselves exposed to persecution. After of Displaced Persons. For if in this particular impassioned discussions, the United Nations case Jews were at stake, this was only as recognised their right to refuse any forced ‘testimony’. In reality, the Exodus expressed the repatriation pending their admission to other fate of all those people who, between-the-wars, countries. This ‘pending’ has continue for nearly failed to find a place in a world bristling with three years. barriers and barbed wire. In the pages that follow we propose to elucidate the general

164 Jewish Displaced Persons The Promised Land and the Zionist Message

The Jews who represent about one fifth of the In this moral desert, the Zionist message one million odd people still stagnating in the acquires an extraordinary resonance. It is the former Axis countries and the majority in only message which carries hope. It promises to Germany, have been particularly tested. The prisoners an exodus to a distant homeland horrors which they experienced in the where they will live a free and purposeful life. extermination camps of Hitler have been People must believe in such a possibility for their detailed and publicised widely enough not to be arms not to wither in inactivity, for women to dwelt upon here. Every life which has escaped bring children into the world, for young people the executioners is something of a miracle, to have something to live for. every soul that has not sunk into the abyss of insanity has a quality of grace. By what miracle, In Germany, in Austria, in Italy, in the midst of by what act of grace have these Jews, these the dismal life of more than 200,000 Jews, new men, women and especially adolescents and centres have sprung up: these are the infants, been able to survive so much horror and kibbutzim, the farm schools where they are preserve their faith in life? learning Hebrew and farming methods in preparation for Palestine. Today, as in the time of Hitler, Jews from all the countries of Europe meet in the camps of These dreams, these hopes are all the more Germany. They pass on the same lamentable potent for having remained alive in the Jewish message: anti-semitism is rampant the world soul during two thousand years of dispersion. over, no nation will agree to receive the There had always remained in Palestine a small survivors of the great slaughter. Last year it was settlement of ‘witness’ Jews. And however far the desperate flight from Poland; this year the removed from the country of his ancestors, a escape from Romania. And they are still in devout Jew who wanted to be certain to enjoy Germany, the country in which six million of his final rest, would ask that a handful of their brethren perished. At the beginning of Palestinian earth be added to the alien earth September 1947, just at the time when the that would weigh upon his tomb. In the towns British were sending the Jews of the Exodus to and villages of the countries of exile the memory Hamburg, the advisor on Jewish affairs to of the land of the forefathers continued to General Clay, commander of the American zone smoulder; from time to time it would burst out of occupation, and the commissioner of the in Messianic movements, that of Sabbatai Levi, Bavarian government for the victims of fascism, of Reubeni and of many others consumed with simultaneously published reports in which they the burning hope to lead their people back to told of a fresh outbreak of anti-semitism in Palestine. An enduring legend, deeply rooted in Germany. Its manifestations are neither the People of the Book, was passed on to the sporadic nor clandestine. Anti-semitic agitation masses to the effect that one day they would reigns in a quasi-permanent fashion in the return to the land of their forefathers across a overcrowded trains and trams, where insults and miraculous Bridge of Paper. humiliations in relation to Jewish travellers are a daily occurrence. Police join in as much as the In the course of the second half of the 19th public. Assaults have been reported….. century and the beginning of the 20th century, isolated groups of Jews from Eastern Europe The lesson of Hitler has borne fruit the more came increasingly often to settle in Palestine. since for the defeated, ruined and humiliated The double current of the Jewish spiritual revival Germans the Jews play—as has occurred so represented by Ahad-Haam and of the Jewish often in history—the role of scapegoats. national revival advocated by Theodor Herzel paved the way for the rapid expansion of the Added to the hatred among the Germans, and Zionist movement. The first world war was not for analogous reasons, there is the hatred yet over when Britain offered her whole-hearted among a certain number of displaced persons support to Zionism which seemed at the time to who cannot be repatriated, former accomplices fit into the pattern of her aims in the Middle of the Nazis and trained in their school. East, and one of the first moves of the nascent How, in these conditions, could one expect the League of Nations was to sanction this support Jews to mingle with the population and settle in by granting its protection to the development of this country? So far the occupying powers have a Jewish national home in Palestine. shown enough understanding of this situation not to impose such an outcome on the Jews. But During the twenty years between the two wars, no steps have been taken to solve the problem this Home kept expanding and prospering of these Jews, and in particular no measure that thanks to the enthusiastic efforts of streams of would enable them to emigrate in large numbers immigrants. Whereas before the first world war to other countries; they continue to live confined Jewish emigration was headed mainly to North in camps. and South America (90% to the United States),

165 with the opening up of Palestine the bulk of Negev. A mysterious force emanates from this emigrants now moved in that direction. In round soil, thrice sacred for the three great religions, figures, from 1925 to 1942 the United States and the sons of the people who once made admitted 223,000 Jewish immigrants, while these hillsides flourish regain here—but only Palestine attracted 268,000. The qualitative here—their ancient vigour, their ancient joy in difference was even more important than the working the soil. Because they love this soil. difference in number. America appealed to the people who hoped to find the forms of life which It was love which had earlier made possible the were crumbling in Europe. Palestine on the accomplishment of a similar miracle by the contrary attracted young people, ardent people Christian communities which a hundred and fifty who wanted to recreate and regenerate the years ago began to settle here and there in the homo judaicus. Holy Land, choosing likewise the most arid places, the most resistant to cultivation. If when It is absurd to attempt to suggest that the crossing some barren region of the country you impetus of all these people towards Palestine is see an oasis of greenness, you can be sure that an artificial result achieved only by dint of it is either a convent or a Jewish settlement. propaganda. There are of course, always, in a weak and passive crowd, people animated by a Whatever may be the practical success of these live faith, conscious of a definite purpose. These efforts by the new settlers, its most valuable are the people who lead others. It is they and result has been to regenerate the people who their promises of exodus from the countries of accomplish it. The real miracle of Palestine has oppression who enable the oppressed to survive. been the transformation of the ghetto Jew into a Their enemies think that they debase them by hardy pioneer farmer who defies all obstacles describing them pejoratively as ‘leaders’. They and accepts any deprivation on behalf of his at are indeed leaders, but so was Moses. last recovered homeland. Healthy children with a clear gaze, straight back and noble biblical The human experience of Jewish Palestine features have replaced, within a generation, the small pale shadows of the Polish alleys. This mystique of the Promised Land which had never died out in the Jewish masses and which How can one account for this transformation if was constantly revived by the suffering and not by the power of the mystique which through persecutions that they endured produced, in the two thousand years of dispersion, has kept alive Palestinian settlement, a phenomenon which can the dream of Palestine? hardly be explained by rational arguments. …. The collectivist principle The modern evolution of economic life and the increasingly sharp criticism of the capitalist … the many Commissions of Enquiry which were system revived an ancient grievance of the anti- later to visit the country could only, even when semites: the Jews, in their opinion, were they were hostile to the Jews, state that the incapable of productive work, they would confine Jews were largely responsible for the revival of themselves to trade, finance and the liberal the country which benefitted the country as a professions. In order to combat these prejudices whole. attempts were made by the big Jewish welfare organisations to bring a number of Jews back to Two factors contribute decisively to this the land after a gap of two thousand years. But achievement: in the first place the Jews apply to as if to confirm anti-semitic theory, all these the reconstruction of Palestine all the attempts ended in failure. Large sums of money innovations of science. The re-afforestation and were sunk in agricultural settlements in South re-fertilisation are being carried out according to America, settlements that the settlers soon carefully tested modern methods. Nevertheless, deserted. The same thing happened in various science alone would not suffice were it not for countries of western Europe. the second factor: the fervour of the person who applies these methods. The devotion of the In Palestine on the contrary, in infinitely more pioneer (haloutz), inspired by almost fanatical difficult conditions, on barren, dry soil eaten enthusiasm. away by salt, the Jewish settlers succeeded in working miracles by dint of perseverance and Under the aegis of the Jewish National Fund, the force of will. The old canals were restored, the central body whose task is the acquisition, wells, terraces and the ancient methods of distribution and development of the soil, a irrigation were improved, strenuous but patient curious agrarian system has been developed: washing eliminated the salt, and fields, the soil acquired through national capital no plantations and groves cropped up not only in longer becomes private property, but it is leased Galilee or the Jezreel Valley of Esdrelon where to the settlers and, by priority, to their the soil was flush with humus, but also in areas descendants for a period long enough to allow believed doomed to remain desert, on the them to feel that this is their home. The lease is shores of the Dead Sea and in the sands of the only maintained if the settlers fulfil its two

166 fundamental clauses, namely: if they do the extraordinarily potent with high-ranking British work themselves, to the exclusion of all wage bureaucrats, bred in exclusive English schools labour, and if they apply the most rational and whence they emerge steeped in sportsmanship, modern procedures, likely to ensure maximum endowed with a somewhat superficial varnish of yield. For it is not enough that the land supports knowledge and reinforced by class pride. As high the tenants, it must also benefit the community; colonial officials, these men have a romantic increasing the yield of the land increases the weakness for appearances which fall in line with capacity of the country to absorb immigrants. their particular sense of fitness. In discharging their duties they naturally seek the support of The application of this system is possible princes and potentates against the mass of especially in collectivist farms, the number and famished natives. This attitude has been scope of which are constantly increasing. They prevalent in India and the Middle East. It is only have been founded by ardent young people, who natural that they should sympathise with the have themselves survived the death camps or haughty, rich and casual kaids rather than with lost their relatives. The recovery, the adaptation the fellaheens reduced to servitude. At best, to a new life, the intoxicating feeling of feeling they may appreciate the picturesque quality of free and useful, have not happened without the latter’s rags and tatters. excesses, very understandable in these first …. phases of emancipation. But the infinite devotion The antipathy which a British functionary feels of these young men and women to their ideal, with regard to a Jew is determined by his their acceptance of their acceptance of very education and his caste. Alas, there is nothing tough way of life, their spirit of sacrifice, are aesthetic about the Jewish immigrants from the tokens of a successful social re-education of a East. Survivors of the ghetto or the camps, kind which is rare in our time. We should not be carrying their stigmata, afflicted with bad too surprised at this since the elements of manners, agitated, stubborn, insupportable, modern socialism in this system find their they exasperate the polite British, who are inspiration in the remarkable social legislation congenitally incapable of seeing, behind the developed in the Bible. * external marks of a degrading existence, the spirit of sacrifice, the creative vitality. For a The Emancipation of the Arab Worker British functionary an immigrant Jew is a native, and he is exasperated to see him pretending to With the European spirit, Jewish immigrants also the respect due to Europeans…. brought with them the principles of trade union organisation and of a decent standard of living. ‘The Munich of the Middle East’ What did they find in Palestine? Wretched …. fellaheen liable to crushing ground-rents and Palestine was progressing by leaps and bounds forced labour exacted by their lords, sole when her development was suddenly warped by landowners in the country. An unsuspected an abrupt change in British policy: in the expec- world opened up for the destitute Arab worker tation of war, Great Britain revised her position hired by a Jewish agricultural or industrial and decided to stake on the Arab card despite concern, for he automatically shared in the the obvious sympathy of the Moslems for the benefits of the remarkable social security and Axis Powers and the national-socialist regime. welfare schemes developed in Palestine. Hoping to placate them, in the spring of 1939, …. Chamberlain renewed in respect of the Moslems The Lawrence myth versus the Moses myth the cowardly gesture which he thought had proved so successful several months before, in While at the time of the Balfour Declaration and September 1938, in respect of Germany. Having acceptance of the Mandate, Britain took sacrificed to the latter first Austria and then advantage of the Jews, later on British policy Czechoslovakia, he now sacrificed the Jews to came under the sway of what may best be the Arabs. This is why the British White Paper of described as the ‘Lawrence myth’, after the May 2nd, 1939, which embodies this perfectly name of the most able of its agents in the useless sacrifice had been called ‘The Munich of Middle East. Captain Lawrence who was a the Middle East’. In it the Mandatory Power re- remarkable Arabic scholar and also a writer and nounced the obligations which it had undertaken poet of the desert, advocated a close alliance in pursuance of the Mandate over Palestine: it between Britain and the Moslem peoples whom restricted Jewish Immigration prior to curtailing he expected to become united and restored to it altogether and cut down to almost nothing the their ancient power. This ‘Lawrence myth’ which acquisition of land by the Jews. has been taken up and expanded by the British Colonial and Foreign Offices (not without Admittedly nobody had ever thought that Britain distorting the profound thought of its eponym) had accepted the Palestine Mandate because of appears in both a political and a sentimental her disinterested sympathy for the Jews. It was form. Strangely enough, the sentimental appeal well known on the morrow of the first world war of the ‘Lawrence myth’ seems to have been that Palestine was in a key position as a stronger than the political. It has proved strategic base, as an important stage on the

167 route to India and as a store of oil. But at the understanding towards the work of rebuilding time British aims in the Middle East coincided Jewish Palestine. with the establishment of a secure and prosperous home for the Jews in Palestine. Now But there followed an extraordinary reversal. Britain was reversing her policy in accordance Once in power, a unanimous Labour government with the tenets of the ‘Lawrence myth’. While broke with all socialist principles in its foreign maintaining the Mandate, she repudiated the policy, to replace them with the traditional obligations it entailed despite her pledges, imperial policy of Great Britain. .. despite the evidence and despite condemnation ..Chamberlain's White Paper was maintained of her action by the Permanent Mandates with extreme rigour. Commission of the League of Nations. … How could the Jews react to what seemed to This unilateral action taken by the Mandatory them the greatest betrayal? Power in glaring breach of the clauses of the mandate, was illegal from the point of view of Constructive Resistance and Destructive international law under the terms of which the Resistance mandate had been granted. …. Two and a half years after the fall of Hitler there are still 200,000 Jews languishing in camps, The disappointing victory waiting for a decision on their fate. We have said: they live surrounded by an atmosphere of Nonetheless, against the common enemy, the hatred, unable to return to their country of Jews of Palestine sided with the Allies. After origin, where they can expect only graves, September 3rd, 1939, 87,781 men and 50,262 destroyed homes and the resentment of a women registered as volunteers for national hostile population. The experience of a century service, military and civilian. Palestine became of emigration has taught them that they are not only a major military base, but also a centre undesirable everywhere, that nations offered for the production of ammunition and war them only temporary shelter. Among these machinery repair, the only industrial centre in fragile havens, it was only the image of the the Middle East. Palestinian homeland that remained indelible, definitive. And now that the whole world is The Jewish population of the country provided closed to them, this image becomes stronger the British army with 23,500 volunteers and stronger. How can one ask them to remain including 2,886 women in the auxiliary services wise and calm, as the years go by and they ... It provided them with technicians, specialists must still face this unjust and illegal detention? in Psychological Warfare, daring paratroopers … who do not hesitate to descend into their Between the Jews and Palestine which offers the countries of origin. It provides them with the only chance of resuming a normal life, looms an Jewish Brigade that distinguished itself by its obstacle in the guise of the prohibition of bravery in Africa and Italy, deserving the immigration. There are two ways of tackling an warmest praise of the Allied High Command. obstacle: to rush at it heedlessly with the savage stubbornness born of despair; or to try Many Palestinian soldiers came from the ranks and get round it peacefully, but with indomitable of the Haganah, an organization of self-defense, confidence in the final victory of justice. created from the beginnings of settlement by the settlers themselves because of the Thus have developed two kinds of Jewish imperative need to protect their homes and resistance: the destructive resistance of the fields against the hostility of the population and terrorists and constructive resistance, that of gangs of Bedouin looters. Without being officially immigration against all odds. recognized by the mandatory administration, the Haganah, whose objectives have always been Jewish Terrorism essentially peaceful, was tolerated by it. At the time of the advance of Rommel in Africa, the The denial of justice of which the Jews have English directly appealed to the Haganah and been the victims and the fearful state of tension received sincere and effective help. to which they were exposed have driven a section of desperate young people to destructive In a word, the Palestinian Jews had served the action. We do not propose to vindicate them. Allies well and they believed they had the right Any violence is to be condemned. But let us try to hope that with the end of the war the to understand the motives for the crimes which injustice of the 1939 White Paper would be they were induced to commit. repaired. All the more did they rejoice when, in the summer of 1945, the universal suffrage of At the origin of Jewish terrorism is the painful the British people brought to power the Labour history of a group of young desperados—for it Party which had always lavished sympathy and cannot be overemphasised that they are young and form but a small minority of the Jewish

168 population, which seeks peaceful solutions. supported by air force patrols and radar These young people have seen their young ones installations ashore which detect clandestine perish as a result of the British refusal to admit ships from a great distance. them to Palestine. A sort of ‘tradition’ has evolved: the passengers Who has the right to condemn them of intercepted ships are taken to Cyprus and unequivocally? Where could they have received interned in camps for long months, even years. lessons in moral conduct? The behaviour of the Now and again some of them are admitted to great powers in matters pertaining to Palestine under the so-called legal quota of international law could have but a disastrous immigration (the rate of 1500 persons per effect on these youngsters tried beyond the month having been arbitrarily laid down by the limits of human endurance. How could they have Mandatory Power). This fate was implicitly learnt to respect legality? And what legality? accepted by the 4500 passengers who sailed clandestinely from Sète on board the President During the occupation, underground struggle Warfield… which left the port without lights or went on in all the oppressed countries. The pilot to try its luck under the fateful name of Reich enacted in decree after decree, a vast Exodus 47. legislation of hate and terror. Was it legal? On the radio waves of the BBC the Allies proclaimed The Franco-British Dispute over and over again that resistance against oppression was not only legal but sacred, This time Britain decided to ‘make an example’, because the oppressor respected neither his own to give a ‘lesson’ both to clandestine Jewish im- word nor international law. Now, on the strength migrants and to the countries of embarkation of the solemn pledges of Britain and of the 52 which refused to deal with them too harshly. In member States of the League of Nations, the this instance the country in question was France. Jews had invested in the reconstruction of Palestine an enormous capital of money, labour, For some time before, Britain sought to check energy and hope. Twenty years later these the exit of Jews from German camps to pledges were flouted by those who had given countries from which they could depart for them. Was this legal? It is not surprising that Palestine. In January 1947, negotiations on this notions should have become confused in these subject had taken place between delegates of minds constantly preoccupied with an immense the three western zones of occupation, but they disappointment. resulted in nothing more than a somewhat stricter control of the issue of visas, and France Such is the origin of Jewish terrorism. Let it be did not allow itself to take on the job of judged, but in its proper perspective, and let the policeman properly speaking. The main issue of judges begin by examining their own the dispute is brought out by the letters conscience. exchanged a few weeks later by the British Ambassador in Paris and the French Minister of Departures in the Night Foreign Affairs. On 21 March, the Ambassador renewed the representations of his government The other kind of resistance, that of the regarding the increase in the number of ships Haganah supported by the Jewish people as a sailing from French ports in the direction of whole and by its representative institutions, is of Palestine and carrying Jewish immigrants a different nature. Here, every move is weighed possessing no certificates to enter Palestine. In and considered, and it is with sadness and consequence, France was requested to take reluctance but fully aware of their steps to prevent this traffic in order to avoid ‘the responsibilities, that the resistants seek to run most serious embarrassment to His Majesty’s the blockade. Government in its efforts to reach an equitable solution of the Palestinian problem’ **. Since the end of the war—we hardly dare to say since the liberation—groups of Jews have In the course of the controversies engendered continually been attempting to reach Palestinian by the Exodus affair, it has been insinuated that shores. Organisations have been set up for this France had accepted secret obligations with purpose which have collected considerable sums regard to Britain, which she eventually failed to of money, but not enough to [acquire] anything carry out. Nothing of the sort happened. The but cast-off old cargo ships, on board which Ambassador’s letter itself shows the inanity of carry, for the sake of economy, excessive these insinuations, since it remarks, not without numbers of passengers. The cargo ships are bitterness: ‘The agreement reached on this discarded anyway after each voyage. They sail occasion referred only to the movement of clandestinely from various Mediterranean persons coming from Germany, and a countries in the faint hope of escaping British subsequent unofficial discussion concerning their vigilance. This is hardly possible: Great Britain movement across and from France achieved no has aligned against these miserable hulks practical results.’ excellent and numerous units of her navy,

169 France was, therefore, free to abide solely by The Odyssey of Exodus 47 the requirements of international law and did not fail to stress this point. In his reply, the It is unnecessary to relate in detail this odyssey, Minister of Foreign Affairs enumerates the the painful stages of which are still fresh in the measures duly taken by the French authorities in memory. Let us merely recall the main facts. accordance with the International Convention for the protection of human life at sea. For the During the night of 10-11 July, 1947, the British grievances translated into legal terms President Warfield… left the port of Sete had taken on an unexpected turn: France was heading for Palestine. From the next day she reproached with having allowed unseaworthy was shadowed by two British destroyers which ships loaded with passengers to sail from her escorted her across the Mediterranean. The ports, that is to say expose themselves to boarding [by the British] took place in the shipwreck, not to speak of bad sanitary and customary way. The President Warfield which in other conditions on board the crowded and ill- the meantime had become the Exodus 47 was equipped ships. Thus, Britain was concerned brought to the quay at Haifa. The British about the comfort and hygiene of the very command having assured her passengers that people whom it wished only to keep stagnating they would be taken to Cyprus, they embarked in the camps [of Germany] Strange legal without resistance onto three ships which, they hypocrisy which draws a chaste veil of were told, would take them there. humanitarian solicitude over inhuman duress! … Instead of sailing for Cyprus, the three ships As regards the visas of the would be passengers, headed for France. At the same time, the British a preliminary check by the Ministry of Foreign government summoned France to take back Affairs and the embassies and legations these refugees whom she had allowed to leave concerned had only been prescribed for her territory illegally. France consented to take collective passports. them back, provided they landed voluntarily and … were not taken off by force. But the spurned It has been claimed on the British side that the immigrants announced their firm intention to President Warfield was not seaworthy. In point refuse to land anywhere but in Palestine. Faced of fact the ship had a certificate of with this stubbornness the British conducted the seaworthiness but not for carrying passengers. transport with calculated slowness, in the hope Having heard that a number of passengers had of breaking the Jewish resistance. nevertheless been embarked, the French authorities forbade the ship to leave the port On 29 July the ships anchored off Port-de-Bouc. and, in accordance with regulations, refused a French officials went aboard to make their offer tug-boat and a pilot and had the ship watched of hospitality and to meet with the expected by police. The President Warfield sailed refusal. Out of 4,554 passengers only 138, most clandestinely at night, abandoning her moorings of whom were ill, went ashore during the course and accepting the serious risk involved in of 24 days of waiting, from 29 July to 23 August. leaving the harbour without a pilot. On the French side everything was done to alleviate this painful stop which coincided with Furthermore, the passengers of the President an exceptionally trying heat wave. The Warfield have been wrongly accused of having passengers crowded in the holds, came on deck made use of false visas for Columbia. Subse- only to find themselves in wire-netting cages. quent investigations disclosed that these visas Short of space, short of water, in deplorable had been issued by the Consul General of Co- sanitary conditions recorded by medical lumbia at Marseilles, who however had acted in commissions (where was the British solicitude excess of his rights by granting 4,500 visas. But about the discomfort of the President Warfield?), it was not up to the French authorities to ques- the immigrants held fast. They were supplied tion the extent of competence of a Consul Gen- with food and other necessities by the Entr’aide eral, the latter being always entitled to issue francaise and Jewish relief organisations, in individual visas and a special check being pre- particular the American Joint Distribution scribed only for collective visas. Committee. Unfortunately it was noted that a part of the supplies unloaded by the Entr’aide Clandestine immigration is not pleasure cruising, launches did not reach the refugees. nor is it, as Mr.Bevin seems to think, a mischie- vous pastime engaged in for the sole purpose of Faced with the unyielding firmness of the Jews, ‘embarrassing’ His Majesty’s Government. It is the British government announced their decision grim emergency rescue work tackled in dead to take them back to Germany where they earnest by rescuers in no position to pick and would be placed in internment camps in the choose their crafts, and accepted with all its British zone. This threat failed to make them risks by desperate people. flinch. It was, alas, carried out. …

170 Social peace, the main guarantee of all a sort of pacific extra-territoriality. Might not the peace whole of Palestine enjoy a few years of this regime? The 18th Commission of Enquiry on Palestine composed of United Nations delegates from Is this an impractical Utopia? No! A Christian neutral countries, ie with no direct interests in solution of the Palestinian problem would be the matter, has submitted its report to the perfectly natural and it would be all the more in General Assembly. The report concludes that keeping with its historical vicissitudes that the there is a possibility for a substantial Jewish Jews would be called on to carry it into effect. immigration into the country and recommends In a remarkable and much discussed book, one the withdrawal of the British mandate…and the of the members of the Anglo-American partition of the country between Jews and Commission of Enquiry on Palestine of 1946, Arabs. We know the many political implications following a careful study of the new Jewish raised by these recommendations. Our goal is community, reached the following conclusion: ‘I not to share them, on the contrary: we would realised, as I had realised subconsciously before like very modestly--some would say very here in Palestine, how sound were the principles naively--to suggest not a solution but a method Jesus had laid down: the brotherhood of man, which might lead out of the deadlock. the community of work by all for the good of all. Here, in Palestine, I had seen them put into No settlement may, of course, be approached practical use, paradoxically enough—or, without accepting a certain level of Jewish perhaps, appropriately enough, by the Jews of immigration, but it is by no means a case of Palestine. It seemed to me that we were unlimited immigration. Although it has been perfectly ready to accept Jesus’ principles as shown that Palestine, if rationally developed, long as there seemed no chance to put them could feed 5-6 million inhabitants, we do not into practice, but that we shied away…when the believe that a number of immigrants should be opportunity came…I thought that just as the admitted which would tend to create a new Jews, because of their tortured centuries, had majority in Palestine. At present the population achieved the ethical concepts of Jesus, so the of the country comprises 1,200,000 Arabs and world must find its way to that same 600,000 Jews. The number of Jewish displaced achievement…’ *** persons hardly exceeds 200,000, and there are …. about as many would-be emigrants in the In our view, the natural guarantors of countries of Europe where violent anti-semitism Palestinian peace should be, on the one hand is implanted. At present, the total number of the Social and Economic Council of the United Jews wishing to leave Europe would not exceed Nations Organisation…on the other hand, the half a million and should the overseas countries high spiritual authority of the Church. Under open their doors, this figure might prove their aegis and with their effective participation substantially lower. Thus, the increased Jewish there would be a greater chance of finding population would barely equal the Arab adequate solutions to the most urgent of population. Palestine’s problems. These, we insist, are primarily of a social nature. A transitional regime in advance of partition The executive power might be delegated with least possible risk to representatives of neutral Once this approximate equality has been countries who have no direct political, economic reached, no immediate attempt should be made or strategic interests in Palestine, but who are to set up any political regime in the present interested in helping to solve the Palestinian atmosphere of intense passions. The most question first of all as nations confessing one of important is that it would be laid down that the the religions born in Palestine, and as States sacred soil of Palestine, the cradle of the three possessing large numbers of Jewish citizens. great monotheist religions should on no account be used as a military base by any power After a certain number of years of an essentially whatsoever. The regime which would be set up pacific regime in which equity would be would be of a transitory character and in guaranteed by the highest moral authorities in keeping with the essentially pacific tasks the world, one could approach the political assigned to the country, it would be based upon question with less passion and greater clarity. equal civil, economic and religious rights of all the inhabitants. Social welfare would be the If the warning issued by the Exodus affair to the primary objective of the administration. conscience of humanity allows us to lay the foundations of social peace, the most important The purpose of the scheme would be to include guarantor of all peace, this sad experience will the whole country within the third zone which not have been in vain. the report of the Commission provides for the Holy Places, Jerusalem and its neighbourhood, and in which the United Nations would maintain

171 Notes English Bible (Bible Societies 1972), pp. 838 and 840). This is the New Testament, but the author *(Editorial note) The context of this remark is would not have drawn a significant distinction not entirely clear. The author may be referring between the New and the Old from an ethical to the Acts of the Apostles. These include (1) point of view. Acts 2, 44-45: ‘All whose faith had drawn them together held everything in common: they would ** One notes, not without a certain sad irony, sell their property and possessions and make a that this letter is signed by M. Duff Cooper, general distribution as the need of each author of a book on King David whose required’ (2) Acts 4, 32-35: ‘The whole body of dedication we are pleased to quote : ‘This book believers was united in heart and soul. Not a is dedicated to the Jewish People to whom the man of them claimed any of his possessions as world owes the Old and the New Testaments his own, while the apostles bore witness with and much else in the domain of beauty and great power to the resurrection of the Lord knowledge, a debt which has been poorly Jesus. They were all held in high esteem; for repaid.’ (Ed: translated from the French text) they had never a needy person among them, because all who had property in land or houses ***Bartley C.Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, sold it, brought the proceeds of the sale, and New York 1947 laid the money at the feet of the apostles; it was then distributed to any who stood in need.’ (New

172 responsible. The ideal of this community life is not however to erase individuality, but to leave the members a very broad scope for initiative, in order to avoid turning them simply into executors.

The structure of a kibbutz comprises three main areas: management and distribution of work, external relations, and secretariat, the latter dealing with internal life as a whole, from the economy to the organization of cultural activity.

Education is one of the main issues. Children are grouped in a remote part of the kibbutz, in a home as cheerful and pleasant as possible. They live among themselves under the direction of specialist educators, and gradually pass through nursery, kindergarten and schools of different levels. However, contact with their parents remains close. They spend all their leisure time with them. In the evening, parents make long visits to children, they attend bedtime, especially the fathers, and if they fail to come, Abbé Glasberg, Vers une nouvelle charte their absence is felt by the child as the hardest sociale. L’espoir Palestinien (Towards a New punishment. Social Charter), Paris 1948 The children, who have everything in common, Selected passages, with headings added. do not know theft and regard lying as a cowardly thing. They are brought up together as Cooperation brothers and sisters and seldom marry each other, but become engaged to young people In twenty five years, the principle of cooperation from other colonies. has spread in a remarkable way, penetrating almost all the sectors of the economy. As soon as they begin to understand, the chil- dren are getting ready to receive emigrants from For us the cooperative movement is of the Europe. At Kfar-Guéladi, a five-year-old girl, on greatest interest, not only as an application of seeing me, asked immediately: socialist forms of work, but above all also because these forms are especially well suited to 'I do not know him, to whom does he belong?' A the needs of rehabilitation of immigrants. significant expression: not ‘who is he?’ but 'to whom'. Because you are not alone, you belong …. to a community.

Agriculture 'He’s from Europe' was the explanation

The agricultural collectives were the first to 'Oh yes!' Then immediately: 'Has he been given arise, first the kvoutzoth, with a limited number something to eat?' of members, confined exclusively to agriculture; then the kibboutzim, developing to form villages I felt a little embarrassed by these European of 1000 and even 1500 inhabitants and where origins, which in her eyes clearly testified to my industrial production was also introduced. But poverty. But we reassured her, and turning to both are governed by the double principle of a me the little girl said: 'That’s good. So now socialist collective: (1) all the goods belong to come and I'll show you the chicken coop. ' the community, all private property is excluded (2) all the work is done in common. …. Today, in the light of the amazing results of this method, one can affirm that the The land of the colony belongs to the Jewish reconstruction of the rural economy is possible National Fund. It cannot be sold, but only leased thanks to the principle of cooperation, with all on a long term basis to the community of the dynamic moral values that this entails. settlers, on the express condition that they themselves cultivate it, without use of wage labour. Construction The individual learns to live according to the community. It is to the community that he is The same principle is active in the world of con- accountable for the tasks for which he is struction…

173 All buildings are the property of cooperatives. This is not all: not only has the Palestinian CGT, The members obtain housing space or an shaped by the pioneering spirit, achieved the individual house through long-term hereditary feat of becoming an employer (the largest renting. Not only the rent, but also the price of a employer in Palestine!) without ceasing to possible sublet are fixed by the management of defend the interests of its members, but it has the cooperative, so as to make any speculation also become, alongside large national impossible. Similarly, in case of transfer of the institutions, a powerful body for the promotion dwelling, it is the cooperative that sets the and coordination of immigration. This aspect of amount of compensation to be paid to the its activity is unique. All over the world we are departing tenant. witnessing the opposite phenomenon: in the wake of growing economic difficulties and The training of bricklayers was as vital for the contradictions, with scarcity and unemployment construction of Palestine as the training of on one side, overabundance and lack of farmers. Apprenticeship was made possible by manpower on the other, the Trade Unions have cooperatives, where newcomers learned the come to oppose immigration, lest the influx of a trade. Very quickly qualified workers emerged, new, cheap workforce leads to the allowing the cooperatives to turn into real proletarianisation of native workers. construction enterprises, involved in road building, public works, etc., thus creating an The Palestinian CGT does the opposite—and important labour market along with agriculture, succeeds. It is a lesson to ponder. Its task is the and enlarging the capacity of the country to more difficult in that Palestine, under the British absorb immigrants.’ mandate, lacked any social legislation or …….. remotely serious Health Service, any plan of rebuilding that was at all seriously financed. On Credit the contrary at each step the CGT was impeded by the mandate or at best abandoned to its own The role of cooperation is not restricted to devices, whether in the organisation of workers, agriculture and construction. The movement has social security or improving the sanitation of the penetrated into almost all sectors of the country. economy: industry, transport, insurance, purchase and sale of produce and materials etc The Palestine trade union movement has overcome all these difficulties by taking Cooperatives include important financial immigration in hand and giving it its unique institutions and workers' banks without which character. It is by taking care of the new immigrants could not have found credit. immigrant….. that it has succeeded in throwing Indeed, the only guarantees they could provide him into the crucible of the future nation and were moral, which is of little use to private society. It is thanks to it this that, within a credit institutions. Cooperative credit gives them humiliated European Jewry, condemned to a short-term and long-term loans on easy terms, stifling urban existence and pressed by a giving immigrants immediate access to a small thousand years of restrictive legislation towards working capital, to acquire tools, livestock, raw monetary, commercial and non-productive materials, a field, to pay their share to a professions, that a new type of Palestinian production co-operative etc. These operations cultivator has been able to spring forth. And do have proved financially sound…’ not reply that this is only a small minority. After 25 years, the number of farmers in Jewish The trade union movement Palestine is 19% of the total population. It is not little, because the United States which disposes The fruitful application of the principle of co- of an immense agricultural production, also operation has been achieved in the framework of forms 19% of the population ... the trade union movement, which has developed on a large scale in Palestine. This is why it is enormously important for the future that immigration rests in the hands of the In practice, a union member may be any person CGT and that it is not bureaucratised, passed to who does not exploit any waged worker. There a government department proper, whose are many unions, both secular and religious, but administrative procedures could place in danger the vast majority of trade unionists, about 80%, that which today defines its value and its belong to the Histraduth, the Palestinian CGT. success: the predominance of the human factor.’ Its scope is however much greater than that of the Trade Unions, because in addition to The company of drivers defending workers' interests and promoting cultural activity, education etc ... it has set up The drivers of cars and taxis contribute greatly an advanced system of social security, in the to this atmosphere [of fellowship]. Throughout face of the Mandate government’s complete lack my travels across the country, I became of interest in this aspect of its duties. acquainted with quite a few and retain a warm sympathy towards them.

174 Apart from a few rare small-scale private We stopped. The lurch had been such that we entrepreneurs, all the drivers are unionised, expected that we would be extracting the members of transport cooperatives whose corpses of the two men confined in the driver’s organisation dates from heroic times when cabin. But, to our greatest amazement we saw security was unknown on the roads of Palestine. them come out of the ditch, swearing, grumbling You needed the courage of a pioneer to deal and bruised but safe and sound. with the rudimentary tracks, to defy the Bedouins who might at any time suddenly Seeing this our driver took off again appear from behind a hill. Road building was immediately, hurling himself at full throttle only beginning and in case of breakdown, you towards the van. After a pursuit of about ten were lost, with no hope of finding a garage or kilometres, we managed to catch up with it at repair shop. The first drivers were rather like the next roadblock where, with all its papers in middle age merchants, at once warriors, order, it was getting ready to pass through as if conveyors of goods and pioneers of economic nothing had happened. exchange. However our man was not long in bringing the Like the Romans, Jewish settlers began by delinquent driver out of the van. building roads. These are excellent, asphalted, and in nearly all cases the result not just of 'You scoundrel, how did you think you could Jewish money, but also of Jewish hands. This overturn a supply truck which might be of untold network was built inch by inch by the pioneers value for the settlers, and simply get away with who came thirty years ago to a country where it? ‘... there were just a few stony paths and scarcely marked tracks. Of course, the guards, once informed, lent a hand. The driver was struck hard, his van The association of drivers consists of men of seized, and then he was put into our car and courage, energy and a certain amount of forced to return with us to the scene of the technical knowledge. They are recruited mostly accident. from former combattants. During the war years they proved to be valuable assistants to the Needless to say, the driver failed to ask us what allied military authorities. They could be rapidly we thought about this additional trip. We finally mobilized precisely because of their union put the guilty party in the hands of the truckers membership, so that men and vehicles were who, along with some settlers of the engaged together. During the war these men neighbourhood, were already repairing the gained excellent experience in handling damage. Then we could continue our journey, armoured cars, and today they render an not without our driver giving vent to his invaluable service not only to the young army, indignation at the lack of conscience of some but to the general economy of the country. It is non-union civilians ...’ especially to their credit that despite the rapid break up of the administrative services of the Pluralism of economic forms mandate government, the supply of provisions for the urban centres has not suffered. They A characteristic feature of Palestinian life is plu- provide deliveries from the most remote ralism. Though communal forms have been agricultural settlements, and bring arms and economically and morally beneficial, they do not reinforcements to those settlements. Confined in tend to crowd out others. their armoured cabins, they perform real feats of daring and speed on roads exposed to Arab … out of 234 co-operative agricultural attacks…. settlements, 159 are community-based. But the rest, 75 settlements with 16,000 inhabitants, We took our place in a taxi which was to take us are more individualistic. Such for example are from Caesarea to Tel Aviv. At a certain moment the Mochave-Ovdim…[in which] each family has we found ourselves behind a heavily loaded its own maisonette, but the product of the work truck; it was holding to the centre of the straight is pooled, to be redistributed in cash to the road, rendered slippery by fine sand deposited settlers according to the number of workdays by the wind. We resigned ourselves to following provided by each family. it. All of a sudden a van passed us; instead of waiting patiently like us and following the truck In addition to worker cooperatives properly which was already in difficulty, the driver of the speaking, there is a another type in Palestine, van accelerated and, wanting at all costs to which belongs to the liberal economy, and has overtake the truck, squeezed it close. The latter also achieved great success. The members are was obliged to leave the centre of the road, recruited amongst small landowners and from turned and rolled over in the ditch, four wheels the middle class in the cities, who have in the air. Without stopping, the perpetrator of appreciated the advantages of cooperation in the offence gained speed and made off. joint purchasing or sales operations or in coordinated investments such as water supply,

175 construction or the development of land. These transport arms without difficulty across all the small landowners or proprietors have formed a land frontiers. series of agricultural cooperatives brought together under a central Union. The wine The same goes for the combatants: the growers and citrus growers (lemons, oranges, ridiculous official immigration quota allowed by grapefruit) have followed their example, with the British limits the arrival of newcomers, excellent results, especially in coordinating including many children and old people, to 1,500 exports. people a month. The influx of clandestine immigrants, though it continues, is numerically Similarly, there are cooperative societies of insignificant. On the other hand, not only small landowners for livestock insurance, individual Arabs, but entire military formations financing and credit operations, building etc. cross the frontiers in large numbers, without the The various forms of cooperation are also English thinking of arresting them….…… widespread in industry, where there is an intermediate type, with 50% of the shares of the The upshot is that in this month of April the company belonging to a capitalist, 50% to the Jews only dispose of individual arms, and often staff. of mediocre quality: submachine guns and machine guns, together with sundry small ... It is necessary to insist on this peaceful coex- weapons, smuggled at various times or istence. manufactured on the spot. They do have a few locally made mortars, but these ungainly The goal of the workers' economic enterprises is machines have many drawbacks. This limitation to serve their own members, and as a result will remain until the departure of the British on they are grouped around two basic sectors: 15 May.’ agriculture and construction. They do not conflict with private companies. To the extent The production effort that they move beyond a trade union framework, the workers' enterprises present Local industry makes an enormous effort to themselves on the free market as ordinary alleviate the shortage of arms. In this country competitors, subject to the regime of the liberal which completely lacks coal and iron and in economy like any other employer, any other which the import of steel is blocked by the firm. They were not created to fight private British, metallurgical factories have been capital, but to make up for its shortcomings, established. They produce, in growing numbers since it was private capital which declined to and with the introduction of certain take the risk with dangerous settlements which improvements, Sten submachine guns and Bren even in the best of cases could not offer an machine guns, as well as some mortars. immediate return. The main production goes on armour-plating: During the course of the 1939-45 war, private coaches, trucks and cars have it. But given the enterprises flourished. Workers' unions did not lack of steel, it is often replaced by strong have the capital needed for the industrial sheets of iron which weigh down the vehicles investment required at that time, nor for costly and complicate their handling.’ modern equipment for war production. It is however very interesting to note that almost all Life goes on of these private enterprises were bought after the war by the cooperatives. Their owners, no In the towns, in Haifa, in Tel Aviv, it is striking longer able to realize significant profits, were no that, alongside preparations for defense, a longer interested, while the cooperatives did not continuous rhythm of work is maintained. Not seek profit but were content to cover their costs, only are the factories and workshops operating their goal being first to provide work for the but, which is extraordinary, construction sites workers. are in full swing, and you see them at every step. From time to time, there explosion more …. the different forms of enterprise, collective or less nearby. But people do not get excited and private, coexist in Palestine and collaborate about it. Children continue to play in the street. for the greater good of the country.’ When bullets whistle too close, they disappear, to reappear a few minutes later. If a passer-by Armaments is brought down, an ambulance takes him away, without others seeking shelter. It is not that The weak point of the Jews is the lack of they ignore the danger or defy it. But these men sufficient arms. The embargo on the import of and women, and no doubt also these children, arms into Palestine is a terrible disadvantage for know that it is only their continuous effort that them, because munition can only come by sea will decide the outcome of the unequal struggle and they are subject to severe British control, in which they are engaged: a community of while the neighbouring Arab countries can 650,000 people, including children, the elderly

176 and the sick, against the warrior Arab states How many Jewish soldiers are there? Nobody that encircle it. was able to tell me precisely. I think, however, that the numbers are not so important. In effect After 6 o'clock in the evening, the isolated shots the whole able-bodied population aged 18 to 40, are transformed into an almost continuous men and women, find themselves in a state of crackle. Sometimes, when a shell explodes, mobilisation, whether they are in regular people sitting in a cafe or at the theatre listen barracks or at home, especially in the and ask: 'Were they firing on us? Where is our settlements, where they continue to work during mortar?’ the day and provide the watch at night. Any person may be summoned elsewhere at any Then they continue to sip their drink or watch time, thrown towards an exposed point or a the show. When they have emptied their battle. It is thanks to this remarkable glasses, when the curtain falls, they will return organisation that I saw battles won, for example to their jobs: one to resume his nightwatch, the Mischmar-Haemek. other to join his combat unit, a woman to return to the factory’. The true strength of these fighters lies in the fact that everyone is aware of his duty and the Courage purpose of the war that has been imposed on him. Everyone knows he has the choice only I can say that in the course of six weeks I never between victory and death. The Arabs can flee, saw a frightened Jew, even when the sounds of retreat towards the vast expanses of the hinter- battle were very close…. The old, cowardly and land; the Jews are driven back to the sea. whining sort of Jew, so common in the West, seems to have disappeared in Palestine. The The sense of discipline is astonishing, shown in death which the European Jew thinks is the the careful organization of defense, or sudden worst of all evils, the death which, even in raids, or the convoys that were sent to certain cultivated circles, he prefers not to Jerusalem after the blockade was broken for the mention, does not here inspire him with fear. first time. I had the honour of being part of one And what dignity you find in the attitude of of them. There were difficult moments, such as parents whose children have been struck down when travelling through the narrow pass in the struggle! At the entrance to Haifa overlooked by two hillsides occupied by Arab Hospital, I am introduced to a mother. I have infantry. The 300 trucks that composed [the just learned her story: her son, a talented young convoy] progressed in groups, each preceded by pianist, was commanding a group of fighters and an armoured car protected by the Haganah. leading his comrades to a military post, when he These vehicles, connected to each other by noticed that the grenade he was holding had radio, received orders from the commander in activated. 'Watch out!’, he shouted, ‘about turn an open car at the front of the convoy. Despite and run for all you’re worth!’ the alerts the whole trip was completed without a hitch. He was immediately obeyed but the young man did not have time to throw the grenade. It The discipline, the immediate and absolute exploded, tearing off both his hands. I was obedience of the soldiers is all the more preparing to say a few suitable words to the astonishing in that in this democratic army mother, but she interrupted and looking me everyone uses the singular ‘you’ (this is straight in the eye said: 'Do you know what my necessary in Hebrew, but the military maintain son's first thought was when I saw him at the it in other languages as well), and the officers hospital? He didn’t complain of his lost hands, wear no distinctive insignia. ‘How does one his broken hopes. Instead he said: 'You know, recognize a superior?’ I continued to be mum, none of my comrades were injured!' astonished.

This firmness and courage, so at odds with the 'First, a soldier must know his bosses image of the ghetto Jew, are commonplace in personally,' I was told. ‘And second, it is by his Palestine. It is not considered extraordinary that bearing that the officer knows how to impose his these Tel Aviv volunteers, without artillery, take authority.’ responsibility for carrying explosives on their backs, penetrating deep into enemy territory, at We must believe that this is succeeding, since the risk of never returning. the respect for the hierarchy is complete. When, in a post in the Negev, I expressed the desire to The women, who are very well trained in have lunch preferably with the troops, they military exercises and firearms, display the objected: 'But you have been invited by the same bravery. Recently they have no longer general!' And the shock at the thought of been sent to the more forward positions, hesitating was such that I was afraid to give an because it is said that when they see women in example of insubordination. the Jewish ranks, the Arabs put much more zeal into the fight.’

177 The general, a young man of twenty-six, who the face of the terror that reigns, in the face of was born in Palestine and whose dress was the Arab League, the systematic killing of those exactly the same as his men’s, received me in in favour of a good understanding with the Jews, his barracks. There was only one folding chair and the looting of shops and buildings by Iraqi which he gave up to me, settling himself on a and Syrian soldiers - whereas in Jerusalem, for corner of the table. Our menu was the same as example, the Jewish authorities began by that of the troops. In a pidgin which mixed all creating an office of confiscation charged with the languages of​​ Europe and a few words of protecting the property abandoned by 20,000 Hebrew that I knew, he told me about the Arabs. strategic situation on a large staff map. The League has sought in vain to recruit fighters in the refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and The Arab refugees Egypt. When the Egyptian authorities decided that all Palestinian Arab refugees ages 18 to 50 Unlike the Jews, the Arab population of Palestine and capable of bearing arms, would be sent is in the grip of panic. Lamentable lines of back to Palestine, a veritable revolt broke out at refugees are leaving the villages and towns the Port Said camp. Refugees attacked the occupied by the Haganah. The latter, far from guards with stones, and it took police provoking this flight, continue to declare that the reinforcements to restore calm. When the Arab Arabs who remain peacefully on the spot have Higher Committee delegate called on refugees to nothing to fear. 25% of Arab residents have do their duty to their homeland, this brought no remained in Haifa and are not worried. But the echo, only discontent. propaganda of the Arab League has created a pychosis of exodus - and we have witnessed the The exodus of Palestinian Arabs is in large part hold of such a psychosis on an otherwise an artificially created phenomenon, and its civilized population! instigators, the Arab foreign leaders, are all the more criminal since they do not even seek to Why are they fleeing? alleviate this disaster. On the contrary, social policy does not exist in the Arab States. This ignorant crowd, kept in a state of material and moral poverty by a feudal regime of I spoke of this appalling misery to a Haifa city exploitation, fears retaliation: yes, undoubtedly councillor. it does fear Jewish reprisals, since some deplorable excesses have been committed by 'What do you expect,' he said, 'it is still for us to the extremist groups; however, the heal the wounds. The day when we have a fait reassurances of the Haganah and above all the accompli agreement and these refugees return, experience of Jewish neighbours should suffice we will treat them as citizens of the Jewish state to calm these apprehensions. But the fear of and extend to them the benefits of our social another sort of reprisal is also formidable. The system. It is by raising the level of existence of weary edifice of Arab nationalism, so laboriously the fellah that we have gained sympathy, the built by the League as a screen for its internal effective neutrality of the poor Palestinian dissensions, has quickly collapsed before an population. The method has proved to be good, indisputable fact: the Arab people of Palestine, we have only to continue.’’ the only people qualified to pronounce on partition, are not hostile to it. Yet people flee in

178 Chapter 10 In quest of French citizenship (1948-1950)

This chapter is one of the articles by Christian trips to Palestine and Iran.[7] Finally, it was Sorrel in C. Sorrel (dir.) Alexandre Glasberg possibly he who introduced him to the apostolic 1902-1981. Prêtre, Résistant, Militant (2013) : nuncio Roncalli, whose confessor he was, so as to “Alexandre Glasberg citoyen français. Les apports allow Glasberg to make his case on the Palestine du dossier de naturalisation.” I have added some issue. [8] When in Paris, he celebrated mass in headings and images and have omitted two the church of Saint-Ferdinand des Ternes, to paragraphs (represented by points) which revisit which he remained loyal until his death, though information provided in earlier chapters. All the he assumed no other responsibilities and donated references are Sorrel’s, with different numbers [9] because of the omitted passages. Otherwise I his honoraria to charitable causes. But he was have changed nothing in Sorrel’s fascinating often absent because of his travels in France and account of the difficulties encountered by abroad. For these purposes he had a special Alexander Glasberg in gaining French nationality. residence permit (with privileges as a priest), and a Polish passport registered on 31 December Introduction 1947 by the Polish embassy in Paris and valid till 30 June 1949 for France, Belgium, Switzerland, Palestine and Iran. On 5th November 1948, abbe Glasberg, who ‘wished to settle permanently in France’, Such was the man who applied for French submitted a case for naturalisation to the Rhône nationality in 1948, without especially highlighting [1] prefecture. A first request, filed in spring 1935, his status as resistance fighter, though he when the applicant was unknown, was postponed provided a certificate drawn up by Colonel ‘for three years’, despite the receipt of ‘positive Maurice J. Buckmaster, head of section F of the reports’, because he had been in France for such British Directorate of special operations charged a short period.[2] The fame which he acquired with assisting the French internal Resistance, and during the war seemed to offer an easy route to mentioned the award of the Resistance medal on French nationality. Yet a number of obstacles 25 April 1946.[10] accumulated on his path and the naturalisation order, obtained on 10 March 1950, did not put an Colonel Maurice James end to his difficulties. In fact he had to wait until Buckmaster (1902- the beginning of 1951 to see the decision finally 1992) about Alexander ratified, after several investigations which throw a Glasberg: ‘[He] worked useful light on his career and on the way he was for the Resistance until the Liberation. He perceived by the French authorities. provided means of …… contact and refuges at a time when the During these years Alexander Glasberg, whose delivery of material publications and talks dealing with foreigners and was carried out by with Palestine were reported in the press [3], intermediaries. Through his courage seemed to move frequently between Lyon and and his exemplary Paris, even if he generally resided in Paris. In engagement, he Lyon, the rectory of the parish of Notre-Dame rendered great service Saint-Alban supplied him with an official address to the Allied cause .’ at the time of his request for naturalisation.[4] In Paris, he lived in Rue des Acacias, at the home of his sister Tatiana Lampert, who arrived at the beginning of the 1930s and became a nurse. Médaille de la Résistance, granted by the French As a priest he remained responsible to the National Committee of diocese of Moulins, whose bishop, Mgr Jacquin, in Liberation, based in the 1948 renewed the celebret required for all United Kingdom during the Catholic priests.[5] In the archbishopric of Paris, Second World War. he seems to have had contact only with Mgr Established in February 1943 in recognition of Beaussart, former assistant to cardinal Suhard. ‘exceptional acts of faith Beaussart was ‘purged’ and forced to resign in and courage’ which July 1945 but retained responsibility, on behalf of ‘contributed to the the diocese, for foreigners and the supervision of resistance of the French priests assisting them.[6] It was he who provided people against the enemy.’ the imprimatur for Glasberg’s booklets on the Palestinian question. It was also he who supplied supporting letters which authorised Glasberg’s

179 In Lyon, his application was dealt with quickly “All this […] tends to show that his sympathies, and the prefect gave a ‘very favourable’ opinion his sentiments and his allegiances attract him on the naturalisation of a figure ‘well known’ in to countries other than ours and to spiritual and the department of Rhone and beyond through his social ideas distinct from those that we have ‘social activity’: ‘His loyalty appears assured and adopted. In Catholic circles, in particular within his political attitude is very proper. Abbé the archbishopric, he is regarded as an Glasberg’s character seems to me above extremely intelligent person, yet very criticism.’ [11] mysterious. His faith, like all his activity, is brought into question by the little importance A favourable response from the Ministry of that he attaches to Catholic rites, and also by Public Health and Population the analysis in his reports on his impressions of travels abroad, notably in Poland and Iran. The first review conducted in January 1949 in Finally we do not disguise his evident Paris by officials of the Ministry of Public Health opportunism and the authority with which, and Population, which was in charge of assisted by many contacts, he works his way naturalisation procedures, was equally positive into various French departments of state, where (‘devotion to social work’, ’very high moral his initiatives may, in certain cases, constitute a standards’, ‘assured loyalty’). But these thought danger to our national independence”. it useful to ask the opinion of the prefect of police because of ‘important functions exercised’ by Director of National Security defends Alexander Glasberg’s reputation but resists Glasberg in COSE.’ [12] request for naturalisation The Prefect of Police disagrees The tone of this report, ‘such as to raise doubts about the loyalty of the applicant’, prompted On 12 April 1949, the prefect of police expressed officials in the Ministry of Public Health and his reservations following a long critical report by Population to consult the General Directorate of [13] General Intelligence. After retracing the career National Security of the Ministry of Interior and of Abbé Glasberg following his arrival in France, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a time when the not without some gossip about his relations with minister [of Public Health and Population] Elisabeth Belenson [14], the investigator himself, the MRP [member of Mouvement mentioned the activity of COSE, the priest’s style Républicain Populaire] Pierre Schneiter, was of life which was reckoned to be out of line with taking an interest in the application.[15] In his official income (‘superb American car of recent September 1949 the Director of National Security manufacture’, chauffeur) and his privileged judged that the ‘complaints raised against this relations with ‘various French and foreign Jewish priest [are] without foundation’, yet still did not circles’. All the COSE employees were Jews, in approve the naturalisation: particular Madame Moosman, who managed the administrative and legal assistance service and ‘One must consider that the applicant’s recent helped to regularise the status of foreigners who activities have taken him in a direction beyond had entered the country clandestinely, with the the framework of strictly national interests. One support of her husband, an official seconded to may then fear that in the future, under certain the Ministry of the Interior, a ‘notorious circumstances, abbé Glasberg could find himself communist’. on a path contrary to the needs of the country in which he seeks citizenship. In anticipation of Glasberg had also retained his ‘religious traditions such an eventuality, which would risk putting of origin’ and had continued to plead the cause of abbé Glasberg himself in a difficult position in Jewish immigration to Palestine through the relation to our country, I think that it would be assistance he gave to the Exodus, his journey to more appropriate not to integrate the applicant Teheran, his participation in the plenary assembly into the national community.’ [16] of the World Jewish Congress in Montreux, and in talks and texts published in France. At the same The Moosman affair time he displayed his sympathy for communism, travelled regularly to Poland and maintained This reservation was probably not unconnected to regular contact with the Polish ambassador in the Moosman affair, which reached a dénouement Paris, raising suspicions that he was a member of at just this time, according to the copy of a report the country’s intelligence services, though no attached to the Glasberg file, but which evidence on that could be brought. He also took apparently was not communicated to the Ministry part in congresses of the Polish Organisation for of Public Health and Population by the External Assistance to the Motherland and was a member Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service of the Franco-Polish Friendship society and the (Service de Documentation Extérieure et de National Movement Against Racism, two Contre-Espionnage (SDECE)) until December organisations in which there were numerous 1950. French Communist Party sympathisers. The conclusion was clear: André Moosman was the husband of the COSE employee who had been called into question by

180 General Intelligence. He was a Ministry of Labour Negative report by French ambassador in official seconded to the Ministry of Interior in Tehran January 1945 at the direction of the [Réglementation de la Sûreté nationale], and in The tone of the ambassador in Teheran, who June 1949 he was sent back to his original reports on father Glasberg’s stay in Iran in the department. He was born in France, a member of company of Ninon Haït-Weyl in September 1948, the Resistance, responsible for French was very different: Radiodiffusion broadcasts to Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the accusation was that, “Abbé Glasberg, who was hosted by this during his trips to Poland, he had encourage embassy in an open and cordial manner during Polish nationals to come to France and had the whole of his stay in Teheran, does not seem welcomed them at his home, for example the to have responded with the same trust. Thus he ‘communist propagandist’ Artur Sandauer, future constantly left hovering an uncertainty both critic and academic. Together with his wife, Polish about his nationality and about the motives for by birth and naturalised through her marriage, his trip. It was by chance that we discovered Moosman would also intervene in support of that he used a Polish passport and, though he another ‘agent of communist propaganda’, Klara assured us that he had come to study on the Kaplun-Nicholas, stripped of French nationality in one hand the situation of the workers, and on 1936, and more generally in favour of foreign the other the position of the Christian volunteers supported by the Centre for action and minorities, all the information that emerged defence of immigrants (Centre d’action et de later leaves no doubt that the aim of abbe défense des immigrés) of which the secretary was Glasberg’s trip was almost entirely to organise the ‘communist agitator’ Abraham Matline, until it the semi-clandestine transport of Iraqi Jews was dissolved by the government in 1948. through Iran.” [22]

It is in this context that Alexander Glasberg, In support of these statements the ambassador informed about an investigation of André provided a copy of a report sent to the Quai Moosman by the Directorate for Territorial d’Orsay in November 1948 after two Chaldean Surveillance (Direction de la surveillance du bishops had confided in one of the [Quai d’Orsay] territoire), alerted the suspect, thereby allowing staff. The bishops had discovered that the help him to take steps in relation to the Sureté offered by abbé Glasberg—a van for transporting nationale. [17] supplies to hamlets and making rural visits— would in fact have as its object to help Iraqi The Quai d’Orsay is against Jewsto stay temporarily in the Christian communities, in transit to Israel: The Quai d’Orsay was also hostile to abbé Glasberg following consultation with its “For Iraqi Jews intending to get to Palestine to representatives: ‘The political services of my lodge clandestinely with minority Iranian department are strongly opposed to the possible Christians is bound to place the Chaldeans […] naturalisation of this cleric all of whose efforts, in in clear danger[…] I do not need to tell you the France as abroad, have been concerned with extremely unpleasant consequences that might support of Zionist organisations and who also result both for this embassy and for the campaigns in extremist groups.’ [18] Christian minorities for which he is ostensibly concerned.” [23] The French minister in Tel Aviv could not supply any information about the priest’s mission in Pierre Scheiter, Minister of Public Health and Palestine at the time of the creation of the State Population, decides in favour of Israel [19], but the same cannot be said of our ambassadors in Warsaw and Teheran. The former In fact, as of 10 October 1949, even before the mentions four trips, two in the company of investigation of the Glasberg case had concluded, ‘progressive French Catholics’ (Emmanuel the minister Schneiter had decided to give a favourable response on the request for Mounier, Stanislas Fumet ) [20], and two in order naturalisation because of the weakness of the to prepare for the emigration of groups of Jews, General Intelligence report and more especially but his judgement remains balanced : because of ‘the many and well-qualified [24] “Though certain members of the clergy of this interventions in support of the candidate’. country have been shocked by abbe Glasberg’s origins and his sometimes rustic and brusque Only written statements, which highlight manner, as well as by his progressive Glasberg’s Resistance activities, have left a trace tendencies, this embassy, on the contrary, has in the file. There are six, all dating from May always been satisfied by his behaviour in this 1949, from the time when the applicant, when country and by the discretion which he has informed that there were obstacles, mobilized his always shown, maintaining a distance from contacts and sent several documents in support politics and from partisan comments on what of his application. he has seen here.” [21]

181 Pierre Schneiter 1905-1979

Georges Bidault (1899-1983)

Four of the statements were addressed directly to the Minister:

The deputy mayor of Lyon, Jean Fauconnet (1895-1965), a COSE official, described in rather general terms Glasberg’s role in Lyon at the beginning of the 1940s.[25]

André Philip 1902-1970

André Philip:

‘He has rendered outstanding services to the cause of the Resistance, opposing racial persecution in particular, with great courage [...] I can assure you that it can only be an honour for France to receive abbé Glasberg as one of its own’. [27]

Abbé Pierre, MRP (Mouvement Républicain Jean Fauconnet (1895-1965) (second from Populaire) deputy, tackles political issues more right) during a meeting of the Cercle pour la directly, playing on his companionship as a Liberté de la Culture in Lyon partisan with Pierre Schneiter :

The MRP (Mouvement Républicain Populaire) ‘I knew him in the Lyon area before the war, at Minister Georges Bidault, who met the abbé in the time when, in a splendid spirit of Christian his home town of Moulins, recalled 'his generosity, he was helping the outlaws of courageous role during the occupation and the Germany and Austria. And then again during invaluable services he rendered to the Jews' and the whole underground period. I can assure you confirms his support 'for a man who does honour that it will be an honour for France to make this to the country of which he requests to be a priest its own […] Need I add that if certain citizen.' [26] people try to blacken him, seeking to present him to your department as a communist, then André Philip, SFIO (Section Française de such assertions are absurd? The least enquiry l'Internationale Ouvrière) deputy for Rhone, would confirm this. Thank you for anything you wrote in similar vein, recalling that it was (tu) can do to ensure the success of this Glasberg who 'hid him in Lyon' when he was application. It will be a good deed.’ [28] 'threatened with arrest' and stressed the ‘special importance of this case’ and the ‘urgency’ of the request.

182 Mgr Theas, former bishop of Montauban, later bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, who was abbé Glasberg’s ordinary in the dark days of 1943- 1944, occupies the same ground, though limiting himself to the experience of the war:

Abbé Pierre (1912-2007)

The final two testimonies, also from clerics, did not deal with the political side. They were Pierre-Marie addressed directly to the applicant, who passed Theas them on to the ministry. The Sulpician Louis 1894-1977 Richard, head of the University Seminary of Lyon, résistant and deportee, stayed on religious territory:

‘I am saddened to hear that at the moment you feel suspicions towards you because of your ‘I was very happy to receive your news today. Jewish origins, your diligence in defence of the It gives me the opportunity, which I eagerly Israelites, in the Resistance, in your current take, to express once more, after some years of social activity. When one is engaged, as you silence, my respect and warmest gratitude for have been, it is very difficult to avoid exposing the good work that you did in Montauban in oneself to malicious judgements, but you will 1942, where I was very pleased to receive you. accept this test in the spirit of our Lord and During those difficult but very interesting years Saviour, with the witness of your conscience as of the occupation, in Tarn-et-Garonne, you did a priest. For my own part, and I have followed excellent work of which I have the most moving you from the beginning, I can testify that in memories. As curé of Léribosc, you made defending the persecuted Jews so effectively, personal connections with your people and you you have done great service as a priest to the had a very striking predilection for the least cause of the Church and, at the same time and diligent church-goers. Like the Divine Saviour, at great risk, to the cause of France which you you went in pursuit of lost sheep. Like Him also, consider your country. You serve it still today in you did not spare the Pharisees. I need not your social activity on behalf of foreigners living remind you that you were—and at what risk— in France and I know that, as priest of the the soul of the Resistance, and that, thanks to Church, you refuse to belong to any political you there were many citizens of Tarn-et- organisation. I hope that I will see you again Garonne who did not accept the situation as it soon. You know my paternal affection.’ [29] was, who did not resign themselves to it. I remember the genuine popularity that surrounded you and which was a tribute to you as a priest and as a human being. I know that at the moment of the Liberation, when I also found myself far from my diocese, you were in constant contact with the bishopric of Montauban and that you calmed public opinion down and limited the damage. I am happy to bring all these memories to mind, because they are very precious to me and because they allow me to express once more my gratitude and my great affection.’ [30]

Louis Richard On 1st December 1949, in spite of the Ministry of 1880-1956 Foreign Affairs’ response, but in conformity with Pierre Schneiter’s decision, the office of the Direction générale de la population et de l’entraide, on the instruction of the Director General, completed the procedure and relayed its order to the Lyon prefecture. Abbé Glasberg

183 payed the required fee on 14 February, his file be 'politically neutral', seen as 'one of the was sent to the decree section on 23 February essential elements of the loyalty which and the naturalisation order, dated 10 March, assimilation implies.’ [34] was published in the Journal officiel on the 12th.[31] SDECE Report

Final attempt to prevent naturalisation On 19 December 1950, SDECE (Service de documentation extérieure et de contre- However, a few months later Henri Queuille, espionnage), alerted thirteen days earlier by the Minister of the Interior, called for the order to be Council Presidency, presented a long report on withdrawn: ‘Information recently communicated the career of abbé Glasberg. It repeated the to me suggests that abbé Glasberg, in information cited the previous year and added collaboration with highly suspect French and details about assistance to German political foreign persons, has facilitated PCF (French deportees in 1945 and contacts with Princess Communist Party) control of a watchmaking Galitzine-Tolstoi in 1947. It revisited the journey training centre sponsored by the IRO to Poland in 1948 which he had organised and (International Refugee Organisation) and from which 'only the Polish government could intended for displaced persons, for purposes benefit.' It also revisited the stay in Iran, which can only be contrary to the interests of our stressing the money at Glasberg’s disposal, the country.’ [32] luxury of his hotel, his carpet purchases, his refusal to make the contacts that he had been urged to make with religious European groups in Teheran, and his interest in the Armenian and Chaldean minorities, both supposedly 'communistic'.

The author completed the list of charges by referring to his ‘almost official contacts’ with the Soviet and Polish embassies in Paris, before concluding:

‘[Abbé Glasberg] is a very intelligent man, very Henry Queuille dynamic, engaged in multiple and often 1884-1970 disturbing activities. He has big funds at his disposal, of indeterminate origin and invested almost entirely in the USA. He is scheming and arrogant, and has managed to form We have no detailed information enabling us to relationships in high places.’ [35] understand the ins and outs of this affair, which concerned an intervention by abbé Glasberg at The SDECE fails to convince Pierre Schneiter the beginning of 1950. He was in search of training places for refugees in the watchmaking This caricature, which tells us more about the centre established in Drome by Marcel Barbu obsessions of the secret services than about (1907-1984), the maverick founder of the Glasberg, was not sufficient to persuade Pierre Boimondeau Community in 1941. The dispute Schneiter to consent to Henri Queille’s proposal concerned the school, which had been taken over to withdraw French nationality. On 2 March 1951, by Barbu’s companion and later rival Marcel during a discussion with the Directeur Général de Mermoz, who described himself as a communist la population et de l’entraide, he noted that 'the although he had left the PCF, and whom the key reproaches against the applicant relate to the prefect of Drome was seeking to remove. period prior to naturalisation and were known at the time the decision was made’ and that ‘the There were increasing numbers of incidents only new facts’, relating to Drôme, ‘are not among the students, who were torn apart by clearly established’. However, he emphasised not national allegiance, and the press led a campaign so much the ‘juridical point of view’ but what was against the establishment, which was presented ‘appropriate’: ‘It seems a sensitive matter to as a haven of the Cominform. Glasberg withdraw abbé Glasberg’s naturalization order, attempted to arbitrate, favouring the because of the confidence shown in him in by the appointment of a new director, the deputy prefect IRO (International Refugee Organisation), and Weyl, brother of Ninon Hait-Weyl, but the IRO also by the inter-ministerial commission withdrew and the school closed in 1951. [33] responsible for assistance to refugees. Indeed he exercises important functions in this area and the The affair was enough, in any case, to revive organization depends to a large extent on him.' [36] suspicions about Glasberg, whose request for naturalization might not be admissible under the code of nationality which required applicants to At the age of nearly 50, Alexander Glasberg finally became a French citizen.

184 Abbé Glasberg’s naturalisation file is of evident [11] Statement of the Rhone prefect, signed by interest. It yields first-hand information provided the secretary general of the prefecture, 22 either by Glasberg himself, or gathered by December 1948 investigators in various state departments, even if the prejudices of officials seem too often to [12] Notes of 11th Office, cabinet C, 7 and 24 prevail over their critical faculties. Though unable January 1949; letter from Minister of Public to resolve all the riddles of the abbé’s career, the Health and Population to the prefect of police, 29 file does illuminate key moments in the January 1949. immediate post-war period and raises the possibility that there are other similar documents [13] Letter of 12 April 1949 which might improve our understanding of abbé Glasberg’s later involvements, well mixed up as [14] He lived ‘maritally’ with her when he arrived they were with activities which could not fail to in Paris and assisted her thanks to IRO and COSE come to the attention of the French and Israeli funds. intelligence services. [15] Note of 11th Office, 20 April and 2 May 1949 NOTES [16] Letter of Director General of Security, 30 [1] Archives nationales [AN], 19770888/96, September 1949. naturalisation file concerning Alexander Glasberg (4931/36), letter from Father Glasberg, 5 [17] Copy of a note on Andre Moosman, 20 July November 1948, and information form drawn up 1949. A complementary note of 20 September by the Chief Commissioner Queyroux, 22 1950 provides details about the career of the December 1948 applicant (studies, resistance activities), his political backing (Andre Philip, Philippe Serre, Leo [2] A note from the Bureau du Sceau (Office of Hamon, Geraud JOuve, Jacques DEstree) and his Seals), 2 May 1936; Rhône departmental private life (liaison with a Polish refugee equipped archives, 3494 W 118, Alexander Glasberg file. with a false civil status and recruited by the political police in her country of origin, who put [3] The naturalisation file includes many articles pressure on her through her imprisoned husband, provided by the applicant but did not use her) [4] Testimonial of Laurent Remilleux, 5 November [18] Letter and dispatch note of the Ministry of 1948 Foreign Affairs to deputy director of naturalisations, 26 November 1949 [5] Celebret, 2 February 1948 (a celebret is a document issued by the ecclesiastical authority [19] Lucien Lazare, L’Abbe Glasberg, Paris, Cerf, toh enable them to celebrate a religious office 1990, pp102-103 and, below, the contribution by outside of their parish or diocese) Jerome Bocquet.

[6] Dominique-Marie Dauzet, Frederic Le Moigne, [20] On the second trip, in 1948, see the Dictionnaire des Eveques de France au XXe eds. testimony of Stanislas Fumet, Histoire de Dieu siècle , Paris, Cerf 2010, pp 60-61 dans ma vie. Souvenirs choisis, Paris, Cerf 2002, pp. 554-557 [7] He ‘is travelling to Palestine with our permission. We trust that he will receive a warm [21] Letter to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1 June welcome from the church authorities […] to whom 1949 he may introduce himself’ (17 March 1948); he is ‘authorised to travel to Iran in the service of the [22] Letter to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 30 May religious communities established in this 1949 country.’(16 August 1948) [23] Report to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 16 Journal de France [8] Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, , November 1948. Father Glasberg did however t.1, Paris, Cerf 2006, passim take advantage of this trip to draw the attention [9] Supplementary report by General Intelligence, of Europeans to the fate of the Christians of the 12 April 1949 Orient whom he visited: ‘Les Assyro-Chaldeens devant la conscience uropeenne’, Esprit, fevrier [10] Colonel Buckmaster writes: ‘[He] worked for 1949, pp 256-274 the Resistance until the Liberation. He provided means of contact and safe houses at a time when [24] Note signed by the Minister of Public Health deliveries of equipment were being carried out by and Population, 10 October 1949 intermediaries. By his courage and exemplary commitment he did great service to the allied [25] Letter to Pierre Schneiter, 9 May 1949 cause.’ [26] Letter to Pierre Schneiter, 17 May 1949

185 [27] Letter to Pierre Schneiter, 19 May 1949 [31] Notes of 1 December 1949 and 23 February 1950 [28] Letter to Pierre Schneiter, 17 May 1949 [32] Dispatch of 6 December 1950 cited in a note [29] Letter to Abbé Glasberg, 3 May 1949. On his of the General Directorate of Population and return to Lyon, Louis Richard explained in the Mutual Assistance, 16 February 1951 (it also bulletin of the University Seminary (Pax, no.54, 3 mentions a letter of 23 June 1950, text of which June 1945): ‘I was accused of collaborationin the is not included) Cahiers du Temoignage chretien, which was false, but I acknowledged that I received them and [33] Pierre Picut, La Communaute Boimondau, distributed them to friends and, of course, I modele d’eduction permanente: une decennie refused to say who was passing passed them to d’experimentation (1941-1951), these, Universite me and to whom I was transmitting them. My Lyon 2, 1991, 535 et 513 p.; Marcel Mermoz, relationship with Father Glasberg, champion of L’Autogestion c’est pas de la tarte, Paris, Seuil, the Jews, known to the person who denounced 1978, 237p; Michel Chaudy, Faire des homes me and with whom I was confronted at Fresnes, libres. Boimondau et les communautes de travail was also kept back. Nonetheless it was for the a Valence 1941-1982, Valence, Editions Repas freedom of Temoignage chretien that I was 2008, 170 p. arrested, imprisoned and deported. ‘ According to Stanislas Fumet, arrested at the same time as [34] Note of 16 February 1951 Louis Richard, the one who denounced them was father Tzebrikow, who came to Lyon to enquire [35] SDECE Report, 19 December 1950 after the Glasberg brothers, with whom he had contact when they arrived in France. See histoire [36] ‘Resume et conclusion de l’entretien qu’a eu de Dieu dans ma vie…op/cit, pp510-513, and M. le directeur general avec M.Schneiter le 2 above, my contribution on Alexander Glasberg’s mars 1951 au sujet de la naturalisation de l’abbe priestly vocation. Glasberg’ 8 March 1951

[30] Letter to Abbé Glasberg, 13 May 1949

186 Chapter 11 France Terre d’Asile

Alexander Glasberg was preoccupied with In the 1950s and 1960s, following the absorption refugees for 40 years, from the start of his of displaced persons after the war, the number of activities in Lyon in 1940 until the end his life. In applications for asylum in France was low, with the late 1940s and 1950s the main task was to about 400 appeals a year, and most applications deal with the needs of people displaced and were successful. However in the late 1960s, with traumatised by the second world war, people the arrival of new groups seeking refuge and looking for residence, accommodation and work work, and in the wake of the 1968 social and in France, or for a dignified retirement. They economic crisis in France, the process became included survivors of the German camps, exiles more difficult and the number of refusals from the communist bloc, and refugees from increased. [4] Franco’s Spain. In the 1960s and 1970s the picture changed as new groups sought refuge in It was in this context that Alexander Glasberg France from authoritarian regimes in Greece and became involved in a new venture: an Portugal, Africa, Latin America and south-east organisation to promote the cause of political Asia. asylum in France. His work in COSE/COS had prepared him for such a project. He had been in These refugees were distinct from economic close touch with UN refugee organisations, which migrants who came to France in large numbers to were vital in funding COSE initiatives after the work, officially encouraged because France faced war, and worked in collaboration with the UNHCR a major demographic deficit in the postwar ‘to draw up UNREF projects and to discuss any period. In 1945 De Gaulle had declared: ‘France, other questions concerning the position of alas ! lacks people’ and proposed ‘in the course of refugees in France.’ [5] COSE/COS had assisted the forthcoming years, to introduce, in a proper many foreigners seeking work in France, including and intelligent way, elements of beneficial migrants from Portugal who had evaded the draft [1] immigration to the French community’ because they were unwilling to fight in Immigrant labour was thus promoted, and led to Portuguese colonial wars. In such cases the the employment of large numbers of foreign boundary between ‘economic migrant’ and workers, in particular Italian, Spanish, Portuguese ‘political refugee’ was not clear. Some Portuguese and Algerian (though the Algerians became migrants were housed for a period in the ‘foreign’ only after Algerian independence in reception centre set up by COS in Montreuil in 1962). [2] 1967, including ‘Joaquim’ who became known to a wider public through the 1968 television film by The status of refugees, as opposed to migrants, Maurice Failevic, mentioned in chapter 8. [6] was defined by international norms set down after the Second World War, when ‘refugee’ and In addition to the relationship with international ‘asylum-seeker’ were not separate concepts. The organisations, the abbé’s refugee work also Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 brought him into close contact with like-minded guaranteed a '... right to seek and to enjoy in people on the political left, in particular those other countries asylum from persecution', and the supporting national liberation movements in the Geneva Convention on Refugees of 1951 Third World and defending militants of those established specific rights for refugees, the key movements who had sought refuge in France. The element of which was the prohibition of abbé developed a close connection especially with refoulement (sending back) to a country where Gérold and Sylviane de Wangen and through they faced serious threats to their life or freedom. them, around 1964, met Henri Curiel. Curiel had The 1951 Convention was limited to persons been a leading figure in the communist fleeing events occurring before 1 January 1951 movement in Egypt, was expelled after several and within Europe, but a 1967 Protocol (ratified periods of imprisonment and was living by France in 1971) removed these limitations and clandestinely in France during the 1950s. He was made the Convention applicable to all parts of the active in defence of the Algerian Front de world. At an international level the organisation Libération national (FLN) and launched and funding of refugee work was assigned first to "Solidarité", a support group for anti-colonial the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation forces in Africa and Latin America and antifascist Administration (UNRRA), created in 1943, then to [7] the International Refugee Organisation (IRO), forces in Spain, Portugal and Greece. The abbé established in 1946, which in turn was replaced was in close sympathy with Solidarité, though the by the United Nations High Commission for association with Henri Curiel came to an end following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in Refugees (UNHCR) in 1952. [3] In 1952 the August 1968 because, according to Lazare, ‘[the French government established L’Office français abbé] could not forgive [Curiel] his obstinate and de protection des réfugiés et apatrides (OFPRA) [8] to implement these provisions, together with an unconditional support for the Kremlin leaders.’ appeal body, la Commission des recours des réfugiés (CRR).

187 Henri Curiel 1914-1978

Michel Lachkar, ‘Assassination of the anti-colonialist Henri Curiel: judge reopens inquiry’ (France Télévisions, Rédaction Afrique, www.francetvinfo.fr, 18/01/18)

An investigating judge has reopened the investigation into the assassination in Paris of the anti-colonial activist Henri Curiel. The resumption of the investigation is made possible by new information about this crime, which has never been cleared up. ...

Henri Curiel was shot dead on 4 May 1978 outside his home by two armed men. The murder was claimed by a mysterious far-right Delta group, but the perpetrators have never been identified. A judicial inquiry was opened on 27 December, 2017 and a judge appointed on 9 January, 2018. The inquiry will have to trace the French or South African channels involved.

‘Forty years after the murder of Henri Curiel, the identification of the killers and of those who gave the orders now seems possible,’ said the advocate William Bourdon on January 16, 2018, adding: ‘All the evidence points to the fact that we are dealing with a state crime.’

Born in Egypt in 1914 to a bourgeois Jewish family, Henri Curiel was at a very young age appalled by the misery of the workers and peasants who worked in the cotton factories and properties owned by his father. This shock and revolt would never leave him. ‘He never forgot that it was the misery of the Egyptian people that brought him to politics,’ said his friend Joseph Hazan, as quoted by the historian and writer Gilles Perrault in a 600-page biography of Curiel (Un homme à part, Barrault, 1984).

Henri Curiel, educated by the Jesuits, was one of the originators of the Egyptian and Sudanese communist movement. He was soon imprisoned following strikes and demonstrations that challenged the power of King Farouk ... He was exiled by King Farouk in 1950, and settled in France (the country of his mother tongue and of the Great French Revolution), where he devoted his efforts to helping Third World liberation movements and promoting peace between Israel, the Arab countries and the Palestinians.

In November 1957 he met Francis Jeanson, head of a network of assistance to the FLN (National Liberation Front), created in 1954 to promote Algerian independence from France. For three years, Henri Curiel put his organization skills and his exceptional talents as an activist at the service of this network. ... Curiel was arrested on 20 October 1960, and spent eighteen months in Fresnes. After the end of the Algerian war, he avoided deportation thanks to his former contacts. ... Curiel left Fresnes at the age of 48, and now put his political experience at the service of national liberation movements of the third world… and in particular of the ANC (African National Congress) of Nelson Mandela. (Thus emerged) Solidarity, an international movement of solidarity and practical support for activists around the world. It was not a question of political guidance, but more simply of instruction in the protective techniques of the underground. Activists, such as those of the South African NCA, might be exposed to the most cruel and sophisticated crackdowns, but they lacked knowledge of the basic rules in this area. ... Assistance was naturally extended to the anti-fascist movements of Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, the Greece of the Colonels and Pinochet's Chile.

‘Henri Curiel finally returned to a problem that had haunted him since 1948: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Convinced that dialogue was the only way out, he organized, with his Egyptian friends exiled in France, clandestine contacts between Israeli and Palestinian "doves"’, says Gille Perrault .... His initiatives for peace in the Middle East disturbed the ‘hawks’ on both sides, who were not shy about resorting to quick procedures. The South African security services considered him one of their worst enemies. And we have discovered since then that they did not hesitate to send their killers into Europe.

188 France Terre d’Asile (FTDA) The goal of the FTDA was to promote the 1968 was a watershed year for those concerned protection of all refugees as defined by the with the rights of asylum. Following the student Geneva Convention of 1951 (supplemented by rebellion and wider social and economic unrest in the New York protocol), whatever their origin and France in May, there was a tendency to blame motive. As described by Gérold de Wangen in a political exiles for subverting French youth and it reminiscence in 1996: was in this political climate that the idea arose of an organisation to defend the cause of political ‘If the 1960s were the years of decolonisation asylum in France: France Terre d’Asile, which movements, the end of the decade was marked finally saw the light of day in early 1971. above all, in many countries, by student France Terre d’Asile was a joint initiative with uprisings. These, particularly in France, have Gerold de Wangen and pastor Jacques Beaumont. shaken the foundations of society. When there is serious social unrest in a country, there is a Gérold de Wangen (1927-1997) was a doctor, a great temptation for governments to blame it socialist and alongside Henri Curiel an active on foreigners rather than on the domestic supporter of the Algerian Liberation Front and of situation. During and after the events of May 1968, foreigners (in particular Brazilians) who Solidarity.[9] were regularly in France were fearful and threatened with return to their country of origin. They were often in the situation of refugees, even if they lacked that status because France had not yet ratified the New York Protocol of 1967.

At the end of 1968, three committed people whose engagement made them sensitive to the issue of rights of asylum, had the idea of establishing a monitoring committee of politically and philosophically diverse people, in order to end the restrictions on these rights: Pastor Jacques Beaumont, former secretary of Cimade; Abbé Alexander Glasberg, founder and director of the Center for Social Orientation; and their mutual friend Dr. Gerold de Wangen, who had acted with them on various occasions. Gérold de Wangen This committee would be essentially concerned 1927-1997 with reporting and defense.

Pastor Jacques Beaumont (1925-2012) was The project did not take off immediately but the secretary of Cimade from 1956 to 1968. During idea matured. Following consultations with this period Cimade played an important role in some associations - notably Cimade - and relation to the Algerian war of independence, leading figures concerned with refugees, the establishing teams in Algeria in areas stricken by original idea resulted in the creation of an the war, and in areas populated by Algerian association for the promotion of the right of asylum and the defence of refugees, whatever migrants in Marseille, Paris and Lyon. [10] their origin or motives for seeking asylum and Jacques Debu-Bridel was invited by abbé whatever the economic and political conditions Glasberg to come in as president. The abbé knew at the time in France. In addition to the legal him through the Association Nationale des objectives and the purpose of informing public Anciens Combattants de la Résistance (ANACR), opinion, the aim, in liaison with public bodies, of which Debu-Bridel was president and the abbé was to promote a national policy on reception vice-president. [11] of refugees. The name France Terre d'Asile, proposed by Pastor Beaumont, was immediately accepted by everyone. After several months developing a plan and making contacts, the association was founded at a constitutive general assembly and the articles placed with the prefecture on 20 January, 1971. The first president – he occupied that position for ten years – was Jacques Debu- Jacques Debu-Bridel, one of the earliest Bridel résistants and a member of the National 1902-1993 Council of the Resistance (CNR), a journalist, writer and former senator. '[12]

189 Sylviane de Wangen was also closely involved in Gérold de Wangen. He was the architect and, the formation of FTDA and later directed it for officially from 1974, the main driving force of the nearly 30 years. She commented that abbé FTDA ; he provided the management of the Glasberg was an inspirational figure in the early association from 1976 to 1980, when he was days: ‘[he] acted as inspiring guide in all the obliged to step down for health reasons, while activity of the association in the most creative continuing to act and to exercise great influence phase’. He insisted that the association should in the field of welcoming refugees until the 1990s use French social legislation as its instrument, (he died in 1997).’ [14] since it was a duty of the ‘national collective (collectivité nationale)’ to support the rights of The first phase refugees, and that such support should include the provision of reception centres: As described by Gérold de Wangen, the first two years of the organisation involved the following main activities:

‘The constitution of an honorary committee most of whom were former résistants; the launch of a cooperative cleaning company, Inter-promo-net, whose aim was to hire asylum seekers, so as to allow them, during the course of the official procedure, to obtain a work Sylviane de permit, in accordance with the legislation in Wangen force at the time (1971 was the year of France's ratification of the New York Protocol to the Geneva Convention, which removed the geographical restriction that had previously applied); creation of a legal commission to study the rights of work of refugees; organization of a press conference and two mailings which publicised the association in 'We should highlight the special contribution different circles and enabled it to reach a made by Alexander Glasberg, treasurer of FTDA membership which has hardly been exceeded until his death in 1981:…: social justice (which since then; enquiries and preparation in he distinguished from ‘charity’) and respect for connection with the aim of setting up one or human dignity were the guiding threads of his more reception centres for asylum-seekers (at life. For him, defending the right of asylum the time, the terminological distinction between necessarily meant decent accommodation for refugees before and after their recognition by refugees as a right and not as a gift. Hence the OFPRA was not in use); many interventions reception of refugees and its financing should aimed at helping refugees in difficulty with the be taken on by the national community. It was administrative procedures. '[15] at the insistence of Abbé Glasberg that France A particular feature of France Terre d’Asile was Terre d'Asile was from the beginning committed that it evolved as an umbrella group and to the opening of a reception centre, at a stage coordinating body for a number of other when we did not even know who would manage associations, as Sylviane de Wangen explained: it. This centre would be aimed at refugees in need, with their families if necessary, to enable ‘the initial project evolved towards the idea of them to take steps to ensure their legal an inter-association platform for defence of the protection and to prepare for their integration right of asylum for refugees of all origins…The into the French economic and society. membership of this body was at the outset Furthermore this centre should be funded by composed of collective bodies (personnes the state (representing the national morales) and individuals (personnes community). This determination came from his physiques) : Cimade, represented at first by its long experience since the 1940s with refugee general secretary Michel Wagner, successor to camps and displaced people during the Nazi Jacques Beaumont ; COS, represented by its occupation of France, and after the war…(when) founder and director Alexander Glasberg ; [13] he created the Centre d’orientation sociale.' COJASOR, represented by its director Ignace Fink. Later we added central trade union After the launch of the organisation in 1971, abbé bodies : the Confédération française Glasberg was still very busy with COS, and démocratique du travail (CFDT), Confédération Jacques Beaumont left Paris to take up a post générale du travail (CGT) and the Fédération de with UNICEF. The de Wangens therefore had the l’éducation nationale (FEN).’ [16] main responsibility for taking the project forward. ‘The implementation of this action’, Mme de Wangen wrote, perhaps downplaying her own role, ‘ rested primarily on the dynamism, pugnacity, sense of organisation and charisma of

190 Chilean refugees New refugee groups

After the initial phase, the level of activity of The use of temporary refuge centres made it FTDA intensified, following the military coup possible to receive the several thousand Chileans against Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity who arrived in 1973, and provided a model for government in Chile in September 1973, which future action: ‘The main missions of the brought thousands of Chilean exiles to Europe. association were launched: to promote a real FTDA was closely involved in the response to the policy of reception of the refugees, to organize an Chilean refugees, some 7000 of whom arrived in initial reception of these populations, to prepare France. By this time the French government had and facilitate the integration of these people by ratified the 1967 New York protocol and so the bringing together the main elements (spoken Chileans were able to get asylum in France. But it language, work, housing ) ...’ [18] was a sudden large influx which required a rapid and flexible reaction. FTDA played a key part, In 1974 these facilities were widened to take in ensuring that the Chileans would be served by a refugees from other Latin American countries, network of reception centres that would take care and in that year France Terre d’Asile obtained of them for a maximum of 6 months. The permission, by way of derogation, to receive member associations of the FTDA were not in a applicants of all origins in centers in the Paris position to take on responsibility for the day-to- region. This allowed the FTDA to organise the day management of the reception centres, but inclusion of new waves of refugees from south- this proved unnecessary because it was possible east Asia, starting in 1975: to use existing social facilities with the support of local authorities and the financial backing of the 'In 1975, the Secretary of State for Social state. As Sylviane de Wangen explained: Action, René Lenoir, solicited the FTDA to establish a system that could accommodate ‘The reason for this…was that what had been refugees from Vietnam, then Cambodia and only an ambition was now being carried out. Laos, on the basis of an agreement signed on The actions of the FTDA organisers in support July 31, 1975. A decree of June 15, 1976, of temporary refuge centres in social facilities which revised article 185 of the Family Code with the necessary room, had been favourably concerning beneficiaries of state-funded social received by the government and they were assistance, made it officially possible to take in being opened as a matter of urgency. We had refugees of all origins, and their families, with a to convince the administrations of various view to their integration into French society.' establishments to take in dozens of refugees on [19] the basis of oral promises about state funding, without knowing the details of how these funds The reception of refugees from South-East Asia would be released. The SSAE was a specialised was undertaken once again in collaboration with social service which was not armed to carry out our partner associations, six of whom met collective action of this kind. None of the regularly as a liaison committee to discuss all constituent associations of the FTDA had a aspects and to allocate tasks : France terre mandate to engage in such an enterprise, nor d’asile, Cimade, Comité national d’entraide, were they in a position to assume even Croix-Rouge française, Secours catholique and indirectly the financial reisk. It was thus the SSAE : FTDA as such that assume dit, which made commitments to the various establishments, ‘France Terre d’Asile was entrusted with found donors, borrowed. On the other hand the responsibility for the transit centres, for member associations could not take exploring the establishment of centres responsibility for opposing these measures. The provisoires d’hébergement (CPH), and for FTDA found itself in fact in a distinct position monitoring the first stages of integration. Two relative to its constituent associations, and transit centres managed by the association, in operational like them. The constituent Créteil and Puteaux, thus saw the light of day. associations could not, in relation to their own The purpose of these centres was to take in members, allow themselves to be directly refugees for an initial period, to provide the involved. It was COS—the association directed social and health assistance needed before by Abbé Glasberg—which withdrew first. After a directing them towards a CPH. period of tension due to this ambiguous From May 1975 to the end of February 1980, situation, the issue was discussed, understood, 63,056 refugees, almost all of whom were from settled, and clearer partnership relations were the three countries of former Indochina, were established in order to address collectively each officially received in France. The two missions specific challenge that arose from a new phase of the FTDA made it possible to strengthen its of hosting refugees. As a result, the leaders of role as a coordinator and gave it a privileged the associations who made up the FTDA at the position as a mediator in relation to the outset, who sat as representatives of their government during this period of implementing respective associations on its board of directors, a national system of reception (of refugees), remained there in that capacity, but acted as and the FTDA was entrusted with its [17] individuals.’ management. [20]

191 The Chilean refugee crisis inaugurated what administration, weighed down by the Sylviane de Wangen describes as 'the great constraints to which it is subject, is very period of “operation of reception” of refugees cautious and it is very hard for it to engage in between 1973 and 1983, within the wider experiments, except to commit the framework of an international appeal by the considerable funds involved. An association may United Nations: however do so, at its own risk, in agreement with the relevant departments. Then, the ‘The United Nations High Commissioner for experiment may prove itself or not and the Refugees had appealed to States. In France, the public authority can decide whether to engage associations had mobilized - about thirty with the process further or to adopt it on their associations had coordinated to gather the own account as appropriate. '[23] means and to assure the government that the reception would be possible. As a result, a In addition to its organisational initiatives, the number of States, including France, had FTDA remained a campaigning body. In the words responded positively to UNHCR's appeal, and of Gérold de Wangen : ‘[FTDA] never considered had organised the reception of refugees very its role in the national system of reception as quickly. The refugees who arrived were simply a management activity but also as an provided with a resident’s visa issued by the integral part of its action to promote the right of French consulate, then were able systematically asylum.’ This meant also promoting the right of obtained refugee status .... After the fall of asylum on a European level : ‘ the activity of Saigon on April 30, 1975, this time it was the France Terre d’Asile became rapidly situated in a competent ministry (the Ministry of Health and larger than national perspective : from the 1970s Social Affairs at the time) that asked the it became apparent that a European dimension of associations to organize the reception of action on behalf of refugees was necessary and refugees from Vietnam (then Cambodia, and this led to the active participation active of the finally Laos) while ensuring that public funds European Council for Refugees and exiles would be available. After that 100,000 refugees (CERE)’[24] were received over about 10 years (nearly 1,000 refugees per month). '[21] In similar vein Sylviane de Wangen comments :

In addition to its role in setting up a system of ‘Of course, defensive action has always existed, ​​ reception centres, financed by the state, in the but the FTDA was created also on the basis of 1970s and early 1980s FTDA helped with other vigilance – hence in anticipation of defensive forms of action which enabled refugees to begin action. And in 1971, the association set up a their inclusion in French society: Legal Commission, open to lawyers who were --support in the search for housing not members of the FTDA, responsible for --access to French language classes as of right, ensuring that vigilance. financed by the Fonds d’action sociale (the In an unsigned article in its Newsletter [25], it classes were administered first by FTDA and later stressed that it was urgent for the European by Cimade) associations to establish a "Europe, Terre --access to occupational training supported by d’Asile’, when faced with a Europe of states with departmental funds a tendency to closure and turning in on --the creation of a special employment service at themselves.’ the FTDA headquarters, thanks to an agreement signed with the National Employment Agency Subsequently, in 1977, the European Convention (ANPE). This service worked in liaison with all the on the Suppression of Terrorism [26], signed in associations involved in the reception of refugees 1976, provoked a wide movement of protest by and provided guidance on occupational training associations, resulting in particular in the creation --after many démarches by FTDA, asylum- of the Commission for the Protection of the Right seekers gained a provisional right to work, before of Asylum (CSDA), an informal grouping of their applications had been decided by OFPRA. associations of lawyers, human rights --medical assessments for refugees who passed organisations, and others whose sole purpose at through the reception centres, financed by aide the outset was to prevent France from ratifying médicale the aforementioned counter-terrorism convention, --in the case of refugees from South-east Asia, which, under the guise of combating terrorism, special reception facilities for unaccompanied was seriously undermining the protection of minors (set up by the FTDA, later taken over by refugees. This convention, accompanied by [22] the French Red Cross) reservations, was finally ratified 10 years later, at a time when, in the light of developments in Sylviane de Wangen comments : European integration, it had become obsolete even though it had not been cancelled. '[27] ‘ the role of associations was decisive in implementing all these measures, some of FTDA left few records of its activities, and it is which were true social innovations--almost all difficult to comment in detail on the role that began as experiments. The FTDA has put this abbé Glasberg played after the foundation of the method into practice a great deal. The

192 organisation in 1971. His primary day-to-day friend of the de Wangens, he was in constant responsibility was towards COS, but it is safe to touch with the developments described above, say that as treasurer of FTDA, and also as a good and without doubt a constant source of advice.

Abbé Glasberg et Gérold de Wangen with de Wangen’s son Laurent, 1966

The abbé relaxing on holiday with the de Wangens, 1974

Henriette Taviani and the UNHCR We have little information about these missions, but it seems that one of them was undertaken in During his three decades as director of Cameroon in 1966, on behalf of the post- COSE/COS, the abbé was in regular touch with independence opposition movement. According to the UNHCR and in particular with Henriette Lazare: Taviani (1925-1991), the French delegate to the UNHCR from 1972 to 1985, who was a strong ‘leading militants of the Union of the Cameroon supporter of France Terre d’Asile and in 1985 People (UPC) had taken refuge in Ghana. But would become its president. ‘The indefatigable their situation became precarious follwing the and radiant Henriette Taviani’, as Sylviane de coup d’état which removed Nkrumah, founder Wangen describes her, gave an address at the of the Ghanaian Republic. Taking advantage of funeral of abbé Glasberg in 1981, in which she of the confusion and instability at the time, said that ‘ alongside my predecessors, Cameroon demanded that the new authorities Ambassador Gérard Jouve, President of the release its nationals. The latter were therefore Center d'Orientation Sociale and Préfet André no longer secure in their country of asylum. On Alphand, who later became a High Commission the strength of a ‘good offices’ mission which delegate, I had the privilege of observing this in the High Commission for Refugees had confided the course of 22 years of work in constant liaison to him, the abbé went to Cameroon. He with Abbé Glasberg.’ She noted that on several managed to secure the agreement of the occasions he had undertaken exploratory government to take account of the Geneva missions ‘at the request of the High Commission Convention of 1951 and not to claim its for Refugees’ refugees opponents abroad.’ [28]

193 Henriette Taviani developed an especially supportive relationship with abbé Glasberg, and testified eloquently to this relationship at his funeral ceremony in 1981:

‘He is one of those who open up new paths; they are rare ... the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which I represent in France ... [testifies] to its gratitude to this indefatigable and courageous defender of those especially vulnerable people whom we try to protect, and whom he treated as brothers everywhere.

Everywhere, because he would anticipate matters and go to distant places, where his thoughtful boldness would persuade the powerful to yield to his vigorous and tenacious interventions.

… He would not only report on a particular refugee situation, but would come with the outline of a solution that my Organization could then develop with his help. Henriette Taviani (1924-1991) in Everywhere and always, because he never conference with the ceased to envisage new formulas, new abbé Glasberg circa methods, to give refugees the full exercise of 1975, and (below) their rights, and energetically confronted any during a celebration problem that arose, passionately discussing of the award of the appropriate measures to deal with any Légion d'Honneur to difficulties that came up. the abbé, Nanteau sur Lunain 1972 The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees also wishes to express its admiration for his innovative spirit, for a builder who since the creation in 1946 of an institution for the elderly which offered the then original policy of admitting couples for the first time without separating them in their last years, who has continued to propose to the Office of the High Commissioner formulas adapted to the questions in the integration of different groups of refugees of all origins, young, not so young , elderly or disabled. '[29]

NOTES [3] Geneva Convention of 1951 : [1] A la recherche d’une patrie, op. cit., pp. 184- https://www.unhcr.org/fr/convention-1951- 185 relative-statut-refugies.html; [2] The influx was managed by the National New York Protocol of 1967: Office of Immigration (ONI), created in November https://www.ohchr.org/FR/ProfessionalInterest/P 1945, bringing foreign workers into a certain ages/ProtocolStatusOfRefugees.aspx number of sectors, notably construction, public works, industry and agriculture. There were 629, [4] Sylviane de Wangen, « L’accueil des réfugiés 000 Italians in 1962 ; the Spanish workforce en France de 1952 à1983 », Migrations Société increased from 289,000 in 1954 to 607,000 in 2016/3 (No 165), p. 4 1968 the Portuguese workforce from 20,000 in 1954 to 759,000 in 1975. There were [5] Rapport de COSE, 5 octobre 1957. COS 711, 000 Algerian workers in 1975, when archive. immigrants constituted 7% of the active population. http://www.histoire- [6] The film was broadcast in 1968 in the series immigration.fr/des-ressources-pour- « Il était une fois », presented by Eliane Victor. enseigner/parcours-histoire-de-l-immigration-en- france-depuis-1945/premiere

194 [7] « [La Solidarité] arranged meetings, liaisons [21] The Refugee Appeals Board was not affected and trips. If necessary it procured false papers. » by the arrival of these large numbers because L.Lazare, op. cit., pp.75-76 none were refused by OFPRA. Indeed it was not until 1984 that the appeal body, the CRR, was [8] Ibid., p.77 formed into several sections working full time, at [9] On Gérold de Wangen see : http://maitron- a time when the rate of recognition of refugee en-ligne.univ-paris1.fr/spip.php?article152443 status was in free fall. By this time refugees were not arriving collectively, as part of an official La Croix [10] 20/09/2012 online. Since the operation with the issue of residence visas; they distinction between civil and military involvement entered French territory mainly as individuals, was very difficult to appreciate, CIMADE and often in a so-called "irregular" manner. sometimes found itself helping agents of the FLN Sylviane de Wangen, op.cit., pp.7-8 (Front de Libération National) to receive care in French military hospitals. Some members of [22] Ibid., p.8-9 CIMADE at heart supported independence, which made them suspect, they were thought to be « [23] Ibid., p.9 carrying luggage” for the rebels. Soon after the foundation of France Terre d’Asile, Pastor Jacques [24] Gérold de Wangen, op.cit., p.95 Beaumont was engaged by UNICEF for missions in Afghanistan and in South-East Asia. [25] France Terre d’Asile, Lettre d’information, [11] Jacques Debu-Bridel was a writer and No. 4, octobre 1973 political figure. He was a member of the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR), a deputy (1944- [26] European Convention on the Suppression of 1945), a senator for the gaullist RPF (1948- Terrorism, Strasbourg, 27.1.1977. 1958), director of information at Radio Monté- https://rm.coe.int/16800771b2 Carlo (1960-1967), and one of the leaders of left Gaullist Union démocratique du travail. [27] Sylviane de Wangen, op.cit., p.10 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques Debû Bridel [28] L. Lazare, op. cit. pp.76-77. After the [12] Gérold de Wangen, « Les débuts de France independence of Cameroon in 1960, the rebels of Terre d’Asile », Hommes et Migrations, No 1198- the Union of the People of Cameroon (UPC) which 1199, Mai-juin 1996, p. 94-95 had combatted the French colonial government, continued to confront President Ahmadou Ahidjo, [13] Sylviane de Wangen, op.cit., pp.4-5 whom they considered a French puppet. Ahidjo had requested French troops to help to maintain [14] Ibid., pp.2-3 peace during and after the transition to democracy. Under the leadership of General Max [15] Gérold de Wangen, op.cit., p.94 Briand, who had previously served in Algeria and Indochina, these troops carried out a campaign of [16] Sylviane de Wangen, op.cit., P.5 brutal ‘cleansing’ in the Bamiléké territories of the West, Centre and Seaboard. According to certain [17] Ibid., p.5 sources over 250,000 people were killed. The rebel head Ernest Ouandié, a Bamiléké, refused [18] « L’action de France Terre d’Asile : 1971- to recognise Ahidjo and pursued a guerilla 1980, la mise en place de l’action de France Terre campaign. Ouandié returned to Cameroon after d’Asile et du dispositif national d’accueil », the Ghanaian coup in 1966, but was later http://www.france-terre-asile.org/1971- arrested and executed in 1971 by the Ahidjo 1980/france-terre-d-asile/histoire/1971-1980 regime. https://en.wikipedia:Ernest_Ouandie [19] Gérold de Wangen, op.cit., P.95 [29] Address by Mme Henriette Taviani, French [20] « L’action de France Terre d’Asile : 1971- representative of the High Commission for 1980, la mise en place de l’action de France Terre Refugees, at the funeral ceremony for Abbé d’Asile et du dispositif national d’accueil », Glasberg. COS archive. http://www.france-terre-asile.org/1971- 1980/france-terre-d-asile/histoire/1971-1980

195 196 Chapitre 12 The brothers Glasberg : Righteous Among the Nations

This chapter reproduces the article by Cindy information about the ‘rescuers’, sometimes Banse, ‘Glasberg, Juste parmi les nations: le long photographs or testimony from people who lived cheminement d’une reconnaissance’ in C. Sorrel close to them during this dark period. The content (dir.) Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981. Prêtre, is however of very uneven quality. Furthermore Résistant, Militant (2013). I have added an the deliberations which take place behind closed introduction, headings, paragraph spaces and doors and lead to official recognition are, alas, illustrations, and an extract from an interview in not accessible. As a result it is hard for outsiders Julie Bertuccelli’s film. The notes are those of to gain a full understanding of the file and the Cindy Banse, with the exception of those placed basis on which the award is granted. in parentheses. The award Introduction The Glasberg file [1] is quite a striking document: In January 2004 Alexander and Viktor Glasberg it is rather thick, about 40 pages, with testimony were posthumously awarded the Righteous extending from 1944 to 2002; it throws more among the Nations medal by Yad Vashem, light on the role of Victor (Vila) Glasberg, the Israel's official memorial to the victims of abbé’s brother who was also awarded the medal. the Holocaust. Finally, it focuses only on the reception centre in Cazaubon in Gers, managed by Victor Glasberg One of the goals of the founders of Yad Vashem (there is no mention of the Venissieux episode, was to recognize Gentiles who, at personal risk for example). and without financial or evangelistic motive, protected Jews during the Holocaust. The January 2004, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem: the Glasbergs were not Gentiles—they were born into Israeli authorities pay homage to the abbé in a a Jewish family—and they did not seem to meet preliminary ceremony awarding the Righteous the criterion. Yet some of the abbé’s friends in among the Nations medal…. in May 2004, cardinal Israel argued, against opposition, that they Barbarin receives the medal on behalf of should be honoured as Righteous because it was Alexander Glasberg at the Gallo-Roman museum as Christians that they had protected Jews in in Lyon, 23 years after Glasberg’s death and 60 Vichy France. This approach was in the end years after the liberation of Lyon. Of all the accepted, though how the debate was conducted church figures who worked to rescue Jews in the in Yad Vashem is not known because the details Lyon region, he was the last to receive the of these discussions are not made public. award: cardinal Gerlier was recognised as ‘Righteous’ in 1980, Pierre Chaillet in 1981, Pierre The Jewish origins of the Glasbergs was very Girard in 1982 [2], to mention only the most likely not the only obstacle. Their status as celebrated. What is more, the title came [long converts was without doubt also a difficulty, while after] his recognition by the French republic as a the abbé’s strong criticisms of Israel in the 1970s member of the Resistance (in 1951) and his cannot have helped his case. But as Cindy Banse nomination to the rank of chevalier de la Légion shows, a particular climate of opinion developed [3] towards the end of the last century: on the one d’Honneur in 1971. hand the emergence of strong Franco-Israeli ties which favoured the award of the Righteous medal The history of the Righteous title to French citizens, on the other hand a marked improvement in relations between the Catholic In order to understand this long journey, and the and Jewish religious establishments. These belated nature of the recognition, it is helpful to changes provided the political setting in which the consider the history of the title itself, Righteous case for Alexander and Victor Glasberg could among the Nations. The Righteous title is of succeed. However, as I know they are the only rabbinic origin, Hassidei Ummot Ha-Olam, which candidates of Jewish origin to have been applied mainly to non-Jews who feared God, honoured by Yad Vashem in this way. evoked in the Midrash. In the middle ages it came to be used in a more general way to refer to non- Jews who showed benevolence towards the Jews. Cindy Banse : The article in Dictionnaire encyclopedique du judaisme proposes the following definition: a non- The Alexander Glasberg file Jewish friend of the Jews. This description increasingly lost its relevance in the context of Our principal source is provided by the files held the Enlightenment and Emancipation. Then in the at Yad Vashem. These files, compiled by 20th century it came to refer to an exceptional volunteers, are made up of the testimony of relationship between non-Jews and Jews in the ‘rescued’ Jewish people, some biographical wider context of a relationship experienced as

197 Medaille des Justes

Diplôme des Justes: L’abbé Alexandre Glasberg antagonistic. This drift in meaning was an among the Nations were defined above all as expression of a basic assumption in Israel about those who had risked their lives to come to the the lack of legitimacy and the risk faced by Jews help of Jews. The risk incurred was the only in non-Jewish States. criterion recognised. This simplistic definition left room for multiple and evolving interpretations. The [Israeli] law of 19 August 1953 which created Jews were seen here as in principle in opposition the title is completely clear in this respect: it to non-Jews, reflecting the Zionist concept of the concerns the commemoration of non-Jews who, in ‘negation of exile’.[6] a hostile envitonment, came to the assistance of Jews. The shape of the title was defined, but no Multiplication of French medals and the procedure was established until the Eichmann symbolic nationalisation of the Righteous trial in 1961, a trial which marked the triumph of the figure of the Righteous. [4] In February 1962 Then a shift occurred in the 1970s in which the Yad Vashem was endowed with a department of recognition of the Righteous turned the States of the Righteous and decided to plant trees in which they were citizens into partners of the homage along the alley of the Righteous, State of Israel. inaugurated on 1 May 1962…. In the mid-1970s and 1980s, the Righteous came A commission was established to evaluate the to embody an exception to the general hostility of merits of each individual case. It had 35 non-Jews and non-Jewish countries to Israel. A members, including three from Yad Vashem, six symbolic nationalisation of the Righteous representatives of survivors, deportees and emerged. In 1988, the number of French medals partisans, four from the legal profession (judges began to increase. In the Rhone-Alpes region, or advocates). The president was a member of which was the subject of my (doctoral) research, the Israeli supreme court. 236 medals were awarded between 1991 and 2008, as against 165 in the period 1963 to 1990. From then on the Righteous among the Nations title became formalised, with a particular stress This increase occurred after the establishment of on a lack of financial motive. The first commission a French Yad Vashem committee which sent out to select the Righteous sat in 1963: it ruled only appeals for witnesses and formalised their following a request by Jewish persons considered testimonies, thus encouraging the multiplication to have been ‘rescued’ and solely on the basis of of titles and ceremonies. The members [of the their testimony.[5] committee] had one thing in common: they often belonged to the Sixième (a clandestine cell of the The nomination and recognition of the Righteous, Israelite Scouts of France created in 1942) and which to begin with was initiated by individuals in thus shared a common experience during the their capacity as witnesses, became increasingly war. This change originated in a desire to improve a matter for the State. In 1953, the Righteous the image of the Israel brand among the French

198 population…[At the same time] the Righteous material or other benefits. It goes without saying among the Nations became the needed that abbé Glasberg, both in the events at counterpoint to the responsibility of the French Vénissieux and through the opening of the for the deportation of Jews. There followed a reception centres, took part in saving a certain complete reversal in the meaning of the number of Jews, without financial reward. It is Righteous among the Nations: the Righteous of just as clear that the risks were enormous: the France were no longer individual persons, but abbé’s brother Victor was arrested by the symbols of a collective response by the French Gestapo at the chateau Bégué in Cazaubon in tothe fate of the Jews. They came to embody the August 1943, when he passed himself off as abbé national honour. [7] Elie, that is to say Alexander Glasberg. He would not survive this arrest. It therefore seems to us The Righteous: saving the honour of France that the stumbling block had more to do with the Jewishness or otherwise of the person. We may mention in this context the speech of the French ambassador, Gerard Araud, at the Israeli The definition of a Jew under the Vichy ceremony: he referred to the first paragraph of régime the key speech by Jacques Chirac in 1995, which recognised the responsibility of the French state In the eyes of the racial legislation of Vichy, abbé in the Shoah. The Righteous now appeared as a Glasberg was a Jew. Article one of the statute of moment of light in ‘the darkest period of French 3 October 1940 defined a Jew as someone with history’. three grandparents of the Jewish race or two grandparents if the person’s spouse was Jewish. The ambassador also made sure to mention the The abbé was born in 1902 in Zhitomir to Jewish exceptional survival rate of the Jewish community parents, and furthermore was a foreign Jew until in France: these persons ‘made possible the naturalised in 1950! The abbé’s conversion to survival of three quarters of the Jewish Christianity changed nothing. The government of community of France, the highest rate of the marshal Petain drew up a new law on 2 June large Jewish communities in occupied Europe’. He 1941 defining who, in France, was to be regarded concluded thus: ‘They saved lives; they saved as Jewish: ‘one who, whatever his confession, honour.’ has at least three grand parents of the Jewish race.’ For the Vichy legislators, the converted This came within the context of the French effort Jew remained a Jew if he descended from Jewish to appropriate the memory of the civilian grandparents. The criterion was mainly racial. resisters: little by little the Righteous among the Nations in Israel became the Righteous of France. The definition of a Jew in the State of Israel At the same time, in the final paragraph of the speech, [the ambassador] did not fail to mention But what was a Jew for the State of Israel? A key the fraternal link with the State of Israel: ‘A question insofar as the title Righteous among the community distant from all forms of fanaticism, Nations is decided by members of the Israeli legal open and generous but also strong in its identity, profession. The question proves to be complex. proud of its history, of its culture, its traditions, According to the Halakha (the oral tradition which its spirituality.’ establishes rules of conduct), a person is recognised as Jewish if born of a Jewish mother The recognition of abbé Glasberg: why so or adheres to Judaism through a religious late? conversion according to the rules of the Halakha.

It was in such a context that the recognition of In these two cases, the person’s Jewishness is abbé Glasberg occurred. The late date of 2004 unalterable, even if the person is an apostate. seems to reflect the increasing number of cases This matrilineal descent was codified for the first filed at the time. What is more surprising about time by the Talmud. That definition of Jewishness the abbe’s Righteous file, however, is the timing can arouse some reservations, since most of the testimonies. In fact the earliest, those of persons named in the Hebrew Bible are Alexander Goldberg and Roger Jalowicz, date mentioned only by paternal descent, for example: from the immediate post-war period, at the end Joshua son of Nun. The laws of inheritance and of 1944; then the testimonies are spread out distribution of land give all power to the father. between the years 1976 and 2002. How then is Finally, the priestly and Levitical responsibilities one to explain that abbé Glasberg’s file took so are transmitted only by the father. In any event long to achieve official acceptance? the upshot is that according to the Halakha one remains a member of the Jewish people, even if To be sure, the individual himself contributed to one is no longer an adherent of Judaism. this delay: all who knew him stressed his great discretion about his activities and their results. In this, the religious rule differs from Israeli However, it seems to me crucial to bear in mind legislation. According to the latter, a Jew who has the very definition of Righteous among the abandoned his religion of his own free will cannot Nations: non-Jews who helped Jews in danger, at be considered a Jew. the risk of their own lives, without seeking

199 The case of Oswald Rufeisen the right to immigrate to Israel), in which a Jew was defined as any person ‘born of a Jewish The case of Oswald Rufeisen is very instructive in mother, or converted to Judaism and not this regard and is quite close in certain ways to practising another religion.’ that of abbé Glasberg. Born into a Jewish family in 1921 in the region of Krakow, he left in Abbé Alexander Glasberg was the son of a non- November 1941 for Mir in Belorussia, where he believing Jewish mother, his father was also non- worked under a false identity as a translator for practising, even if he had his son circumcised. the local authorities. In this way Rufeisen was Alexander also made the choice as an adult to able to forewarn the Jews of Mir about actions convert to Catholicism. The confusion of identities that were being prepared against them, and sometimes weighed on the abbé himself. A provided arms to the Ghetto resistance. Thanks survivor of the Shoah once suggested to him that to him, almost 200 Jews were able to flee to join an application be submitted for recognition by up with the partisans in hiding in the Yad Vashem. Glasberg quickly replied: ‘They neighbouring forests. cannot grant me this recognition. I am not a Righteous, I am a Jew.’[8] After the liquidation of the ghetto, the real identity of Rufeisen was revealed and he was The question of the Jewish identity of the abbé arrested. He managed however to escape from was critical in this procedure. The newspaper police custody in Mir and between August 1942 articles included in abbé Glasberg’s Righteous file, and December 1943 hid in a neighbouring from Israeli and American papers, regularly monastery. During his stay there he decided to stress that the award [to Alexander and Victor convert to Christianity. At end of 1943 he joined Glasberg] was being granted to Jews who had the partisans and ended the war at their side. converted, and that it was the first time that Yad Vashem had awarded the Righteous medal to After the war, he joined the Carmelite order and persons born Jewish. Zvi Newman, spokesperson became a priest, adopting the name Father for Yad Vashem, justified the recognition: ‘This is Daniel. In 1958 he decided to go to Israel and to connected to the fact that the brothers Glasberg request Israeli nationality, arguing that he was acted from a standpoint outside [their origin]… as Jewish. The Ministry of the Interior refused his fully conscious Christians, using the resources of application; he then appealed to the Supreme the Church to save Jews from their mortal fate.’ Court which dismissed the appeal. Not all were in agreement. The former minister The question of the abbé’s identity Yair Tsaban and former member of the Knesset Shlomo Hillel preferred to highlight the solidarity This question of Jewishness was the subject of of a convert Jew for the Jews: ‘[He] never further debates in the Israeli parliament on 9 and returned to Judaism, but always considered 10 February 1970 under the government of Golda himself as belonging to the Jewish people and Meir. They ended with a vote for an amendment always considered Judaism a part of him.’ to the law of return of 1950 (which guaranteed to all Jews and to their possible non-Jewish families

« [Others argued that] he was a Jew. His name was Glasberg. So [they said] give him any honour that is granted to Jews, but not the medal of the Righteous. But we were insistent, and we put the case that what he did for the Jews was uniquely because he was Christian. He would not have been able to do anything as a Jew, they would have sent him to Auschwitz as a Jew! His help was possible only because he was a Catholic priest and thanks to all his contacts. So yes, by all means, he was a ‘Righteous among the Nations’! And through obstinacy, this honour was finally granted to him. In this place, this honour is illustrated beautifully, and I am glad that thousands of young Israelis—tens of thousands over time come here—with our teachers who show them the plaque and tell them, more briefly than I, about the heroism of Father Glasberg, and I Aryeh ‘Lova’ Eliav think that’s the most beautiful way to honour his memory.”[9]

200 audacious pronouncements by some bishops would make a considerable impact.

Antisemitism grew stronger in France in the 1930s, with new racial theories added to the old prejudices of the 19th century. It was nourished by a big wave of immigrant Jews fleeing Germany and central Europe. The number of Catholics who reacted to this hatred was insignificant. A Lyon circle comprising intellectuals, Jesuits and social Christians, a circle which indeed abbé Glasberg used to attend, played a pioneering role, but the majority were marked by prejudices against the Jews deriving from the Catholic tradition.

If silence was the accepted response on the part of the bishops after the Assembly of cardinals and archbishops held in Paris in summer 1940, this was because the vision they had of the Jews justified the Vichy legislation. The Catholic Church was itself also convinced of the existence of a ‘Jewish question’ which it was legitimate to regulate …[though] such measures should not detract from the principles of justice and charity: the bishops appealed to them in calling for Wall of the Righteous in the Gardens of human rights to be safeguarded. Yad Vashem We should not misunderstand the significance of the declaration of repentance in 1997. It was Antisemitism and repentance more repentance for the silence and the lack of education among Christians, than for Christian I come now to my final point: abbé Glasberg’s inaction. Pope John Paul II, especially during the nomination also occurred in a particular religious solemn liturgical ceremony on 12 March in Rome, context. It reflected the new relationship between in the jubilee year 2000, highlighted [this Jews and Christians in the generation that point]... Repentance did not mean the recognition followed Nostra Aetate. [10] of a personal and present culpability (which would be meaningless), but an awareness of Let me refer again here to the speech by the solidarity, which must be taken forward as a Primate of the Gauls, cardinal Barbarin, at the responsibility for the future. May 2004 ceremony in Lyon (Barbarin was appointed by Pope John Paul II in Lyon on 16 July We can employ a Hebrew expression here: 2002, the anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ round teshouva, which is to regret a fault. It means to up). After the customary thanks, he first make an honest confession, but above all a mentioned cardinal Decourtray, who had commitment to change one’s attitude and even, anticipated the [Vatican Council] act of when possible, calls for reparation. In his speech repentance towards the Jewish people [11], then cardinal Barbarin also appealed to the youth and the declaration of repentance pronounced in 1997 to the obligation to remember. We cannot repair by the Church of France: ‘Not everyone a mistake that has been made, but must commit understood that the night was then drawing in for to building new relations with our brothers. humanity, nor was this horror denounced in time.’ Judaeo-Christian rapprochement after Vatican Council II On 30 September 1997 Mgr Olivier de Berranger, bishop of Saint-Denis, in front of the memorial at It was at Vatican Council II that the Church the Drancy camp, read a declaration of began to work in the direction of a repentance repentance for the attitude of the French understood as a sea change. [12] Anti-Jewish episcopate during the years 1940-1942. This sentiment of religious origin was addressed in courageous act was greeted with surprise and order to examine its influence on the incomprehension by public opinion. The French development of modern antisemitism and the role Jewish community was not the source of this of Catholic responsibility in the Shoah. The Jewish statement: on the contrary [that community] statutes and the laws passed by Vichy stood stressed the extent to which Christian behaviour against the Gospel and against the respect for the had contributed to saving 75% of the Jews of human being to which Christ called his disciples. France. …..[However] the Church of France The silence was objectively a fault, as was the remained very silent until the year 1942, when complete absence of education in Christian awareness. (…)

201 The pontificate of John Paul II was an extension explained by the co-existence of a number of of this declaration [of Vatican Council II] and factors. It occurred at a moment of upsurge in made dialogue with the Jewish people a central Righteous medals awarded in France, which element in definitively departing from anti- occurred following the creation of the French Semitism. This recognition marked the opening of committee for Yad Vashem. The obstacles were a new era in Judaeo-Christian relations: no more numerous: the Jewishness of the abbé and the suspicion of conversion, no more theology of question of conversion; the state of Judeo- substitution, but the recognition of a fraternity in Christian dialogue and the presence of mutual difference (…) suspicion. Today, these have been overcome and this offers new hope for the recognition of other In conclusion Jewish civilian résistants who worked alongside the abbé. In conclusion, the late recognition of Abbé Glasberg as Righteous among the Nations can be

NOTES

[1] The files of the Righteous are in the process no future without a "spiritual centre" in the Land of digitalisation but M. Lucien Lazare was kind of Israel. enough to place abbé Glasberg’s file at my https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negation_of_the_Di disposition. My thanks to him. aspora)

[2] Lucien Lazare, Israel Gutman, Dictionnaire [7] Sarah Gensburger, ‘Les figures du Juste et du des Justes de France, Paris, Fayard, 2003, 596 p. Resistant et l’evolution de la memoire de l’histoire francaise de l’Occupation’, Revue francaise de [3] COS archive, Glasberg files. science politique, vol.52, no. 2-3, avril-juin, pp. 291-322. [4] In the courtroom, the Righteous occupied front stage. The trial highlighted their noble [8] COS archive, Glasberg files. behaviour. From then on, there was a growing social demand to pay homage to the Righteous. [9] (In Julie Bertuccelli’s film).

[5] Sarah Gensburger, « La création du titre de [10] Declaration on relations between the “Juste parmi les nations” : 1953-1963 » based on Catholic Church and non-Christian religions by her dissertation « Essai de sociologie de la Vatican Council II (1965) mémoire. Expression des souvenirs à travers le titre de “Juste parmi les nations” dans le cas [11] In 1983, cardinal Decourtray was the first to français: entre cadre institutionnel, politique speak of the need for the Church to repent in publique et mémoire collective’, École des Hautes response to the tragedy of the Shoah. In his eyes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2006, 777 pp this had to be a collective step. He did not hesitate to open the diocesan archives at the time [6] (The ‘negation of exile’ (shlilat ha'galut, of the Touvier trial and after his appointment or shlilat ha'golah) is a central assumption in went to the Izieu home. some currents of Zionism. It holds that Jewish emancipation in the Diaspora is not possible [12] Jean Dujardin, L’Eglise catholique et le because life in the Diaspora will lead either to people juif: un autre regard, Paris, Calmann- discrimination and persecution or to national Levy, 2003, p.293 decadence and assimilation. A more moderate formulation says that the Jews as a people have

202 Chapter 13 The enigma of Alexander Glasberg ?

Alexander Glasberg was an extraordinary man family and his personal history. He used to say whom it is impossible to pigeon-hole and hard to that you cannot choose your family but you can portray. He defied every sort of conventional choose your friends. And he would say that COS expectation: a Russophone Jewish émigré who was his family. [3] became a Catholic priest; an abbé detached from the Church; a passionate defender of foreigners Baptism and an ardent Francophile; a priest who cherished the French secular tradition; a committed socialist Alexander Glasberg remained silent, also, about who had no time for theories and doctrines; a his decision to become a Catholic and a priest. Zionist who disliked all nationalist sentiment; a This has left much room for speculation. Lucien friend of Israel who defended the Palestinian Lazare imagines that Alexander Glasberg was people. And in his personal life, a very sociable baptised as an infant by his parents, to improve yet very private person. his chances in a part of the world (then in the Russian empire, now western Ukraine) where Given such a remarkable mixture of elements, it Jews were disadvantaged, and that this was the is hardly surprising that Alexander Glasberg is starting point for his later religious path. [4] For often seen as an enigma. And he contributed to Lazare, who approaches his subject from a this perception by his reluctance to speak about strongly Jewish perspective and is very conscious himself. I have vivid memories of his strong of the abbé’s sense of Jewish identity, such a presence on the few occasions, in the 1950s and scenario is easier to accept than the possibility 1960s, when he made an appearance in my that his later choices were wholly autonomous. family circle. Shura—the Russian diminutive of Yet the suggestion of an early baptism is very Alexander by which he was always known within implausible. My grandmother Tatyana, who was the family—exuded confidence and authority, he deeply interested in matters of faith, and was filled the room. He would stare impassively for a baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church in her time out of the thickest of spectacles, apparently 20s, never mentioned anything of this sort when unmoved, then all of a sudden a wicked grin reminiscing about her parents, and it is would appear and he would enter into animated inconsistent with anything she or her sister Adela conversation. He was a mesmerising figure, but said about them. also puzzling, and I always felt that there was something undisclosed about him. He loved Meanwhile the assiduous researches of Christian company, but he was hard to know. Sorrel, reported in chapter 3, have shown that Alexander Glasberg’s religious choices, becoming It is true that in one sense everyone is a mystery, first a Lutheran and then a Catholic, were indeed even to those nearest to them. We cannot ‘get entirely his own. inside someone else’s head’. Or in Dickens’ more eloquent words: ‘A wonderful fact to reflect Yet what is striking about this discussion is that it upon, that every human creature is constituted to should have arisen at all, a discussion which be that profound secret and mystery to every testifies to the abbé’s own silence on that [1] other.’ And yet we speak of some people as question. inscrutable, others as an open book, depending on how far they offer a window into their inner The same uncertainty surrounds the nature of his world. In that sense Alexander Glasberg gave faith. In 1986 Ninon Hait-Weyl asked Maurice little away. He left no diaries or memoirs and few Montuclard, a progressive Dominican who letters, divulged very little to friends and befriended the abbé during the occupation, if he colleagues about his family and his past. could comment on the abbé’s beliefs, to which he replied: Eliane Obermayer, who was close to the abbé in the 1960s and 1970s, first in Paris and later when ‘It is eight days since you asked for a reply to managing the COS home in Marvejols, said: ‘we your question about the religious and spiritual knew a little about his life through Ninon Haït and life of our dear ‘abbé’ ? Despite the huge Nina Gourfinkel, but he himself never spoke about friendship which linked us after 1941 and his past and through discretion we posed few despite the intimacy which that implies, I feel questions. Perhaps we should have asked, but unable to answer your question. And I think what interested him was the present and the that others, such as Hourdin and Roze in future, how he could act.’ [2] Similarly, Sylviane particular, would be better placed than me to de Wangen said that she and her husband Gérold, bring up detailed memories of a rich and simple who became good friends of the abbé through yet above all secretive person, who seemed to their joint work in France Terre d’Asile, were want to divulge as little as possible about aware that there was much that they did not himself. ’ [5] know because the abbé hardly spoke about his

203 That is a striking answer from a religious friend, Spontaneity and Discipline but it is also striking that Ninon, a close collaborator of the abbé during the occupation Having made the decision to become a priest, it and a pillar of COS for 35 years, would ask the seems that Alexander Glasberg remained question, which meant that nothing on this committed to his vows. He was by nature highly subject had emerged in all that time. unconventional, yet there was also a pull towards stability. Nina Gourfinkel, who knew him perhaps “Talk about me? That is of no interest!” as well as anybody, commented on this polarity: ‘While he was spontaneous to the point of In 1968, soon after the opening of the COS Divio anarchy, he submitted without reserve to the centre in Dijon, the abbé was interviewed by the discipline which he had voluntarily adopted in journalist Hervé Jouanneau for a Dijon newpaper. becoming a priest.’ [8] And Lazare pursues the Jouanneau had discovered that this abbé same theme, asking: Glasberg was the same as the one who had played a heroic role during the war, and was ‘Did he now aspire to “settle down”? Did he fascinated to discover more about his subject, to expect the ecclesiastical state to bring his understand how a priest came to be involved in adventures to a close, to give him a better such a big secular project. But the abbé gave marked-out future? It is likely that, with the little away beyond his age and his shoe size!: benefit of greater maturity, he considered breaking with his turbulent past. And that is '... an extraordinary man, with a weighty figure, why, once he had entered holy orders, he a heavy chin, a look that was hard to fathom would always remain faithful to his vows. Yet through the very thick lenses of his spectacles, his temperament was not that of a man of but which seemed transformed as soon as he order and this prevented him from identifying opened his mouth because there was so much with the conformism of the clergy as a whole. warmth in each word ... His wanderings were over, but his spiritual journey continued.'[9] This portrait is only a sketch: he would have so much preferred that we did not to talk about This suggestion of a tension between a rebellious him, about abbé Glasberg ... (Talk about me? nature on the one side and a search for stability That is of no interest! ... [and] you want to on the other seems to me compelling. It is also know my age as well? I'm 66 years old and my plausible that Alexander Glasberg would manage shoe size is 44!) But let’s admit that he makes such a tension by accepting the personal a change from those pretentious windbags who discipline of priesthood, while detaching himself like to appear important…. from the institutions of the Church. In the early days he had some parish responsibilities in St Surly, caustic, tenacious, discreet, and above Alban, and then in Honor-de-Cos when he went all infinitely good, abbé Glasberg had at least to underground during the war. But during the to take the time to read this short article, to whole of the post-war period his life was focused emerge for a time from the shadows which he on his social work, which was secular and funded [6] so much prefers .... ' by the state.

The fact that Alexander Glasberg was A horror of converts unforthcoming about his inner world is frustrating to those, including the present writer, who want The abbé was highly unconventional and he could to tell his story. Sorrel comments: be very provocative. A particular example was his attitude towards converts. Olga Meier, who ‘The historian is aware of the drawbacks of worked with him in COSE in the early days, said: autobiographical writing, which is a distorting ‘He was the freest, the least conventional person mirror, yet also knows the riches that it may one can imagine. He, the convert Jew, never contain and can only regret this choice which alluded to his religion and above all never tried to deprives him of an irreplaceable vantage point influence us. What’s more he had a horror of on (Glasberg’s) career and his motives. He is converts.’ [10] Lazare takes note of this and, on bound also to wonder about the gap between the basis of interviews with people who knew the the ebullient temperament of the man as abbé, comments: described by his friends and his strict control in when speaking of private matters. Therein ‘(he had) some disconcerting attitudes. Thus he resides no doubt part of the Glasberg detested Jewish converts, as several of his [7] “mystery”’. friends observed. He would announce this aversion in a peremptory manner which But Alexander Glasberg was a man of action par discouraged further discussion. He was excellence. He immersed himself in his many targeting a “category” of people, rather than projects, without regard to what the next one or another particular person. Those who generation would make of him! remember him expressing this astonishing antipathy experience a real confusion over the

204 fact that they remained silent, did not try to Yet we know that the early baptism narrative is understand. A hypocritical abbé? Or afflicted wrong, and we know for sure that Alexander with a complex of self-hatred? These are Glasberg did not suffer from lack of self- redundant speculations. There was nothing in confidence. So if we follow Lazare’s logic, then the least equivocal, and no dissimulation in his the abbé’s stated aversion to converts was indeed manner of being a baptised Jew. This was a ‘hypocrisy and insolence’. But we need not go so very clear-headed person, despite the far. Most likely he was irritated by a certain breed complexities of his situation, who felt at home of over-zealous new believers (Lazare himself in his own skin, and had a robust temperament makes this point), and the abbé was certainly not which defied the psychological torments of the one of their number. If so, then he was being anxious. There were no internal conflicts, there provocative to be sure, but not hypocritical. He was a perfect tranquility of the soul. He was not liked to keep people guessing. speaking of himself when he stigmatized Jewish converts.' [12] Relationship with the Church

All of these observations are I think accurate. But Once Alexander Glasberg had installed himself in Lazare goes on to say that the abbé’s aversion to Paris after the occupation, he forged a role in converts social work without any reference to the Church, though in the early post-war years he did retain a ‘supports…the hypothesis that his baptism was connection with the Archbishopric of Paris, a choice made by his parents. We must be through Roger Beaussart. Beaussart, though careful about drawing definitive conclusions, if ‘purged’ after the Liberation (pressed to resign as only because of his own discretion about this assistant to cardinal Suhard, who was persona sensitive episode of his past. Let us say simply non grata with De Gaulle), maintained an that to proclaim one’s aversion to baptism when administrative role. He wrote to the abbé in one has oneself chosen this path is incoherent friendly fashion in January 1947, sending best in a way which one can explain only by a wishes for ‘your very important activity’ [13], lent hypocritical and insolent attitude, or else by a his imprimatur to the abbé’s booklets on pathological lack of self-confidence. Yet Palestine, and wrote letters of recommendation Alexander Glasberg suffered from neither of for the abbé’s visits to Palestine and Tehran. these weaknesses.’ [12]

A story of pickled gherkins

Another example of Alexander Glasberg’s unconventional spirit, trivial yet significant, from my own experience: when I was 10 or 11, in the mid-1950s, my family (my father, mother, brother and I) were on a visit to my grandmother Tatyana in Paris. There was another Glasberg living in Paris, Naum Borisovich Glasberg, a cousin and a great friend of both my grandmother and the abbé. We were guests for supper at the house of Naum Borisovich and his wife, and the abbé was there. He came to the evening armed with a bottle of pickled gherkins, which he adored, and placed them confidently on the dinner table next to his plate, clearly destined for his own consumption. This was a Russian gathering and the abbé had broken a basic rule of Russian (and no doubt any other) hospitality, and Naum Borisovich, an outspoken character, was furious: ‘You are a guest here, this is intolerable!’ But the abbé was unperturbed—he did not apologise, did not defend himself. He just went ahead because he had to make sure he would get his gherkins!

Though trivial, this episode was revealing. Alexander Glasberg was quite ready to confound conventional expectations, he was not ‘nice’, he could be provocative. He ploughed his own furrow.

Yet the same evening, after causing the furore with the gherkins, when the meal was finished, he said all of a sudden, with a grin and a gleam in his eye: ‘and now, friends, let’s talk about something interesting!’ I don’t remember what discussion ensued, it was no doubt too advanced for me to follow. But the gherkins and that remark, ‘let’s talk about something interesting!’, have stayed with me forever. Alexander Glasberg had seriously violated the social rules, but he was still the soul of the party !

205 For his part, abbé Glasberg took the trouble to [in Alexander Glasberg’s writings] The role and send his booklet on the Exodus affair to a number vocation of the Church are not mentioned, nor of Church people whom he had known in the is doctrine. When he aspires to change a world early days in Lyon, including Cardinal Gerlier, perverted by injustice, he does not do so as a Pierre Petit de Julleville (by then Archbishop of man of the Church. He worked in a manner of Rouen and Cardinal), Henri de Lubac and Abbé his choosing, but without challenging the H.Leclerc, from whom he received letters of hierarchy. The "juggler of Notre-Dame" did not thanks. An early version of the booklet was in juggle with Church discipline.’ 16] fact dedicated to Cardinal Gerlier, a much appreciated gesture: ‘…the Cardinal greatly Social work, social justice and the secular appreciates your sensitivity in dedicating La spirit Leçon Sociale de l’Affaire Exodus to him. He asks As shown in chapter 9 on the development of me to convey his gratitude. His Eminence COS, Alexander Glasberg insisted on the secular congratulates you on bringing Christian witness nature of his homes and on a separation between to these international social issues, which are too his identity as social worker and as priest. Éliane often vitiated by politics and self-interest. He Obermayer, who directed the COS home in earnestly hopes that your work will make an Marvejols from 1983 to 1993, observed: ‘The effective contribution to clear thinking among abbé was a priest, but was not a man of the those who are not entirely blinded by deep- Church ; he distrusted the institution and never seated selfishness.’ (Communication from Canon referred to it. His faith was an intimate thing, and Maury, Secrétaire Particulier, 10 December he never engaged in proselytism. All the 1947); Pierre Petit de Julleville : I remember very establishments of COS were strictly secular.’ [17] well the retreat at the University Seminary in He was indeed a strong defender of the secular Lyon where I once preached, and that you and traditions of the French state, at the opposite your brother confided in me. After all these years pole to the theocratic currents in the state of it gives me pleasure to tell that I have not Israel, which he looked on with horror. forgotten that time.’ (letter of 2 December 1947) ; Abbé H. Leclerc : '(I have a) fond and During his interview for Maurice Failevic in 1968, friendly memory of St Alban where, thanks be to which revolved around the abbé’s work with God, I once met you' (letter of 18 December refugees, in particular the COS centre in 1947); Henri de Lubac: 'My dear Alexander….I Montreuil, he was pressed a little on the question received your little book on Exodus. It shows me of his identity as a priest: that you have not quite forgotten me.’ [14] ‘Maurice Failevic : How is it that you, a priest, But abbé Glasberg was never incardinated in the who could very well be in a Paris parish or diocese of Paris where he lived for 35 years. Nor somewhere in the provinces, how is it that you did he have contact with the diocese of Moulins have focussed on this very particular issue, an where he was ordained. [15] He maintained a important but small-scale issue which affects striking independence from the Catholic relatively few people, this issue of political hierarchy, pursuing projects of his own making. refugees…a political person and a priest, they To begin with he was without doubt assisted in don’t sit very well together? this by the fact that he was a hero of the Resistance, while many in the church hierarchy Abbé Glasberg :…. Here, I am not a priest, I were under a cloud after the war because of their am not here in the capacity of priest, that is proximity to the Vichy regime. But having another domain….I am here as a social worker established an independent niche within the and I am a priest in church…(What I am about realm of social work, he was able to preserve this to say) is a bit of a joke, but one day someone niche without any link to the Church. came to see me here [in COS] to ask for advice… and for some help, she asked me to It also helped, as Lazare points out, that he did sort out the difficulty in which she found not comment in a public way on theological herself, and she said to me : “I am appealing to questions: you as a priest”, thinking that my heart strings would vibrate in sympathy. I explained to her: If he knew how to gain tolerance from the no…here I am not a priest… then she said but hierarchy, this was because he had understood you are still a priest..I said yes, but that is my that the Church is not a monolithic body with violon d’Ingres …and that sums it up. Here [in regard to matters that did not concern dogma. COS] we are dealing with social problems...and The Church did not reject those of her my position as priest plays no part in that.’ [18] representatives who were allies of Vichy, nor those, more rare, who supported the The expression violon d’Ingres originates from Resistance. Similarly, it was legitimate for one the fact that the great painter Jean Ingres (1780- priest to support the established capitalist 1867) loved to play the violin, and it came to order, and for another to plead the cause of the refer to a passionate hobby distinct from the proletariat. Rome cracked down only on those activity for which one is renowned. [19] If so, then who broke the ecclesiastical rules ... the abbé was using it very loosely, because his

206 social work was a consuming interest which left righteousness, the passion of Abraham, the very little time for the violin, for the ‘priest in passion of Moses. [26] church’. But there is no reason to think that his sense of At certain times in his life abbé Glasberg did Jewish identity was in tension with his Christian however develop links with progressive religious beliefs. Being Jewish and being Christian were movements. In the 1940s and 50s this was with surrounded by certain social expectations and Jeunesse de l’Eglise, inspired by Maurice others might regard them as incompatible, which Montuclard (1904-1988), who left the Dominican no doubt was the basis for the story told by the order in 1953 and went into the world as a abbé’s friend Shlomo Hillel: ‘worker priest’. [20] He married and his wife Marie later commented that ‘for Montuclard Glasberg ‘There is a Hebrew saying : “it is hard being a was a very dear and loyal friend. They adored Jew”, all Jews know that saying, they know how one another.’ [21] The abbé attended monthly hard it is to be a Jew. So once to tease the meetings organised by Jeunesse de l’Eglise in abbé I said: “Monsieur l’abbé, it’s hard being a Petit-Clamart and Montuclard recalled that abbé Christian !” He thought for a moment—he had a fantastic sense of humour, completely Jewish— Glasberg was an active participant. [22] and said : “you know Maurice (at the time I was known as Maurice Perez), it’s even harder Later, in the 1970s, during the last nine years of being a Jew and a Christian at the same his life, he participated in a reflective Christian [27] group called Concertation inspired by the time!”’ Chomels, which also met every month and which engaged in biblical reflection and social and Yet there is no evidence that for Alexander political discussion. The abbé was a ‘determined Glasberg there was a subjective tension between and provocative’ presence but remained loyal to the two. He had not broken away from a Judaic way of life since, notwithstanding his the group.[23] The abbé had been introduced to it grandmother, he was not brought up in that way by Jacques Roze, former secretary general of of life. He was therefore a convert in the sense Jeunesse de l’Eglise and a worker priest whom that he adopted Catholicism, not in the sense Alexander Glasberg brought into COS. And on the that he abandoned one religious tradition for death of the abbé other members of the group another. His sister Adela indeed made the came into COS, including André Chomel who interesting suggestion that to be a ‘true priest’, presided over it from 1981 to 1985. the abbé had to rediscover his Jewish roots. [28] As to religious observance, his friend Eliane If so, then his Christian and Jewish identities, far Obermeyer saw no signs of it when the abbé from being in conflict, went hand in hand. visited Marvejols in the 1960s and 70s. Nor did his Catholic friends the Chomels, whom he met Political currents every month for nine years in the 1970s, and they added: ‘We called him abbé, but this did not In the political realm Alexander Glasberg was have any religious character’. And yet the sympathetic to socialist causes and this brought Chomels knew that he celebrated mass privately him into contact with like-minded people on the at the parish of Saint-Ferdinand des Ternes. French left, including the communist left. His Hence something of Catholic practice did survive socialist sympathies were also, through the socialist Zionist tradition, the source of his in the life of abbé Glasberg. [24] And he died in enthusiastic support for a Jewish state in Meaux outside Paris, ‘at the end of one of the Palestine. All this made him suspect in the eyes retreats of reflection on the Church, Christianity of the French security services in the Cold War and the issues of our time, organised for several climate following the Second World War. It [25] years by a group of his closest friends.’ caused a lot of trouble when he applied for French citizenship at the end of the 1940s, Jewish Identity though he succeeded with the help of his Resistance record and strong support from a What then of his sense of Jewish identity? He was number of religious and political figures. very conscious of his Jewishness and identified strongly with the Zionist cause. He was at home On the other hand the abbé played no part in with Jewish cultural traditions and knew Yiddish. mainstream politics, nor did he participate Furthermore he had some knowledge of Jewish directly in the postwar currents of French rites, a knowledge which almost certainly came progressive Christianity, in particular the ‘worker from his maternal grandmother, who was devout priest’ movement, though he was supportive of it and whom he adored. And his friend Nicolas and befriended many former priests who were Obermayer, the ex-priest who worked in the part of it. According to Lazare: offices of COS in Paris and later directed the COS retirement home in Marvejols, reflected that ‘In France the first ten years after the war were ‘there was something in abbé Glasberg of that a time of noisy debates triggered by the rise of mystique of the Old Testament, that sense of progressive Christian currents and the

207 experience of the worker priests. These two traumas of the Second World War, for his tireless movements drew their dynamism from the work in support of later generations of refugees. momentum of the purge (of Church figures), And his memory is secure in the wonderful legacy the attractive force of the Communist Party and of COS, today greatly enlarged but pursuing the the "discovery" of a radically dechristianized same ideals which inspired its foundation. proletarian world by young Christians from the bourgeoisie. Despite his spiritual and political In all these activities there was no mystery. affinities with the Jesuit community of Lyon and There was a unified purpose behind all the the Esprit team around Emmanuel Mounier, the projects of abbé Glasberg, from the beginning of abbe did not participate directly in Christian the 1940s until his death in 1981: to find a progressive movement. He did not feel, and for dignified place in French society for the excluded good reason, the guilt which animated it ... It is and marginalised, whether refugees, the elderly, true that they aspired, like him, to change the the disabled or the socially dislocated. world, their project being to evangelize the dechristianized proletariat. On the other hand And he was a driving force in the projects that he the abbe's activity was always been social, set took on. In the words of Jean-Marie Soutou, who quite apart from proselytism and the promotion worked alongside him during the Vichy period: of religious. "[29] ‘abbé Glasberg was at the centre of everything At the same time Alexander Glasberg admired (in which we were engaged), unshakable and many of the worker priests, and as we have seen impossible to eradicate. A huge presence, with some of them found work in COS. great inner concentration, always advancing towards the goal he had set himself, never The legacy of Alexander Glasberg giving up on anything ... (And) he was exceptionally practical. His boldest enterprises This book has tried to throw light on some of the succeeded. He placed at their service calmness key moments in the remarkable story of and courage, a practical spirit, knowledge of Alexander Glasberg, without pretending to clarify people, of their strengths and of their the deeper springs of his life and personality. weaknesses. He confronted everything, found How much does this matter? It would be very money when there seemed to be none, found interesting to gain a greater understanding of support where it seemed impossible.’ [30] what made him tick, but far more important is the contribution that he made to the world These thoughts were informed by the courageous around him. He will be remembered for his heroic activities of Alexander Glasberg during the work with refugees during the occupation, for his German occupation, but they can serve also as involvement in the Resistance network in Tarn- an eloquent tribute to his life and work as a et-Garonne, for the assistance he gave to whole. displaced Jews seeking a homeland after the

NOTES [7] C. Sorrel, op.cit., p. 11 [1] A Tale of Two Cities, Wordsworth Classics 1993, p.11 [8] N. Gourfinkel, op.cit., P.240

[2] Interview with Eliane Obermeyer, September [9] L. Lazare, op.cit., P.31 2018 [10] Olga Meier, Circulaire “Chers amis”, 3 avril [3] Interview with Sylviane de Wangen, April 1981, COS archive 2009 [11] L. Lazare, op.cit., p. 24 [4] L. Lazare, op.cit., P.25 [12] Ibid., p.25 [5] Letter from Maurice Montuclard to Ninon Haït- Weyl, 21 January 1986, COS archive. Maurice [13] Letter of 4 January 1947. COS archive Montuclard was the founder of Jeunesse de l’Eglise. See Thierry Keck, Jeunesse de l’Eglise [14] Letters in the COS archive. (1936-1955). Aux sources de la crise progressiste en France, Paris, Karthala, 2004 (cited by Luc [15] C. Sorrel, op. cit., p. 109 Dubrulle, op.cit., p.136) [16] L. Lazare, op.cit., p. 44 [6] Hervé Jouanneau, « Ce “curé de choc” pas comme les autres, auquel nous devons le centre [17] Eliane Obermeyer, cited in Alexandre « DIVIO » (rééducation fonctionelle des person- Glasberg; Anti-conformiste. Résistant. Innovateur nes âgées) » Le Bien Public, octobre 1968 social (COS 2008), p.18

208 [18] The transcript of Maurice Failevic’s interview [23] Ibid., p.141 with abbé Glasberg is in the COS archive. [24] Monique et André Chomel, entretien avec [19] From the ages of 13 to 16, when he was a Luc Dubrulle. Luc Dubrulle, op.cit., P.134 student at the Académie Royale de Peinture, Sculpture et Architecture in Toulouse, Ingres [25] Jean-Marie Soutou, op.cit., p.115 played second violin in the Orchestre du Capitole, and he continued playing throughout his life. [26] In Julie Bertuccelli’s film https://wordhistories.net/2018/01/05/violon-din- gres-origin/ [27] In Julie Bertuccelli’s film

[20] On the worker priests see : [28] In Julie Bertuccelli’s film https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prêtre_ouvrier [29] L. Lazare, op.cit., p.43 [21] Luc Dubrulle, op.cit., P.140 [30] Jean-Marie Soutou, ‘L’abbé Glasberg’, Ésprit, [22] Ibid. mai 1981, p.116

209 210 BIBLIOGRAPHY

COS archives

Honor-de-Cos archives

Cindy Banse, « Glasberg, Juste parmi les nations : le long cheminement d’une reconnaissance » dans C. Sorrel, dir., Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981 (2013)

Madeleine Barot, « La Cimade : une présence, une communauté, une action » dans Les Clandestins de dieu, Fayard (1968)

Renée Bédarida, Pierre Chaillet. Témoin de la résistance spirituelle. Fayard (1988)

Serge Bernard, ‘Alexandre Glasberg et le Comité d’orientation sociale : un précurseur de l’intervention sociale ?’, contribution to study day devoted to Alexander Glasberg (1902-1981), 24 May 2012, l’Université Jean Moulin-Lyon 3

Axelle Brodiez-Dolino, ‘Alexandre Glasberg fondateur associative: une vie au service des internes et étrangers’, in C. Sorrel, ed., Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981 (2013)

Patrick Cabanel, Histoire des Justes en France, Armand Colin (2012)

Lucien Chibrac, Assistance et secours auprès des étrangers—Le service d’aide social aux émigrants (SSAE) 1920-1945, http://theses.univ-lyon2.fr

Les Clandestins de Dieu, Fayard (1968)

Madeleine Comte, ‘L’abbé Glasberg au secours des Juifs’ in C. Sorrel ed., Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981 (2013)

Jacques Derogy, Histoire de L’Exodus. La Loi de Retour, Fayard (1969)

Luc Dubrulle, ‘L’abbé Alexandre Glasberg, une identité presbytérale entre affirmation et négation’ in C. Sorrel, ed., Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981 (2013)

Christian Eggers, ‘L’internement sous toutes ses formes : approche d’une vue d’ensemble du système d’internement dans la zone de Vichy’, Revue d’histoire de la Shoah, No. 153, janvier-avril 1995, pp.7-75

Pasteur E.C.Fabre, ‘Le Pont-de-Manne-en Royaume’ in Les Clandestins de Dieu, Fayard (1968)

Joseph Folliet, Le Père Remilleux, Chronique Sociale de France (1962)

Abbé A. Glasberg (Preface by abbé Glasberg), À la recherche d’une patrie. La France devant l’immigra- tion, Études xénologiques, Centre d’orientation sociale des étrangers, Éditions Réalités (1946)

Abbé A. Glasberg, La leçon sociale de l’affaire "Exodus". Études xénologiques, Centre d’orientation sociale des étrangers, Éditions Réalités (1947)

Abbé A. Glasberg, ‘Les Assyro-Chaldeens’, Esprit, fevrier 1949, p. 256-274

Abbé A. Glasberg, Israël à la Croisée des Chemins. (1951), COS archive

Abbé A. Glasberg « Le problème juif en URSS », Esprit, Octobre 1956, pp.583-589

Abbé A. Glasberg, « Rapport sur l’activité de la Direction des centres d’accueil » dans C. Sorrel, ed., Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981 (2013), pp.149-159

Abbé A. Glasberg, Vers une nouvelle charte sociale : l’espoir palestinien, Études xénologiques, Centre d’orientation sociale des étrangers, Éditions Réalités (1948)

Alexandre Glasberg; Anti-conformiste. Résistant. Innovateur social (COS 2008)

Nina Gourfinkel, Naissance d’un monde, Editions du Seuil (1953)

211 Nina Gourfinkel, L’Autre Patrie, Editions du Seuil (1953)

Anne Grynberg, “L’accueil des réfugiés d’Europe centrale en France (1933-1939) », Les cahiers de la Shoah No. 1, 1994

Anne Grynberg, Les camps de la honte, La Découverte et Syros (1999)

Robert Guicharnaud et Norbert Sabatié, « L’abbé Glasberg dans la Résistance », Conférence du 2 avril 2007, Académie de Montauban Aviva Halamish, The Exodus Affair, Vallentine Mitchell (1998)

Philippe Hanus, “Les centres d’accueil pour juifs étrangers de Saint-Thomas-en-Royans et de Rosans” (1942-1944)” in Un siècle de réfugiées dans la Drôme (2017)

Hommage à Alexandre Glasberg, curé de Léribosc et résistant—17 mai 2009—L’Honor-de-Cos 2010

Francoise Jacquin, Jules Monchanin. Lettres à sa mère 1913-1957, Paris Cerf (1989)

Francoise Jacquin, ‘L’abbé Monchanin, précurseur du dialogue judéo-chrétien, 1935-1938 ‘ Revue d’histoire de l’église de France, janvier-juin 1994

Hervé Jouanneau, ‘Ce “curé de choc” pas comme les autre, auquel nous devons le centre ‘DIVIO’ (rééducation fonctionelle des personnes âgées)’ Le Bien Public, octobre 1968

Hillel J. Kieval, “Legality and Resistance in Vichy France: the rescue of Jewish children”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol.124, no.5 (Oct 10, 1980), pp.339-366

Nick Lampert, Connecting with Family History. Ukraine 24 May-1 June 2008. A diary in words and images (2008)

Lucien Lazare, L'Abbé Glasberg, Cerf (1990)

League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, December 1922, His Majesty’s Stationery Office. Cmd 1785

Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children, W.W.Norton and Company (1962)

Timothy Maga, “Closing the door: the French government and refugee policy, 1933-1939”, French Historical Studies, Vol. 12, No.3 (Spring 1982), pp.424-442

Paul Magosci, A History of Ukraine, 2nd edition, University of Toronto Press (2010)

Julia Maspero, « La politique française a l’égard de l’émigration juive polonaise de l’immediat après- guerre », Bulletin du Centre de recherché français à Jerusalem, 2011,22

Henri Mayeux, Guide Pratique de la Naturalisation Française (1947)

Roger Millot, « Les Glasbergs, une famille juive ukrainienne » dans C. Sorrel dir., Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981. Prêtre, Résistant, Militant (2013)

Caroline Moorhead, Village of Secrets, Chatto and Windus (2014)

Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940-1944, Columbia University Press (1972)

Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, Stanford University Press (1981)

René Nodot, Mémoires d'un juste. Résistance non-violente 1940-1944. Editions Ampelos (2011)

Valerie Perthuis-Portheret, Août 1942. Lyon contre Vichy, Editions Lyonnaises d’Art et d’Histoire (2012)

Remise de la médaille des justes des nations à l’Abbé Glasberg par l’Institut Yad Vashem (Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine, Lyon 5 mai 2004)

Norbert Sabatié, « L’abbé Glasberg et la Résistance dans le Tarn-et-Garonne’ in C. Sorrel, ed., Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981 (2013)

212 Le Sauvetage des Enfants Juifs pendant l’Occupation dans les maisons de l’OSE 1938-1945, L’œuvre de Secours aux Enfants, Paris (2008)

Ruth Schatzman, ‘Nina Gourfinkel (1898-1984)’, Revue des Etudes Slaves, LXIII/3, 1991, pp.705-723

Hannah Shramm, Barbara Vormeier, Vivre à Gurs: un camp de concentration français 1940-1941, Maspero (1979)

Lucy Smith, ‘Une expérience d’orientation’, Esprit, avril 1966

Christian Sorrel dir., Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981. Prêtre, Résistant, Militant (L’Équipe Religions, Socié- tés et Acculturation (RESEA) du Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes (LARHRA) (2013)

C. Sorrel, ‘Alexandre Glasberg citoyen français. Les apports du dossier de naturalisation’ in C. Sorrel, dir., Alexandre Glasberg 1902-1981 (2013)

Jean-Marie Soutou, Un diplomate engagé (Editions de Fallois 2011)

Jean-Marie Soutou, ‘L’abbé Glasberg’, Esprit, mai 1981, pp.115-117

Gérold de Wangen, “Les débuts de France terre d’asile”, Hommes et Migrations, No 1198-1199, Mai-juin 1996, pp. 94-95

Sylviane de Wangen, ‘L’accueil des réfugiés en France de 1952 à1983’, Migrations Société 2016/3 (No 165)

Joseph Weill, Contribution à l’histoire des camps d’internement dans l’anti-France, Editions du Centre (1946)

Joseph Weill, ‘Le curé des camps et de la Haganah’, Tribune Juive, Avril 1981

White Paper, May 1939. Cmd 6019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939

Et nombreux sites internet utiles

Broadcasts and films in which Alexander Gasberg appears

Julie Bertuccelli, Le Mystére Glasberg (2008 Beamlight—KTO—Pola productions)

Émile Weiss, producer, Les Portes de la mer. This documentary contains iamges of abbé Glasberg during the Exodus 47 crisis

Maurice Failevic : Joaquim Le Portugais. Televised documentary, broadcast in the Eliane Victor series Il était une fois (Première chaîne), 22 July 1968.

Les vieux. Un combat pour six millions. Débat télévisé ORTF 1969 réunissant l’abbé Glasberg, Pierre Laro- que, François Bourlière, M. et Mme Obermeyer.

Interview par Frédéric Pottecher et Ghislaine du Size. Cassette vidéo VHS INA.

Immigration et xénophobie. Enregistrement sonore d’une émission diffusée le 28 janvier 1948 avec l'Abbé Glasberg, Louis Chevalier, Henri Lacaze. CD diffusé en 1999 par l’INA. Ce CD contient l’enregistrement d’une autre émission : La troisième force, diffusée le 24 février 1948. Enregistrement : INA 19480128 – 19480224.

213 Sources of photos

Chapter 1 p.8 carte de l’Europe : Philip’s Great World Atlas (2005); p.9-10 portraits d’Alexandre Glasberg : archi- ves du COS ; p.11 Savelii Glasberg et Berta Numsonicz : archives du COS ; p.12 Natalya Ivanovna Orzhevskaya : zwiahel.ucoz.ru/novograd/history/Orjevskaja_07_09_13 ; p.12-13 prises par l'auteur ; p.14-15 documents d’archives fournis par Schlomo Wilhelm, rabbin de Jitomir ; p.16 Irina : ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeva_Irina_Savelevna ; p.17 Tatyana : archives familiales ; p.18-19 : archives familiales et archives du COS ; p. 21 : archives familiales

Chapter 2 p. 23 Jules Monchanin : site d'Oblates of Shantivanam; p.24 Père Jules Lebreton: http://www.30giorni.it/articoli_id_77764_l3.htm; Victor Glasberg : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; Dom Jean- Baptiste Chautard : https://stas.org/en/node/1284 ; p.25 Louis Richard : Lucien Lazare, L’Abbé Glasberg (p.64) ; Henri de Lubac : https://www.crisismagazine.com/tags/henri-de-lubac ; Alexandre Glasberg avec séminaristes : archives du COS ; p.26 Abbaye St Vincent : carte postale trouvée par Marie Boucheny ; l’abbé Glasberg à l’Institut du Sacre-Cœur : fourni par Norbert Sabatié ; p.27 Visite en Pologne : archives du COS ; Laurent Rémilleux : http://www.ajpn.org/personne-Laurent-Remillieux; p.28 extérieur et inté- rieur de Notre Dame : archives du COS

Chapter 3 p. 31 Carte : fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_occupée ; Pétain et Hitler : rarehistoricalphotos.com/petain- meeting-hitler-1940/ ; p.33 Camps d’internement : cclh1.canalblog.com/; p.34 Cardinal Gerlier et Pétain: francenationaliste.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/le-marechal-petain-une-divine-surprise/ ; p.35 Cardinal Gerlier : db.yadvashem.org ; abbé Glasberg : archives du COS ; p.36 Nina Gourfinkel : archives du COS

Chapter 4 p. 45 Camp de Gurs : encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gurs; wehrmacht64.canalblog.com/albums/camp_de_gurs__64_/photos/57380123- camp_de_gurs_un_groupe_de_refugies_espagnols.html; fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_de_Gurs ; prisons- cherche-midi-mauzac.com/des-camps/gurs-camp-de-concentration-pour-miliciens-espagnols-sorti-de- nulle-part-9578; p.47 Madeleine Barot : www.womeninpeace.org/b-names/2017/6/12/madeleine-barot ; p.48 Joseph Weill : judaisme.sdv.fr/perso/dirige/joweill/index; Ninon Haït-Weyl : archives du COS ; David Donoff : jewishcurrents.org/june-27-dodo-donoff-resistance-fighter ; p.49 Donald Lowrie : www.gutenberg-e.org/steuer/archive/chapter/18.html ; p. 50 Madeleine Barot : film de Julie Berticcelli ; p.54 abbé Glasberg : www.cinehistoire.fr/event/labbe-glasberg/; p.55 Location des centres : Carte : fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_occupée ; p.56 Sarah Schramm : H.Schramm et B.Vormeier, Vivre à Gurs (p.64-65) ; p.61 Hotel Bitsch : museedelaresistanceenligne.org/media355-Pont-de-Manne-et-le- restaurant-Arnaud; p.62 Bâtiment Lastic : jewishtraces.org/le-centre-daccueil-du-lastic/ ; p.64 Sarah Celemencki Bergher : prise par l’auteur ; Château du Bégué : jewishtraces.org/begue/; p.68 dessin par un ami de Nina Gourfinkel : archives du COS ; Jehanne la Pucelle Bannière : https://www.pinterest.co.uk/alchemist83145/jeanne-darc/?lp=true; ‘Bayard’: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_(cheval)

Chapter 5 p.69 Rafle du Vel d’Hiv : http://www.licra.org/16-juillet-rafle-du-vel-dhiv; Drancy : http://www.rfi.fr/france/20180327-inculpations-meurtre-survivante-rafle-vel-hiv-france; p.70 Direction de la police 5 août 1942 : Valérie Perthuis-Portheret, Août 1942 (p.37) ; Jules-Géraud Saliège : www.archives.toulouse.fr/histoire-de-toulouse/monseigneursaliège; p.71 Pierre-Marie Théas : socialjusticeresourcecenter.org/biographies/theas-pierre-marie/ ; p.72 Père Pierre Chaillet : fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Chaillet ; Jean-Marie Soutou : J-M Soutou, Un diplomate engagé, p. 184 ; p. 73 Caserne de Vénissieux : www.expressions-venissieux.fr/tag/sauvetage-des-enfants-juifs-du-camp-de- venissieux/; p. 74 Gilbert Lesage : Valérie Perthuis-Portheret, Août 1942 (p.36) ; p.76 Georges Garel : www.ajpn.org/personne-Georges-Garel-275 ; p.77 Montée des Carmelites : http://www.lelyondesgones.com/photos_lyon_jadis/lyon_4eme/index.html; Traboules : www.lyon- france.net/2018/10/traboules-lyon.html

214 Chapter 6 p. 81 Plaque: memoiredelashoah.blog.ac-lyon.fr/page/3/; p.83 Plaque pour les jeunes déportées de Las- tic : Philippe Hanus, « Les centres d’accueil pour juifs étrangers de Saint-Thomas-en-Royans et de Ro- sans (1942-1944) (p.88) ; p.86 Sophie Weitzer: film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.89 Boris Bezborodko : www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PhXAc-JaUw; p.91 Victor Vermont: archives du COS; Château du Bégué : www.fortunapost.com/32-gers/13818-carte-postale-ancienne-32-cazaubon-chateau-de-begue- 1913.html; p.92 Ady Steg avec sa sœur et frère : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.93 Eliane Grigson : photo fournie par Eliane Grigson ; photo prise par l’auteur ; Ady Steg : film de Julie Bertuccelli

Chapter 7 p.97 Mgr Théas : catholique-montauban.cef.fr/rubriques/gauche/histoire-et-patrimoine/listes-des- eveques/mgr-theas/mgr-pierre-marie-theas; Grande Fête Mariale : fournie par Norbert Sabatié ; p.98 Presbytère et auberge : archives de L’Honor de Cos ; Eglise St Etienne : http://patrimoines.laregion.fr/index.php?id=369¬ice=IA00048428&tx_patrimoinesearch_pi1%5Bstate %5D=detail_simple&tx_patrimoinesearch_pi1%5Bniveau_detail%5D=N3&RechercheId=5b590a9037ebe; Charles Mounier : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.99 Charles Landou : film de Bertuccelli ; p.100 Mariage d’Irénéé Bordaries : fournie par Norbert Sabatié ; Tombes : photo prise par l’auteur ; p.101 Lucien Etienne : catholique-montauban.cef.fr/rubriques/gauche/histoire-et-patrimoine/personnalites/abbe- lucien-etienne ; p.103 Caroline Lamolinaire : archives de l’Honor de Cos ; p. 104 Caroline Lamolinairie, Gaston Lamolinairie, Roger Lamolinairie : archives de l’Honor de Cos ; Fanion et insigne du maquis d’Ornano : http://www.dieupentale.com/dossierPDF/Maquis_Ornano_suite_Copie.pdf; p.106 Château de Piquecos : fournie par Norbert Sabatié ; Marie-Rose Gineste : db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId=4042844; Monument du Maquis d’Ornano: https://www.flickr.com/photos/89235234@N00/6500105779/lightbox/; p.107 Ferme du bois de Pauly : archives de l’Honor de Cos ; p.109 Résistants de l’Honor de Cos : resistance82.fr/19-aout- 1944-montauban-ville-libre/; p.110 Médaille de la Résistance : cérémonie dimanche 27 février 1950 ; Christiane Saint-Martin : archives de l’Honor de Cos ; Croix de Guerre : prise par l’auteur ; Place de l’abbé Glasberg : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.111 Reportages : archives de l’Honor de Cos ; Michel Lamo- linairie : prise par l’auteur

Chapter 8 p.115 52 rue de l’Arbre Sec : archives du COS ; p.116 Nina et Ninon : archives du COS ; p.117 Théo Klein : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; Henri Mayeux Guide : archives du COS ; p.118 Olga Meier : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.120 Jorge Semprun : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.122 Valence : archives du COS ; L’Hotel Beauséjour : archives du COS ; p.123 La nouvelle Beauséjour : http://hospidroits.e- santepaca.fr/?q=centre-g%C3%A9riatrie-beaus%C3%A9jour-hy%C3%A8res ; Hyères 1957 : archives du COS ; p.124 Hyères 1964 ; Château d’Abondant, Abbé Glasberg et al Abondant : archives du COS ; p.125 Gilbert de Chambrun 1972 : archives du COS ; Eliane et Nicolas Obermeyer : film de Julie Bertuc- celli ; p. 126 Marvejols 1964 : archives du COS ; Eliane Obermeyer : prise par l’auteur ; p.127 Château de Nanteau : archives du COS ; p.128 L’histoire de Joaquim : archives du COS ; Pierre Meunier : http://cercle.jean.moulin.over-blog.com/2018/08/les-plus-proches-collaborateurs-de-jean-moulin-pierre- meunier.html ; p.129 Médaille : prise par l’auteur ; l’abbé 1957 : archives du COS ; p.131 Marie Bar- reau : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.133 Repas au COSE : archives du COS ; p.134 Olga Aisberg : fournie par Claire Trebitsch ; Olga Meier : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.135 trois photos d’Alexandre Glasberg : film de Julie Bertuccelli

Chapter 9 p. 143 plan de partage: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine; Sarah Arkin- Meler: film de Julie Bertuccelli; p. 144 Paul Ramadier : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ramadier ; Georges Bidault : spartacus-educational.com/2WWbidault.htm ; Edouard Depreux : gw.geneanet.org/matth100?lang=en&n=depreux&oc=0&p=edouard ; Jules Moch : fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Moch ; p.145 Old Bay Line : jewishmuseummd.org/tag/deborah- cardin/page/10/; Ike Ahronovitch : archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2009/12/24/yitzhak_ahronovitch_captained_exodus_ refugee_ship/; p.146 Yair Tsaban : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.147 SS Président Warfield à l’ancre : www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/photographs-of-the-exodus-refugee-ship; p.148 Passagers débarqués de force : www.israelink.co.za/ship-launched-nation/; Après la bataille : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Exodus ;

215 Bill Bernstein : www.jewish-american-society-for-historic- preservation.org/internationalprograms/billbernsteinisrael.html; p. 150 Notice et dépliant : archives du COS ; p.151 Certificat et document spécial : archives du COS ; p.152 abbé Glasberg à Port-de-Bouc : film documentaire « Exodus 1947 » ; p.153 Moshe Sneh : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Sneh ; Angelo Roncalli : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.155 Ariyah Eliav : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.157 l’Abbé et Ninon Tehran, Shlomo Hillel : film de Julie Bertuccelli

Chapter 10 p. 181 Colonel Buckmaster : spartacus-educational.com/SOEbuckmaster.htm; Médaille de la Résistance: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_Medal; p.183 Pierre Schneiter : http://www2.assemblee- nationale.fr/sycomore/fiche/(num_dept)/6353; p.184 Jean Fauconnet : https://numelyo.bm- lyon.fr/BML:BML_01ICO0010157bdad2cf2fdf?&query[0]=isubjectperson:"Fauconnet,%20Jean,%201895- 1965"&hitStart=5&hitPageSize=16&hitTotal=5; Georges Bidault : https://spartacus- educational.com/2WWbidault.htm; André Philip : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Philip ; Abbé Pierre : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abb%C3%A9_Pierre ; p.185 Louis Richard : Lucien Lazare, L’Abbé Glasberg (p.64) ; Pierre-Marie Théas : https://socialjusticeresourcecenter.org/biographies/theas- pierre-marie/; p.186 Henry Queille : http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/henri-queuille

Chapter 11 p. 190 Henri Curielle : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Curiel; p.191 Gérold de Wangen : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; Jacques Debu-Bridel : https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/centre-val-de-loire/15- mars-1944-elu-eure-loire-signe-programme-du-conseil-national-resistance-1440867.html; p.192 Sylvia- ne de Wangen : film de Julie Bertuccelli ; p.195 Abbé Glasberg avec Gérold de Wangen et son fils : Lu- cien Lazare, L’Abbé Glasberg (p.64) ; p.196 Henriette Taviani (deux photos) : archives du COS

Chapter 12 p. 200 Diplôme des Justes et Médaille des Justes: archives du COS ; p.202 Ariyah Eliav, p. 203 Mur des Justes : film de Julie Bertuccelli

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