See you soon Caroline! Chapter 10. Perpignan, France. Sunday September 13th, 1942

Chapter Ten: Perpignan, France.

Sunday, September 13th, 1942

 

The office of the American Quakers was actually the ground and first floor rooms of a private house in the Avenue Baleares in Perpignan. It was a handsome house in a handsome street of three storey buildings, in one long continuous terrace, but each one individually styled. Number 30 had balconies on the first and upper floors.

Marion Oakes, the delegate in charge, lived in her flat on the top floor. It was well-appointed, with a modern kitchen and bathroom, and her sitting room overlooked the street below. There were trees in the road which reached up almost to the level of her flat and afforded welcome shade from the summer heat. Her bedroom at the back of the house overlooked a small shady garden and was well away from any street noise. Not that there was much street noise, for this was the second year of strict rationing, and motor vehicles were scarce. Petrol was in such short supply that some buses were powered by gasogene, the fumes from a coke burner which was towed behind the vehicle.

Marion was an Irishwoman who had been in charge of children’s hospitals in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. She had arrived in Perpignan with thousands of other refugees who struggled over the Pyrenees in February 1939 to escape General Franco’s pursuing armies. If she had been Spanish instead of Irish, she would now have been in one of the several camps surrounding Perpignan, living in appalling conditions. But, thanks to her nationality, here she was in pleasant and comfortable surroundings, though like everyone else in wartime France, subject to all kinds of shortages including food.

It was late afternoon on a warm sunny day, and Marion had just finished dictating a batch of letters to her Spanish secretary. Most of her staff were Spanish, she had selected them from the camps and so had saved them from the monotony and drudgery of life there. Her task originally had been to work with these unfortunate people – mostly women and children – to ease the burden of their lives by setting up classes for the children, and supplying benefits such as books and musical instruments for the adults. Now her work involved other camps where gypsies, Jews, and other so-called “undesirables” were being concentrated in even harsher conditions –if that were possible!

“Will you call Pedro and tell him that I’m ready to go to Rivesaltes now?” she asked her secretary.

Dolores lifted the telephone and called the chauffeur who as well as driving Marion to the various camps, also acted as a mechanic looking after the two lorries used to despatch supplies around the district.

“He says that there will only just be enough petrol” she said, putting the phone down.

Marion smiled grimly, “He always says that, but somehow we manage! I’ll have a chat with the Prefecture tomorrow and see whether they will release more coupons for us”.

“Are you bringing any children back with you this time?” asked her secretary.

“Yes! The two Krauch children. There’s another convoy due to leave tomorrow and I’m determined that they will not be on it. Isobel wrote to Marseilles this morning promising that I would ensure their release tonight. There’s nothing we can do for the mother I’m afraid. You know, I feel sometimes that we are just making it easier for the government to send these unfortunate folk away by looking after the children for them. If the Germans ever occupy this zone, the children will be taken too. We shall have to spirit them all away before that happens.”

Dolores sighed. “I don’t know how you manage to persuade parents like Frau Krauch to give up their children” she declared. “I know I would never have let mine go when I was in Argeles.”

“But your children were not in danger of being sent to their death.” retorted Marion.  “Your children had the good fortune not to be Jewish!”

“Do you really believe that these people are taken away to be killed?” asked her secretary wonderingly. “The word is that they are being resettled in Silesia to work in the mines!”

Marion snorted in disbelief. “Children? Babes in arms? Old women on crutches? Patients dragged out of their hospital beds? I don’t know where they take them, but they never come back! Some of the fit men like Herr Krauch are sent to work camps, and usually they come back after six months or so. But when those trains leave Rivesaltes, they are never heard of again. And why just the Jews and the gypsies – and the Jehovah’s witnesses and the communists? Never the Spaniards – thank God. But why not? If they are supposed to be a work-force, you’d expect them to be drawn from the fittest of all races and religions!”

“They do send Spanish people” protested Dolores. “What about old Senorita Garcia? She was Spanish!”

Marion shook her head sadly. “Yes! She was Spanish. A Spanish Jew!”

The door opened and a weather-beaten elderly man appeared. “The car is ready Madame!”

“Thank you Pedro. I’ll only be a minute! I’ll see you outside!”

 

Captain Dubois picked up the ringing telephone. He listened for a moment and then replaced it without a word. Standing up, he reached for his cap and strode to the door just as the old Citroen pulled up alongside the building. The window of the vehicle was lowered, and the arm of Marion Oakes emerged. The captain shook her hand.

 “Good afternoon Madame Oakes! Where do you wish to go to today?”

He knew full well of course that the Quaker representative could have only one object in seeking permission to enter the camp of Rivesaltes this Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow, the fifth convoy was due to leave for “an unknown destination”. It was his task to see that everything was ready for its departure, and that the required number of inmates was loaded onto the train when it departed at seven-o-clock in the morning. They had already been selected and warned to be ready. There were nearly six hundred men, women and children this time, ranging in ages from four years, to one old man of eighty-three.  Of these, four hundred and fifty of them, all Jews, had only arrived in the camp on Friday from the camp of Les Milles near Marseille.  The other one hundred and fifty or so had been waiting a little longer, and had been rounded up from various places in the unoccupied zone. No doubt Madame Oakes would be seeking to remove some more children from the camp. Well, providing they were not among the twelve under-sixteens already selected, he had no objections. He respected the tall Irish Quaker with her brisk no-nonsense manner, and he felt that she understood him too.

Marion Oakes smiled at the captain. “To Ilot K, as usual” she replied. “I have found some space for two more children, and I should like your permission to remove them from your care.”

Marion knew that the captain disliked his job, and that he cooperated with the various caring agencies to the utmost of his abilities. That was why she opposed some of the other agencies in their desire to withdraw from working in the camp. They felt that by accepting to cooperate with the camp authorities, they were also accepting that the conditions in Rivesaltes were satisfactory, and of course they were not. The inmates were ill-fed and ill-housed. They lived in squalor with rats running everywhere, and the only clothes they possessed were the clothes they wore when they entered the camp. Yet to withdraw their services would mean that the caring agencies were turning their backs on these poor people on a matter of principle.

“There should be no difficulty” replied the captain. “There will be the usual formalities of course, I will need to see the parents’ permission in writing, and as usual I will need to know where the children are to be placed. They must be available to be recalled to the camp at any time should Vichy so demand.” He knew, and Marion knew, that should this ever happen, the children would be found to have mysteriously disappeared from their registered colony. Such things had happened before!

The Citroen made its way through the dust and dirt to the entrance to Ilot K. Like the camp itself, Ilot K was also surrounded by barbed wire, and the only access was by way of another guarded gateway. The passes were shown and checked, and Marion alighted to make her way to barrack number thirty-five. As it was a warm day, most of the women were sitting outside the barrack on improvised seats – upturned boxes and crates for example. There was no recognisable furniture in the barracks at Rivesaltes!

She found Frau Krauch sitting on her own with her baby in her arms. Her little girl, Lotte, nearly three years old, was playing nearby with some other children.

“Hello Helga!” said Marion.

Helga Krauch lifted her head, and Marion saw that she had been crying. She touched her on the shoulder and said “I’ve come to take your children my dear! You know that you can trust me with them. They’ll be well looked after, and we will get them safely away as soon as possible!”

Helga held the baby towards Marion and said:

“Take him. Take my little Franz! He’s too young to know what’s happening to him! But I’m not letting Lotte go!”

The Quaker worker was appalled. “But Helga! Only yesterday you agreed to letting them both go! You signed the papers! I have them here! And Captain Dubois has given his permission! You can’t turn down an opportunity like this!”

The Jewish mother was crying again. “I don’t know what’s to become of us all, but I could never face my husband again if I had to tell him that I let Lotte be taken away. I owe it to him to see that she comes to no harm. What sort of mother would I be to let a child who has had three years of my love be taken from me? Who is going to explain to her why her mother doesn’t want her anymore?”

Marion Oakes was silent. What could she say? Could she tell this woman what she suspected lay in wait for her at the other end of the railway tracks? And supposing she was wrong? Supposing there was a new life awaiting them all with proper accommodation and good food? Children and parents were dying here in this camp from malnutrition and disease. Could anything be worse than this?

“Is that your final decision?” she asked.

The young woman nodded. She pulled from her pocket an old photograph of the family home in a village near Breslau. On the back she had written her husband’s name and address at Rivesaltes.  She tore the photo in half, and gave the portion with the address on it to the aid worker.

“Keep this with him” she said. “It’s his father’s address. He might come back one day.”

 Marion took the baby in her arms and with a final farewell, walked back to the car.

 

Marion Oakes couldn’t bring herself to go the following morning to see the convoy leave. When her assistants returned from the camp later on, they were deeply distressed. They had seen Helga Krauch mount the train with her little girl along with hundreds of other prisoners. Then, just before seven, when the train was due to depart there was terrible screaming from further down the platform.

“It was a Belgian woman” said one of them. “She had come to the train with her two children to say goodbye to her husband. He was a Jew, but apparently she was not, and so she and the children were to be spared from deportation. But the guards had discovered that they were three persons missing from the number on the lists, and so they had seized her and her children and bundled them onto the train to make up numbers. She was screaming “I’m not a Jew! I’m not a Jew! And nor are these children!”

Marion was horrified. “What did you do?” she gasped.

“We rushed down the platform and begged the guards to let the three of them get off the train. ‘They’re not Jews’ we said. And do you know what the guards said?”

Marion shook her head.

“They said ‘Well, which three of you will make up the numbers then?’ And we were so ashamed! As if it would have made it alright if the three of them had been Jews!”

Marion was silent for a moment. She stared out of the window, imagining the scene only too well. Then she turned to her assistants.

“You’d better get your breakfast” she said. “You’ve been up early this morning. You did all you could! Now, I’d better order the food and drink for those poor people!”

She picked up the telephone and placed a call to the Toulouse office. When it was answered she said: “Happy sixtieth birthday! Alice” and hung up.

The Toulouse receptionist replaced her receiver, rose from her chair and walked down the corridor to the canteen.

“They’re on their way! Six hundred portions! You’ve got about two hours!”

Most of the caring organisations were allowed onto the platforms to bring food and drinks to the deportees on the trains. But the authorities did not give them sufficient warning of when the trains would arrive, nor how many people would need feeding. So Marion had evolved a simple code. “Happy Birthday” meant that the train was on its way, and “sixty” in this case meant approximately 600 meals would be needed.