The Paris Children : A Novel (2020) by Goldreich Gloria

Author:Goldreich, Gloria [Goldreich, Gloria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

The tragedy of Vél d’Hiv ignited a new urgency. The country was haunted by the fear that the cruelty enacted in Paris might occur without warning in Toulouse, in Lyon, in the smallest villages of the Unoccupied Zone. All equivocation ended. The leadership of the Jewish Résistance knew that they were in a race against time. As rafles increased and mothers and fathers disappeared, there was a desperate search for additional hiding places for abandoned Jewish children. Madeleine and her comrades worked endless hours in search of any possible refuge. Sleep was a luxury. Meals were snatched on the run.

She lived a double life. Her Vichy employment provided her with excellent cover for her Résistance activities. She wore the lapel pin of the Vichy Battle Ax of Gaul. In the eyes of her supervisors, she was Madeleine Dupuy.

But she knew herself to be Madeleine Levy. The blue-and- white scarf of the Jewish Scouts was tucked into her camisole. When exhaustion overcame her, she slept at her parents’ home, dismissing Jeanne Levy’s insistence that she be aware of the need for caution.

“I am very careful, Maman,” she told her mother, the reassuring lie uttered with ease.

She offered Claude no such reassurance. During their brief and breathless phone conversations, they spoke guardedly of the dangers they confronted, speaking in a code of their own invention.

“A good day is over,” she might say, which meant that she had survived and was safe.

“Lonely here,” he murmured which meant that he missed her, that he loved her.

“Lonely here too.”

She never knew where his “here” was. Résistance secrecy transcended lovers’ needs.

She thought herself to be a skilled thespian, performing on an unsteady stage. She greeted her Vichy coworkers amiably on her routine visits to the Secours National offices, her smile masking the hatred in her heart. She completed her official duties and sped on her bicycle down unfamiliar roads and across rural pathways in a desperate effort to find hiding places for endangered boys and girls, always moved by the courage of those who offered assistance, always angered by those who refused to help.

“I cannot risk putting my family in danger,” the owner of a small inn said regretfully.

“All of France is in danger, monsieur,” she retorted wearily but did not add that the situation of Jewish children was the most dangerous of all.

She was very careful, aware that there were those who volunteered assistance and then surrendered the very children they had offered to shelter to the Vichy police, claiming the rewards on constant offer. A betrayed Jewish child might yield a bonus of extra ration books, perhaps even several liters of petrol. She asked pointed questions, consulted with parish priests, explained her rejections circumspectly.

The news that the SS Commandant, Klaus Barbie, had been assigned to Gestapo headquarters in Lyon dismayed the Résistance leadership. It was yet another indication that the Southern Zone would soon be entirely under Nazi control. Any pretense of French governance would soon be abandoned.

“But of course we do not have a French government.

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