Claude Cahun by Bower Gavin James

Author:Bower, Gavin James [Bower, Gavin James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78099-045-3
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2013-08-30T04:00:00+00:00

ALARM. What for. So that the officers when frightened like in Stalingrad and Tunis want you to protect them with your lives, so they can escape.

ALARM. What for? So that you don’t have time to think.

WHY…WHY…

SPECTRE…

Because you have all been ‘brainwashed’. Yes we were in 1918 and this time it will be longer and more bitter than ever.

Read every week the paper for soldiers without a name (‘die Zeitung der Soldaten ohne Namen’.)

While Cahun retrospectively cast doubt over her success when it came to defining ‘good propaganda’ in her Confidences au miroir, the confession dated 1945-6 and dedicated to Moore, we should be in no doubt that the resistance of these two women was remarkable. There was no chance of escape from a tiny island, densely filled with German troops. The population was small, and, as the historian Charles Cruickshank explained, ’Every man, woman and child could have been gassed and incinerated in a single day in one of the larger and more efficient German concentration camps.’ The threat of punitive measures was therefore very real, and much of what little resistance there was comprised escape acts. Nevertheless, Cahun and Moore warrant just one small paragraph in Cruickshank’s book on the island’s occupation, where their relationship is mistakenly likened to that of blood relatives. ‘Shortly after the invasion of Europe two Jersey half-sisters, no doubt thinking that the end was in sight, began to type messages inciting the troops to surrender.’

They were more than likely caught as a result of the shopkeeper who sold them cigarette papers. Cahun tried to save Moore, claiming sole responsibility and even confessing her Jewish heritage – which she had kept hidden until then. When they were originally sentenced to death, it was to be by beheading. The couple attempted suicide by cyanide on arrest, but failed – which ironically saved them, as they remained too sick to leave the infirmary when a shipment of prisoners was set to leave that day. Having been sentenced to six years for listening to the radio and death for distributing messages, Cahun, contemptuous in court, asked which sentence they would serve first. They soon discovered that a number of German soldiers had also been jailed for insubordination – for which the couple blamed their own actions. They refused to sign an appeal for pardon – thus remaining in prison from summer 1944 (when France was liberated) until the 8 th of May 1945, the last day of the war.

In her prison diary, Cahun is typically magnanimous – but also playful. She describes, with humour, the washing facil- ities ‘as old as the building itself’. ‘They would have delighted an antique dealer,’ she continues. Prisoners had to carry heavy basins, which held seven or eight pints, around the cells. ‘By the time it overflowed, if the wardens were alerted, I should be well past human interference.’ The toilet at the trial was ‘set in the wall’ between floors. They had to use it in full view of ‘the crowd in the hall’ as only one person could fit inside and so the door remained open.

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