Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (45 page)

From November 1940 to March 1942, the subsequent series of orders did not directly affect the four women who had identified themselves as Jews. The Second through the Fifth Orders largely concerned further details on what it meant to be Jewish in the eyes of the Third Reich, or dealt with Jewish-owned businesses.
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But then came the Sixth Order of March 21, 1942. This order decreed that Jews could not change residence without permission and imposed a curfew of 8
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. for Jews. Further, the order stated that violators could be “interned in a camp for Jews.” With hindsight it is easy to see the noose tightening, as it is apparent that at this point the women were being monitored. On March 17, the Bailiff received an instruction that the registration cards of Jews be marked with a J.
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Inspector Sculpher was notified, and he reported carrying out the marking of Therese's and Auguste's cards. Interestingly, however, Sculpher did not mark the cards of Elisabet and Elda, although he noted their existence. Perhaps this was an example of Sculpher taking refuge behind a hyperscrupulous compliance with the exact terms of the instructions. These two women, even though they came forward as falling within the criteria of being Jewish, listed their religion as Church of England, and Sculpher could respond to the letter, rather than the intent, of the order.
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It is to be remembered from
chapter 3
that as of September 1941, a list existed of all English-born men over the age of eighteen, gathered as part of planned reprisals for Allied actions in
Iran. Also, on September 22, 1941, the Bailiff received a demand for a further list including all foreigners who were nationals of a broad list of countries large and small (everywhere from Russia and the United States to the Congo, Sudan, and Ruanda-Urundi mandate). The list was also to include those without nationality, emigrants from Germany since 1933, emigrants from Czechoslovakia since 1938, and all Jews. To this last request, Sculpher provided the now-familiar names of the four women who had registered in October 1940. Next came a request for the names, ages, and addresses of former British officers now residing in Guernsey.
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As described in the last chapter, the expected reprisal did not materialize in 1941, but the master list was now in place. What the Germans would do with it, if anything, was anyone's guess.

The answer was apparently nothing for now, and States officials must have taken a deep breath. However, before the first deportation scare was past, the Germans requested a list of “Key persons” to be submitted, chosen from the previous list of aliens. This list would be an opportunity for the States to indicate workers whose services were particularly necessary for the Island. Prominent on that list forwarded by Leale in October 1941 was the name of Therese Steiner in her position as a trained nurse. Also, under the longer list of those key aliens employed in agriculture and horticulture, a primary area of need for Guernsey, was the name of Marianne Grunfeld—at this point, because she avoided stepping forward to register, not known to be Jewish.
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So, the extensive master list and an initial request for exemptions existed from September and October of 1941, and the following year the German military authorities made use of it.

In April 1942, the Germans cherry-picked from this list an initial group to be deported to France. Mrs. Millicent McGahy, Therese Steiner, Auguste Spitz, and Marianne Grunfeld all received a notice signed by Rittmeister von Oettingen that they were to be deported from the Channel Islands, and they were ordered to report to St. Peter Port harbor on April 21.
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Let us take a pause and look at some of the names on this short list. Millicent McGahy was married to Arthur McGahy, and both were Guernsey-born, although they had emigrated to the United States in the twenties. They became United States citizens and settled in Boston. Before a scheduled move to California, they decided to take a short vacation to visit relatives in Guernsey. The visit continued longer than originally planned, and the McGahys ended up being trapped by the Occupation. Reportedly, Arthur was noted for arguing directly with the German authorities, using his American citizenship as a shield against retaliation. He seems to have been quite a nuisance, trying to wrangle various benefits for other people. But then America entered the war, the neutrality shield disappeared for Arthur McGahy, and the Germans were swift to pounce. Although a key worker in charge of a vineyard, the Germans contacted him on January 2 at 10:00 in the morning and told him to pack for France. He was picked up at his home at 4:30 to stay in the Royal Hotel—not for luxury's sake, but because this was the German headquarters in Guernsey. He was taken to Jersey the next day to cool his heels in jail until taken to internment in France on the 7th of January.
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It is easy to see that Mrs. McGahy was on the list to join her husband in France to close the loop on one deemed a troublemaker by the Germans. Therese Steiner, Auguste Spitz, and Marianne Grunfeld were deported to France quite simply because they were Jews, although Elisabet Duquemin and Elda Brouard were not included. But Marianne Grunfeld had not stepped forward back in October 1940 when Jews were ordered to register, so how did her name come to be on the list for deportation? There has always been speculation that she must have been denounced by a neighbor or fellow worker at the farm, but there is no evidence to support this.
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It seems unlikely that her Guernsey neighbors knew her to be
Jewish, because her pictures show her to be fair and almost stereotypically “Aryan-looking.” Of course, her name was on the list of 407 aliens and also on the list of key aliens, but in no place is her religion given. One possibility, as pointed out by William Bell, was that E. H. Ogier (her employer) was under investigation, along with fourteen fellow farmers, for “unlawful trading in foodstuffs.” The investigation would have brought the Germans into direct contact with the Ogier family and all of the workers on the farm.
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The answer to this little mystery may be more mundane. Frederick Cohen points out that Grunfeld (“Greenfield”) would have stood out to the Germans as an unmistakably Jewish surname.
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While Grunfeld has little meaning to non-Germans, the equivalent ability to read supposedly “Jewish names” appears in such American popular culture as
Gentleman's Agreement.
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Marianne's identification as Jewish, her deportation, and her subsequent death may have simply been a matter of her name being spotted by the Germans on one of the many lists they demanded.

There is no indication that any of the four women on the list for deportation attempted to escape or to seek a hiding place. Escape off of the Island was only undertaken by a few people over the five years, because it was a dangerous option that took months to plan and relied heavily on weather and tides to accomplish. Finding a secret location in which to hide for many years undetected would have likely been impossible in an island the size of Guernsey and with a ratio of slightly more than one soldier for every two Guernseymen.
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In any event, the Germans utilized the advantage of surprise in this first deportation. Just considering the order of the previous month, it seems clear that the Jewish women, at least, were under close surveillance. The timing also seems to indicate a desire to shorten the window during which the targeted women could plan some form of escape, for they were warned for deportation on the 17th and left the Island on the 21st.

If the deportation was a surprise, various forces stepped in to attempt intervention in these few days. Some of these attempts at intervention were written and therefore survive as an indication of the efforts of States officials and private citizens. John Leale provided E. H. Ogier with a letter of introduction to the Feldkommandantur on April 18: “The bearer, Mr. E. H. Ogier (Duvaux Farm, St. Sampson) is a well-known and respected Guernseyman…He wishes to discuss the possibility of retaining in his employ Miss Marianne Grunfeld. I would be obliged if you would grant him an interview on this subject.”
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Ogier did attempt to intervene on his employee's behalf, and the outcome happened to be witnessed by Rev. Ord. That evening, Ord wrote in his diary:

This morning as I passed down the Grange, a friend stopped me outside Grange Lodge, the Civilkommandantur, to vent his rage and sorrow. He had gone to appeal for a girl employee who is only just within the forbidden degrees of Jewish birth and is to be carried off. The officials listened to the arguments he put but were powerless to resist the inhuman decree of the Nazi Frankenstein.
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This attempt to prevent Marianne's deportation was not the sole attempt to intervene.

The fact that Therese Steiner and Marianne Grunfeld were already on the “key aliens” list made it unlikely that the States would let them go without renewing the argument to retain them. A trained nurse like Therese would have been a particular loss, and the entire concept of indispensible workers was at stake. According to Sandra James, John Leale made an appeal on Therese's behalf along the lines of “key worker,” but it failed, just as had the plea made for
Marianne. The hospital records recorded “an expression of regret at losing their [Therese and Auguste] services as their work had been of the highest order.”
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It seems that Rev. Ord had contact with Therese Steiner during this period between her notification and her departure. A year later, in March 1943, he wrote that when they spoke, possibly at the hospital where his work would have taken him, she had received “orders to go to France. She was in great distress and seemed to feel that her feet were now set upon her Via Dolorosa. I did what I could to comfort her but what can one say.”
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Although too much should not be made of Ord's term “Via Dolorosa,” since he could not anticipate the full extent of the tragedy that awaited her, it is clear that Therese expected discrimination and an uncertain future. While to some she maintained that she would be all right, and at least one friend described her as “in good heart,” Ernest Plevin, who was a police clerk sergeant, remembered her “bursting into tears and exclaiming that I would never see her again.”
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Elisabet Duquemin also described the anxiety of both Therese and Auguste when they came to see her the night before deportation to say goodbye and borrow a suitcase.
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The departure of the four women was quiet because they reported separately to the St. Peter Port harbor. Barbara Newman went with Therese to the Weighbridge and spent about half an hour with her and the other women before the deportees entered the departure area. This was an area guarded by German soldiers where only the deportees could go, and from there they were sent to France.
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As Cohen points out, nationality played a major role in this first deportation. Millicent McGahy was deported in part because she was an American citizen. Elisabet Duquemin and Elda Brouard gained a certain level of protection from having married British nationals. They would be the only registered Jews left in Guernsey to be subject to the Eighth Order, demanding that Jews over six years old wear, attached to the left side of their coat, a six-pointed yellow star with “Jew” written on it in black letters. The Ninth Order banned Jews from locations of public entertainment, and designated their shopping hours as only between 3 and 4
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. Of course the Ninth Order depended on the yellow star of the Eighth Order before it could be easily carried out.

Although the names of Elisabet Duquemin and Elda Brouard were known as the only remaining registered Jews, the stars never arrived, and Guernsey officials, shopkeepers, and the general public never were faced with participation in this Nazi performance of racial discrimination.
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Ultimately, Elisabet and Henry Duquemin (along with Janet Duquemin, their eighteen-month-old daughter) and Elda Brouard were deported along with former British officers, high-ranking freemasons, those with criminal convictions, and communists in the February 13, 1943, deportation. Although Henry Duquemin wrote a letter of appeal about his family's deportation, the German authorities turned him down, the Nebenstelle affixing to his written appeal a curt “Wife is a Jew.”
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The Duquemins and Elda Brouard were treated much like the majority of the Guernsey deportees; in fact, Elisabet was a “Barrack Leader” in Biberach.
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All survived the war.

Such was not the case for Therese, Auguste, and Marianne, who would be deported from France on July 20, 1942, along with 821 other Jews. Crammed into cattle cars, they suffered the full horrors of a journey that has been documented many times, arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau on July 23. We do not know whether they survived the first “Selektion” or were sent immediately to the gas chambers. We do know that they did not survive the war, although word of their fate would not come quickly to Guernsey. Pathetically, the Ogiers noted in their farm visitors book on Christmas Day 1942, “Toasted our dear Marianne Grunfeld…and all other evacuees.”
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By then, all three women were most likely already dead. A year after the
women left Guernsey, Rev. Ord would have their initial deportation confirmed, and even had knowledge of the further deportation to Poland, although with no idea of what this meant. On March 4, 1943, he wrote, “In hospital today I learned that that bright and universally respected little nurse Steiner had been taken to France for internment. A letter had come from her saying that she and another girl like her were being taken to Poland.”
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Frederick Cohen, in discussing this diary entry, makes a note that the pretext used by the Germans with the French government for this second deportation was that a new “Jewish state” was being established in Poland.
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It is difficult to know if rumor of this chimerical Jewish state came to Guernsey, easing the minds of those who knew of this further transfer of their friends to Poland. It would only be in April 1945, with the shocking news of the concentration-camp liberation, that the Guernsey Islanders would learn the truth.