Monsieur le Commandant (10 page)

I interrupted my writing to take lunch; now I take pen in hand to approach the most dreadful part of my confession.

Tonight, after sealing this letter and before delivering it to you at the Hôtel Bellevue, I will telephone Ilse.

And all will be said.

My daughter-in-law returned to Paris in May with little Aristide, leaving Hermione with me to complete the academic year at her primary school. Ilse came back every Friday and went home on Sunday. She had returned to work in the Opéra offices. She spent the month of August with us in Andigny, and so we were all four together until September. We had no news of him who was no longer my son, and I didn’t care to think about him.

The war, which we had thought would be brief, had begun to look as if it would be prolonged. For the moment, your Führer had put off his conquest of cunning and obstinate Albion to turn the muscle of his Panzer divisions against the Reds. No more Soviet blackmail! Communism would pay – and we hoped, pay dearly. A tremendous movement was unleashed in Eastern Europe. France would need to watch it with eyes wide open; the scale of the vengeance would help her to understand the enormity of the crime.

Until that moment, the war had been waged by the National Socialist Revolution against the Anglo-American plutocracy. As of that memorable 22 June 1941, it became in addition a war against the egregiously debasing form of civilisation embodied by Bolshevism.
This was a new and glorious chapter in the struggle for the European Federation, a vast community at the core of which France has its own special place and important role to play, if only she can find the resolve to do so. In the choice between Russia and Germany, no vacillation was acceptable. The scales must fall from the eyes of those Frenchmen who remained deluded and lived, like Olivier, in a dream world. England was but a smokescreen for the most infernal enterprise of subversion that had threatened humankind in centuries: the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy. Thanks to the clear vision and decisiveness of Chancellor Hitler, a new Western Crusade had been launched against the East.

In July, I received a telephone call from Monsieur du Moulin de Labarthète, the Maréchal’s Chief of Staff. A reshuffling of the Cabinet was in the works, under the auspices of Admiral Darlan, and I was being considered for the national Information or Education portfolio. Dumbfounded and overwhelmed, I declined the offer – the honour was too great and my abilities too limited. I excused myself on the grounds that I was a writer and not a politician. But the real reason for my refusal was that I had no wish to give up – by dint of having to move to Vichy, and all the travelling and glad-handing that would have been required in my new ministerial capacity – my summer with Ilse, our frequent times together in Andigny, or our excursions in Paris.

This was a new routine that we had inaugurated on 2 July, on the occasion of a charity gala thrown at the Opéra for the benefit of our naval prisoners of war, and for which, because of her job in the administrative offices, my daughter-in-law had been offered two tickets. Serge Lifar and Solange Schwarz were starring in the ballet
Le Chevalier et la Damoiselle
by Philippe Gaubert. Ministers Scapini and de Brinon – my distinguished colleagues on the Franco-German Committee – were in attendance, and Admiral Darlan presided over the proceedings. The stage was a whirlwind of jousting and enchanting costumes. Ilse and I thrilled to the clash of lances, and when the maiden
in white ermine gave her colours to the knight and prayed for him … In the interval, Monsieur Rouché, the Director of the Palais Garnier, was very pleased to meet the famous father-in-law of his secretary, while Monsieur de Brinon appeared to be in thrall to Ilse. He told her that she resembled an actress he used to see in the movies. An SS officer who also happened to be a film buff said that he was probably thinking of Elsie Berger. My daughter-in-law shivered but kept her composure. She had often been teased over the resemblance, she quipped with a laugh.

Of course, Ilse had no idea that
I already knew
about her race. Monsieur de Brinon lamented Elsie’s absence from recent productions. The officer cackled: ‘
Jüdin
.
10
We sorted her out …’ The critic Alain Laubreaux cried ‘Bravo!’ I glanced over at my companion, who had gone quite ashen.

I never spoke to her again about the incident, and on our later outings I was careful to minimise the amount of time spent in the company of her compatriots, who might count other film enthusiasts in their midst. She was moved by my discretion, and seemed to be troubled, surprised and comforted by the fact that the German officer’s comment – which I could not have helped but overhear – had not changed my attitude towards her. It seemed to have had the effect of increasing the affection in which my daughter-in-law had long held me.

I took her to the cinema. We saw
La Vierge folle
, a new adaptation of the play by Henry Bataille. The actor Victor Francen played the lawyer Amaury, and Annie Ducaux his wife. I could not fail to be touched by the plot, about a middle-aged man having a secret affair with a boarding-school girl he had met by chance on a train. As we left the cinema, I thought that Ilse, too, seemed moved.

The Prix Goncourt for 1941 was awarded to Henri Pourrat, the candidate I had endorsed. While he was already a writer of some
renown, his latest book, expressing some of the loftiest and most noble French values, provided welcome reassurance to an unsettled public, and strengthened people’s support for all the great plans of our Head of State, whom they would stand behind rightly and properly as he worked for the greatest good and honour of my Motherland. I regretted that Francis Carco, Jean Ajalbert and Lucien Descaves had dissented from the majority opinion and had chosen to award an
ill-considered
‘Free Zone Goncourt’ to their nominee, Guy des Cars.

The young Sonderführer Gerhard Heller, from the
Propagandastaffel
, a friend to many writers and intellectuals in the Occupied Zone, accompanied me to a meeting with your Ambassador, His Excellency Monsieur Otto Abetz, whom I had known since the early days of the Franco-German Committee when, introduced by Henry de Montherlant, he came to give us a lecture on the Hitler Youth. This remarkable man – a confidant of Ribbentrop’s and an adviser to the Chancellor – is courtly, attractive, quite young for such a posting, and has the typically Aryan physique of a magnificent Nordic warrior that I find quite striking. He easily convinced me of the sincerity of his desire for a genuine and fruitful cultural collaboration, in addition to the political one, between our two great peoples. From that moment on, Monsieur Abetz regularly invited me to the receptions held by the German Institute, whose abundant buffets were particularly appreciated by Parisian writers reduced to rationing, which has had little effect on me, enjoying as I do – and as you do, too – special relations with the farmers of the Andigny district. Shortly thereafter, I had the honour that autumn of participating in the first great official delegation of French writers to Weimar, in the excellent company of Marcel Jouhandeau, Drieu la Rochelle, Brasillach, Abel Bonnard and Ramon Fernandez. André Fraigneau represented my publishing house. Jean Giono had also been invited, but had begged off on the pretext that he had been denied the use of a chauffeur and car that he had
requested for the trip. The ever-obliging Lieutenant Heller introduced us to the distinguished authors of your country, and Arno Breker – a committed Francophile who, as a young sculptor, had lived in an attic room on the Avenue d’Orléans during his time in Paris – threw us a party at his studio in Jäckelsbruck surrounded by his monumental works. The climax of our visit was a solemn ceremony held in the presence of Dr Goebbels.

But I must confess that the most moving moment of my visit to your country was when, thanks to Sonderführer Heller, who had conveyed my request to the Reich Ministry of Propaganda, I was able to attend, alone in a vast theatre furnished with upholstered seats, screenings of two films:
Das Flötenkonzert von Sans-souci
and
Der Kongress tanzt
, both featuring Elsie Berger. I knew every film in which she had appeared, thanks to the complete list contained in the report provided by the Dardanne Agency, and I had scrupulously noted their titles before my departure.

The general population had no great love for the Jews but had tolerated them thus far. French tradesmen, in particular, would have been glad to be rid of the Yids by reason of the underhand nature of their competition. And many doctors sent letters to the Medical Association alerting it to colleagues with names of dubious origin, so that the association might inform the Gestapo of foreigners of irregular status, who were speedily investigated. I can affirm that the anti-Jewish measures undertaken by the German authorities and my government elicited no protest from the vast majority. There was just a trickle of complaints, emanating from a minority of the overly charitable who felt that our articles in the press were too vindictive, and could therefore lead to such excesses as attacks on synagogues and the like. And yet, when Paul Riche wrote in
Au Pilori
, ‘The Jew is not a man. He is a stinking beast. We rid ourselves of lice. We fight epidemics. We put down microbial invasions. We defend ourselves against sickness and death – and thus, against the Jews,’ well, I can assure you, Monsieur le Commandant, that deep down most Frenchmen thought exactly the same!

In February, the occupying forces issued a regulation forbidding kikes to leave their homes between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. or to change their primary residence, under pain of imprisonment, fine or internment in a camp for hooknoses. I approved – the Jewish problem concerns all Jews; this was an issue of
race
and not merely of religion. Sadly, the tribal headmen are already safe in London and New York, where they pursue their baleful business. For the remainder, those still within our grasp,
all must meet the same fate!

Let none talk of formal justice, for this is a matter of public health. France is a convalescent, and her conqueror sits at her bedside pointing the way to salvation, which calls first and foremost for the excision of the Semitic cancer within. The Jewish influence on a country’s affairs saps its aspirations to greatness and its capacity to preserve its moral patrimony. In the occupied territories, the German authorities have devised ways to subject the Jews residing therein to strict monitoring in order to maintain total control over their activities. Our Kings of France long ago shared the same aim. Philippe-Auguste issued a decree in 1206 – that is, I note in passing, just a few years after the construction of the stronghold that looms above our city of Andigny – that Jews must wear a wheel badge. Shortly thereafter, Pope Innocent III prohibited Jews from dressing like Christians. Later in the Middle Ages, the wheel was replaced by a brightly coloured and grotesquely misshapen cowl. In England in 1434, King Henry VI ordered the children of Abraham to wear a yellow circular patch sewn onto their outer clothing. Such edicts are so numerous that I could hardly list them all.

I mention these few only to point out that three months ago, when they first compelled the Jews of the Occupied Zone to wear a distinctive sign – as they already had in Germany, Poland, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands – the occupying authorities were merely conforming to a very ancient and very sage tradition; and it is my hope, for the reasons explained above, that the government of the Maréchal shall soon follow suit in the Southern Zone.

I must also confess that all the recent measures that I have just enumerated had only confirmed me in the belief that my daughter-
in-law
had acted wisely in marrying my son and then applying for French citizenship. Ilse thereby avoided the indignities of a situation that would have quickly become unbearable: prohibitions against owning a wireless set or a telephone, using a telephone booth, attending public entertainments, and so on and so forth. I should have been forced to
request a dispensation for her, via the intermediary of Monsieur de Brinon, whose wife, née Franck, is Jewish and, as the spouse of Vichy’s Ambassador to Paris, is naturally exempt from having to wear the star. But while I am confident of the friendship and good will of that excellent man, I have been told that the Gestapo grants such extremely rare exemptions only to the wives of members of the Maréchal’s inner circle.

As these regulations, which I had long dearly sought, gradually came into force in my country, I was gripped by an ever more compelling anxiety; each new dictate represented another threat to the one being who held any importance for me, the woman towards whom all my thoughts continually gravitated and in whom was concentrated the despairing love that constricted my heart.

One day in early June as I watched Ilse dandle little Aristide in her arms, it occurred to me that the most powerful shield for deflecting any suspicion of Jewishness concerning her was, paradoxically, my notorious hatred for Jews. Taking the appalling schizophrenia that was tearing me apart to its logical extreme, I therefore spent several hours in my office wielding my most mordant and vengeful pen to compose an article for
Le Journal d’Andigny
that I felt most likely to repel the dark gaze of suspicion from my family once and for all.

With bitter satisfaction, thinking of the Jewess whom I loved madly and wanted to save more than myself, I signed – just as later this evening I shall sign this letter to you, Monsieur le Commandant – I signed with great sweeping strokes of my pen, ‘PAUL-JEAN HUSSON’.