In This Hospitable Land (33 page)
Then André noticed with surprise and relief that no religious affiliation had been listed. Reassured that his newborn’s safety had not been compromised, André signed the birth register with the deepest feeling and a fine calligraphic flourish.
In Denise’s private room, healthy, gurgling, sleepy-eyed Cristian rested his full head of shimmering dark hair on his mother’s chest. André held and kissed Denise’s hand. The doctor stopped in to ask if they wanted him or the rabbi to perform the circumcision.
André and Denise agreed circumcision made medical sense. André couldn’t explain why he wanted the rabbi to handle it but Denise didn’t object.
“Samuel Freedman would insist,” she said mischievously.
When Ida and Christel saw their baby brother for the first time later that day, Ida said, “I love him. But will he always look like a frog?”
The next day André rode back to La Font and Denise brought Cristian back to the aunts’ apartment, where they stayed in what had been her grandmother’s room.
Within a week the Jews of occupied France were ordered to wear yellow armbands with the Star of David whenever they appeared in public.
“Will they make us wear a star too?” Leonore asked nervously.
Regine considered then slowly answered, “If the Germans want the star worn in the north of France it won’t be long before Pétain makes it the law in the south as well. I’m sure it betokens worse to come.” She turned her eyes on Pierrot. “You must be more careful than ever. I don’t want you and your friends hanging around in public places anymore. Avoid downtown. Stay away from theaters.”
Each time an aunt ran an errand she returned with news of increased gendarme presence.
“We almost never hear from the family in Belgium,” Leonore said dolefully one evening, “but now mail from friends in Paris has stopped. I don’t want to think what that means.”
Both aunts believed Aubenas had become too dangerous for Denise and the children.
Denise agreed sorrowfully. “We’ll leave soon.”
On June twenty-second, the government enunciated a new policy:
relève
—“relief.” One French prisoner of war would be released for every three skilled French workers who went to Germany.
“Three for one,” Leonore said disgustedly. “How does that help France?”
Secretly Aunt Regine prayed that one of the ones released would be her other stepson.
In early July the BBC relayed a London
Daily Telegraph
report that more than one million European Jews had already been killed by the Nazis. Almost simultaneously a letter arrived from André couched in terms that, read by Vichy authorities, would suggest nothing out of the ordinary but nevertheless conveyed to Denise that he had learned definitively (from one of the pastors? the mailman? Max Maurel?) that after a person went to “camp” (Drancy) they were sent on “vacation” (out of the country) “permanently” (no interpretation necessary). He also wrote, “Touté is not the only dog about to round up some sheep,” and by “sheep” Denise understood he meant foreign Jews in Vichy France.
Denise told the
tantes
they should come with her to La Font since Soleyrols was safer than Aubenas. But the aunts still believed their age and sex would protect them.
“Pierre, though,” Aunt Regine said tearfully, “should go with you.”
But Pierre insisted on staying with his friends. They had agreed to share their fate.
“They’re not all Jews,” his stepmother said fearfully. “And you’re the only foreigner.”
“So that brings you up to date,” Denise concluded. She was glad to be back but worried about her aunts and Pierrot—until they appeared at La Font in mid-July to check up on Denise, Cristian, and the rest of the family. Distressingly, aunts Regine and Leonore had drifted into lethargic despair. Pierrot had become rebellious as never before, spending more and more time out and about with his friends.
They found no relief at La Font.
“We’ve been listening to the radio,” Alex told the visitors soon after they arrived. “During the night police rounded up all the foreign Jews registered with the authorities in Paris and shipped them off to Drancy. Even those who had lived in France for years and years.”
A few days later the guests had gone back to Aubenas the reports were confirmed: almost thirteen thousand Parisian Jews had been arrested and interned during one long night. Then the newspaper said that on the fourth of August nearly a thousand Belgian Jews had been deported to Auschwitz.
But the worst news for the Sauverins arrived mid-month by telephone. Pierrot had been taken away. He had gone out with friends, then stopped into a pharmacy on the main street to pick up medicine for Leonore. After making the purchase, Pierre and his friends had spotted police herding men into a van at the end of the block and Pierre had led his friends into a movie theater to hide. The movie stopped almost instantly, the lights came on and policemen blocked all exits. The gendarmes told the women to leave and told the men to show their identity cards. Then they ordered the men to drop their pants. Any circumcised man was declared a Jew and taken away—including Pierre.
The Sauverins were inconsolable and terribly afraid.
“We should try to leave,” André told Alex. “There’s still an American embassy in Vichy. We could try to get permission to emigrate to the United States.”
Alex was stunned. “You really think that would work?”
“Probably not. But it’s worth a try.”
From the Protestant temple in Vialas, André knew a teacher named Leo Rousson. Having seen him talking privately with the pastor, André was convinced he was part of the Resistance. Via nods and winks the postman had suggested Leo sometimes went to Vichy on “business.” So André went to Vialas to ask Pastor Burnard whether Leo could be trusted to go on a mission for the family.
The pastor was impressed by André’s choice and arranged for Leo to meet him at the Brignands’ café. There André handed Leo a dozen of Jack Freedman’s diamonds—part as payment, the rest to convince the Americans the Sauverins were solvent.
One week later André and Leo Rousson met again at the Brignands’ café. But Leo’s effort had failed. Approaching the American embassy in Vichy he had spotted a
collaborateur
from Vialas so had walked around the block and gone to lunch in a café. Each time he returned the collaborator was there. Leo hadn’t dared enter the embassy.
Expressing his regret and sorrow, he returned all of the Sauverin diamonds. “Never before have I had so much value in my pocket. And never again, I know.”
On the beautiful sunlit first Monday of September 1942, Pastor Robert Burnard walked the winding road between Vialas and Soleyrols, a newspaper tucked under his arm, his dark clouds of thought a confused and sorrowful contrast with the clarity of the sky. He had spent the previous afternoon at a conclave of Protestant pastors of the Cévennes gathered in the hamlet of Mialet to discuss what to do about the “final solution.” Recently the Grand Rabbi of France had sent a letter to Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon, informing him that Jews weren’t sent from France to Germany to work. They were sent to be exterminated.
The pastors knew they had to do everything in their power to save their local refugees.
André apologized to Pastor Burnard for himself and Alex being so sweaty and dirt-smeared. They had just come from working the upper field, slicing through row after row of hay with great, wide swings of their scythes. The hay would be left to dry in the sun for two days then turned, gathered into piles, and brought down to the barn for storage.
“I never knew how many muscles I had,” André stated uncomplainingly.
Skipping past pleasantries, the pastor unfolded his newspaper and handed it to André, who adjusted his glasses and set his beret more evenly on his head before starting to read.
“Another new law has been passed,” Pastor Burnard said, not waiting for André to finish, “allowing the Vichy government to conscript specialists and send them to Germany. All French men are required to register.”
“We’ve already heard about this,” Alex groused.
The pastor shook his head. “I suppose you have also heard about the roundups.”