Lyon
November 8, 1992
Valérie Portheret walked into the headquarters of Amitié Chrétienne. Twenty or so people were milling about the chairs lined up in rows in the conference room. Valérie got the sense that most of them knew one another well. The older woman from the Resistance and Deportation History Center the day before was not there. Valérie felt like an intruder. She fidgeted with her long blond ponytail and sighed with relief when a man announced that they were about to begin. Then the woman who had agreed to meet her there slipped in through the door, puffing with haste. She eased into the seat next to Valérie, placed her hand on Valérie’s knee, and whispered, “I’m so sorry; forgive me for being late. I missed my bus, and at my age, I can no longer run.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Valérie whispered back, relieved to no longer be completely out of place.
The older gentleman at the front of the room wore a frayed gray suit with a shirt that had not been ironed in decades. But as soon as he began speaking, Valérie forgot all about his disheveled appearance and focused on his words.
“The conference room is almost full today. What a change from five years ago when we started these lectures! Back then there was only a handful of us.”
The man’s enthusiasm in a room full of octogenarians took Valérie by surprise.
“For years we’ve been studying what happened in the summer of 1942 in Lyon and the surrounding areas. We’ve gathered quite a bit of information, but there are still important gaps. We know that an ecumenical Christian fellowship organization, Amitié Chrétienne, coordinated the aid to the foreign Jews held at Vénissieux. With the help of a few government employees, the workers of Amitié Chrétienne gathered the reports and legal documentation necessary for obtaining deportation exemptions for the greatest number of people possible. They focused on children and saved 108 from sure death.”
Valérie’s eyes were wide. This was the subject that interested her most.
The man continued, “Those children managed to escape and go into hiding, but we know almost nothing about them. We have a handful of names, though most of them adopted new names to avoid being tracked by the Nazis.” The audience listened with rapt attention to each word. The speaker pulled out a yellowed piece of paper and shook it gently in the air.
“Records like this give us valuable information about what happened at the camp on those sad August nights. The more we find, the more we’ll be able to unravel the mystery of those children, what became of them, and how they survived the war.”
* * *
When the lecture was over, Valérie’s older companion greeted several people and introduced Valérie to them. Then she motioned toward the speaker and asked, “Would you like to meet Joseph?”
Valérie nodded shyly. Her typical assertiveness had dried up.
“Joseph, this is Valérie Portheret, a doctoral student. Valérie, this is Dr. Joseph Weill.”
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” Valérie said, shaking his strong hand.
“Where are you studying?” Joseph asked.
“At Jean Moulin Lyon 3.”
Joseph pursed his lips. “That place is a brood of Fascists. I’ve had to lecture there a few times, and they’ve all but kicked me to the curb. I don’t know why the government allows it.”
The old woman tried to defuse the tension. “Lyon used to be considered the capital of the Resistance. Now it’s a bastion of the extreme Right. That’s one of the consequences of forgetting the past. Joseph, Valérie wants to write her thesis on what happened to the Jewish children of Lyon.”
The man’s face relaxed and he smiled. “What aspect in particular?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. At first I thought about focusing on Klaus Barbie’s trial, but I’m more drawn to the subject of the children.”
Joseph nodded. “Klaus Barbie arrived in Lyon in July 1942. Before that he’d been in Holland and on the Russian front. That spring he’d been named chief of security in Gex, near the Swiss border. We know that he was sent to Dijon in June, but then by July he and other Nazis were staying in the Charbonnères-les-Bains casino outside of Lyon. He was going after spies who transmitted their messages by radio frequencies.”
Valérie was pensive. “So he wasn’t involved in the deportation of Jews from Lyon?”
Joseph put his hands to his waist and leaned back. He was enjoying the conversation now. “Well, no, not directly. The French gendarmes did all the dirty work, but the members of the SS and the Gestapo supervised the work of the prefect and the local government. Not long ago I discovered a very interesting photo.”
“Of what?” Valérie was keen to hear.
“It’s of Klaus Barbie in the Vénissieux camp. Some people believe he could sniff out what was happening with the Jewish children and that he tried to stop it, but at that moment in time, the Gestapo could not take open action in the unoccupied zone. Not until November 1942 did they have full authority to pursue Jews in the free zone.”
Valérie shook her head in fascination. “That’s incredible.”
“Well, the children aren’t my specialty, but there’s a lot of information in LICRA, the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism.”
The older woman rested a hand on Valérie’s shoulder. “If you’d like, I can go with you to meet those folks. I was thinking to pass by the offices next week. Joseph would agree with me that they’re extremely jealous of their time and resources, but there’s a very nice man, René Nodot, who would be happy to tell you more about what happened with the Jewish children from the camp.”
The two women bid farewell to Joseph. They went down the stairs and back out onto the street where daylight was giving way to a chilly darkness. The streetlights snapped on suddenly, allowing the older woman to study Valérie’s face.
“Are you all right after all of that?” she asked.
Valérie nodded resolutely. “As Dr. Weill was talking, I felt more and more sure that I need to research more about the children from Vénissieux and their rescue. It takes me farther away from my original subject of study, Klaus Barbie, which was going to be extremely interesting, but the lives of those young ones mean so much more than the life of that murderous butcher. Have you noticed how the executioners often end up as celebrities? There are books and books about them. But so few write about their victims. The victims are mere numbers, faceless statistics, figures on the yellowed pages of history.”
The old woman held Valérie’s gaze and said, “I was one of those faceless statistics.”
Valérie stepped back in surprise.
“Yes, I come from a family of French Jews. We didn’t flee the country in 1942. When the Nazis took over the free zone, they arrested us.”
Valérie could barely breathe enough to eke out, “Dear God, I’m so sorry.” Her legs refused to move from where the women had paused.
“It was a long, long time ago, but it’s still painful. They arrested us in 1944, when the end of the war was in sight. In August of that year, in fact, just a few weeks later, the Allies arrived in the city. Ironic, isn’t it? A neighbor denounced us. We had spent two years locked up inside the house, surviving thanks to the kindness of some of my father’s friends, who brought us food. I was a young woman of twenty-two, dreaming of becoming a schoolteacher. I lost two years of my life locked up in that house, buried alive within four walls. The Gestapo detained me along with my parents and sent us on a transport to Auschwitz. My parents were gassed immediately when we arrived, but I worked in the laboratories of Auschwitz III. I was forced to go on the famous death march. We made it to Bergen-Belsen, where the British freed us on April 15, 1945. I was so skinny I thought I’d never recover.”
“When did you come back to Lyon?” Valérie asked in awe.
“A few weeks later. Our house was still standing, despite the bombing. I waited for my parents, who were never officially declared dead, though I saw them being walked to the gas chambers, and we all know what happened there.”
At that, the woman started to cry.
Valérie hugged her and said soothingly, “I’m so sorry; I had no idea.”
“I’ve been a teacher for over forty years, but I never married. I didn’t want to bring children into a world like this. I’ve seen too many things, things that still come back at night to haunt me.”
Valérie hugged the woman again and tucked the woman’s frail arm under her own as they resumed their walk toward the river again. The thesis research was already opening Valérie’s mind to a new world. It was a cruel, pitiless world that refused to be erased. Valérie needed to know and, above all, needed everyone else to know the truth.