Lyon
August 27, 1942
Lucien Marchais reviewed the list of exemptions before going to Vénissieux. The do-gooder associations would put up a stink, but it would be a passing row. Within a few months no one would remember the poor devils from the camp. The intendant himself had nothing against the Jews. He was just doing his duty. He did not give the orders; he followed them. If the Germans wanted the foreign Jews, he would hand them over since, after all, those people belonged in their country of origin. After that he would head back home to spend time with his family.
The intendant arrived at the camp in his black Citroën. Jean-Marie and the rest of the commission were waiting for him. It was their second meeting of the day, and exhaustion was etched on their faces. The city government had received all sorts of missives begging for the liberation of the prisoners. But they all knew that the masters of France were not the prefect or the regional intendant, not even Prime Minister Laval or Marshal Pétain. The Germans held all the cards.
“Ladies and gentlemen, forgive me for being late. Discussions about what measures to adopt are ongoing, and I still cannot tell you which people will be exempt.”
A murmur passed through the room.
“Do you mean to say that other groups besides unaccompanied minors will be considered for exemption?” Jean-Marie asked.
“I did not say that,” Marchais snapped.
René Cussonac, the camp director, spoke up. “Don’t get your hopes up; it’ll only be worse later.”
His words were met with disgusted stares. Everyone saw through Cussonac’s bravado to the heartless, cruel man that he was.
Jean-Marie noticed the briefcase at the intendant’s feet. He had a feeling that it contained the names of exempted people. If he could get a look at that list and see the arguments against the rejected requests, perhaps they could do something to counteract what was happening.
“What do you say to a coffee break?” he suggested to Father Glasberg. Everyone got to their feet and headed for the adjacent room.
Jean-Marie seized the moment of Marchais’s and Cussonac’s absence. He grabbed the briefcase, ducked into a side room, and began rifling through the papers. There were so few names accepted for exemption. Surely it was incomplete. He jotted the names down, put all the documents back, and hastily returned to the meeting room. People were already returning to their seats. The intendant was looking all around the floor.
“Where’s my briefcase?” he demanded.
Everyone looked up at him in surprise.
“I left it right here! One of you Communist collaborators stole it!”
“Mr. Marchais, my colleagues are not Communists, and we haven’t seen anything,” Father Glasberg answered calmly.
Cussonac went to the door to call for his men. Jean-Marie hid the briefcase behind his back, turned without taking his eyes off the two authorities, and set it down off to the side. He calmly stepped as far away as he could.
“Isn’t that it?” he asked, pointing to the corner where the case now sat.
Everyone turned and Marchais grabbed it.
“I didn’t leave it that far away; I know I didn’t.”
Jean-Marie shrugged. “Someone probably moved it accidentally when we all went to get coffee.”
Marchais had the briefcase open on his lap and was thumbing through the papers.
“Is anything missing?” Jean-Marie asked.
“No, everything’s here,” Marchais said warily.
“Very good. Then can you proceed to tell us about the exemptions?”
The intendant was fed up. He glared crossly at Jean-Marie and said, “Tomorrow we’ll get to that.” He stood and headed for the door.
“But we need to know the names today so we can file the appeals,” Madeleine objected.
“All in due time,” Marchais snapped.
“Please, Mr. Marchais,” Father Glasberg called, “this is all most irregular. There are norms and processes to follow.”
Cussonac got in Glasberg’s face. “Are you accusing us of doing something illegal?”
“I’m just pointing out the fact that these proceedings are highly irregular, sirs. The lives of over one thousand people are at stake, most of them helpless women, children, and older adults.”
“They aren’t soldiers or criminals,” Jean-Marie added. He could barely contain his fury.
“Everything will be carried out according to regulation.” Marchais’s parcity of words indicated that the meeting was over, and he opened the door.
But Madeleine called out, “When is the deportation and transfer scheduled for?”
“Tomorrow, the men. The night of the twenty-eighth to the morning of the twenty-ninth, the rest,” Cussonac announced, proud that his work there was coming to a suitable close.
The authorities quit the room, and the members of the commission stared at one another dejectedly.
Again, Madeleine spoke. “What are we going to do?”
“Let’s all have a seat again. On the one hand, the release forms for parents to sign are being printed, and those cases can’t be rejected. On the other, there are those who’ve served the country of France.”
“Those groups combined hardly amount to two hundred people,” Jean-Marie said.
“So they’re going to report upward of eight hundred?” Madeleine’s tone held the shocked grief they all felt.
“There’s still time, and we’ll fight to the end,” Father Glasberg said. He turned to Jean-Marie. “What did you see in the briefcase?”
“There was a list with a lot of names granted exemptions, but then later a pen had scratched off hundreds of them—the majority, in fact.”
“So at first they accepted our requests, and then someone gave a counterorder,” Glasberg concluded.
“We’ve got to make our reports watertight,” Madeleine said with tears in her eyes. “If we can save even one more person, it will be worth it.”
The commission members knew that most of the camp’s inmates were already condemned to die. For many, the sentence would not be carried out immediately, but eventually the Nazis would erase the souls crammed into Vénissieux.