Lyon
March 13, 1994
Since making the decision to write her thesis on what had happened to the 108 children rescued from the Vénissieux camp, Valérie Portheret had developed a new habit: sharing her research progress every month with René Nodot over coffee.
“Two years ago when you found that box of files, how many families were you able to identify?” René asked as Valérie watched the wind whipping the rain against the café window.
“At first I thought it was more, but it turned out to be only thirty-three. So there are still a lot more to find.”
“Wouldn’t the diocese of Lyon have files in their archives? The Catholic Church is known for holding on to things.”
“You’re right about that. Pierre Gerlier was a very orderly man, but they haven’t granted me access to their files. I think that some members of the church hierarchy feel the same way as most of society; they’d like to turn the page and move on. Klaus Barbie’s trial a few years back coughed up all sorts of controversy.”
René sipped his coffee, which was still too hot. He recalled the taste of chicory root from his younger years when coffee ran scarce and then ran out. Real black coffee still tasted like glory to him.
“Klaus Barbie,” René mused. “Did you know that I met him in 1942? He’d been sent to Lyon to hunt out clandestine radios, but what he liked most was hunting people. He was obsessed with finding the children. For days it was all he did. He couldn’t believe that a hundred children had been rescued right under his nose.”
Valérie smiled. That must have been a memorable defeat for the man, she mused while biting into the pastry the waitress had brought with her coffee. Then she winced and said, “It’s not for nothing that they called him the Butcher of Lyon.”
René nodded. “He’d been sent to Dijon but then was named head of the Gestapo in Lyon. Not far from here, just a few blocks, is where their headquarters were. It still gives me chills to think about.”
Valérie studied René. It was still hard for her to grasp that people like him had lived through the events she was writing about. World War II was so near and so far away at the same time.
“He more than deserved to end his days in jail,” she said.
“Well, human justice is always debatable. After all that he did in the Netherlands and in France, torturing his victims with his own hands, he was in a comfortable cell in Lyon, practically a hotel. This was a man who was responsible for the death of some four thousand people. He even imprisoned the legendary Resistance fighter Jean Pierre Moulin. Perhaps his most heinous crime was capturing the forty-four children of the Izieu children’s home and seeing to their death.”
Valérie set her mug aside. She had something important to tell René.
“You know that I’ve been trying to trace the children.”
René nodded.
“Well”—she cleared her throat—“I’ve decided to try to find each one of them.” René cocked his head at her, unsure of exactly what she meant. “I mean to actually search for them wherever they are in the world and, when I find them, give them back their real names, their lost identities.”
René took her hand. Her statement had shaken his customarily passive expression. “Tracking down those children will be a titanic mission,” he warned.
“I know. But I believe that we’re all here on earth for a reason, for a purpose, and mine is to find those children. They come to me in nightmares about August 28, 1942. It’s like their little faces are begging me to find them. Their parents sacrificed everything for them, and they don’t even know who they used to be.”
“God help you; it’s a magnificent project. You know you can count on me for all the help you need.”
“Thank you,” Valérie said, resting her hand on her belly.
“Ah.” René cocked his head again. “And I see that you no longer smoke.”
Valérie smiled.
“So you’re expecting?”
Valérie’s smile widened and her eyes shone. “I imagine what that night must have been like for the mothers and fathers of Vénissieux and . . . Mercy, this child hasn’t even been born and I’d already give my life for them.”
Her words floated in the air, the same air breathed fifty-two years before by the families of the Vénissieux camp.