Tourelles Barracks, Paris
August 17, 1944
After years of helping people avoid detention and concentration camps, Gilbert Lesage had finally landed in one himself. He studied himself in the mirror as he shaved: his sunken face, now creased with wrinkles, had aged more than he would have expected during those nearly five long years of war. He buttoned up his shirt and went out to the yard. The internment camp, which had been set up within former army barracks, housed all sorts of people, especially members of the Resistance. Gilbert limped slightly on his right leg, a gift from Klaus Barbie during his brief stay in the Gestapo jail in Lyon. Gilbert had since heard many stories about Barbie’s nefarious deeds throughout Lyon. He only hoped the man would one day be made to pay for his crimes.
“Good morning, Pierre. Did you get ahold of a newspaper? I’m ready for this war to be over.”
“The Allies are at the gates of Paris. It can’t be much longer till we’re liberated.”
“Well, they’re taking their precious time,” Gilbert said, half joking. Since the landing in Normandy, the Allies were not advancing through France fast enough for his liking. “It must be the heat,” he said, fanning his chest with his hat.
“Gilbert Lesage,” a voice called from the other side of the yard.
Gilbert approached the guard cautiously.
“Yes, what is it?”
“You’re wanted in the infirmary.”
Gilbert figured it must a summons from his old friend Michel, an Alsatian doctor who tried to keep the camp’s prisoners in decent health despite the lack of medicines at his disposal.
At the infirmary, Michel closed the door to his office once Gilbert was inside.
“The last transport is preparing to leave,” the doctor said, getting straight to the point.
“What? They can’t. The Allies are just miles away,” Gilbert retorted.
“That’s exactly why. We’re free manual labor, and they’re still hoping to win this war. Hitler still claims that his radio-guided missiles will bring the British to their knees.”
“No one believes that anymore.”
“Maybe not, but the Germans have no choice but to try to hold out. The Russians are eating them alive. Pretty soon they’ll be in German territory and will get their revenge.”
Gilbert shrugged. He would never understand the self-feeding, never-ending cycle of hatred that refused each passing generation the chance to start from scratch. “So why did you want to talk about it with me?”
“Come here.”
Michel scooted the cot where he examined patients. It was covering up a panel in the wall that Michel took off to show Gilbert the hole behind it.
“It fits only two people.”
Gilbert frowned. “Then what about all the others?”
“It fits only two people,” the doctor repeated.
“Why me? There are young men out there, kids with the rest of their lives ahead of them. And fathers—no one is waiting on me to get out of here.”
“Look, you’ve saved the lives of thousands of people—who knows, maybe even tens of thousands. You’re the best human being I’ve ever met.”
“Well, I’d like to save one more while I’m at it,” Gilbert retorted.
“Today you’re going to have to let me save you.”
Gilbert was surprised to find himself tearing up. He had not expected to ever be saved, and he did not even think his life was worth the trouble.
“Come on,” Michel insisted. “Get in before the Germans come around.”
“Thank you,” was all Gilbert could say as he fought to restrain his tears.
“There’s no time for sentimentality; in you go.”
The two men knelt and crawled into the small cave, pulled the bed back against the wall, and fixed the panel in place. Then they held their breath and waited.
The Nazis deported a sizable number of men from the Tourelles Barracks that day. Gilbert and Michel could have been among those final unfortunate Frenchmen. Their former fellow inmates were sent to German extermination camps and weapons factories where they perished from the working conditions or the physical and psychological abuse from their captors.
A few hours later, when Gilbert and Michel crawled out of their hiding spot, they found the camp nearly abandoned. A handful of older men remained, along with a few prisoners who had managed to hide during the final roundup. Only they saw the Allies enter and officially free the camp.
Gilbert joined the others at the main gate. Soldiers wearing French uniforms forced it open.
“Thank you,” Gilbert said to one of them.
“We’re from the Leclerc Division,” the soldier answered in heavily accented French. He was a Spaniard.
At that, Gilbert burst out laughing. He would never have guessed that a group of Spaniards would be among the first units to liberate Paris. History was full of ironies, but that one beat them all.
Small tanks bearing the names of Spanish cities drove by the old barracks. Those soldiers, who had been fighting since the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, were now headed to Germany to pay Adolf Hitler back for all the bombs he had dropped on innocent people throughout Spain.
Gilbert joined the inmates cheering the soldiers beneath the intense August sun. He remembered back to August two years prior, in other barracks in another French internment camp. In Lyon he and his colleagues had stood up for the cause of justice and saved 108 children from the talons of the Nazis. How he hoped that Europe would never have to face something like that again—hoped that their fight for freedom and human dignity had been worth it all.