9  

 

Hazardous Journeys across Well-Guarded Borders

Although the rescue of the La Hille teenagers from near-deportation was like a miracle, it turned out to be only the beginning of more threats and equally narrow escapes.

On September 10, 1942, Maurice Dubois wrote to Mme Goldschmidt-Brodsky in Basel that “truly these past few weeks have been very upsetting for everyone and we are very happy that we finally could save our children. For now I think I can tell you that we have been assured that they will not be endangered in the near future. It is of course very difficult to predict what may happen in the future; everything keeps changing so quickly.”¹ His prediction could not have been more accurate.

Following the arrests and liberation of the La Hille teenagers, Eleanor Dubois and Rösli Näf separately went to Bern to urge the admission of the children into Switzerland in order to safeguard them from other roundups that were sure to follow. Rösli Näf recalled:

Even though the daily routine was resumed, my sense of safety had been shattered. I went to the Bern headquarters of the Swiss Red Cross with the urgent request to bring all the children of the colony to Switzerland. Even though they were familiar with the events at La Hille and Le Vernet, there was no interest in my proposal. Instead I was reproached for a lack of faith following the successful liberation from Le Vernet.

I realized that, in spite of their knowledge of what had happened, there was no awareness of how perilous the situation had become and that they neither could nor wanted to confront the reality. Although I had told no one at La Hille the purpose of my trip, the more astute of the teenagers noticed that I was not returning with good news.²

Eleanor Dubois, already in Switzerland, made a separate effort to gain asylum for the children of La Hille. “Like numerous other persons who spoke out about these questions in recent days, Mme Dubois had the definite impression that the anti-Semitic actions in France would continue and be extended to younger children. Mme Dubois asked that the possibility of quickly granting asylum in Switzerland to the Jewish children and teenagers in our colonies be researched.”

“An exploration with representatives of rescue organizations to assess this emigration issue took place in Geneva, chaired by Mr. Lowrie of the American Unitarian Service Committee.”³

Antonia Schmidlin⁴ describes Eleanor Dubois’s attendance at the August 29, 1942, meeting of the Geneva Committee, “whose objective was the emigration of all endangered young Jewish people from France. She had traveled to Bern the day before at the request of her husband Maurice Dubois.”

“Ellen [Eleanor] Dubois gave a down-to-earth report about the events at La Hille. It was concluded that the Swiss Red Cross provided the only possibility of saving the threatened children in France. Therefore it was proposed to ask the Red Cross Children’s Aid Society [Secours Suisse] to move the children in the Secours Suisse colonies in France to Switzerland until the end of the war or until emigration overseas becomes possible. Ellen Dubois took on the responsibility for making the contact with the Red Cross.”⁵

Unfortunately for the children at risk in France, higher authorities in Switzerland had already begun to divert any rescue efforts into other channels. A September 4 meeting of the Secours Suisse in Bern was preceded a few hours earlier by a discussion between insiders Edouard de Haller (representing the top level of the Swiss government), Col. Hugo Remund (chief of the Secours Suisse), Secours Suisse secretary Olgiati and federal Justice and Police Department Chief Heinrich Rothmund.

Mr. de Haller wanted to prevent any protest against Vichy actions, limit the Secours Suisse to caring for the children and prevent their immigration and, above all, was very concerned about offending the Nazi regime. His views were presented by Col. Remund at the meeting of the Secours Suisse that followed:⁶ “Messrs. Zuercher⁷ and Olgiati are instructed to get in touch with the French Red Cross of the unoccupied zone, in coordination with the Swiss embassy in Vichy. This pleases E. de Haller because the approach is discrete and poses little danger for Bern. The committee’s decisions follow entirely the party line: No official pronouncement, no comment to the press and a waiting posture toward the French Red Cross.”⁸

The climate at La Hille was quite different from the attitudes in Bern. “At La Hille, life supposedly returned to normal, but in actuality everything was different. Anxiety spread among us, and the castle turned into a trap where we could be arrested at any moment,” recalls Ruth Schütz Usrad.⁹

“A miracle happens only once. We invented many plans to escape. I returned for a short time to the Schmutz family’s farm, whose peace was a total contrast to my state of mind. After a few days I received an order from the police that I must return to La Hille without delay. We now existed under the framework of forced living, and it was prohibited to leave the place.”¹⁰

Already on September 13, French police arrested Heinz (Chaim) Storosum (almost nineteen years old) and interned him at Camp Noé near Toulouse.¹¹ Storosum, a dedicated violinist, and Walter Kamlet, a devoted piano player, had been ignored during the August 26 mass arrests at La Hille because they were registered in Toulouse instead of La Hille, where both had been placed by Maurice Dubois for study at the music conservatory. “Once again Maurice Dubois and his wife came to my rescue, just in the nick of time. I was already on the way to the freight car when they suddenly rushed to my side and brought me back to La Hille in their car.”¹²

All the older La Hille teenagers had good reason to fear what might come next. In April at least eleven had been required to register with the préfecture office in Foix for Group 721 of the Groupement de Travailleurs Étrangers (“GTE,” sometimes abbreviated “TE,” or the Foreign Workers Battalion).

On January 2, 1942, the Vichy Interior Ministry had issued a ten-page order to the regional prefects signed by P. Pucheu that spelled out the requirement of assigning Jewish immigrants to the “TE” battalions. Those registered who were in occupations “useful to the national economy” could keep their present employment but would be assigned to the “TE” ranks under the “pour ordre” (on call?) designation.¹³

An examination of the Ariège archives shows that Mme “Audie” (Olga) Authié, Cabinet secretary of the Ariège Department Préfecture, had established and initialed the documents, with the handwritten remark “pour ordre” on all La Hille records except that of Émile Dortort. Among the La Hille teenager registrations on file are those of Karl Heinz Blumenfeld, Edgar Chaim, Émile Dortort, Berthold Elkan, Werner Epstein, Hans Garfunkel, Kurt Moser, Ernest Schlesinger, Inge Schragenheim, Manfred Vos, and Fritz Wertheimer. There may have been others.¹⁴

The “pour ordre” designation means that she signed in behalf of her superior. It is likely that there was collaboration between Rösli Näf and Maurice Dubois with Mme Authié. Both Swiss staff officials had apparently seen to it that the older boys of the La Hille colony were assigned to work for French farmers in the area under the “Mission de Restauration Paysanne” (Agricultural Rehabilitation) program established by pre-Vichy French law on April 27, 1940.

The director of this program in the Ariège Department notified his prefect on March 29, 1943, about the placement of Jews in agricultural work and lists “the following young Jews” (all from the La Hille colony): “Charles Blumenfeld at Mr. Étienne Savignol, farmer at Lézat sur Lèze; Edgar Chaim with farmer M. Soula at St. Ybard; Werner Epstein at M. Schmitz [probably Schmutz] at the Tourloure farm in Escosse; Adolf Nussbaum with M. Dupuy at Rimont; and Fritz Wertheimer and Kurt Moser with Mr. Milleret at the Couteret farm in Cerisols” [actually Cérizols].¹⁵ It is a stretch to consider this farm work as “essential” enough to entitle the La Hille teenagers to this special treatment. It probably protected them from deportation, at least for a while.

Émile Dortort, for unknown reasons, apparently did not obtain this status, was drafted into the TE forces, and moved to the Septfonds camp north of Toulouse.¹⁶ In Vichy Premier Pierre Laval’s deal making with the Germans, foreign Jewish refugees were always available to be surrendered for deportation. “During the summer and fall of 1942 the GTE (Travailleurs Étrangers) helped fill the deportation trains to Auschwitz,” state authors Marrus and Paxton.¹⁷ Unfortunately, Émile Dortort became one of those GTE camp victims. He was sent to Drancy and from there he was deported to the Majdanek murder camp on Transport No. 51 on March 6, 1943, one day before his nineteenth birthday. His friends Bertrand Elkan (arrested at La Hille) and Norbert Winter (age nineteen) were on the same transport.¹⁸

The Nazi murder of Berlin-born Norbert Winter was another well-intentioned rescue effort gone wrong. Sometime in the winter of 1941, Maurice and Eleanor Dubois had come to La Hille and tried to interest the older boys in moving to the new “ferme-école” (agricultural school) La Roche, organized by the Society for Trades and Agricultural Labour (ORT), a Jewish organization started in Russia in the late 1800s. It was located at Penne-d’Agenais, about ninety miles northwest of Toulouse. Only Norbert Winter and the brothers Leo and Willy Grossmann volunteered. Although the three boys were not enthused about the primitive camp-like conditions, the Dubois couple persuaded them to stay because they would be safer in the remote country setting of La Roche.

As the Vichy police roundups intensified in mid-1942, La Roche was also targeted and the older boys hid in the nearby woods. Leo Grossmann suffered lung damage but was nursed back to health by the wife of the camp leader. Leo, the older Grossmann brother, contacted the farmer “at Lantanet” near Seyre for whom he had worked in 1940–41. Jean and Amélie Rouger agreed readily to accept him. Their nearby relatives François and Marie Ambry also agreed to hide younger brother Willy Grossmann on their farm property.

Because it was dangerous to approach the authorities for a travel permit, Leo obtained a local doctor’s fake prescription for eyeglasses in Toulouse and made his way to Seyre from Toulouse without any problems. Willy followed his brother in similar fashion a week later. They were able to stay safely at Seyre under the protection of their farmer friends until the end of the war, grateful that none of the village residents gave away their secret.¹⁹

Norbert Winter was not so fortunate. Caught in one of the roundups at La Roche, he was deported with several of his La Hille friends from Drancy to Majdanek on Transport No. 51 on March 6, 1943.²⁰

In November, only ten weeks after the boys and girls liberated from Le Vernet had returned to La Hille, the German army moved south and occupied all of France. After the Anglo-American forces landed in North Africa on November 8, Pierre Laval had tried to persuade the Germans that he could effectively maintain neutrality in Vichy France. Hitler’s military forces ignored his promise and swept south to the Mediterranean coast on November 11. For the third time in their brief lives, the children of La Hille were again under direct threat of their German persecutors.

“Suddenly we heard, via radio from Toulouse, that the Germans had marched into southern France,” wrote Edith Goldapper (Rosenthal). “Without exception we knew what this would mean and are consequently afraid. I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly panic prevails and we all want to flee.”²¹ Ruth Schütz Usrad also described the surrounding events: “The Gestapo spread out in every city and district, and started rounding up young French youth to send them into Germany for forced work. The noose around the necks of the Jews grew tighter and tighter. It was clear that in this situation no intervention by the Red Cross would be strong enough to save us.”²²

In Bern, the governing committee of the Secours Suisse also was alarmed. “It considers it its duty to once more request the Bundesrat [Swiss governing body] to review again the question of admitting the Jewish children who are in the care of our colonies in France. The situation which has developed since November 11, 1942—even though we have not received any upsetting reports so far—leads one to fear renewed actions against these children.”²³

Although the Château de La Hille is located some ten miles out in the countryside, German troops were now permanently installed in Foix, Pamiers and other main towns of the Ariège department, within easy reach of the La Hille colony.²⁴

“From now on whenever we listened to the foreign radio, we first posted lookouts at all corners of the château,” recalled Rösli Näf in an August 1989 report.²⁵ “Especially for Jews and for political refugees the German occupation came as a heavy blow. They could literally feel the net tightening around them. Especially our older teenagers felt this fear as they had aged fast during these past two years.”

With the growing anxiety at La Hille, lookouts were posted and a camouflaged hideout called the Zwiebelkeller (onion cellar) was created. It actually was located in an attic space near the château tower. From teacher Eugen Lyrer’s bedroom a small opening hidden behind a moveable clothes closet led to a cramped space invisible from outside the building. Here a number of persons could hide during inspections and searches, which were not long in coming.

All over Europe the deportations were now in full operation. Although details were not known, the fact that children, the elderly, and persons in poor health were included in the arrests signaled even at La Hille that the destinations of the trains likely were not labor camps, as the Nazis were pretending in order to disguise their plans of mass murder.

In the remote countryside of the Ariège department, where La Hille is located, there were only three options for escaping the new arrests: hiding with area farmers, crossing the rugged Pyrénées into Spain over out-of-the-way mountain paths, or traversing some 450 miles by train and on foot, with frequent identity checks, from La Hille to the Swiss border, which was closely guarded on both sides.

Thousands of Jews attempted to flee France, and many of the rest tried to go into hiding. It has been estimated that some 22,000 refugees of all backgrounds, many of them Jews, illegally crossed the Spanish frontier immediately after “Attila” [the codeword for the German occupation of Vichy France]. By the end of 1942 the figure had swollen to 30,000. Both Spain and Switzerland discouraged refugees and often turned people back.

In October 1942, the Swiss tightened their controls, refusing entry to anyone not provided with a normal visa issued by the Swiss consulate. Along both frontiers began a desperate traffic. Local guides took these people across, and to the hazards of police and border guards were added the hazards of fraud and robbery by some unscrupulous opportunists.²⁶

The older of the La Hille children and some of their Jewish caretakers were soon fated to experience all of these difficulties singly and in small groups. This is the story of their daunting and incredible attempts to escape in order to avoid capture and certain death. Their courage and heroism, the selfless devotion of those who assisted them, as well as the tragedy of those who failed and were murdered, are the main reason this book had to be written. Between September 1942 and the end of 1944, twenty-three made successful escapes to Switzerland, eight succeeded in crossing the Pyrénées to Spain, but eleven of the La Hille boys and girls were caught, arrested, and murdered in Poland, in addition to the adult Ernest Schlesinger. Below are the details of these attempts to escape or to hide in Vichy France.

During the night of September 12, 1942, Almuth Königshöfer was the first of the La Hille teenagers to succeed on the hazardous mountain journey from France into Switzerland, illegally. She had left La Hille three days earlier and traveled by bus and train via Grenoble and Annecy toward what is now the Morzine ski area, east of Geneva. She hiked across the border at night from Morzine over the Col de Chésery (a mountain pass) at 6,500 feet. After making her way down the mountain on the Swiss side, Almuth continued via cable car and then by train to Lausanne where her parents Friederich and Ella Königshöfer were living after they had fled from Germany in March 1939.

Almuth and her parents were Protestant, with some Jewish ancestors, and they were known to be anti-Nazi. This is why Almuth went to France alone at age fifteen. After the war began, she was interned three different times (because she was German), the last time at Gurs in September 1940. This is where the Secours Suisse freed her in November 1940 and brought her to the colony at Seyre. She was then seventeen years old. When her parents’ application to have her join them in Switzerland was denied by Swiss authorities, she had already decided to escape across the border on her own.²⁷

Lotte Nussbaum was, like Almuth, one of the most responsible older girls of the colony. In 1942 the Secours Suisse had transferred her from La Hille to its children’s home at Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons near the Swiss border east of Geneva. Nineteen years old, she became a caretaker for young children. On August 26, 1942, she was arrested there, interned at Venissieux near Lyon, and freed on August 30. Lotte and two companions pretended to go on a walk near the Swiss border at Monniaz/La Renfile and succeeded in crossing the border on October 4, 1942. She thus became the second of the La Hille group to enter Switzerland illegally. Like all others who successfully crossed the border she was questioned by border guards and then interned for some time.²⁸

In mid-December, Viennese-born Lucien Wolfgang and Norbert Stückler (both seventeen) were the first La Hille teenagers to hike across the Pyrénées into Spain. Little is known about their route or the difficulties that they encountered, yet the journey on foot in winter conditions off the main mountain roads is extremely treacherous. In a biography statement written in the 1990s, Wolfgang reported, “we made the escape mostly without a guide. After 3 days we were arrested in the village of Litlett outside Berga near Manresa and brought to a jail in Barcelona. On January 3, 1943, we were released, based on a New Year’s amnesty by the Franco government.”²⁹ Both survived the war. Wolfgang served in the Free French Army and Stückler later emigrated to the United States and served in the US armed forces.

By now the question at La Hille was no longer whether it was high time to leave, but only with whom, where to, and when. “Because the USA was no longer an option, they all wanted to try to reach neutral Switzerland,” wrote Irène Frank in her diary.³⁰ “So it happened repeatedly that at the breakfast table 2 to 3 youths would be missing, without a word to any of us, except maybe to Miss Näf.”

That was the case on December 22 when Regina Rosenblatt (fifteen), Margot Kern (sixteen), Peter Salz (sixteen) and Jacques Roth (seventeen) left together on foot and by bus to Foix and from there by train via Toulouse to Lyon and Annemasse.

Rösli Näf had given them money for the trip, false identity cards with assumed names and directions to the Secours Suisse children’s home at Saint-Cergues-les Voirons, close to the Swiss border southeast of Geneva.

At that colony they were assisted by Miss Renée Farny, who had worked at various Secours Suisse facilities in Vichy France before she came to Saint-Cergues. The four young people from La Hille were the first of twelve whom she helped to cross the border illegally.

“The next day she connected us with a 17-year-old French scout who led us to the border and gave us directions,” recalled Peter Salz in a biography written in 1985. After some false turns and other adventures we reached the barbed wire and climbed over it. We were in Switzerland.”³¹ Fortunately, the Saint-Cergues colony was located only about one kilometer from the border with a wooded area called Grands-Bois separating it from the barbed wire area of the border. As would happen to all their La Hille friends who successfully made it across the border into Switzerland, the four were arrested, interviewed, and interned by the Swiss border authorities. “As we agreed to do beforehand, we lied about our age and therefore were not sent back [those over 16 might be sent back] and we had already destroyed our ID papers,” Peter Salz wrote in his biography.

Copies of the border police interviews for virtually all the escapees from La Hille are preserved in Swiss archives (Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv and others). When asked about acquaintances in Switzerland, most named their Swiss parrains de guerre (Swiss family godparents who had been recruited by the Secours Suisse for most of the La Hille children) and Rodolfo Olgiati, secretary of the Secours Suisse in Bern (“suggested by Rösli Näf,” they said). Some also gave the name Mme Marguérite Goldschmidt-Brodsky, their Belgian protector, who had fled to Basel with her husband and whose Swiss address they knew. Many contacted her soon after they arrived in the Swiss internment camps.³²

One day later Hans Garfunkel (eighteen) left la Hille alone and arrived in the same border area. He crossed the Swiss border at about 10:00 p.m. on December 24 near the village of Monniaz.³³ Very bright and also very worried, Garfunkel had sounded the alarm the morning of the August arrests at La Hille. He too contacted his Swiss godparents immediately after he reached Switzerland and reported to Mme Goldschmidt-Brodsky by letter on January 28, 1943, about his ordeal and the fate of those he left behind.

“I came to Switzerland on Christmas eve. I traveled from La Hille to the border as a 14-1/2-year-old French boy in short pants and Boy Scout shirt! That’s how I got to the border without difficulty but could of course bring nothing with me. Since then I have been able to obtain the necessities from my [Swiss] godparents and acquaintances,” he wrote. “Miss Näf had done all that was possible to protect us at La Hille but the situation had become so desperate that we slept mostly at nearby farmers’ and in other hideouts.”³⁴

Rösli Näf recalled her version of these traumatic days in an extensive report written in August 1989:

With Jean [Hans Garfunkel] as the first one, who one night before Christmas, undoubtedly after many and serious reflections, took the rescue into his own hands, a new and very difficult period began for all of us. [She failed to recall that the others named above had left before Garfunkel.]

I was aware that if I did not report his escape immediately to the police, I would place myself on a slippery slope—also with the Secours Suisse—especially since I, instead of preventing any further escapes, which would have been impossible with the older teenagers, actually assisted them, even with money when they needed it.

Although Lucien and Norbert had succeeded to reach Spain, most of the others preferred to try to flee to Switzerland. Because of their relationships with their Swiss godparent families they already had a connection there. This was augmented by the offer from Renée Farny who had already assisted others in getting across the border.

From now on we lived in constant fear. What if one of the groups were caught? I discovered what dangers are connected to illegal actions and I cursed my inexperience. In any event it was I who needed to assume the responsibility and the blame. Toulouse must be kept in the dark. But what if the police found out anyhow? How could we be sure that our (La Hille) children attending the public school wouldn’t tattle?

How could I maybe quarantine the château while the fleeing teenagers were en route? Strange as it may sound, until then we had never needed medical help. Without any definite idea of how I could explain this, I found myself in the office of a nearby doctor—and I got lucky again!

The doctor grasped immediately, after I told him who I am, what I needed from him. He told me to relax and promised to announce a scarlet fever quarantine for La Hille to the local school and to the police. This even kept away visitors from the Toulouse office who had already been invited to come for the Christmas celebration.³⁵

Edith Goldapper (Rosenthal) recalls the chaotic situation among the older girls and boys: “So we’ve reached December 21, 1942. We are aware that the deportation of Jews is imminent and that is why some have decided to get out yet tonight. Inge [Schragenheim] and Leo [Lewin] will leave tonight. They are heading for Switzerland. The leave-taking is awful. To imagine that 2 young people are venturing off into the unknown like that is upsetting,” she writes in her diary.³⁶

In fact several other groups quietly fled from La Hille on New Year’s Eve. Seventeen-year-old Leo Lewin and Inge Schragenheim, barely eighteen, had already left together on December 20 and headed for Lyon where they made contact with the Jewish community. There they were given false identification cards and sent to Abbé (Abbot) Marie-Amédé Folliet in Annecy, closer to the Swiss border. They were hidden there for a few days by a family that asked neither who they were nor where they were going. And they received new false identity cards, supposedly issued by the prefect of the Haute-Savoie Department. Leo Lewin now became Léon Dubois.

25. Secours Suisse staff visiting at La Hille in 1942, hosted by Colony Director Rösli Näf (at far right). To her left is Rodolfo Olgiati, general secretary of the Secours Suisse, from Bern. From the author’s personal collection.

During the night of December 31 a guide led them to the border at Moillesulaz, east of Geneva. About 3:30 a.m. they were arrested and interrogated by Swiss police. Leo (Lewin) “Dubois” could stay as a refugee because he was under eighteen. He told the interrogators that he knew Mme Renée Didisheim of La Chaux-de-Fonds (his volunteer godmother), Pastor Mueller of Habkern, near Interlaken, and Mme Goldschmidt-Brodsky of Basel.

Inge Schragenheim was not so lucky. Already over eighteen years old, she was pushed back over the border to France and “with more good luck than smarts I found my way back to Annecy and then returned to La Hille,” she wrote in a 1990s autobiography.³⁷ Lewin states that Inge was lucky to be returned to French authorities and not to the Germans. In 1943 Inge would try again and succeed in fleeing to Switzerland where she was reunited with her mother.³⁸

Also on December 31 another trio, Ilse Wulff (who had turned seventeen that week), Ruth Klonover (eighteen), and Else Rosenblatt (seventeen) left together via Pamiers, Toulouse, and Lyon. Ruth joined the two others when Lixie Grabkowicz was unable to go. She recalls³⁹ that Rösli Näf supplied money for travel and the address at Saint-Cergues. “We masqueraded as young French students with our schoolbags but suddenly German soldiers came into our compartment on the train. We pretended to know a few German words and learned more, trading them French ones. Our schoolgirl trick also worked at the Annemasse train station.”⁴⁰ Their crossing from the Saint-Cergues colony succeeded (they crossed at La Renfile)⁴¹ and in their interviews with the Swiss border interrogators they were able to get away with their falsified ages of fifteen and fourteen. In fact the transmittal letter with their files to the federal police in Bern on February 3 states, “in light of their young age these girls should be placed appropriately by Mlle Hohermuth.”⁴²

Few of the escapes from La Hille went smoothly and all were undertaken with great stress, fear of arrest, and failure. This was the case with Ruth Schütz (Usrad) and Lixie Grabkowicz (Kowler), age eighteen, who also left the colony on New Year’s Eve 1942. Ruth, then seventeen years old, describes the dangerous odyssey in detail in her autobiography, Entrapped Adolescence. With Rösli Näf absent that day, teacher Eugen Lyrer gave them money that had been sent by Ruth’s mother from England, as well as bread and cheese. He directed them to an address in Lyon where they would get help for crossing the Swiss border. They left La Hille secretly and walked toward Pamiers to catch the train to Toulouse. They soon found out that even the side roads were patrolled by the gendarmes and they dove into ditches twice when motorcycles approached.

In Toulouse the day’s last train to Lyon had already left and they now were faced with finding shelter before the 10:00 p.m. curfew. After a fruitless search for lodging they ended up spending the night of New Year’s Eve huddled in an apartment building doorway. They were able to recover a bit in the morning, when a caring resident of the building took the two shivering Jewish girls to a church where they could at least get warm.

New Year’s Day afternoon they wangled their way onto the crowded train to Lyon and successfully managed to avoid the German guards’ identity checks; they carried no identification papers and had they been stopped, they would certainly have been apprehended. They carefully remembered the Lyon address that Eugen Lyrer had given them: 22 rue de Lanterne. Lixie recalled⁴³ that this was the address for the renowned Abbé Glassberg, a Catholic priest who helped many Jewish refugees. Because the abbé was away, his housekeeper gave them ration coupons and directions to a Christian support place. “We were without identity cards, ration cards and without money in a strange city,” recalls Ruth Schütz (Usrad).⁴⁴

We used the morning hours to survey the churches in the city. Which one should we choose to sleep in at night?

When we arrived at the home of the Christian Friends, we found people sitting at rough wooden tables, bent over their plates. Two boys near the window looked familiar. They saw us and greeted us with great excitement because they were Bertrand [Elkan] and Charles [Blumenfeld], two older boys from La Hille who had arrived several days before.

They told us that there was no point in trying to get across the border into Switzerland because the Swiss government had ordered that asylum be given only to pregnant women and children. All other Jewish refugees were turned back to France, and many of them had fallen into the hands of the German henchmen who were patrolling the borders.⁴⁵

From a French Jewish welfare organization the boys had received a little money and rented a room in Lyon. They invited the two girls to sleep in this room.

They asked us to come just before the curfew hour and we tried to sneak into their room without being seen. It only had space for one double bed, and on it lay down 5 souls: the 4 of us, and also Friedl [Steinberg Urman from La Hille], who had come one day earlier. We were very careful not to make any noise or be excited.

The next morning we went to the Jewish welfare organization hoping to receive a little money and some advice. When Lixie and I started to climb up to the first floor, we heard screams and curses in German. We quickly ducked under the stairwell and witnessed a nightmarish scene. The Jewish workers of that office were coming down, their hands on their heads and German soldiers pushing them with the butts of their rifles. We heard screams outside and the noise of cars leaving, and then all was quiet. Quite a while passed before we mustered the courage to leave our hiding place. We had been silent witnesses to the end of the activities of this Jewish organization in Lyon.⁴⁶

Every day we searched through the local newspaper ads seeking farm workers, and returned to the Christian alms house to eat the daily soup. It was a watery liquid made from cabbage, squash, or turnips. It was the only food that touched our lips. Bertrand and Charles couldn’t stand the hunger anymore and decided to return to La Hille. I begged them, “Please don’t return to the castle. Spring is coming, and they will need helping hands in the fields. Somehow we will be able to survive.”

But they were determined to return. They were stopped by the French police, interned in a camp, and sent to the East where they perished. This is how we lost Bertrand with the shy smile, and the small, bright eyes. Because he was short, we had nicknamed him “Bébé” (Baby). He was very mature in his behavior, had a sharp mind, and was loved by all. The tall and handsome Charles was always carefully dressed and combed, gracious, and with perfect manners.

Ruth and Lixie did find a temporary hideout in a convent in Lyon and later sought refuge in various places throughout the region east of Lyon. After a stay in a convent near Grenoble—Lixie says it was Notre Dame de Sion—she found a connection to the French Fortrat family and stayed with them as a domestic for eighteen months under a fake name. Ruth began a series of short-lived and precarious stays with primitive farm families and then joined the French resistance as a messenger. Neither ever made it to Switzerland.⁴⁷

Two other groups got underway separately on December 31 in what proved to be perilous and ultimately disastrous attempts to find a route across the Swiss border.

Irène Frank in her personal diary described the human and emotional feelings that accompanied the leave-taking from close friends:⁴⁸

Sometimes 2 or 3 children would be missing at the breakfast table without informing anyone except perhaps Miss Näf. One day Inge Helft and Dela [Hochberger] came to see me and confided in me because we were fond of each other. Walter and Manfred [the Kamlet brothers] looked ashen and upset. I understood what the impending leave-taking meant for these infatuated young people, especially Walter.

More than any, these young people who know that they must continue to fight and struggle, but from then on alone, without their beloved one to help, torn away unmercifully, a light extinguished which in such a glow and purity would never return, a wound which would never quite heal.

The day before, Kurt Moser, twenty years old, noticed that sixteen of his companions had already left the château. “I felt a vast void,” he writes in his diary.⁴⁹ The next night at 2:00 a.m. he left La Hille accompanied by Kurt “Onze” Klein, who had just turned seventeen. Each carried 2,000 French francs, bread, cheese, and chocolate. The two went by bus and train to Toulouse, bought train tickets and spent the day in the station’s waiting room. The train left for Lyon at 7:25 p.m. “Seated in a compartment with two French policemen and a German soldier, ‘Onze’ wished them ‘Happy New Year’ on the way between Narbonne and Beziers,” Moser writes.⁵⁰ Little did they know that their own New Year would start off with very bad luck.

Moser notes that they were not “bothered” in Lyon because it was New Year’s Day. It was already dark when they arrived at Saint-Cergues and they headed immediately toward the Swiss border. At first they missed the barbed wire that was strung along the border. But then, “we’re in Switzerland!” A border guard spotted the pair and brought them to a small town’s police station. Because they were older than sixteen, without relatives in Switzerland and without identification papers, they would be returned to France. “I tried to escape but they caught me. They drove us back on a truck and we went through the barbed wire. We’re back in France. ‘Onze’ did not want to try it again, so we separated.”

“I climbed over a high barbed-wire fence but tore my hand. There were snow flurries and I didn’t know where to turn.” Through the night Moser lay in the snow. “Then I ran. The hills receded and I stayed on small paths. After about 10 kilometers, a small village! I see grey-green-clad patrols. They were German border police, who took me into their office. I was back in France! They took down my false identification: Karl-Heinz Flanter, born on December 28, 1926, in Hannover. I had worked on a farm in Saverdun. They fed me and treated my hand. In the evening they took me by sled to the police at Douvaine (another nearby town). I was searched and they took my money, watch, knife and briefcase.”⁵¹

The next morning the police took Moser to Thonon-les-Bains. He spent the night in “the dark cellar” behind bars. On January 5 he was transferred by train to nearby Annecy. At the jail gate another policeman had Walter Strauss in tow. Moser learned that Walter too was caught by French border guards. They are incarcerated together with other prisoners. The guards are nasty. He learns what happened to the other La Hille group of five and the story is not cheerful.

After interrogation by a local judge, Moser eventually was released and received the papers authorizing his travel back to La Hille, where he arrived on January 16, more than two weeks after he and “Onze” had fled. “‘Flanter’ once again became ‘Moser,’” he writes. “Many of the older boys and girls had gone. Irène Frank had been asked to leave for violating the rules.⁵²

And what happened to “Onze” Klein? He had enough of border crossings. “Onze” ran back to Saint-Cergues and from there to Annemasse. At night two German soldiers caught him on the street but his fake story during the interrogation about having to meet an uncle set him free and he caught the train to Lyon. There he was caught again and was able to go free with the same fake cover story. The German guards spoke French poorly and failed to detect his Viennese accent when he spoke French. Thus he, too, made it back to La Hille, but not without dangerous adventures, interrogations, and failing to escape to safety in Switzerland.⁵³

The attempted escape of five teenagers led by Walter Strauss turned into one of the two most tragic accidents of the La Hille history (the other occurred later on the way to Spain). Like Kurt Moser and “Onze,” Dela Hochberger from Berlin, Inge Helft from Wurzen, both aged sixteen, Manfred Vos from Cologne, aged eighteen, and Inge Joseph, aged seventeen from Darmstadt, left La Hille on New Year’s Eve 1942. Ruth Schütz (Usrad) was to have been one of the group members but stayed behind because she felt ill and did not want to hinder the escape’s success.⁵⁴ Walter, seventeen years old, from Duisburg, was one of the leaders of the La Hille colony, admired and respected by his peers (and was this author’s closest friend). He also was Inge Joseph’s boyfriend.

The five left the village near La Hille in the middle of the night and hiked the fifteen kilometers to the train station at St. Jean-de-Verges on the mainline to Toulouse. Arriving in Toulouse about 10:00 a.m., they separated, trying to evade the snooping German and French control personnel until the connecting train to Lyon was ready to leave in the late afternoon.⁵⁵ It is not known whether Kurt Moser and Kurt “Onze” Klein rode the same train, though the documents about their flight point in that direction. Similarly, Ruth Schütz and Lixie Grabkowicz would have been in Toulouse and on their way to Lyon that day or the next day or two.

The danger and the fears that confronted the fleeing teenagers are described graphically in the cited book by David Gumpert, nephew of Inge Joseph. Their train was filled with German soldiers and French strangers, any one of whom could have been a dedicated Nazi collaborator. Most of the La Hille teenagers did not speak perfect French and many had German accents. So silence was the order of the day and the ride to Annemasse, the target town near the Swiss border, lasted seventeen hours.

Somewhere along the way one of the Germans entered the group’s compartment, looking for a chess player. Walter Strauss volunteered, moved into the player’s compartment, and allowed the soldier to win some games, thus diverting attention from his uneasy group.⁵⁶ After they arrived in Annemasse, the walk to the Swiss Red Cross children’s home at Saint-Cergues eight kilometers to the northeast went smoothly.

But soon a frightening and disastrous series of events would lead to tragedy for the group and to far-reaching upheavals for the entire La Hille community. The available sources provide varying descriptions of the details and of the timing, yet even a general summary is graphic enough.

After a brief stay at the Swiss children’s home of Saint-Cergues, the group of five headed toward the nearby border area, which was covered with snow. A number of the La Hille refugees were guided to the border by Renée Farny, the aide at the Saint-Cergues colony. Mlle Farny apparently was not present and the five refugees had to find their own way.⁵⁷ It was pitch dark and snowing heavily when they arrived at the barbed wire. They crawled under it one after the other and continued through bushes and fields, looking for the road to Geneva. Instead they reached another barbed wire. Confused and already lost, they decided to cross that wire as well. Moving forward and hoping the road to Geneva was near, they instead encountered a third barbed wire fence. They realized that they were lost and after much discussion, continued along the fence toward some trees. Soon they saw a light at a house some distance away. It was decided that Walter would go ahead alone and explore. The others would wait for his return. If, for some reason, he did not come back, they would go in a different direction.⁵⁸

Walter did not return as promised, and after much discussion his four companions took the fatal step of following him toward the house with the light. As they approached the building a German border guard arrested them. When they were marched to a larger building ten minutes away, conversation among the German-speaking guards indicated that Walter apparently had been caught by French soldiers who were alternating with the German border patrol. When they arrived at the Hotellerie Savoyarde, site of the German border police, they were subjected to lengthy interrogations.⁵⁹

Two of the girls and Manfred Vos admitted their real identities and that they had come from the Château de La Hille, while Inge Joseph steadfastly stuck to her fake name and cover story, in spite of typical interrogation trickery. The German commandant, interviewing Inge for the third time that evening, pounded his desk and threatened that she would face a firing squad at 7:00 a.m.

During the night she asked a guard for permission to use the bathroom. There she found a window, pried it open and jumped to the snow-covered ground. Though a hunt was quickly organized, the panicked Inge burrowed into the snow and managed to escape.⁶⁰ The next morning, a Sunday, Inge had made her way to the Swiss Poupon-nière (nursery) at Annemasse, where she encountered Mme Germaine Hommel, the director at Saint-Cergues, who was visiting there and unaware of the fleeing group. She brought Inge back to Saint-Cergues and hid her there.⁶¹

Word of the tragic turn of events had spread quickly. Rösli Näf had arrived at Saint-Cergues from La Hille on Saturday, concerned about the several groups of her teenagers who had planned to cross illegally into Switzerland with her support. Upset by the misfortune, Mme Hommel was anxious to meet with Mlle Näf and accidentally found her at the Annemasse train station, already on her way back to La Hille. By a strange coincidence they also spotted Walter Strauss who was being escorted, in handcuffs, by French police. The policemen allowed him to speak with Rösli Näf to whom he reported his version of what happened to his group before he was caught by a French border guard.⁶² The gendarmes then led him off to a French jail where he would meet Kurt Moser, who had been apprehended after the Swiss guards pushed him back over the French border.

On Monday at noon, Maurice Dubois, chief of the Secours Swiss operations in France, telephoned Mme Hommel for details after Rösli Näf had alerted him to the problems. He urged Mme Hommel to get the inside story from the local authorities and she connected with the German border guards at the Hotellerie who informed her about the interrogations. They referred her to the main office at Annemasse where she learned that Manfred Vos, Inge Helft, and Dela Hochberger had already been sent to Lyon, where they were delivered to the German authorities.⁶³ From Lyon they were brought to the deportation transit camp of Drancy near Paris, deported, and murdered in Auschwitz.

On February 18, Kurt Moser (by then back at La Hille) records in his diary that the three had written to their friends at La Hille from Drancy. “On the 9th they were deported to an unknown destination.”⁶⁴ All three were indeed sent to Auschwitz from Drancy on Transport No. 46 on February 9, 1943.⁶⁵

Encouraged by the Swiss personnel at Saint-Cergues, Inge Joseph made two more attempts to get across the Swiss border at night in the following days. She made it the second time, found the road to Geneva and came close to Lake Geneva. A Swiss guard stopped her; she was brought to a police station for interrogation, and again pushed back across the French border. The young La Hille refugees could not know that the Swiss authorities had decided on December 29 to return illegal immigrants to France if they were found within twelve kilometers of the border. Before that date they were allowed to stay if they had managed to cross the border.⁶⁶

From a small French police station Inge was taken with twenty other “violators” to a prison in Annecy, a French city near the border area. After three days, awaiting appearance before a judge, she could not believe her eyes when she spotted her friend Walter Strauss waiting in the same courtroom. Mme Hommel of the Saint-Cergues colony, who knew the judge, facilitated their release and they traveled together on the train back to La Hille.⁶⁷

Although he was caught, Walter Strauss was lucky to be arrested by a French border policeman instead of by the Germans. During the usual interrogation he protected his Swiss caretakers and lied that he had stolen the food and the money that they had found on him. As with all the other fleeing La Hille teenagers, it was Rösli Näf who had provisioned him with money and food. Before he encountered Inge, Walter had been taken before a magistrate at the border town of St. Julien. There Mme Hommel had vouched for him and testified about his leadership role at La Hille.⁶⁸

What caused this tragic mishap when others of the La Hille colony were able to cross successfully in the same area? The January 8, 1943, report by Mme Hommel states that the Strauss group was caught at Machilly, a small border village near Saint-Cergues. In that area Switzerland pokes into France like a thumb. If one crossed the barbed wire from near Saint-Cergues into Switzerland, one would reach the other side of this thumb just a short distance away and be back in France. On her third crossing, Inge Joseph discovered that mistake and avoided it. Attempting this crossing in unfamiliar territory at night and in deep snow, as the group did, they had fallen victim to this peculiar border configuration.

Besides the deportation and deaths in the failed attempt, dire and reprehensible repercussions were quick to follow in other directions and up the ladder to the governing officials in Switzerland. A disgruntled staff member at the Swiss Red Cross office in Annemasse, a Mr. Kuesner, was present and overheard part of Mme Hommel’s report about the arrests to her superior, Mme Marthe Terrier. Without knowing the full story, and intent to denounce Rösli Näf and Mme Hommel, he traveled to Geneva on January 5 and gave a distorted verbal report to local Swiss Red Cross authorities, including Max Zürcher. Based on what he heard, Zürcher immediately notified Col. Hugo Remund, the chief of the Secours Suisse, in Bern. Upset and angry, Remund ordered the dismissal of Rösli Näf and Mme Hommel without awaiting information from Maurice Dubois who had already been briefed by Mlle Näf on January 3 in Toulouse where she had stopped on her way back from Annemasse. Dubois in turn visited La Hille on January 5 and, with Mlle Näf, checked on the reaction of the Ariège Préfecture officials who declined to act—“toute l’affaire serait étouffée” (what happened would be swept under the rug).⁶⁹

On January 9, Dubois traveled to the Swiss town of Moillesulaz in the border area near Saint-Cergues and met with his superiors, Zürcher and Olgiati, to discuss the details and consequences of the incident. He also defended the involvement and actions of the two accused women (Näf and Hommel) and objected to their dismissal.⁷⁰

Col. Remund, putting more credence into Kuesner’s faulty allegations, labeled the versions told by Dubois and Mme Terrier as “largely incorrect.” He requested Swiss ambassador Walter Stucki (in Vichy) to order the accused female staff members back to Switzerland. Because the border had been closed, Stucki decided to question Maurice Dubois, Germaine Hommel, and Rösli Näf at his office in Vichy. He interviewed Dubois and Hommel on January 11. Rösli Näf had missed her train and was interrogated the following day, also with Dubois present. On the first day Dubois had defended the role of Mlle Näf, withheld his knowledge of her collaboration with Renée Farny, and admitted that at least twenty-four teenagers had escaped from La Hille in the waning days of 1942.

The ambassador emphasized that Rösli Näf was neither entitled, nor capable, to judge the political situation nor the danger to the children under her care. According to records obtained by Antonia Schmidlin, Mlle Näf stated that she recognized that she had acted inappropriately and that she wished, for the sake of the Red Cross, to be recalled to Switzerland.⁷¹

It is interesting to note that the ambassador summoned Rösli Näf back to his office from her Vichy hotel after office hours that day and frankly told her that he was proud of her actions and wished that more Swiss citizens had the courage she had displayed. “His attitude was different from that morning. More than I had realized then, he understood the situation of our children. His remarks were like balm on my desperation and insecurity.”⁷²

Ambassador Stucki also wrote to Col. Remund as follows: “To you I need to emphasize that had Mlle Näf or Mr. Dubois asked my advice before Christmas (which he tried to do but failed to reach me), I would have had to answer truthfully that after November 11, 1942, [when the Germans occupied all of France] Mr. Laval [the French premier] is no longer capable of maintaining any assurance he might have given us. Personally I am convinced that these Jewish children, aged over 16, would have fallen into the hands of the Germans sooner or later, and actually will.”⁷³

Worried more about offending the Nazis than saving the Jewish children, Col. Remund felt obliged to inform, in ingratiating fashion, General Director Walther Georg Hartmann of the German Red Cross in Berlin “about the regrettable incidents which occurred recently in one of our children’s homes in France” and that four Jewish children were arrested at the border by French and German authorities. He felt it was important that Hartmann learn of this first-hand from him before other reports would reach him and he assured the German that he had already taken the necessary measures to prevent any recurrence.⁷⁴ For good measure, Remund also notified the Swiss embassy in Berlin, in case there were German inquiries.

The management committee of the Secours Suisse discussed the border events and action to be taken at its meeting in Bern on January 26. Col. Remund criticized Rösli Näf severely during his review of the incidents and the result of Ambassador Stucki’s interviews in Vichy. There was pro and con discussion about the dismissals of the three women (Näf, Hommel, and Farny) and it was decided that all three should be replaced, leaving it to Maurice Dubois to reassign or dismiss them.

During this meeting the fate of the ten La Hille refugees who had successfully crossed the border was also discussed. The week before, Edouard de Haller, the Swiss government official assigned to oversee the Swiss Red Cross, had requested that Col. Remund research their whereabouts with the help of the border police. Each had a Swiss godparent family that was ready to accept them in their homes. Typical of the attitudes of higher officials of that period, de Haller stated that “by escaping, these children have lost the protection of the Secours Suisse. It would lead to a dangerous outcome if we now rewarded them for their transgression.” However, no action was taken.⁷⁵