Vor dem großen Tor
Stand eine Laterne
Und steht sie noch davor
So woll'n wir uns da wieder seh'n
Bei der Laterne wollen wir steh'n
Wie einst Lili Marleen – Wie einst Lili Marleen.*
“Lili Marleen”
Lyrics of Hans Leip (1915) and music of Norbert Schultze (1938)
However dreadful it had seemed to be, the German repression machine collapsed in the face of the liberating forces, and the Vaucluse witnessed its crumbling under the pounding of the western allied armies. First, bombs landed on strategic spots: train tracks and roundhouses, bridges and main roads, material and ammunition depots, airfields. The retreating German army rushed into the Rhône valley where it became a prime target for the allied air force. British Spitfires hedgehopped just above the cypresses. From the roof tops, in the darkness of the sky, the air base of Orange was set ablaze. Gruesome rumors spread across the Vaucluse: national highway 7 was strewn with German bodies amid scattered heaps of military vehicles, weapons and supplies.
No sooner was the last German soldier out of sight, that the towns and villages resounded with a parody of “Lili Marleen”—the old time favorite of the Afrika-Korps, made famous in English, on the allied side, by Marlene Dietrich in 1943. During recess, children broke into this song of revenge.
In front of the barracks,
A German soldier,
Is mounting guard,
While sniveling.
I ask him: why are you crying?
He answers me: we’ve had it!
The Russians are right on our tail - The Russians are right on our tail.
In the school children’s song, the demons of the German occupation were still present, the fear that they inspired had not yet vanished. One makes a mockery of what had been a source of terror, and we are almost convinced that the Germans were just clowns. But not just yet, because, for many, the wounds had not yet healed.
At the conclusion of this study about the Vaucluse, in looking at our return to the past, may be in itself a lingering exorcism of those early daemons, we are overwhelmed by the power of the Nazi police machinery, even if it broke down in the face of the massive attacks of the allied forces. The German police tracked down and turned Resistance fighters to discover the hideouts of the Maquis-Ventoux, at the edge of the Vaucluse. We have seen how that police unleashed the massive fire power of the German army—a detachment composed of a ground crew of the Luftwaffe, SS, members of the “Brandebourg Division,” and Militia men. We have witnessed the massacre without hesitation of 35 Résistance fighters, who were surprised in their sleep. The disparity between that war machine and its victims was overpowering.
This was the same police apparatus the Jews of the Vaucluse had to face. They could all have been discovered and reduced to dust—every single one of them, since they carried so little weight. The machine had the means to do it, and furthermore, its bosses in Berlin had devoted all their energies to the elimination of the Jews. If in the Vaucluse the German police did not fulfill the desires of its leaders, it is because, under the pressure of events, it did not put the extermination of the Jews at the top of the list of its objectives.
One still trembles at the thought that it could have done so, that it makes us feel the urge to start singing the parody of “Lili Marleen” all over again.
____________________
* In front of the barracks,
At the dawn of day,
The old street light suddenly flares up and shines.
It’s in that corner that at night
We wait for each other, filled with hope
The two of us, Lily Marlène. (First verse of the French version by Henry Lemarchand in 1940)