Nîmes Committee (Camp Committee)

Leadership

Nimes Committee, Nimes Coordination Committee for Relief Work in Internment Camps, (Comité des Camps Nimes), France, 1940-1945

(American Friends’ Service Committee Archives, Philadelphia, PA; Nimes Committee Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, NYC; USHMM, Washington, Philadelphia; Unitarian Service Committee Archives, USHMM, Washington, DC; Nîmes Committee Records, YIVO Archives NYC; Minutes, Nîmes Committee meeting November 1940, Varian Fry Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; Bauer, 1981, pp. 161-164; Fry, 1945, pp. 18, 19, 80; Gourfinkel, 1953; Lazare, 1996, p. 294; Lemalet, 1993; Lowrie, 1963; Marrus & Paxton, 1981, pp. 162-163, 260, 261, 267; Rayski, 2005, pp. 107, 341n15; Ryan, 1996, pp. 90, 148-149, 152, 163, 167; Samuel, 2002; Suback, 2010)

The Nîmes Coordinating Committee, also known as Nimes Coordination Committee for Relief Work in Internment Camps, (Comité des Camps Nimes), the Camps Committee, was established in Toulouse, France, in November 1940.  It was created as an umbrella organization of 25 refugee organizations to help coordinate the relief efforts in the French concentration camps in the Southern Zone.  The Camps Committee provided food, medicine, clothing to the beleaguered refugees trapped in the French-run concentration camps.  The conditions in the camps were abysmal, and the mortality rate in some cases reached 10% annually.  The Nîmes Committee was run by a number of refugee and relief agencies, including the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), headed by Donald Lowrie, the American Friends’ Service Committee (Quakers), the Unitarians, under Dr. Charles J. Joy, the American Red Cross, Secours Suisse, French Red Cross, Secours National, CIMADE, SSAE and Amitié Chrétienne.

The Nîmes Committee worked closely with both the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and HIAS, who helped support the operation.  The Nîmes Committee also worked with a number of local consulates, particularly the Portuguese, Spanish, American, Chinese and Czech.  They obtained valuable documents, including visas and transit papers, which enabled Jewish refugees to leave the camps and eventually escape Southern France.

There were six prominent Jewish organizations that participated in the rescue and relief activities with the Camps Committee.  They included CCOJA, CAR, EIF, OSE, FSJ, HICEM, JDC.  Joseph Weill and Julien Samuel worked with the Camps Commission and arranged for shipments of food and medicine into the French camps.  Herbert Katzki and Joseph J. Schwartz, of the JDC, negotiated with French officials to alleviate the conditions in the camps and gain the release of refugees.

Chapter 8: The Nimes Committee, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

With the YMCA office established in Marseilles, I began contacts with various agencies working in camps. Already a score of organizations were engaged in helping refugees, in or out of camps, but I soon discovered that in general each was working in its own specialized field, with quite insufficient knowledge of what others were doing. So I began a series of calls on the principal agencies, suggesting some better coordination of our efforts.

There was an almost comic element in my taking this initiative. Although I was now officially working under the World's YMCA in Geneva, and had a gold-sealed document attesting to the fact, and although Geneva had assigned a budget for our work, that office had neglected to send me any money or even inform me that funds were available. Now, I couldn't (p. 83) provide libraries and orchestras for a dozen camps on the small amount of relief funds left in our cash box after the expenditures for the soldiers' club and a children's chateau in Pau and considerable general relief. Here I was, representing a world organization, with almost no money to start my work. I had to think of some useful service that would cost nothing. I had first broached my idea in Vichy.

To my question, "Would you think it useful to attempt to coordinate the work of these agencies?" the Minister of the Interior replied: "What an excellent idea! Why don't you do it? You have my official request, and my backing for whatever you can work out."

This was the origin of the "Coordination Committee for Relief Work in Inter[n]ment Camps," soon to become known across all of southern France as the "Nimes Committee," because the lovely Old Roman city of Nimes, near the geographic center of the score of relief agencies at work in camps, was the site of the Committee's monthly meetings. The idea of a coordinating organ for unofficial groups (the later term was NGO for Non-Governmental Organizations) was readily accepted by almost all the agencies. Someone remarked to me at the time: "If you can coordinate the Quakers you will accomplish something no one has ever done yet," but I have to record that no other organization collaborated more wholeheartedly with the Committee throughout the whole of its existence.

On November 5, 1940, we held a small preparatory meeting at Quaker headquarters in Toulouse, and on the 20th the first organization meeting took place in Nimes. Officers were elected and I was chosen chairman, a position I held until German occupation of southern France forced me to move to Switzerland. One meeting of the Committee was held after that, but regular operation under the Germans was manifestly impossible, and the removal to inter[n]ment in Baden-Baden of many of its members practically closed the Committee's history. (p. 84) At our first meeting we agreed that monthly meetings would be held, and we chose an executive committee among organizations stationed in Marseilles to take any interim action necessary.

I do not recall that the Committee ever had a treasurer, or even a budget. The YMCA office in Marseilles was chosen as headquarters, and was to take care of all the necessary clerical work: circulation of minutes and reports or other Committee business. By this time I had received funds from Geneva and could comfortably offer this service.

Our first meeting set the tone for cordial and complete cooperation that never failed throughout the Committee's life. As I opened that initial session I glanced at the alert faces around the long table. What a gamut of nationalities and interests they represented! Of the twenty-five member agencies of the Committee that day, five were world organizations, a dozen others were national, like the American Friends of Czechoslovakia, the American Joint Distribution Committee, the American Friends Service Committee, the "Belgian Office" or the Swiss Aid for Children. Some were religious, some not, such as the French Red Cross or the International Migration Service.

Besides those just named, we had the Polish Red Cross and YMCA, the French YMCA and YWCA, two instances of joint representation, the French Student Christian Association, the Unitarian Service Committee, The World's Alliance of YMCAs, the French Committee in Aid of Jewish Refugees, ORT (Jewish technical education organization), OSE (Jewish children's relief agency), the European Student Relief, the Central Jewish Committee of Relief Organizations, the French Protestant Federation, the CIMADE, a joint relief agency of French Protestant youth organizations, HICEM, the Jewish emigration society, RELICO, a Jewish organization for health and medical service, the Catholic Centre d' Accueil, and a personal delegate of Cardinal Gerlier.

For many agencies, less well known to French officialdom (p. 85) than the YMCA or the International Migration Service, membership in the Committee gave official recognition and approval of their work. The Polish Red Cross, for instance, at a time when Poland no longer existed so far as official France was concerned, was enabled to continue its efforts on behalf of the thousands of Polish refugees almost until the German occupation of the whole of France. The Belgian Office, a sort of combined Red Cross and unofficial consular service, came under the Nimes Committee umbrella, whereas the Nazis, had they been consulted, would never have permitted any Belgian organization to exist.

Even purely French organizations, by the very fact of their existence only in unoccupied France, were in spirit anti-Nazi, and hence suspect by the German-controlled government in Vichy. It was not strange that the Vichy Secretary of State called the European Fund for Student Relief, "Fond Europeen de Secours aux Etudiants," the "Front for Student Relief." And with the steadily increasing anti-Semitic pressures in Vichy, Jewish organizations in particular needed coverage and protection.

One of the outstanding achievements of the Nimes Committee was the complete and sympathetic collaboration of Christians and Jews. The majority of all refugees, inmates of internment camps or living outside, were Jews, but of the twenty-five organizations meeting in Nimes only six were Jewish. Despite religious differences, the services coordinated by the Nimes Committee were available to all refugees, without distinction. And in frequent cases where it seemed diplomatic for a Jewish organization not to appear in the picture, some special project would be turned over for execution to the French Protestant CIMADE or to the Quakers, the Jews simply providing the necessary funds.

As the anti-Semitic influence in Vichy became more dominant, there were frequent instances where Jewish organizations working alone were refused permission for new projects but where collaboration in the Committee made these possible. (page 86) Our presentation and recommendation of these programs often secured the necessary authorization.

Then, although the Nimes Committee sedulously avoided politics, the overriding sympathy of all its members was wholeheartedly with the Allied cause, and a spirit of mutual confidence developed which was one of the most gratifying elements in its operation. This fact of both organizational and spiritual unity gave the Committee, with all its international connections, a prestige and influence with French authorities that proved to be of even more significance than coordination of effort. Coordination was achieved, the tasks of each organization defined, information shared and resources pooled, and from the purely functional viewpoint the Committee would have amply justified itself. But with no primary intention of so doing, it also became the sole defender of the interests of a hundred thousand otherwise defenseless refugees. All these helpless people, German Socialists, Poles or Belgians for instance, were officially or de facto stateless. No consular or other governmental office existed to concern itself with their affairs, to aid in such legal procedures as visas and emigration or to protest mounting injustices culminating in deportation to the extermination camps in Poland. So, soon after its inception, the Comite de Nimes found that it could-and must-speak with one voice to Nazi-dominated officialdom, and found also that in most cases it would be heard. As a matter of fact, within a few months after the Committee began to function ministers in Vichy, realizing how much the various relief agencies could ease their own tasks, began presenting problems to the Committee, instead of vice versa. On one occasion Vichy requested that organizations in the Committee, established officially for aid to refugees, extend their services to camps where French citizens were interned.

Happily, most of the Committee's relations with Vichy were not in the form of protests. By viewing the situation from the internees' standpoint and collecting data on one or another problem, the Committee was often able to present (page 87) possible solutions and even to propose cooperative effort by government and private agencies. Such suggestions were usually accepted by Vichy. One worker wrote after a Nimes Committee meeting: "The acceptance of these propositions will practically revolutionize the lives of sixty thousand unfortunate people in camps."

Soon the Committee's meetings came to be the high points in the lives of relief workers in Vichy France. Morning trains from east and west arrived at Nimes at about the same hour, and all-day meetings in the comfortable Hotel Imperator could begin by 10: 00 A.M., finishing late in the afternoon. The noonday luncheon, perhaps only because of the company, always seemed a bit more appetizing than the sometimes strange fare served in most French restaurants, all operating under near-famine conditions.

At a meeting the group around the long table might include from twenty-five to forty persons, of the most varied types. There was Abbe G[lassberg]. of Jewish origin, now one of the leading Catholic social workers in France. Among the official representatives of the American Friends Service Committee were a Danish lady and a Russian princess; there was a former ambassador and an ex-consul general. The representatives of Jewish organizations were equally varied. There was a young American, baffled and frightened by his first experience in a strange country and still more by the anti-Semitic atmosphere in which he had to work, yet with no idea of retiring, as he might have, to safer and more normal Lisbon; there was also one of the outstanding authorities on jurisprudence of imperial St. Petersburg, a gray-bearded veteran of many battles for social justice. Like this man, several other Committee members were experienced in relief work during World War I and later. There was usually a visitor officially permitted to come from occupied France, like the charming and courageous Madame Chevalley of the International Migration Service, who brought news from the other side of the demarcation line. Sometimes one or more representatives of some (p. 88) Vichy ministry were present, and on one occasion the Inspector General of Camps himself.

What did we discuss in these monthly meetings at Nimes? Everything concerning the lives and conditions of refugees, in camps or outside, even on occasion those outside metropolitan France, as when we dealt with refugee situations in Colomb-Bechar or Casablanca. We always had a general survey of the state of affairs in various camps, changes in administration or legislation concerning refugees, and a report of what each organization had been doing during the past month. As time went on and the agencies became more closely acquainted, the number of joint projects constantly increased: the Jews or the Quakers would open a home for children, the Unitarians would provide medicines or educational personnel, and the YMCA the library, with the French Red Cross responsible for legal arrangements and permissions from Vichy. With constant changes of personnel in the ministries and what seemed like perpetual movement of refugees from one camp to another or even the closure of certain camps resulting in part from pressure by our Committee, at each monthly session we faced new conditions and had to adjust to altered situations. At one meeting, for instance, I could report that our proposal for opening a new camp for internees over sixty had been accepted, and at the next we assigned to Committee members the different tasks of equipment, health and cultural services in the new location.

Some items from the minutes of a meeting in October, 1941, are illustrative of our work. All Committee records were seized by the Germans when they occupied Marseilles, but for some reason this report survived. "The transfer of children from Argeles to Rivesaltes is practically complete." (The first groups were transferred without any preparatory disinfection precautions, so they took with them to a comparatively clean camp all the filth and illnesses from Argeles.) "Despite the rude climate, the fleas and the rats, Rivesaltes is preferable to the degrading atmosphere of Argeles. It will be necessary (p. 89) to check on feeding. The American Red Cross is asked to provide supplementary food for the children.

"New measures of 'recruitment' for the foreign labor groups are discussed. Thousands of refugees living in towns on state subsidies, including men ill with t.b., have been taken. The Committee Chairman is asked to intercede with Vichy, especially for students, some of whom have been removed just before their examinations.

"The new apprentice school planned by the ORT organization has not been opened because the authorities requisitioned the premises already rented for that purpose. Other buildings are being sought. But the apprentice courses in Rivesaltes are already functioning."

Another minute reports that an exhibit of handicraft by the inhabitants of Gurs had just been held. "It was most successful, but how are we to sell the products without risking damage to the national economy of France?

"The delegate of Cardinal Gerlier reports that three hundred Catholics, former German and Austrian citizens, are to emigrate to Ecuador. He hopes this will create a precedent, and that many others may escape by this method.

"Some organizations are having difficulty with permission to enter some camps. A circular issued at our request by the Prefecture at Marseilles has not had the effect desired. It is decided that the Chairman will present a complete list of representatives of all our agencies and secure block permits on his next trip to Vichy."

Thanks to the complete cooperation of the Committee members and our avoidance of political discussions, the Nimes Committee quickly acquired status and influence which its members individually could never have had. As its chairman, I was able to meet with anyone in Vichy we thought it useful to interview.

Money came to us in various ways, legal and illegal, mostly the latter. As a matter of fact, I did not always understand the processes myself. One day in Marseilles a man I had never (p. 90) seen before came into my office "with a message from Mr. Marshall." Mr. Marshall was an American businessman whose acquaintance I had made on one of my trips to Vichy, and with whom I had once discussed the problem of money transfers. I had not seen him for weeks. Now here was his message: "Mr. Marshall thinks it would be good if you were in a room in the Hotel Terminus in Lyon between twelve and two next Wednesday." Looking up railroad schedules, I found there was a good train from Marseilles that would land me in Lyon shortly before noon, and that another left Lyon at 2:10 for Marseilles. Although I was a regular client of the Hotel Terminus, which is a part of the Lyon railroad station, and could always count on being lodged there, somehow, I took no chances on this occasion and wired for a reservation several days ahead.

My room was ready when I reached Lyon and from noon on I dutifully waited to see what would happen. An hour passed. Then the telephone rang, but it was a call for a Monsieur de Couderque, either someone who had recently occupied this room or perhaps an error by the hotel telephone operator. The lady begged my pardon. One-fifteen, and still nothing happened. I had read from beginning to end every paper I had brought with me; newspapers were slim things at best in those days of paper shortage. French hotels never having heard of the Gideons, there was nothing else in that room to read, and if I left the room long enough to buy more reading matter on the station platform, that might be the moment my expected visitor would arrive. Nothing to do but pace the floor. A quarter before two, and still no sign of action: was the whole thing a mistake? Had something happened to whom? I was closing the small suitcase I had brought, when at five minutes before two there was a knock at my door. I opened it to a stranger, who entered, gave me a quick looking over and asked, "You are Mr. Lowrie?" I nodded. Without further word the man handed me a parcel about the size of a paving brick wrapped in newspaper, and turned to leave. (p. 91) "Don't miss your train," he reminded me, as he was closing the door on his way out. Stuffing the package into my suitcase, I ran for my train. No receipt of any kind was asked or given. Back in my Marseilles office I opened the parcel: it contained a million five hundred thousand francs in beautiful, new one thousand france banknotes. Even at the then fallen rate of exchange, this represented five thousand real dollars. I knew this transaction was the result of that one conversation in Vichy about exchange, but w ~at and who had come between then and my receipt of the money, I do not know to this day.

Usually under-the-counter exchange operations were not quite so mysterious, although they always had to be secret. We had a code expression for these transactions: "the available balance." Sometimes in a conversation you would be given the name of a man who possessed francs; you went to see him, and the arrangement was made. Sometimes an organization- the Polish Red Cross for example-had an exchange arrangement they kindly shared with others. For a considerable time one perfectly legal method of obtaining a better than official exchange rate was to turn dollars into French francs in Switzerland, and bring the currency into France: while you had to declare the amount you were carrying, there was no legal limit to the sum you might be transporting. But, as one of my reports to New York headquarters, written from outside France, reads, "the 'available balance' system works smoothly and gives better results than can be had in Switzerland." The same report continued: "I am cabling you today to deposit five thousand dollars as the last time ... As regards further operations, you will have to trust us and make deposits where and as we request."

There were rare men-the secretary of the Reformed Church at N., an anonymous Venezuelan in Lyon, and Monsieur Bernard, devoted French patriot later shot by the Germans- who managed more or less regularly to cross the line of demarcation, sometimes smuggling in packets of French banknotes, with instructions as to where the equivalent dollars (p. 92) were to be deposited in the States or in Berne.

Monsieur Bernard seemed to have a special guardian angel, for he crossed the line about once a month and was never apprehended by the German police until southern France was occupied. When he was finally arrested, a Frenchman and fellow patriot, not a German, was responsible. Bernard had called on a wealthy industrialist in his home in Lyon to arrange for an unusually large transfer of funds. As was not at all unusual, the two men had met for the first time. When Bernard was leaving, the valet, handing him his overcoat, noticed that it had been purchased in Vienna. He immediately suspected that Bernard was a provocateur, sent by the Germans to trap the industrialist. Here was a tragic predicament. The industrialist could believe Bernard was who he claimed to be, and carry through the arrangement, involving no small risk, as they both knew. But suppose he was a German agent? In that case, the only way for the industrialist to avoid arrest and almost certain death would be to report at once that Bernard had approached him. If, on the other hand, Bernard was honest, reporting him would deliver a fellow patriot to Nazi executioners. After anxious consideration, it was decided to inform the Gestapo, and when Bernard called the second time, as agreed, they were waiting for him.

Of course these complicated and clandestine exchange operations could get out of hand. With almost no written records, no one's memory could be infallible, and sometimes something other than perfect order prevailed. The experience of one prominent member of our Nimes Committee in this connection is illustrative. Like all the rest of us, he was concerned with a number of different operations: supporting persons and organizations aiding Jewish refugees to escape, financing part of the French underground, as well as carrying out the nominal work of his own organization. This man had not had much experience in financial matters, and out of need he began to use what funds he happened to have on hand for one or another of his projects without too much regard for the actual designation of the money. No one ever doubted his absolute honesty, but matters became so complicated that, once the war was over and attempts to bring financial order out of chaos had proved hopeless, his sketchy records were simply destroyed, all concerned agreeing that the man had done an excellent job. After all, it was part of the common cause.

Occasionally in the money business we encountered peril from within our own ranks. The pastor who was one of the vice-presidents of the Nimes Committee left his briefcase, containing some financial and other papers of a thoroughly "classified" nature, in a train. Although, in consequence, his home was ransacked by the police, no one of our other organizations suffered the special police attention we expected. Another time our YMCA cashier in Geneva, as unimaginative as he was honest, sent me via open post some monthly accounts including details on certain "available balance" transactions. Again, as by a miracle, this letter seemed to have been unopened by censors.

There were occasions when gray-market financial arrangements were accepted by officialdom itself. At one moment a certain Czechoslovak we suspected of Nazi leanings, who seemed to have undue influence in Vichy, tried to persuade the government to liquidate the Czech Aid and appoint a special French committee to take over our work. By some clever negotiating in Vichy, om men were able to reach an agreement and form a small committee, under the patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that would administer relief to Czechoslovaks. To this committee we ref erred a score of names that could be sent to Vichy without danger to the persons themselves, while continuing-without saying so aloud-all the rest of our Czech Aid operations as before. It was agreed that I, as president of the Czech Aid, would send twenty thousand francs per month to the new committee. Consequently, I received a letter from the Vichy Foreign Office instructing me to transmit French francs in banknotes (p. 94) to the new committee, via the French Consul General in Geneva. Such transmission of banknotes, purchasable in Switzerland at a third of the official exchange rate, was by this time illegal, but I could soon show an official receipt for my first official black-market transaction.

Of course we had no bank accounts. Some of the organizations had office safes where currency could be kept. Our improvised YMCA office in Marseilles had none, so most of the time our entire capital was stored in a suitcase under the bed in our hotel room. There were times when this treasure amounted to more than a million francs.

Another financial headache affecting most of our relief agencies was the matter of transferring funds to individuals near us, in camps or outside. Sometimes money would come from a New York or a Lisbon office, the amount indicated in dollars: "Transmit to Hans Schelling $10.00." Now at what rate of exchange should we pay Hans Schelling the ten dollars his brother in New York was sending him-at the legal rate or something three times as good? If Schelling chanced to tell the wrong person that he had received an "extralegal" rate, that might get us into trouble: if he was normally intelligent he would know the common gossip among refugees about gray-market rates, and so might reasonably expect us to use this figure in paying out his brother's transfer. We all decided to make individual transfers only at the legal exchange rates. This was sure to cause criticism among refugees, but it was safer for all concerned.

Even if we remained completely within legality, transfers to individuals brought frequent difficulties with the police. Sometimes requests for transmission to individuals came from an organization like the British Red Cross: there would be a list of names with no indication of the identity of the individual senders. Some British licenses forbade the agency to reveal the senders' names. In one such case the Quakers had an unpleasant time with the police because they had transmitted a considerable sum to the wife of an officer known to be with (p. 95) de Gaulle. Another agency received a list of persons, each of whom was to receive the same amount. All of these men were known to be politically suspect, and again the police came inquiring. Since it was not the function of a transmitting agency to investigate the political loyalties of a person to whom money was sent, any more than the use to which it was put, the situation was awkward in the extreme. One of the largest American organizations in Marseilles was quite sure that it was being used to "contribute to the support in France of the dependents of many persons in the Free French forces abroad." But the recipients would otherwise have been destitute, so transfers continued until the German occupation.

Receiving money from abroad was one thing; delivery was quite another. Six months might elapse between Solly Kahan's appeal to a relative in New York and the arrival of an answering check. In that time Kahan had probably left the camp from which he first wrote, might have lived somewhere outside for a while, been reinterned (because the check had not reached him and he was again penniless), or perhaps was in hiding. When the German occupation closed all our agencies, the undelivered "transit" amounts totaled several million francs. However, French citizens left in charge of American offices succeeded in distributing the greater part of these funds to their destinations. The remainder soon became valueless through wartime inflation.

[Lowrie, 1963, pp. 82-95]

Chapter 13: Service in the Camps, The Nimes Committee, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

By the beginning of 1941 the outside world began to hear about the camps we were serving. The New York Times carried a two-column article, "Misery and Death in French Camps." Gurs was the camp most talked about, but it was by no means unique. Despite the removal of able-bodied men to work battalions and the trickle of successful emigration, the population of the camps remained stable. As refugees living outside became indigent, they were forced to move into the shelter centers. By the end of the year only a few hundred men and women had been liberated from the repression camps; the camps for the aged and the invalids were always filled to capacity.

Food conditions were deplorable: a Friends Service Committee report noted that "what was supplied by the government (p. 134) was sufficient for only two thirds of the inmates" of Gurs. The OSE managed early in the year to take a hundred children from Gurs to a home they established in Limoges. From that place came this letter: "I have seen hundreds of children in Russia, Hungary and Poland after pogroms or famine, but none like those we have just received from Gurs. . . . Passengers in the train that brought them were moved to tears by the sight of the starved youngsters. At Toulouse, doctors forbade us to move them further, as the children were too weak to stand more travel."

Each camp had a series of hospital barracks for treating those in danger of death from undernourishment. Many of the patients were stricken with famine dropsy: others were skin and bone-literally.

With camp populations including so many old folks, so many already ill, conditions were reflected in the mortality rate; an average of twenty persons per day, at the worst.

[…]

Into this "unbreathable atmosphere of human helplessness" came our various relief agencies. And at once, if only slowly, improvement began. After blankets and disinfectants, the most important relief was food. As with all other phases of relief, feeding in camps was well coordinated: the Joint Distribution Committee placed in the hands of camp directors funds for supplementing the adults' ration. By operating in local markets, agents from camps could purchase foods Vichy could not even requisition. The Quakers and the Swiss Aid set up special feeding kitchens. Thanks to the collaboration (p. 135) of relief agencies, an extra meal given daily was saving literally thousands of lives. For one camp the Swiss Aid gave a daily ration to two hundred men chosen by the camp doctor as the worst cases of malnutrition. The sight of these men was heartbreaking.

One of the outstanding instances of cooperation in camps between two agencies was that of the YMCA and the CIMADE, a union of French Protestant youth organizations for refugee service. This group began service to the thousands of French refugees from the northeast at the outbreak of the war. They continued service to their fellow citizens as well as to the largely foreign population of the camps right through to the liberation. Inside the camps, the two organizations planned most of their work together: in foyers supplied and supported by the YMCA, CIMADE provided the staff .

CIMADE and Swiss Aid personnel lived in the camps, but even regular visitation by representatives of other agencies served a positive purpose. One professor in Gurs remarked to me: "Just the sight of you walking through our camp means more than you can imagine. It is assurance that the world outside still cares, and that we are not completely forgotten."

Probably equal in importance with the material aid so generously poured into the camps by some of our relief agencies was the nonmaterial help furnished by others-the religious groups, the European Student Relief, and the YMCA.

[…]

In most camps there was a rabbi among the internees. For the other faiths local clergy, often German-speaking, gave most liberally of their time. Their role in raising the morale was supported by a remarkable group of French social workers, mostly from Protestant groups who, to give better service, went to the courageous length of taking residence in the camp, sharing all the discomforts, the lack of heat, the miserable food, with the internees themselves. The fact that someone cared enough to come and live with them gave these workers a unique prestige with the inmates. Their presence also had undoubted influence on the camp management. Here were "free" men and women who knew everything that went on in the camp, who could be very helpful to well-meaning camp directors but a certain hindrance to any crooked dealing by the camp administration. The visits of other representatives of relief agencies served the same purpose.

[…]

Eventually most of the camps had a chapel, more or less improvised, or at least a place where religious services could be held. In Gurs each ilot had one barrack set apart for religious, cultural and recreative purposes. High holidays of all faiths were celebrated. Rosh Hashana in 1941 was prepared for weeks in advance, a French Protestant group lending every possible aid. In Gurs on that occasion all ilots were open for two days, with freedom of passage from one to the other, and for the first time wine was legally served in camps. It was a (p. 140) real holiday, long to be remembered.

One day in Marseilles I was introduced to the French Red Cross visitor just in from Gurs. She did not know of my relationship with relief agencies. "Things are getting better all the time," she told me, "thanks to these foreign organizations. We poor French haven't much for ourselves, and of course we're doing all we can for our own refugees, but these organizations, some American, some Swiss, some international, apparently exist just to help refugees."

"What kind of things do they do?" I asked.

"Just about everything to make life more bearable for all those poor people.

[…]

"And then there are people from some organization (I think some of them are Jewish) who come to talk to those who hope to emigrate to America or the Argentine, or wherever. Sometimes they have money for a refugee, which they leave on deposit at the office for him to use, bit by bit, as camp regulations permit."

[Lowrie, 1963]

Chapter 14: Vichy, “Labor, Family, Fatherland, The Nimes Committee, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

The year 1941 witnessed steady devolution of the Vichy government toward a totalitarian state more and more closely allied to Hitler. In January the French Republic disappeared. This was evidenced by the changed title of the Journal Officiel of the French Republic with "State" inserted instead of "Republic." The almost sacred motto "Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite" was dropped from all French coinage and instead the Petain slogan was used, "Labor, Family, Fatherland"-whatever that was supposed to mean. More and more German "delegations" and "commissions" added to the crowding in the cities, particularly in the better hotels: nowhere in Germany or other occupied territories was living so comfortable.

About this time Vichy closed all French frontiers to prevent (p.143) its citizens from leaving to join the Allies, and then came Petain's proclamation of himself as supreme and sole authority in France.

[…]

The steady change in policy was accompanied by correspondingly frequent changes in personnel. One of the most vexing aspects of dealing with a revolutionary government was that at about the time arrangements had been completed with some high authority he would disappear, and one would have to begin all over again with his successor. In one painful case, the Coordination Committee had achieved approval of its camp program from one department and then the whole authority was transferred to a rival department that seemed to feel duty bound to resist in principle everything the previous department had authorized. It took weeks of patient insistence to modify this attitude, with consequent delay for many of our projects. And even then one was never sure whether the high authority who had agreed to the plans would remain in office long enough to issue the promised orders.

[…]

When visiting Vichy I always had to report to the chief of the National Police. He was an energetic and jumpy person who was quoted as having said, "Every foreigner is an enemy." By good luck I had been able to establish quite frank relations with this man, and he seemed to give credit to most of the items we presented. On one occasion I reported on the most recent meeting of the Coordinating Committee and presented a list of names of organization representatives for whom we were seeking general permits to visit camps. The police chief's response was typically bureaucratic: He pulled out a copy of a letter he had addressed to me and sent "through channels" via the governor of our province. Although the letter was dated a month earlier, I had not received it. The police chief read out one paragraph indicating that as chairman of the Coordination Committee (in one sentence it was called the "Lowrie" Committee) I had the right to request our local governor (prefer) to deliver visitation permits to anyone I named. It was useful to know that the police had this much confidence in us.

The second item we discussed was a trade school for one hundred fifty boys aged fourteen to eighteen, organized by the Jewish society ORT. This had been presented in principle before, but now I came with a specific project for a specific place. The police chief granted permission to take these boys and their teachers from the camps and put them into a small chateau rented by ORT. The French authorities would transfer to the school the per diem allowance for the camps, and of course would supply the necessary police guard around the place. We offered to open this school to any boys in the village who might wish to take advantage of first-class technical (p. 145) instruction, but this was not accepted. "It is better that French children should not mix with foreigners," the chief said. What he meant was that Aryan children should not have contact with Jewish people. But, anyway, our project was authorized.

Another project for which we needed Vichy approval was a home for five hundred convalescent invalids who because of lack of space had been pushed out prematurely from the two big camps for the sick. One of our organizations offered to provide such a center and thus give five hundred more people the chance of living outside the camps. This project was accepted in principle, but we would have to come to Vichy again and propose a specific place.

[…]

The chief hesitated at my next request. I presented a list of twenty children, the last Czechoslovak youngsters remaining in camps. We wanted to transfer them to our Czechoslovak children's colony at Vence on the Riviera. He read the names over to himself: "Aren't these children Jewish?" "Perhaps, monsieur, but for us they are just Czechoslovaks," I told him, "and they will certainly be happier in Vence than in camp." "All right," the great man said, "I agree," and he told his secretary to prepare the necessary orders for release. (p. 146)

The difference between occupied and non-occupied France was fast disappearing. While the general public in southern France already saw that France's only hope lay with the Allies, the group around Petain, after several "purges," had come almost completely to favor collaboration with the Germans. Unoccupied France was almost as thoroughly under Nazi control as if there were formal occupation. The French police now appeared to take orders directly from the Gestapo. Behind every customs official, as one crossed the line into Switzerland, stood a man in civilian clothes who, everyone knew, was a German. The number of commissions or other excuses for introducing Germans into our part of France was increasing.

[…]

His Eminence Cardinal Gerlier, ranking prelate in southern France, had been interested in our work from the start, had sent his personal representative to our Nimes meetings, and had offered help in other ways. Several times he received me in audience, when we requested his intervention in Vichy, now apparently almost completely under Catholic control. The old Marshal was supposed to be quite sensitive (p. 149) to the Cardinal's opinions, but caught as he was between the Nazis and his Catholic conscience he could not always do what the Cardinal asked of him.

[Lowrie, 1963]

Chapter 15: Vichy, “The Jewish Question”, The Nimes Committee, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

In Germany Hitler had opened 1941 with a prophecy that Jews would soon be completely eliminated from Europe. Within a month a new "Commissioner General for Jewish Questions" was appointed, and the accompanying decree spelled out his duties. Out of a mass of details in the Commissioner's instructions, it appeared that all the new laws were to apply to "the whole of the national territory," thus apparently erasing any difference between the situation of Jews in occupied or unoccupied France. A few months later the Germans announced that all Jews who had entered France since January, 1936 (!), would be incorporated into work battalions and moved to concentration camps. This order applied to both occupied and unoccupied zones: it was one step nearer complete occupation of France. (p. 152)

One of the first echoes of this decree was the report from Vernet that a large number of "German and other refugees" who protested extradition to Germany or transport to North Africa for work on the Trans-Sahara railroad had been shot. […]

Next came a law excluding Jews from all the armed services. Then we learned that five thousand Jews, mostly foreign, had been arrested in the occupied zone and transferred to a labor camp near Orleans. At the same moment in southern France five thousand "able-bodied foreign Jews" were roused from their beds one morning and ordered to the railroad station. […]

New laws permitted the prefer of each province to act on his own authority in carrying out new arrests.

[…]

Vichy seemed still a few paces behind the anti-Semitism of occupied territory, and consequently there were renewed attempts by Jews to cross the demarcation line into southern France. Vichy ordered all provincial governors to tighten the border lines; to increase the number of guards and take more severe measures, including "administrative internment," against Jews attempting to flee the occupied zone. Newspapers published lists of those imprisoned for attempting to cross the line.

But despite the now closely guarded demarcation line, the flow of Jews, and particularly Jewish children, into southern France was steadily increasing. By early summer all the children's colonies and homes operated by the Nimes Committee organizations were crowded to capacity. And more kept coming, with or without the help of our agencies. In one fortnight two hundred children came across, little groups acting on their own initiative, finding holes in the line of demarcation. One boy of ten was brought by his parents to the line and sent across alone, since the father, a prominent Jew, dared not risk the consequences if he should be caught in an attempt to pass into southern France. The boy walked several miles at night and turned up at a farmhouse in unoccupied territory the next morning. The OSE found shelter for the lad in one of their Marseilles homes.

Even before deportation from southern France began, our Nimes agencies had been at work, usually with reluctant consent from Vichy, removing children from camps into homes (p.157) or colonies-like Vence for the Czechoslovaks-organized to receive them. This was not as simple as it sounds. Each case precipitated a family crisis. After the years of suffering together, should a family now be separated? Most parents tried to convince themselves that this was only a temporary separation, and sending their children to well-organized homes set up by the different agencies was so manifestly the right thing to do that in the end few parents refused to make the decision. They could not know then that, in most cases, this meant the salvation of these youngsters from the general deportations which occurred later.

By the summer of 1941 practically all our organizations were engaged in various efforts to help Jews escape the Vichy police. Clandestine passage into Switzerland was one way: later, when I was visiting refugee camps in Switzerland I frequently met Jewish friends I had first known in French camps. They had survived the hazardous adventure, with the help of Catholics and Protestants who had served as guides and "passers."

…the Swiss were not giving visas to people unable to produce evidence that they could eventually travel further, and who might thus become public charges in Switzerland. Hence any person we assisted to bypass the French border police had to have a visa in his passport indicating that he could travel to some overseas country. I do not recall that we ever forged United States visas, but one way to assist Jews to enter Switzerland was to place a Cambodian or a Portuguese or a Mexican visa on their passports. Soon several of our agencies were engaged in forgery.

The Czech Aid office was a good example. We had a few specialists in consular signatures. One man could make a perfect imitation of the signature of the Mexican attaché responsible for issuing visas; another practiced for weeks to be able to forge the name of the Portuguese consul general. This was a somewhat risky procedure, although the counterfeit signature would be seen only by border police. Since all our (p. 158) exported men were going to Britain, the "imitation" visas could harm no one, and they worked perfectly when we had to use them.

[…]

With our Czech veterans, if you could not export them you had to hide them. Already, all over unoccupied France, Jews were seeking places of concealment. Here a Catholic institution, there a Protestant village, the Christian forces joined in efforts to keep these hunted people from the police.

In Marseilles the prior of a Dominican monastery turned his house into a city of refuge. Here passports were forged, predated certificates of baptism were fabricated. (I knew a prominent Jewish woman who held two baptismal certificates, (p.159) one Protestant and one Catholic. Happily, she survived the war.) Through his Catholic connections the good prior could arrange, even after the German occupation, to pass his "clients" into the Italian occupied zone and thence into Italy, where, despite the official declarations, actual cases of Jewish persecution were far less frequent than in Nazi territory. When finally the Gestapo came to arrest the prior, he received them in his sitting room, excused himself "to pick up a rosary," and never came back.

Never before in normally law-abiding France had there been such widespread, well-organized disobedience to police regulations. ... In numerous cases policemen resigned in protest: it was no light matter for a man with a family to give up his job in these near-starvation times.

To their protests French Christians added action. One of my friends, a Catholic priest, was arrested because he refused to reveal the hiding place of forty children who had been stolen from under the very noses of the Vichy police. A pro-Petain newspaper complained: "Every Catholic family is sheltering a Jew. French authorities supply them with false identity cards and passports. Priests assist them to cross into Switzerland. Jewish children are hidden in Catholic schools. Catholic officials give advance notice to Jews scheduled for deportation, so that half of them escape."

That Vichy paper told only part of the truth. All Christian forces, Protestant as well as Catholic, institutions as well as families, took up the cause. Jews who had escaped from camp, or now no longer dared to live in freedom, would be sheltered by a convent, a convalescent home or a Protestant village.

This nationwide conspiracy to confound and circumvent (p.160) the occupying army was possible because of the magnificent teamwork of Christians, both Catholic and Protestant. It was like the underground railroad of pre-Civil War days. Small groups of refugees were escorted, almost always by night, from station to station toward the Swiss border. For a time the groups were turned over to professional "passers" for the arduous and dangerous crossing of the frontier line, members of the Nimes Committee paying the very considerable fee these smugglers charged. Later the task became so dangerous that the professionals retired from business and our amateurs had to carry on. Not once, but time and again, the Christian guide was arrested by the border police. […]

One by one the non-French men in Jewish organizations began to disappear. They had not left their posts voluntarily: they had simply been started on the way to Auschwitz as a result of what sometimes seemed like reckless courage. Not one of these men engaged in succoring refugees in camps would have been unable to escape from France if he had so desired. The apparatus for safe passage into Switzerland was always at their disposal. However, they saw their duty clearly and paid the tragic price for doing it. One of the veteran leaders wrote me from the children's home he was managing and said that this letter would probably be the last I would receive from him. It was.

[Lowrie, 1963]

Chapter 16: Vichy, Wine on Ration Cards, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

By autumn 1941 the resistance movement was well organized, and most of us were somehow engaged in it. "Export" operations for Frenchmen were intensified; "cells" a la Lenin were organized. It was only after the war that I learned the name of the "network" to which our "cell" belonged. Certain of the leaders were sent abroad and the rest assigned to tasks at home. A "retired" lawyer from Paris, now living as a peasant on his small farm near Nimes, was a way station for clandestine passage of men or news or orders. A pastor's apartment in Marseilles was constantly in use to hide escapees from the north until false documents could be prepared for them, and among the best forgers of passports and other documents in southern France were two Protestant pastors. Catholic and Protestant clerics collaborated in the most effective of a dozen "underground" resistance papers. 

[…]

One striking thing about the Resistance effort was the complete and sympathetic collaboration not only of Catholics and Protestants but of Christians with Communists. Communist agencies for underground action were in existence in France before the debacle, and of course could carry on undisturbed afterward. All the Communist know-how and, so far as we could learn, most of their organization was placed at the disposal of the Resistance leaders, whether Christian, Jew or Communist.

[Lowrie, 1963]

Chapter 17: Vichy, Visas for Aparides, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

see also diplomats that aided Jew and other refugees

Among the new words resulting from the war, like "jeep" or "commando," we relief agencies found ourselves constantly using the French word "apatride," no matter what language we were speaking.

Apatrides were the thousands who had no passports, what they had when they left home having been declared invalid by the powers now occupying their homelands: Spaniards or Germans or Czechs now disowned by the governments in power. Apatride means man without a country. Most of our refugees had become men without a continent, and most of them were trying to leave Europe for some other part of the globe.  

Whether or not you have a country you must have some sort of document proving that you are you. Even in peacetime, one of the gravest accidents that can befall a traveler is to lose his passport, and even if he never left home no European would think of living without an identity card.

[...]

Everyone talked of visas: every organization was more or less engaged in helping refugees obtain them, sometimes facing quite unpredictable complications.

[…]

Generally the cooperation among our agencies was better coordinated. Cooperation was often dictated by circumstances. Most agencies were limited in the amount of money they might use for a given refugee, and in scores of cases the given refugee needed twice or three times that amount. Here two or three organizations would join funds to enable the person in question to get out of France.

Failure to secure the right visas at the right time could mean death in an extermination camp in Poland. Frustration followed frustration: refugees suffered nervous collapse, unable to endure the tension. On occasion the usual esprit de corps among refugees failed.

[…]

There were legal and not-so-legal ways of procuring visas. Certain consulates might be "persuaded" to bypass the regulations. In rare cases a personal appeal to the authority concerned would procure the necessary rubber-stamped note in an endangered man's passport. One such personal connection with the consul of a certain Southeast Asian country [probably Siam] was most useful. And the records must show the names of scores (p. 175) of immigrants to that far-off land, who never got farther than the Free French forces in North Africa or Britain.

"Aryans" could obtain exit permits from France much more easily than Jews, though the latter formed the overwhelming majority of the refugee population. Early in 1941 Vichy had appealed to the United States to accept a larger number of refugees from southern France, to which our State Department replied that one way Vichy could reduce the number of refugees there would be to grant exit permits to the hundreds of persons who already had United States immigration visas.

Of these, at least 90 per cent were Jewish.

[…]

One day the Czech Aid office received from the American consulate a list of thirty-two names-Czechoslovak citizens who had been granted entry visas into the United States. This was evidently part of a scheme to move as many Czechs as possible out of the Germans' reach, so they could join their own armed forces in Britain. Of the whole list, not one man was known to any Czechoslovak agency in southern France. In any case these men would go to England, not to America, so after we had some discussion in the office, thirty-two men living at La Blancherie were renamed and provided (176) with the proper identity papers. Thus thirty-two more Czechs were able to reach England and continue the battle against Hitler.

By this time the Czech Aid office possessed an excellent set of "official" consular and police stamps and could arrange almost any man's papers for departure or change of residence. Certain Czech passports could not pass German-sympathizing border police in Spain, for instance. Even in peacetime, in some well-authenticated cases where a passport had been lost, the Prefecture would issue a substitute document "in lieu of a passport," on which the holder could have consular visas affixed. With the collaboration of friends in the Prefecture office, these blanks could be had, after which it was a simple matter to fill them in and affix the "official" stamp. Then a Spanish and a Portuguese transit visa would be stamped on the document, together with a destination visa. Since some Czechs had actually emigrated to Venezuela, this was the destination usually indicated.

[…]

Probably 90 per cent of all refugees wanted to go to the United States. Obtaining an American visa was often a time consuming process, and under the shadow of imminent German occupation haste was essential. A refugee had to present three affidavits of support from three separate persons. It not infrequently happened that two would arrive, but the third would be missing, so correspondence with the States had to be renewed to secure that third affidavit. By this time the steamship reservation might be useless, and then negotiation would have to take place all over again.

[…]

For many of these hunted people the expiration date of a visa was almost like a date for execution. Some years after the war, in New York, I met an ex-refugee who greeted me with "You saved my life." I had no recollection of the case, but this man explained: "I was in the army and could not reach Marseilles before my American visa expired. The American consulate was refusing to receive people like me, but you gave me a note to the consul and I was able to take a ship for New York."

[Lowrie, 1963]

Chapter 18: Vichy 1942 Resistance, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

Another word peculiar to our situation in the relief work was "T.E.," our contraction of the French "travailleurs etrangers"-"foreign laborers." When you were speaking French they were "Tay Ay."

The main body of these groups at first consisted of foreigners who had been enrolled in the French army or other military formations now formally demobilized but still maintained under semimilitary discipline. By mid-1942 we began to hear of additions to these groups formed by the French under instructions from the Germans.

These formations served a dual purpose: workers were sorely needed, but the groups also provided a convenient method for the surveillance of foreigners in France.

The official proclamation authorizing these detachments (p. 182) stated that able-bodied men between eighteen and fifty-six were to be included. The facts were quite different. Some boys of fifteen were mobilized. Many men belonged to the professional classes and were quite inexperienced in- even physically incapable of-the heavy labor to which they were assigned: road building, logging or mining.

By April, 1942, some forty thousand men were enrolled in the labor gangs. Since they were scattered in small groups, usually away from urban centers in out-of-the-way corners of the country, our committee found it difficult to serve them. Even if travel had been less difficult, we did not have the personnel to spare from service in the refugee camps. However, many of these laborers had come from camps where they had known the service of our various agencies, so we all kept receiving appeals for help.

Material relief was out of the question: it was clearly up to the European Student Relief and the YMCA. [...]

With every month the situation of the T.E. worsened. The Nimes Commission on the T.E. brought in alarming reports. With typical lack of concern, the police had thrown these groups of foreigners together. A small detachment of twenty men might contain men of five nationalities and languages, and the consequent lack of understanding was anything but favorable to good spirit and good work.

Furthermore, there was the ever-recurring danger that these anti-Nazi foreigners might be turned over to the Germans. The Germans were now pushing France to furnish five hundred thousand "volunteers" for their war industry, and Frenchmen were doing their utmost to avoid being sent. It seemed likely that these foreigners would be offered instead. This threatened possibility soon became fact, and as they began to transport workers to Germany the Nazis divided them into two groups: "Aryan" and "Palestinian."

After consulting the Executive Committee of the Nimes Committee I invited the Vichy office responsible for the T.E. to send representatives to our next meeting. That was in April, 1942. The meeting turned out to be what the French call "mouvementee." Three men from Vichy turned up: two rather low-brow bandit types and a third really nice gentleman with waxed mustaches, who knew nothing. The delegation at first took the attitude that our committee of some thirty experts in relief work were as ill informed as the third gentleman, but after we had put them through a grueling afternoon they reported to Vichy that they were too exhausted to describe the session.

Nonetheless, during the proceedings we secured promises of reform in some phases of the treatment of foreign workmen and also secured something hitherto unobtainable: general permission for our various organizations to visit the labor camps. It is an interesting detail that all requests for such permits had to have my signature and guarantee, as chairman of the Nimes Committee. Our committee had become something more important than a simple consultative body of relief workers.

[…]

If conditions were hard for Frenchmen, they were doubly so for people in camps. Deaths from starvation were occurring daily, while the total death rate tripled, due in part to the famine, in part to cold, and in part to disease, against which camp populations no longer had any resistance. Our "Nimes" agencies were straining all reserves to meet the need of hundreds of men and women afflicted with famine dropsy. I shall never forget the picture of starving Jews lined up outside the American Friends Service Center in Rivesaltes, waiting for their daily food supplement. But private initiative was manifestly insufficient, and the hoped-for French government intervention never arrived.

[…]

One day in Rivesaltes I discovered five Jewish children from our Czech colony in Vence, all marked for deportation. The fact that we had our representatives resident in this camp made it possible to secure the release of three children by more or less legal methods, and although their parents were with them awaiting certain deportation, we managed to get the other two out of camp, hidden in a delivery truck. All five went into hiding and lived until the war was over.

[…]

In the early weeks of deportations, Jews married to Christians were exempted from seizure. Later the rule was changed, and the Christian member of the couple had to choose between being left alone or accompanying the husband or wife. But at first all sorts of matches, some contemplated for years and others concocted under pressure of the emergency, were arranged.

[…]

To all our rescue efforts the Germans reacted by imposing even stricter controls. Under Vichy orders the police checkpoint at Annemasse, the one "open" railroad station between France and Switzerland, was reinforced. Police began arresting Frenchmen known to be "passers" over the line into Switzerland. Despite these precautions, by the end of October, 1942, six thousand refugees had crossed into Swiss territory and about a thousand had gone over the Spanish frontier. The Swiss government set up a special commissariat to deal with the increasing problem of refugees. Within ten days during October more than two thousand persons had crossed the Swiss frontier illegally. If they could not pay large sums to boatmen to row them across Lake Geneva, the only other possible route was the tortuous and difficult climb over the already snow-clad mountains, hiding by day and going on by night. […]

In France mass arrests continued throughout September; hundreds of persons were seized daily and sent to Rivesaltes. That enormous camp in southwest France was, from then on, to be the sifting place for all the Jews rounded up by the police. Inside this camp was the sorting pen-a large barbed-wire enclosure into which all those arrested were put until (p.190) the sifting commission could examine their cases and decide whether or not they were to be deported. If sheep were sufficiently intelligent, it would not be difficult to imagine their mental anguish as the butchers looked over a flock to see which they would choose for slaughter. Such was the atmosphere of this prison within a prison. One of the most ghastly aspects was that many of these poor people had been through the sorting process two or three times already and were still waiting for another trial. They had seen the trucks roll out of their prison with people being turned over to the Germans, themselves saved from this transport but possible members of the next. One fine woman who had passed twice before the sorting commission and been held for further investigation said to me: "Mr. Lowrie, there are just no words for it."

The October session of the Nimes Committee met under the shadow of these terrible events. It opened with a moving statement by the Grand Rabbi of France, expressing gratitude for the sympathy and helpfulness of our organizations. We made plans for the immediate future and linked our efforts even more closely. Again, as throughout these tragic years, mutual confidence between Christians and Jews was manifested. In one camp where Christians were permitted to attend church services in the town, the YMCA club was turned into a synagogue once a week. In most camps all religious services had to be held in our "foyers," but great care was taken in decoration and design to avoid using any symbolism that might offend our Jewish friends. I noted this concern in a letter: "Everywhere the Christian forces, Catholic and Protestant, have been not only serving Jews in distress to the measure of their ability, but have stood, and are standing, heroically to their defense. And the absolute confidence with which our Jewish friends ask and accept such help is another sign of a relationship almost unprecedented in our day." One day the head of a Jewish organization came to see me. "I have several hundred young people in my group," he said, "what are you going to do about helping to hide them from the police?" In view of the prevailing relationship, this was a very natural question. And of course something was done about it. Not since the times of religious persecution had there been so many people in France hiding others from the arm of the law. What with procuring false passports, smuggling people across boundaries, and helping others avoid police searches, I wondered if most of us would ever become law-abiding citizens again.

Thanks to the considerate help of the Bishop of Tulle, nearest city to our Czech farms, nine of our Jewish farmers were saved from deportation. The farm manager called on the Bishop and explained that we had men on the farms who were "orthodox," and since the police did not seem to know that the Orthodox Church was a good Christian religion, along with Catholic and Protestant churches, would the Bishop give a certificate that it was? Fully conscious of the actual situation, His Grace wrote each of the men concerned a personal letter: "Dear Mr. Silberstein: In response to your inquiry, I am pleased to inform you that the Eastern Orthodox Church is one of the world's universally recognized Christian churches," and he affixed his "tremendous" episcopal seal. The police were so surprised that Silberstein had a "certificate" from the Bishop that they accepted the letter for the impression it was intended to convey, and so nine more men escaped deportation trains.

In Lyon one day the police arrived at the gates of a convent, demanding entrance to search for Jewish children reportedly hidden there. The Mother Superior replied that if the policemen did not remove themselves from her doorstep instantly she would telephone the Cardinal, and then gave them such a lecture on the inviolability of a convent that they never came back.

One amusing instance of Christian-Jewish cooperation occurred when HICEM, the ancient and honorable Hebrew Emigration Society, asked the Czech Aid for the privilege of  arranging the emigration of some Christians. They explained that this would prove to Vichy authorities that HICEM was an organization making no racial distinctions.

The Spanish frontier guards might accept such refugees, but this passage practically assured a month at least in Spanish prisons. One day one of our Czech staff was escorting a group of eight across the Pyrenees frontier. "We are just going over to the fiesta in that village," he told the Spanish guard. "All right," the guard replied; "when you come back you might bring me a bottle of cognac." When, a few hours later, the young man not only returned but also brought the cognac, the guard could scarcely believe his senses.

While thousands were escaping from unoccupied France, others were escaping into it from the north. All sorts of devices were used. One of our Czechs walked from Paris across the whole of German-occupied France and over the line, carrying a halter and looking for "a gray horse that strayed out this way. "

During those hectic weeks it seemed that most of my time was spent in travel. A few lines from a letter of that time record a typical week: "Thursday noon I was in the plane for Vichy . . . Six hours in Vichy-time for four appointments, and I took the train for Toulouse, a twelve-hour trip. This train carries no sleeper . . . I had seven hours in Toulouse, and then went on to Pau."

During these months it was necessary to visit Geneva about once every ten days in order to communicate with New York and maintain contact with representatives of a half dozen governments. Crossing the frontier was always an interesting experience. Behind each uniformed customs officer stood a man in civilian clothes: a German surveying the border. Annemasse was the one legally open crossing point between "free France" and Switzerland. As an American citizen whose government maintained friendly relations with both these states, I had the right to move between them at will.

The Germans would make a wry face as they looked at my passport, and on several occasions would tell the Frenchman: "Take him in and search him." So the customs officer and I would retire to one of the little booths provided for the purpose, but never once was I searched.

The Frenchman would say: "You must know how I dislike this, but you know how things are-let's have a cigarette." After a proper interval we would emerge, my passport would be stamped, and I could board my train for Geneva.

Even if they had searched me they would, of course, have found nothing illegal. Often I was carrying important information to be shared with American officials in Switzerland, but I carried it in my head, and here, as long as the Germans held strictly to legality, they would never know what I was transporting.

[Lowrie, 1963]

Chapter 19: Chambon-Sur-Lignon, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

see Le Chambon-Sur- Lignon

Chapter 20: Destiation Unknown, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

On August 13 (1942) we sent this cable to the JDC headquarters in New York: "3,600 Jews from internment camps in unoccupied France sent eastward, exact destination unknown, 1,000 from Gurs, 1,000 from Rivesaltes, 700 Vernet. Mass arrests made in hotels Bompard and Levante, Marseilles. 200 women taken to Les Milles for deportation. Order affects men and women aged 18-65. Mothers have choice of taking with them children over five or leaving them with welfare organizations. Total quota is 10,000, first from camps, then working groups. If quota not attained, then arrests to be made in cities." Ten days earlier, what we had been fearing for months had eventuated. We all knew that the Germans had been moving thousands of Jews eastward from occupied France to unknown (p. 204) destinations, but this was the first time the Nazis had struck into what both they and Marshal Petain still called Free France. Despite the velvet assurances of Laval or Darquier de Pellepoix, General Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, that no violence would be applied to Jews in southern France, the last word evidently belonged to Hitler's prime Jew hater, Rosenberg. Paris Soir explained that four thousand Jews from occupied territory and an equal number from unoccupied France had been deported eastward, "as a lesson to the Jewish accomplices of terrorists and black marketeers."

In Marseilles the shock of those August hotel raids struck us all with peculiar force. The two modest hotels mentioned in our cable were occupied largely by refugees, mostly Jews, who happened to have sufficient means to avoid internment in a camp. The poor people were routed from their beds at four in the morning, given just time to dress, advised to take a blanket and supplies for a day's journey. Loaded into trucks, they were taken to the railroad station, packed into boxcars and transported to Les Milles.

What happened there brought terror and suffering almost unimaginable. One of the special police at Les Milles later told me he had lived in the colonies and China, had fought in two wars, but never had witnessed such scenes. It began with the arrival of fully armed national police who surrounded the camp, refusing entrance to all outsiders. For several days even chaplains, Christian and Jewish, were denied admission. The camp officials were working day and night making and remaking lists for deportation. No one knew who would be taken and what chance a given person had of escaping the general fate.

A few days later the actual choice of victims began. By this time pastors and rabbis had forced the authorities to admit them to the camps and they joined our workers in a veritable battle for rescue. In most places the local Catholic priests felt they could not intervene without special hierarchical permission, and this could not be obtained in time. (p. 205)

The day after the first mass arrests in Marseilles I chaired an emergency committee composed of representatives of the Friends Service Committee, the International Migration Service, the Swiss Aid, the OSE, the International Rescue Union, the YMCA and the YWCA, to face the new terror and decide what we could do, as individual organizations or acting together. It was little enough, Heaven knows. First there were protests, to Vichy and then to the world. We alerted all the news agencies, we sent cables to all governments still maintaining relations with the Petain regime. We heard reports that Pope Pius had protested to Petain and that Laval had agreed "for the moment" to limit deportations to foreign Jews.

However exact this report, leading clergy in France did protest in no uncertain terms. The brave Archbishop Saliège of Toulouse protested from the pulpit: "Jewish children, men and women are being treated like cattle." Dr. Marc Boegner, President of the Protestant Federation of France, the country's leading Protestant, consulted with Cardinal Gerlier and they each wrote Petain a letter of the same content. "No Frenchman," wrote Boegner, "can remain insensible to what has happened in the internment camps since August second. . . . There are about to be delivered to Germany men and women who from political or religious motives have sought refuge in France .... The Christian churches, of whatever faith, would be unfaithful to their duty if they did not raise a protest." In allusion to Petain's. frequent insistence that France was a defeated nation, Boegner continued: "I beseech you to impose the measures indispensable if France is not to inflict upon itself a moral defeat, the burden of which would be incalculable."

Our Nimes emergency committee alerted all the other members, asking them to address protests to governments, Red Cross societies, and newspapers. But these moves could not save the first convoy from deportation. We decided to appeal to Marshal Petain himself. Two of us, president and vice-president of the Nimes Committee, went at once to Vichy.  

Mobilizing all the pressures available from sympathetic French notables and the United States Embassy-who could intervene directly in Petain's "cabinet"-and from newspapermen and others who could approach the Foreign Office, we demanded an audience with the Chief of the French State.

Our first contact was with Petain's personal secretary, General Campet. This gentleman had never heard of the deportations. Further, he assured us that such a thing would not be possible in France. If we had not insisted upon seeing him, it is probable that Petain would have heard of these atrocities only later, if at all. After we had spent three days canvassing various agencies we were informed that the head of the French State would receive us in audience. This was two days before the first deportation train was scheduled to leave.

One of Vichy's swank hotels was now in effect the capital of France, since it housed the executive offices of the Chief of State. Passing the tired-looking soldiers on guard at the entrance, we waited only a few minutes in an anteroom, then we were shown into an office rather crowded with furniture, desks and tables covered with a large amount of bric-a-brac. The working desk itself seemed orderly.

We were presented by the Marshal's General Secretary, M. Jardelle, and were seated in two chairs facing the Marshal with Jardelle at his side, but between us and Petain. Before Petain could reply to anything we said, Jardelle restated it to him in his own words in a slightly louder voice, thus suggesting the reply. Before the interview we had presented a formal memo stating that we represented all the private philanthropic organizations in France, that we were spending 80 per cent of our budgets for the aid of French people, and consequently only a minor part of our work was for refugees. The Marshal had supposedly been informed of this memo. Petain asked, "What gives me the honor of your visit?"

"We come to you in the name of all the philanthropic organizations in France working in large part for the French population, but also for foreign refugees. Many of our organizations have given major aid to the French," I replied. Here Jardelle interrupted to name the Quakers and the YMCA.

"I know both of these and we are grateful for their help," the Marshal said.

I went on: "For two years these organizations have been collaborating with the French government, often at the government's request, to help preserve and prepare these refugees for emigration. About 10,000 have already emigrated, thanks to our combined efforts. We are willing to continue this service, but we are now greatly concerned about the present measures being taken against certain foreign refugees, particularly Spanish and Jews." Jardelle, interrupting, "You know, Monsieur le Marechal, that the Germans asked to have 10,000 French Jews and that to save them we have been obliged to give up an equal number of foreign Jews. They are to be transported to a sort of 'Jewish state' the Germans have set up near Lublin. There, it appears, they will enjoy a certain liberty."

"Oh, yes, I know, near Krakow," said Petain. (The old man was wrong-he meant Kattowitz.)

"We have been deeply moved and profoundly hurt by the present measures," I continued. "We cannot believe, Monsieur le Marechal, that this has been done with your knowledge [this I emphasized, but Petain did not react] or that it is inevitable."

Petain made a gesture of helplessness, open hands and a shrug of his shoulders. "You know our situation with regard to the Germans."

Of course we could not accept this as an answer. I took the approach we had previously discussed in committee: "We believe that there might at least be some exemptions. For example, those ready to emigrate. Laval has this list under study." Here both Petain and Jardelle brightened and Petain said he would speak to Laval about it. I went on: "Then, the children. We can naturally make no promises but we believe that if we could have three or four weeks in which to launch an appeal United States doors might be open for the children involved."

"I will speak of this to Laval, too. Will you be in Vichy for a week or ten days to have a reply?"

"Monsieur le Marshal, the first train is leaving today."

"Well, then I will speak to Laval this afternoon and you may telephone M. Jardelle tomorrow for the decision," said Petain, and half rose from his chair.

I had to play one more card: "We cannot conceal from you, Monsieur le Marechal, the unfortunate impression this action will have on public opinion abroad and the serious repercussions it may have on the work of our organizations in France."

Petain simply waved his hand as though he deprecated this, and then rose, terminating the interview. We had the impression that he had not fully grasped the last remark.

Petain was not as tall as his pictures had led us to believe. He held himself erect and had a fairly firm handclasp. Although he seemed physically well preserved, his flesh was bloodless, almost waxen in color. He was slightly deaf and evidently not altogether aware of what went on around him.

While I was appealing to Petain, Quaker representatives, acting on behalf of the Nimes Committee also, saw Laval. The total result was nil. The old Marshal could do nothing,. Laval would not. His tirade against Jews in general gave every indication that he approved the atrocious measures. All that was left for us to do was to fight things out on the local level.

During those hectic days the camp director's office at Les Milles was like a courtroom gone frantic. The little room was crowded, coatless men sweated in the August heat, police inspectors came and went, camp clerks brought in new telegrams from Vichy and protests from all sorts of Frenchmen. There was constant movement, fearful tension. In principle the director himself, never noted for his love for his charges but nevertheless a man with some sense of justice, had to make all decisions. But behind his chair stood a police captain (p. 209) representing Vichy and, indirectly, Rosenberg and Hitler.

The "attorneys for the defense" were men from our various agencies, an American or two, but most of them French since this was a French problem and Frenchmen were in a better position to argue or insist. Among these none was more effective than Monsieur F., the local pastor. Living near the camp, he knew intimately all its internal life, including the actions and omissions of the management. Like the rest of us, he took the position that no Christian or even a Jew with a Christian spouse could be brought under the deportation order. Each time a list was made up the pastor and others began a new attack on the director. "You know, monsieur, that Morgenstern has been one of the most faithful members in our church." "Yes, but before he came to Les Milles? Some have become Christians overnight." "But here is his baptismal certificate dated 1925-surely he should not be in this new list. Remember his service in our library all these months." -"And here is Rubinstein. You know as well as I that Mrs. Rubinstein is Aryan, and that he became a Christian at the time of their marriage." "We're not taking Madame Rubinstein-" "But how can you face separating this Christian, I repeat, this Christian couple? Put yourself in Rubinstein's place. It is unthinkable that-" In his earnestness the pastor could not keep his voice from betraying his feeling toward the police. "What do you think?" The director turned to the Vichy agent. "Oh, let him stay-at least for this time"-and the director initialed an order releasing Rubinstein from Ilot K.

In the vast confusion no one seemed sure who had authority to grant exemptions-the camp officials, the police, the prefecture, or Vichy. In one case a whole group of politically endangered men who had been exempted by the French authorities were replaced in the deportation lists after a German officer had visited the camp. One was a former captain of a German ship who had served the Allies during World War I. His father and two brothers had been executed in Germany as enemies of the Third Reich. All efforts to save (p. 210) him failed and he left with the first train, calm and courageous in his Christian faith.

Another man was a distinguished lawyer condemned to death in Germany for his activity during the early anti-Nazi trials. He and his wife had been among the mainstays of the Protestant group at Les Milles. Their son was in the Foreign Legion in Africa and this should have assured their exemption. Had they any proof? Thinking to save their son from possible difficulties, they had burned all their papers. A frantic search revealed a letter proving that the son was in the Legion. The authorities replied, "This indicates his presence in the Legion last March-it does not prove he is still there in August." The couple climb calmly into the boxcar and the iron bar falls across the closed door. Some hours later, just before the train moves out, new insistence by the local pastor forces the police to relent, and the two are saved.

Here was a mother, returned voluntarily to the camp from free residence outside to share the fate of her son. The young man, not knowing of her intention and warned of his own danger by a guard, had fled the camp shortly before his mother's arrival. In spite of all efforts by Pastor F. and a YMCA secretary, the mother was sent to the deportation pen.

There was a young man of thirty-six who had come down from the occupied zone to join his wife and children after a long separation. Of Polish origin, he had lived in France since he was a year old. He had volunteered in the French army at the outbreak of the war. He had excellent recommendations from well-known Frenchmen. But he was a Jew. Jewish by race and by religion, as he repeated with magnificent obstinacy each time the question came up. The police had picked him up at a railroad station just before his train was to leave for the village where his family was awaiting him. He could not understand why he had been arrested and brought to Les Milles, and when he was put into the deportation train he kept insisting that he must be permitted to see his wife and children. (p. 211)

In the confusion much unnecessary suffering ensued. French organization, none too strong at best, almost broke down. Men and women were herded into the courtyards and forced to stand for hours under a blazing sun while the final lists were being made. Is it any wonder that in each camp there were suicides?

The actual deportation, unfortunately only the first of a series, was as bad as could be imagined: men and women pushed like cattle into boxcars, thirty to a car with a police guard. The cars' only equipment was a bit of straw on the floor, and one iron pail for all toilet purposes. The journey, we were told, would take a fortnight or eighteen days. The various relief organizations gave what could be obtained in this half-starved land in the way of extra provisions for the journey. The YMCA despairingly put a box of books into each car. All of us were curtly refused permission to accompany the trains or even to organize a service of hot drinks and refreshments at the frontier where the trains would pass into German-occupied territory.

The dignity and self-control of most of these unfortunate people will always be remembered; together with the self-forgetfulness and generosity manifested in such large measure. In many cases internees offered to go in place of others. There were two sisters at Gurs, both over eighty, who went to the director of the camp saying they understood that volunteers would be accepted to, replace others on the lists and offering themselves for this purpose. The communion in suffering between Jews and Christians seemed more intimate here than ever-the close collaboration of pastors and rabbis, the unfailing aid offered by Christian organizations, and the confidence with which Jewish groups asked for and accepted it.

[…]

By 3: 30 A.M. all those standing in the sorting pen had been checked, and put into the train. The rest, including camp officials, went to bed. At seven the police chief arrived from Marseilles, counted the names of those in the train and found the number short of the quota for this convoy. He ordered people to be taken from the infirmary to make up the total. Men and women in their nightclothes were hustled into the train just before it pulled out.

Alerted because of the new crises, Pastor F. arrived a few minutes before the train left. When he learned that five Jewish Christians had been added to the lists after his departure three hours earlier, he protested vigorously to the police, but in vain. The train was already moving when he located the five in one of the cars. "Don't despair," he called to them, "we're still fighting. Watch out at Lyon." Pastor F. telephoned me in Marseilles and I sent a hot telegram to Vichy. At Lyon the police removed the five men from the train and sent them to temporary safety in Rivesaltes.

Although most of the able-bodied men had already been impressed into the foreign labor battalions, the first group deported consisted of men only. They were told they were being assembled for another work party, which was probably one reason for the docility with which they allowed themselves to be packed into boxcars for the long journey. Another reason, besides the fact that half-starved men were facing heavily armed police, was the naive assumption, particularly among the German Jews, that law and order would prevail, and that after all even the Nazis would contain themselves within the basic laws with which these people had grown up. For example, there was one old man from Mannheim who had been (p. 213) living on his pension as a German ex-civil servant, who never could understand why he was no longer receiving his monthly allowance: he had written home that he was now living in Gurs-why didn't they send him his pension?

By this time we all knew, and most of the Jews in southern France also knew, of the deportation trains from occupied France to Poland. And frightful rumors had spread regarding the fate of the deportees, but even so, neither in the first instance of deportation from Les Milles nor in any of the others was there any observable effort at resistance. Burdened with almost endless tribulation, these men were as sheep before the slaughter. They conquered hatred by enduring it.

[…]

Just after the first large convoy of Jews had left Les Milles, the director of that camp telephoned, saying he must see me at once. I had known this man about as well as the other camp directors, and thought him like most of the rest: not big enough to resist the super-temptations inherent in his position. There had been ugly tales of near-starvation in his camp while truckloads of provisions went out of it by night, to be sold in the black market of a nearby city. His exploitation of men in his camp for labor in an enterprise from which he drew profits was a matter of open record. A few weeks earlier he had been arrested for profiteering in falsified certificates of liberation.

And he knew that I knew all this, which fact, however, had not affected the surface cordiality of our relationship. I knew of the panic and terror abroad in Les Milles as men were being processed for that week's deportation. So I was not surprised by the director's telephone call. It was midnight when he arrived at our hotel and I could scarcely recognize the man. He had visibly lost weight, his eyes were like those of a hunted animal.

"I never thought I should live through scenes like those in our camp these days," he said. "Having responsibility, even purely executive, for a crime like this is heartrending. I would have resigned at once, but of course it takes time to be relieved of such a position, so I have had to stay and try to make it as easy as possible for those poor people. I have managed to save some of them-the pure Aryans or the half-Aryans I haven't put into the lists, and those with visas for emigration I think we can save also. But artists like B. and musicians like K., men I have the highest admiration for-to send them off to Poland or God knows where, is something so terrible . . .

"I have one request of you, Mr. Lowrie. You know me and you know what is happening now and who is really responsible. Promise me that when the accounts are settled in the future (for there will be a future and there will be a settling of scores, of that I am sure), promise me that you will stand by me and say that this was no responsibility of mine. I am merely carrying out orders-and you know it and you must promise to protect me when vengeance begins."

I never visited Les Milles after the liberation and never heard what became of its director. In the confused and radical adjustments after the war, small attention could be spared for former directors of former refugee camps, so it is probable that this man moved quietly into some other job.

For weeks we lived in a nightmare, battling with every means at our disposal, legal or not, to save as many as possible from Nazi fanaticism. My office became a sort of field headquarters, with daily meetings and reports, new plans concocted, successes or failures registered. As the struggle went on, we secured some new concessions-certain categories of Jews to be exempt from deportation: former soldiers in French armies or their families; the very aged and the ill; parents whose children were French citizens.  

But almost before the ink was dry on a Vichy promise of exemption we would discover that it was worthless. One week in Vichy I was assured that in no case would ex-soldiers in French and Allied armies be touched. Just a few days later in Marseilles I learned that some of our Czechoslovaks, men who had risked their lives to fight at the side of the French, men who had been left in France because they were too close to the front to escape when the main Czech army was evacuated to England in June, 1940, were being held in concentration camps awaiting deportation. I at once telephoned Vichy for an explanation. "Oh, well," I was told, "ex-soldiers-what does that mean? Some Jew who served in the quartermaster's department or a few months in a camp-he's not to be considered an ex-combatant."

Ilot K in Les Milles had become the last station before loading the deportation trains. Refugees from all over that corner of France were sent to Les Milles to be "processed" and those selected for the next transport went into Hot K. Here a young French pastor, leader of the resident CIMADE-YMCA team, played an important role, until the moral problem surrounding the selection of those for the transports became too onerous. The police order for each transport would simply specify the number of Jews to be taken. It was then left to camp management to make the selection. For the early deportation groups the pastor would review the proposed lists with the camp director, pleading or arguing for this or that person. But as it became evident that removal of one man from the list, however justifiable, simply condemned some other to be taken, the pastor found it impossible to continue these efforts.

In the meantime an aroused Western world began to bombard Vichy with cables of protest. If Petain's Foreign Office had felt itself more or less isolated from the West because of its collaboration with Hitler, it was now suddenly a center of attention. Alerted by local representatives of our Nimes organizations and by the press, many governments and hundreds of private agencies added their influence to what we continued doing in France.

The National Council of the Reformed Church of France met and ordered a message read from all pulpits: "The Church cannot further remain silent in face of the sufferings of thousands of human beings who have received asylum on our soil. The Church would have lost its soul and its reason for existence if it did not maintain that divine law is above all human contingencies. And this divine law does not permit that families created by God be broken up, children separated from mothers, the right of asylum and its compassion be unrecognized, the respect for the human person be transgressed, and beings without defense be delivered to tragic fates."

Whether or not as the result of such protests, Vichy now reluctantly granted permission to OSE to move 1,200 children from occupied France to their children's colonies in the south. These were some of the children left behind in northern France when their parents had been taken to Poland. The Joint Distribution Committee reported to its New York office: "These children, orphaned for at least the duration, will be brought to safety in southern France, where they can receive adequate care." Care was one thing; safety, as we were soon to discover, was quite another.

We never knew what motivated the Germans to allow these orphans to leave occupied territory: some thought it was a matter of shrinking food supplies in the north; another story had it that someone had bribed a high Nazi official. In any case, a few weeks later the Nazis were trying, vainly, to take these youngsters for deportation.

Joint action of Coordination Committee members obtained Laval's promise not to touch children in homes and colonies conducted by our relief agencies. In consequence, the agencies were besieged with requests to take in more children. Frantic parents, themselves facing probable deportation, thought they might at least save their children from the Nazi terror. A few weeks later Laval's promise to us was revealed to be as treacherous as the rest of his words and actions. With horrified fascination we watched the Nazi action pattern unfold: first a finger was seized, then the hand, then the whole arm, each time with the assurance that the victim should be grateful that no larger bite was taken.

The children's camp at Rivesaltes had already received four thousand Jewish children suddenly transferred from occupied France, piled in atop the large number of children with parents already in residence. Now, as our agencies acted on Vichy's consent to remove children from the camp to colonies and homes, another harrowing situation arose. Parents of children under eighteen were granted the choice of leaving their children in France to be cared for by strangers or taking them along to share the common fate. This announcement created new agony: few human families are more closely linked than the Jews. Nights of agonizing debates followed frantic efforts to communicate with some family connection outside the camp for counsel. In hundreds of cases the mother had to face this decision alone, the father having been taken eastward or held in some foreign labor group. Often the children themselves would be brought into the discussion. In most cases the decision was to leave children behind.

No one slept the night before the children were to be moved out of the camp, now almost entirely occupied by men and women whose fate was sealed. Those hours remain an ineffaceable memory. Some groups, both Christian and Jewish, spent the night in prayer. Some parents passed hours writing out final admonitions for their children: many wrote wills, disposing of property they had left in Germany, for the youngsters to take with them. The terrible morning came, with the military trucks drawn up before the office. Families clung to each other-many cried out in wild affliction and others stood dry-eyed and tense as children were loaded into the trucks. We would never forget the moment when the vehicles rolled out of camp, with parents trying in one last gaze to fix an image to last for eternity.

[Lowrie, 1963]

Chapter 21: Five Thousand Visas, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

In vichy I had suggested to Marshal Petain that the United States might admit children threatened with deportation from France. The idea had come out of our emergency committee meetings, and some preliminary steps had already been taken before I saw Petain.

We in Marseilles knew that our corresponding organizations in the States were already raising the question in Washington. Could not some thousands of emergency visas be authorized, in any form whatever, to move these threatened children out of danger? If such visas were granted, we could bring pressure on Laval to grant the corresponding exit permits. A fortnight after my visit to Petain Vichy had announced that parents to be deported would have no choice: their children would accompany them. Laval stated that these "anti-Semitic (p.219) measures will be taken only against foreign Jews, and these measures will be applied as ordered." He added that this was "a simple measure of purging out the unassimilable foreign Jews who clutter the black markets and engage in anti-Petain and pro-de Gaulle campaigns."

From Marseilles the JDC representative cabled his New York office on September 5: "Eighty children from camp Les Milles whose parents left previously were deported yesterday. Five thousand others now in Rivesaltes immediately threatened. Urgent you make every effort to emigrate as many of these as possible. American organizations have cabled Mrs. Roosevelt asking her interest. Every minute counts now." And later the same day: "In addition ten thousand (adults) already deported from unoccupied France, another seven thousand scheduled to go next days. . . . Arrests being made in all cities. Children being removed from institutions supported by private philanthropy, including Swiss Red Cross. Push U.S. visas for largest number possible."

But would Vichy go along with this plan? Facing Laval's reluctance and the certainty that even if exit visas were granted the operation might take months, the JDC in New York, early in September, suggested that we explore the possibility of moving children first to Switzerland "under appropriate guarantee of maintenance during temporary stay." And on September 10 New York cabled: "Hope have all permissions immigration one thousand refugee children within ten days. Work out administrative responsibility for selection, visas, transportation, etc. U.S. Committee willing waive restrictions against children with relatives here."

That same day, however, we cabled New York: "Exit visa situation now much worse and for present practically impossible even for Jews of French nationality to obtain exit permits. All plans must be held in abeyance temporarily." We also reported that both Swiss and Portuguese authorities were being approached again concerning possible movement of children to those countries for a temporary sojourn, but that (p. 220) we had small hope of such permission unless we could guarantee that children would move on to other countries within a short time. All organizations, we told New York, were engaged in all possible preliminary preparations, but could undertake no actual processing of children "until we have government decision on number of children it will accept."

Then came the exciting news that the State Department agreed to admit a thousand children and on September 18 had cabled the Marseilles consulate instructions to issue the visas (noting that the Enemy Alien Act excluded children over twelve born in Germany or Austria, thus protecting America from subversive influences). But the same day the Times man in Vichy reported an interview with Laval: "No man and nothing can sway me from my determination to rid France of foreign Jews and send them back to where they originated. I will take no lessons in humanitarianism from any country."

To intensify our efforts, I went at once to Geneva where, a month earlier I had helped organize a special Emergency Committee to work on obtaining visas from countries other than the United States. In Geneva we called on diplomatic representatives of all the likely countries-Canada, Mexico, and some of the other Latin-American republics. It was almost like an auction. To the ambassador of Country X I could say, "If Country Y is offering visas to save five hundred children, surely your government can do as much."

Professional diplomats, never known for their capacity to make haste, in this case outdid themselves. By this time the outside world was aware of the plight of Jews in France and soon Mexico offered 250 visas, Ecuador 200, Uruguay 500, and the Argentine 1,000. Crowded little Switzerland offered to accept an undetermined number of children. Before the operation had to be abandoned, the total of visas available was three times the number we had asked for.

Our preliminary estimate of the cost of the operation reached astronomical figures. However, Jewish agencies were prepared to give the necessary financial guarantees, and our (p. 221) efforts were not retarded one day by money considerations. New York cabled us in Marseilles that six doctors, ten nurses and twenty-five escorts were being recruited for the transport. We began to assemble details New York requested about shipboard accommodation, life belts adjusted for children, and time required for processing.

In the meantime Vichy police continued to arrest Jews in both parts of France. On the Riviera, where most well-to-do non-French Jews were living, there was panic. In one night there were five suicides. Another night the police raided an OSE home, arresting all adolescents. The next night they returned and took away the younger children.

New York informed us that the American Friends Service Committee was authorized to certify children presented for visas: "Quota visas for most, visitors' visas for others." We in Marseilles pleaded for visitors' visas only: "Under the existing regulations, and with present consular staff in Marseilles, it would take eight months to process the quota visas. Lowrie is now in Vichy working on French exit permits."

On September 24 a New York cable to the American consulate stated that the United States Committee would be required to act in loco parentis, to give the legal parents' permission for emigration. With most of these imperiled children either already orphans, or about to become so, the instruction seemed superfluous. Faced with the actual possibility of letting a thousand children escape their designs, Vichy bureaucrats now gave grudging consent for five hundred children only. I knew all too well the seesaw of influences in Vichy, so we did not despair of obtaining more visas, but at once went to work on the first five hundred.

The cable we sent New York reporting that Vichy was granting only five hundred visas "deferring action on others until later," prudently insisted: "This must not occasion publicity of any sort hostile to the Germans." However, publicity was inevitable and the French government, angered by (p. 222) unfavorable reports in the American press, was reconsidering the whole matter, meanwhile authorizing no exit visas. We reported to New York that processing of children was proceeding nevertheless and that several hundred United States visas could be issued, once Vichy made up its mind.

Most of the personnel of all the chief agencies in Marseilles had been mobilized to assist the Quakers in preparing a thousand children for presentation to the Consulate. Given an entry visa into the United States, we foresaw no serious difficulty with transit visas, Spanish and Portuguese, though the Spanish could be terribly deliberate in matters concerning Jews. Friends in Lisbon wrote me that the Portuguese would issue visas in blocks, and we hoped the Spanish authorities might agree to the same procedure. The agencies had set up a careful organization to assure the speediest possible processing, once French exit permits had been granted. First, youngsters from children's homes near Marseilles would be called, and a fixed schedule would order the reception of those from other places afterward.

Preparing children for emigration was no simple matter. Even the selection was complicated. With a thousand places and two thousand applicants all eagerly presenting their almost equal claims, how do you choose? What do you do if two children of the same family have different nationalities, one having been born in Prague and the other in Lyon? What do you do with a child whose parents have been deported and who has lost all his identity papers? Medical examinations and inoculations must be carefully scheduled. A full history of each child must be recorded, for use in eventual placement in the States.

On October 5 Sumner Well es informed the chairman of the United States Committee: "The President authorizes me to inform you that he approves a decision to grant visas to five thousand instead of one thousand in France. He does not believe it desirable, however, that any public statement about this decision be made." The Committee replied that in order (p. 223) to bring five thousand children into the United States it would have to raise five million dollars, so some kind of public statement in America would have to be made about the President's decision. Such publicity would have to be a calculated risk. That same week a United Press dispatch from Vichy reported that Laval had informed the United States Embassy there that France would grant exit visas to five thousand children. This seemed too good to be true, as it later turned out to be.

The New York Times of October 15 reported from Vichy: "The United States Committee for the Care of European Children, which has raised a $900,000 relief fund, has posted bond in Philadelphia for one thousand Jewish children from France. The bond guarantees that they will not become public charges. . . . American consuls have received authorization to issue emergency visas. Don Lowrie, representing the American Relief Committee at Geneva, will arrive Saturday to discuss details with Laval's Secretary-General."

On October 18 a delegation of the Quakers, in charge of moving children to the States, met me in Vichy. Our main business was to bargain with the reluctant authorities for exit permissions for one thousand, instead of five hundred, children and the speediest possible procedures thereafter. The United States charge d'affaires, Mr. Pinckney Tuck, an old friend, had taken the greatest interest all through this visa struggle, and again gave us his full support. After two high-pressure conversations with high-ranking officials we got what we wanted. But minor bureaucrats were rarely generous in promising simplified technical measures, and I cabled home only that "the operation is beginning at once, and we hope to have the whole thousand on the ocean before Christmas."

For a fortnight we worked and waited for Vichy to send the authorizations to Marseilles, but continued with preparations as though we were sure of the outcome. By the last week in October we had completed all arrangements, assured railroad passage across Spain and Portugal, and had chartered (p. 224) a ship from Lisbon. At last I was informed by the Marseilles Prefecture that authorization to issue up to five hundred visas had been received from Vichy. On November 7 the group of twenty-three escorting personnel, pediatricians and trained child-care workers sailed from New York for Lisbon.

The next day the Allies landed in North Africa, and the Germans swept into complete occupation of France. On the 12th this cable went to New York: "All train service for civilians suspended. Possibilities for departure now practically nonexistent." And on the 13th, "All emigration from France to the United States now stopped. Have canceled all transportation arrangements."

This ended another chapter, or rather several chapters at once, for persons and organizations and the whole story of the war. For the past three weeks the Nazis had been so busy collecting workmen, French and foreign, for their industry in Germany that the deportations had almost completely stopped. Here and there Jews were being seized and sent to Rivesaltes, but the general atmosphere was calmer. Life in refugee camps had returned to something approaching normal, and all our Nimes agencies had paused for a bit to prepare for whatever might lie ahead. Some of us had felt we might risk taking a short breathing spell, and we had set our next Nimes Committee ahead a month so that we might have the time.

Helen and I had gone to Geneva, and from there on November I went down to Locarno for a proposed ten-day rest. The next morning my Geneva office had telephoned news of the Allied landing in North Africa and the German occupation of southern France. So we hurried back to Geneva. On November 10 the United States broke off all diplomatic relations with Vichy, and it was clear that the two of us were to remain in Switzerland for the duration.

For most of our American colleagues, however, a less agreeable chapter was opening. As far back as April the United States Embassy had requested all Americans not engaged in urgent business in unoccupied France to return home, but the representatives of all our relief agencies had chosen to remain at their jobs, and the Embassy had approved our decision. Consequently, when southern France was occupied, the Germans took all the Americans they could find, mostly diplomatic and relief personnel, and transferred them for what proved to be over a year's internment in Baden-Baden.

The sheer chance of our having chosen this moment to be in Switzerland saved the Lowries from that long Baden-Baden vacation, and it was with rather mixed feelings that, pursuing our usual tasks, I was soon forwarding from our YMCA office in Geneva to my fellow Americans in Baden-Baden books, musical instruments and theatrical material, just as we had been doing for the internees in France.

Changing headquarters from Marseilles to Geneva meant no lessening of work to be done. For one thing, we still had those five thousand U.S. visas, or the promise of them. Could they not be used to save the children, even if overseas travel was out of the question?

For some reason, and contrary to their policy in occupied territory, the Germans at their first entry into southern France, did not deport children under sixteen. Later it became known that their intention was to turn all these youngsters into good Nazis as replacements for the terrible losses of German men in the war. On January 14, 1943, in a cable to New York I suggested: "Urge effort to get countries originally granting visas to assure validity after war. Chance that Swiss might admit them in this case." Since most of the countries concerned were at war, and some of them felt they already had all the Jewish immigration they could manage, this was no simple matter. Formal visas, valid until after the end of hostilities, or some sort of gentlemen's agreement between certain American countries and Switzerland, had to be arranged. Swiss neutrality and other international questions complicated the undertaking.

As we anticipated, the Swiss authorities took the position that to admit (and feed and house) such a large number of children, no private assurances that the youngsters would be moved to other countries after the war would be acceptable: there must be guarantees by a responsible government. At the other side of the Atlantic the State Department pointed out that such a guarantee could not be given since it would involve binding a future administration to issue visas to children who by that time might be adults. The Bermuda Conference on Refugees, currently in progress, helpfully suggested a joint declaration to the neutral nations by the Allied governments pledging that after the war they would return to their respective homelands all refugees forced by persecution to leave. The suggestion appeared to have been accepted, but nothing of practical value for our problem resulted.

In November of 1943 I received a letter (uncensored) in Geneva reporting that the Germans had "blocked" all Jewish children's homes and that their French leaders were arranging to dissolve these centers and "lodge children with private families." A JDC memo can go on with the story of our Emergency Committee: "The Swiss government was persuaded to approach Vichy authorities to permit the children to leave France via Spain. This request of the Swiss government, which was based entirely upon humanitarian grounds, was refused by the French. Nevertheless, we continued to press the Swiss government to make a second demarche to the effect that Switzerland herself would be prepared to give asylum to the children. Switzerland continues to request the formal guarantee of re-evacuation."

If we could secure the revalidation of at least some of these visas, there was a chance of slipping some children across the border. A confidential "note" I sent the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs at that time outlined our approach.

"Beginning with August, 1942, the anti-Semitic persecution initiated a special campaign against children. After the mass deportation of adults in Paris, more than four thousand children were left to wander in the streets or weep before the sealed doors of their former homes. . . . A few days later (p. 227) they were loaded into trains, sixty to a car, the doors were sealed shut . . . and no one has heard of them since . . .

"At the beginning of January, 1943, the German authorities introduced a new system of control ... Jewish children's homes were blocked . . . so that any movement or change of address was forbidden. At the end of January, eight hundred of these children were deported under the same conditions as in 1 942. Since then, another 'blocked' home near Marseilles, with thirty children whose parents had been deported, has been under direct supervision of the German police. On October 20 they, together with the directress and her assistant, were deported. During this operation the Germans took sixty hostages, to prevent any attempt at escape.

"It now appears that in the immediate future all children's homes in the former nonoccupied zone will be 'blocked' in the same manner. Thus about two thousand more children are threatened with deportation, orphans whose parents have already been deported. . . . If, despite all police measures, only six or seven thousand children have been taken, it is because the greater part of the others have been removed from danger . . . thanks to rescue work organized by private organizations of all faiths and political colors, eminent personalities of· the churches and a large part of the general population.

"It is now evident that . . . the capacity to take children into families has reached the saturation point (this was an exaggeration-but it strengthened our argument) and that thus several thousand other children will be 'blocked' in homes, under the menace of deportation. Some of these have succeeded in passing into Spain, others into Switzerland. But about 1500 are left whose lives practically depend on one thing: the possibility of entering Switzerland within the next few weeks. At the moment, further passage into Spain is impossible. Up to now, Swiss authorities have never refused mission to a single child, but it would be quite understable [sic] if Switzerland should feel that it cannot accept an unlimited number of foreign children. (p. 228)

"The Geneva Emergency Committee which last year obtained five thousand emigration visas for these children, visas made useless by the German occupation, is doing its utmost to assure the validity of these visas, once the war is ended.

"The immediate question is whether the Swiss authorities should issue formal authorization for the thousand or fifteen hundred children there is still time to save . . . or let things remain as they are, risking the chance that entry may be refused" (November 15, 1943).

I do not recall that a reply was ever received to this note, but neither do I know of a refugee child's being refused entry into Switzerland.

Another proposition partly evolved by our Emergency Committee in Geneva, which dragged through several months, was that the British government should arrange with the Palestinian government to reserve for these children a sufficient number of the 30,000 immigration certificates for Palestine already authorized but unusable because of the war. Both British and United States governments associated themselves with this proposal, but nothing came of it. On request of the State Department (December 23, 1943) the JDC reaffirmed the guarantee given earlier to the United States Committee for maintenance of five thousand children if permitted entry into the United States.

During these months our Geneva Committee, in concert with similar committees in the other countries concerned, was trying to secure the revalidation of the visas each country had originally offered, making them good until some indefinite future date. Although this was a proposition quite without precedent in diplomatic history, most of the countries we approached eventually gave the necessary assurance, and these were communicated to Berne, but no final action was taken and the matter remained in suspense until the close of hostilities.

Fairly accurate lists now showed six thousand children left in France who had to remain in hiding until the American troops stormed up the Rhone valley to liberate them, together with all their French protectors.

[Lowrie, 1963]

Chapter 22: The Cardinal’s Children from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

see CIMADE

Chapter 23: Hiding Six Thousand Children from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

Almost daily the agencies managed to extract a few dozen children from the camps, sometimes with genuine documents permitting their transfer to an OSE home or to a Quaker colony, sometimes by less legal methods.

A group of thirty children would leave the Rivesaltes camp on a hike, and only fifteen would return. The others "had run away in the town." Some youngsters were sent on doctors' orders (genuine) to a nonexistent children's clinic in Marseilles. The address given was the Unitarian Service Committee' s dispensary for adults, but it served the purpose. One friendly delivery man had a secret compartment built under the seat of his truck, which could contain two or three small children and allow them breathing space until, outside the camp, they could be transferred to a car waiting on a side road and rushed to a home ready to receive them. Again, it was largely thanks to friends in the camp administration and the local police force that such operations were possible.  

As a matter of fact, most of the population of southern France was alert and ready to help threatened children. Whether out of love for youth or hatred for the enemy occupants, most local authorities, as well, worked hand in glove with our agencies in this vast game of hide and seek.

For greater security, the agencies set up an elaborate organization, almost like a business enterprise, of acquisition and delivery of goods. To minimize risks, they divided the whole of southern France into separate compartments, each operating largely on its own, while one or two leaders maintained contact with all the other sectors. Thus in case of a misstep, or a brush with the German police in one sector, no trails leading to other sectors could be followed by the Nazis. The occupants, of course, suspected this, and their action toward all workers for refugees took forms that might have been expected.

Maintaining thousands of children in hiding was a huge enterprise. First Christian parents had to decide to take upon themselves and their own children the risk of taking in a Jewish child, and Laval had proclaimed that hiding a Jew was an act of treason. Then a child had to be selected who more or less naturally fitted into a given family picture. If he was to be presented as a member of this family he had to be of the right age and, if possible, the right complexion.

And then the youngster selected had to be brought, sometimes halfway across southern France, to his sheltering family. In one place the same creaky wagonload of hay was used a dozen times to deliver a child to his adopting family. Of course, save for the big towns, no family could suddenly receive another five- or fifteen-year-old child, and keep it a secret. Concealment was a matter of village-wide conspiracy. The fact that no "leaks" occurred was due almost as much to hatred of the Nazis as to the common effort to save children's lives.

In any case, from that moment on, not only did the parents have to prevaricate, but they also had to teach their own children to lie: "This is our cousin Auguste from (p. 238) Strasbourg ... " Families had to have extra ration cards, but these could easily be fabricated. In most villages the shopkeepers cooperated. The adopted youngsters also had to have "proper" identity papers. One parish set up a complete counterfeiting apparatus. Since most of the youngsters had lost their "cartes d'identite," local officials would often issue substitutes.

The police could not give all their attention to hunting children, because all French manpower-and "man" began at fifteen-was being rounded up and transported to Germany for wartime employment. This circumstance had mixed repercussions on the shelter projects for children. In hundreds of cases a French family with a son over fifteen was hiding him as well as a foreign child. In the best "hideout" sections of France, west and southwest from Lyon and in the Cevennes (where Chambon is located), what with families hiding their own sons and the fact that this was officially designated as a reception area for evacuees from bombed coastal defense zones, "the absorptive capacity" as it was called, was almost exhausted. On the other hand, this generous immixture of outsiders made changes in each family less conspicuous.

Once twenty-five or forty children were safely tucked away in some village you were never sure how long you might be able to keep them there. Almost everywhere we had inside information about imminent action by the police-a given area was to be blocked while a new house-to-house search was carried out. Sometimes a hundred children had to be moved in a night, smuggled through the police cordons into some other areas. Sometimes the new area was a place that had been carefully surveyed and prepared, months before, to receive more children; sometimes temporary overcrowding of a section already near the saturation point had to be risked. In most places the local police were now altogether on our side. It was not uncommon for them to arrest and imprison temporarily a young Frenchman being hunted by the Nazis for their work gangs in the Reich.

The whole operation was a joint effort by Jewish and (p. 239) Christian organizations, mostly OSE and ORT and, on the Christian side, CIMADE and the Catholic institutions. Protestants did not have many places that could be used for storage of a whole group of children at a time, as the Catholics did. For instance, a group of young Protestant conspirators in Grenoble planned to "kidnap" forty Jewish children from the fortress where they were being held, scheduled for deportation eastward the following day. With the aid of some French authorities they arrived at the fortress gates one midnight with two trucks and forged papers authorizing them to move the children to another prison. The Vichy police never could trace those two truckloads of children, who went directly into a convent school in the city. A few days later our committee looked them over and, one by one, they were taken into private homes.

As the summer of 1943 advanced, this secret organization in France could be consolidated. Soon assistants trained in social case work and approved by the various relief bodies were attached to special staffs operating in each of the sectors. Despite the difficulties and grave dangers of travel; at regular intervals they would visit the children in hiding, overhaul their wardrobes, and check on their state of health and their schooling.

By January 1, 1944, twenty-five such special workers were operating, working under the leadership of one director in each sector who was responsible for the application of general rules concerning welfare, and for the coordination of all activities on the children's behalf. At the beginning of this year three thousand children had been registered in three sectors independent one from the other, and fresh contingents of children were being regularly taken into hiding. In addition, some two thousand children were hiding, together with their parents, scattered all over French territory. Soon the total passed the six thousand mark.

In Geneva the OSE headquarters built up a special catalogue of the children in both France and Switzerland. Each card carried the fingerprints of a child, both its real and its assumed (p. 240) name, and whenever possible a photograph. The data assembled for youngsters who had received United States visas in Marseilles in the autumn of 1942 provided a good beginning for the catalogue that eventually included five thousand names, a document of inestimable value when these children were liberated at the end of hostilities.

The great expense of this whole operation of concealment may be imagined. In addition to the cost of feeding and clothing six thousand children under these emergency conditions, in a country suffering the severest penury there was also the added expense of medical and dental care as well as the maintenance and travel costs of supervisory personnel. Fortunately the "available balance" system we used before 1943, and similar procedures, continued to function, so funds were made available; "Otherwise," as one worker put it, "this dangerous and delicate work would be compromised."

One report to the Intergovernmental Committee in 1 944 concluded with this paragraph: "Attention is drawn to the fact that owing to the active sympathy of all the French relief organizations involved, the great devotion of the visiting personnel, and the sound character of the system adopted, not a single child has been lost hitherto."

And this almost miraculous record was continued until the war ended. There was one tragic mishap when the Nazis put their dogs on a small group of children being helped through the barbed wire on the Swiss frontier, and the whole group perished. The grave of the courageous young French woman guide was found after the war.

On September 6, 1944, we received a letter from a Jewish chaplain with the American forces advancing up the Loire valley. "This territory," he wrote, "has just been liberated. I have been here five days and every day some more Jewish children come out of hiding. One day five, the next eleven, and so on. There must be hundreds of kids scattered all over this territory, and they owe their lives to the courage of hundreds of Christian families."

[Lowrie, 1963]

Chapter 24: Czeck Aid Under the Occupation, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

see Czeck Aid (Centre d’Aide Tschécoslovaque; Secours Tchèque), Marseilles, France, see also YMCA, Marseilles, France

Chapter 25: All Clear, from Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (1963):

Despite the tightened german controls on the Swiss-French frontier, we in Geneva were able to maintain considerable communication with southern France. Most of our Nimes organizations, even some of the Jewish agencies, continued operation after the Germans had taken away all the American personnel. The occupants realized that these services were useful to them and, except in the case of Czechs and Poles, permitted the work to continue.

While some of the refugee camps had been closed and the population of the others was steadily diminishing through death and deportations, our devoted secretaries still continued to live inside the barbed wire, and to help these unfortunates as long as help was possible. Most of the needed supplies had (p. 250) to be sent from Switzerland, since France had been scraped bare by the occupying power. A postcard of acknowledgment from one bedridden internee in the camp at Noe said: "Thanks to the drawing material you sent, I can now forget everything around me."

[…]

After the first days of liberation, some reported directly to the rabbi with the American forces, and regrouping went on in an orderly fashion. The OSE and the other Jewish agencies reopened homes that had been evacuated to escape the Nazi occupants. On November 11, 1944, OSE sent this cable from Geneva to New York: "Have initiated action to reunite parents and children. Two thousand are receiving aid with parents, three thousand are being placed in adoptive families and children's homes."

Within a few weeks the thousand and more others hidden in France had been located and brought under the care of the Jewish agencies. All of us were surprised to discover that a third of our hidden youngsters could be reunited with their parents: the Christian organizations had done a larger job of hiding adults than most of us had realized. Some families had means to permit their entry into Switzerland from half-starved France. Later they would return to the lands from which the Nazis had driven them, Holland or Belgium or even Austria: no one wanted to enter Germany again.

Leadership of the Nimes Committee

Dr. Donald Lowrie (USA), head of the World YMCA, head of Czeck Aid, (Centre d’Aide Tschécoslovaque; Secours Tchèque), Marseilles, France, see also YMCA, Marseilles, France Leader of the Nimes Committee, Marsailles.

As leader of the Nimes Committee, Lowrie was one of the most important rescue and aid activists in Southern France.

Dr. Donald Lowrie worked for the North American and later the world service of the YMCA.  Lowrie worked with a number of other relief agencies in the French internment camps.  He helped set up the YMCA relief activities in the unoccupied zone of Vichy.  He worked closely with Vratislav Stula Alias “Thurmond” the assistant director of Czech Aid Czech diplomat in Marseilles, Slavomir Brazk Alias “Dupont”, assistant of Czech Aid Vladimir Vochoc to distribute illegal passports. Later, Lowrie helped Jews escape the French Foreign Labor Battalions by setting up a protected area.  Lowrie also obtained visas from other diplomats, including Cambodian, Portuguese and Mexican.  These documents helped Jewish refugees flee to Switzerland.  Lowrie also helped with an attempt to rescue Jewish children who lost their parents when they were deported in 1942.

“Donald Lowrie, first of the North American and later the World Service of the YMCA, had extensive experience in relief work in France and eastern Europe.  During the 1920s Lowrie had worked in Russia and then spent eight years in Czechoslovakia before going to Paris to direct the outbreak of the war.  Like his French friends, Lowrie fled south during the late spring of 1940, taking what he expected to be temporary lodging near the Gare Saint Charles at the Hôtel Terminus, which remained his home for the next two and a half years.

Lowrie coordinated the work of a number of relief agencies present in the internment camps and directed aid to the neediest individuals.  Along with Tracey Strong, he set up YMCA relief headquarters for the Unoccupied Zone on the rue Pythéas.  He personally oversaw the distribution of nonmaterial aid from the North American YMCA, such as books and musical instruments.  Like Varian Fry, Lowrie also engaged in clandestine and illegal activities with a group called Czech Aid.  He worked with the Czech consul Vochoc to distribute illegal passports and to set up the Château de la Blancherie on the outskirts of Marseille.  The Chateau was a farming community of Czechs, which not only provided a safe place for able-bodied men to escape service in the Foreign Labor Battalions but also was a self-sufficient unit that often raised a surplus for Czech compatriots struggling in Marseille.  Lowrie later wrote that the community was severely criticized because it housed an abnormally high proportion of Jews, yet this experiment remained one of the few success stories of combating Vichy antiforeign and anti-Jewish legislation.  Eventually Czech refugees established a school-colony for Czech children in Vence and a Czech nucleus for the Resistance in southern France.  Somehow these experiments won the respect of some French authorities, for the French never turned these colonies over to the Nazi Todt Commission, which sought able-bodied men to work on construction projects, and even warned them of the imminent Nazi arrival in late 1942.  Clearly, there were alternatives to docile compliance with German intentions and Vichy laws.  It is perhaps surprising that this colony never fell under Rodellec du Porzic’s scrutiny, but possibly his affinity for the enemies of Germany outweighed his tendency toward slavish implementation of Vichy anti-Jewish and xenophobic policies.

Lowrie also obtained forged Cambodian, Portuguese, and Mexican visas to help refugees into Switzerland, for Swiss authorities sometimes admitted foreigners with visas for other destinations.  He made contact with the first underground organizations, which he later claimed appeared during the summer of 1941, and worked with Abbé Perceval, prior of the Dominican monastery in Marseille that hid Jews.  To avoid incurring greater suspicion from government authorities, Lowrie carefully avoided the temptation of exchanging money on the “grey market,” an activity that brought much trouble to Varian Fry, and made only legal exchanges, although he did admit to sometimes obtaining his funds from illegal sources.  Lowrie’s best-known efforts, however, occurred in connection with a large-scale American attempt to rescue Jewish children abandoned when their parents were deported in 1942.

In November 1940 Lowrie helped set up the Coordination Committee for Relief Work in Internment Camps, commonly called the Nîmes Committee, because its monthly meetings were held there.  The committee of twenty-five agencies devoted itself to relief work, primarily in the internment camps but also on behalf of individuals in Marseille.  The Nîmes Committee collectively made reports on camp conditions, which Vichy must have taken seriously, because André Jean-Faure, the government’s camp inspector, attended all meetings.  Whether Vichy actually took notice of committee suggestions, perhaps as a concession to public opinion, or simply intended to keep track of the committee’s activities is unclear” (Ryan, pp. 148-149).

Fry wrotein his memoirs:

            “But if a refugee’s American visa hadn’t yet been authorized, of he wasn’t willing to travel under his own name even if it had been, there was usually only one solution—a false passport.  It was the Czech Consul at Marseille who solved that problem, and it was Donald Lowrie who put me in touch with him.  Lowrie was one of the representatives of the Y.M.C.A. in France, and also the delegate of the American Friends of Czechoslovakia.  He had been in Prague when the Germans came in, and he had helped a good many German and Czech anti-Nazis escape.  When he got to Marseille he was already known to the Czech Consul as a good friend of the Czechs.  I met him very soon after my arrival, and he took me down to the Czech Consulate and introduced me to the Consul.

            “Vladimir Vochoc was a diplomat of the old school  He had been chief of the European personnel division of the Czech Foreign Office before the fall of Prague, and a professor at the University of Prague.  I don’t think he liked the idea of handing out false passports, but he was wise enough to realize that his country had been invaded by the Nazis, and that it wouldn’t be liberated by legal means alone.  He was willing to help any anti-Nazi save his life if there was any chance at all that, once saved, the man would be useful in overthrowing the Nazis and so restoring the independence of Czechoslovakia.  Vochoc’s own job consisted in smuggling the Czech volunteers out of France so they could fight again with the British.

            “At Lowrie’s suggestion, I made a deal with Vochoc.  He agreed to grant Czech passports to any anti-Nazis I recommended to him.  In return I gave him enough money to have new passports printed when his limited supply had run out.  He couldn’t get any more from Prague, obviously, but as a Consul he had the right to have them printed in France.  The work was actually done at Bordeaux, in the occupied zone, under the noses of the Germans.  It was a very nice job.  The covers were pink, whereas the old Prague passports had been green, but otherwise you couldn’t tell one from the other.

            “After that there was nothing left to do but work out a safe way to receive the passports.  Lowrie was living at the Hotel Terminus, and I used to go over to his room and have breakfast with him twice a week.  Each time I went I would take him an envelope of photographs and descriptions of my candidates for Czech passports, and he would give me an envelope of the passports Vochoc had already prepared for the previous lot.  Then I’d go back to my room at the Splendide and hand the passports to the refugees as they came in to get them.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 18-19]

The French Prefecture called to complain about the activities of Bohn, Fry and Lowrie:

“The Prefecture had also called in the American Consul and told him it was inquiet—uneasy—about the ‘activities of Dr. Bohn and Mr. Fry.’  It had also complained about Lowrie’s activities in behalf of the Czech soldiers, and had warned Vochoc not to use any more false passports.  Lowrie had given up his illegal activities, and Vochoc had decided to issue no more passports.” [Fry, 1945, p. 80]

Bauer, 1981, pp. 161-162, 176, 240-241, 262-265; Fry, 1945; Lowrie, The Hunted Children, 1963; Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945). Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.  Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 107, 132, 137, 191. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House). Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), p. 148-149, 152, 167, 216., Suback, 2010, pp. 33-34, 39-44, 66-69, 72, 81, 141-144, 157, 177, 183-184, 227-229)

Vratislav Stula Alias “Thurmond” the assistant director of Czech Aid (Centre d'Aide Tchécoslovaque), assistant to Donald Lowrie, member of the Nimes Committee, World Service of the Young Men’s/Women’s Christian Association (YMCA/YWCA), Marseilles office,

Upon arrival at Aix-Marsielle in August 1939, Stula engaged in military and paramilitary activities due to the imminent war with Germany. Prior to his university studies, he received military training, joining the volunteer Czech Brigade of the French Army (L'Armée Tchécoslovaque en France) on 2 September 1939. On 1 December 1939, Stula was called to active duty, beginning his formal army combat training at the Agde, Herault, military camp. He served as an infantry corporal in military campaigns fighting against Germany during the spring and early summer of 1940. Six months later, following the Battle of France and the second French-German Compiègne armistice on 22 June 1940, Stula was officially demobilized from army service on 26 June 1940.

Joining an underground unit of the Free French Forces in June 1941, Stula served as a covert combat member of the French Resistance Movement (La Resistance) through 1945. Thanks to the cooperation of the Aix-Marseilles University officials, he was able to obtain two addresses, a covert alias, and dual identity papers to maintain his status as a student while also working as a soldier for the underground resistance.

Stula was also working as the assistant director of Czech Aid (Centre d'Aide Tchécoslovaque)—a part of the original Nimes Committee and the only remaining Czechoslovak organization in existence during WWII in unoccupied (Vichy) France—to provide assistance to hundreds of demobilized Czech and other refugees. Under the auspices of the Czech Aid refugee program, he worked under false identity papers, using the alias “Mr. Thurmond” before the Gestapo raid (see below), in securing shelter, support and food for refugees (including Jews) and allied soldiers. As a covert Czech Aid official, Stula was also able to successfully direct the underground Network Service of the Free French Forces for his sector of Vichy France. In 1943, the Gestapo raided the offices of the Marseilles Centre d'Aide Tchécoslovaque. They interrogated “Mr. Thurmond” and threatened to execute his family, but Stula narrowly escaped by convincing them that he was just a student and by speaking superb French. The Gestapo later realized their mistake, issuing a warrant for Stula’s arrest with a 50,000 franc reward on his head, and subsequently closed the Czech Aid organization.

However, Stula was able to continue his work for Czech Aid, using a new alias, “Mr. Montagnon,” but now in a covert, underground capacity. Lowrie summarizes Stula's single-handed efforts to re-establish the Czech Aid rescue operations, after the Gestapo raid, in the following The Hunted Children passage: “Thurmond (Stula) had persuaded the French postal officials to permit him, against all (Vichy) regulations, to copy the lists of earlier Czech Aid payments and was thus able to reconstitute those files, so that the Czechs never missed a month's payment of allowances."

The reconstituted accounts were delivered to Lowrie in Geneva, and under his direction, the original French accountant was able to continue auditing Czech Aid records, thanks to the young two men, "Thurmond and "Dupont" covert operations. Through additional underground negotiations, Stula, Slavomir Brazk and Pastor Toureille successfully established a new covert committee to aid refugees and fallen allied soldiers. From exile in Geneva, Dr. Lowrie was able to secure 20,000 francs per month for the new “committee” from Hugo Cedergren in Stockholm. The funds were filtered through Foreign Office officials in Vichy and delivered to the committee through the “black market” channels. Thanks to these funds, Stula and Brazk could continue at great personal risk, practically all Czech Aid relief services previously under the guidance of the Nîmes Committee. The funds helped save children, families and refugees, including allied soldiers, until the end of the war.

Following the war, Stula was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Resistance, and was recognized for his active military service by General Charles De Gaulle. The following passage summarizes General De Gaulle’s letter to Stula, acknowledging his WWII resistance missions:

“To the order of the Army Corps Corporal Chief Vratislav Stula, in the mission of the D.G.E.R., has during the past three years and four months, directed the Network Service of his sector. He has accomplished personally, against any danger, dangerous missions. After having fallen three times into the claws of the Gestapo, he succeeded, thanks to his cold blood, to mislead and confuse their research and as soon as he was set free, he alerted the network of possible danger. He was able to save numerous lives thanks to his courage, spirit, and his initiative by organizing their fleet to abroad.” Signed by De Gaulle, 4 September 1945.

In addition to General De Gaulle’s awards and commendations, Stula received letters and awards from the Czech Foreign Minister in exile, Jan Masaryk Jr, while he resided in Paris, and from the President of the International Committee YMCA in Paris, Donald A. Lowrie, each acknowledging Stula’s remarkable missions and courageous war efforts, conducted in a selfless manner. (Czechoslovakia; Lowrie, 1963)

Slavomir Brazk Alias “Dupont”, assistant of Czech Aid (Centre d'Aide Tchécoslovaque), assistant to Donald Lowrie, member of the Nimes Committee, World Service of the Young Men’s/Women’s Christian Association (YMCA/YWCA), Marseilles office,

Slavomir Brazk Alias “Dupont”, worked with Donald A. Lowrie Director of Czech Aid and Vratislav Stula Alias “Thurmond” the assistant director of Czech Aid (Centre d'Aide Tchécoslovaque) in aiding refugees in the Marsilles area.

“In Marseilles it took the occupying Germans nearly a month to turn their attention to the Czech Aid. Early in the morning on December 3, 1942, they occupied our offices, arresting all personnel as they came to work. A neighbor warned one of the younger leaders before he left his room and he succeeded in alerting one other, the first assistant to the director. This man, one of whose half dozen identity cards read "Dupont," took over the leadership of Czech Aid.

Although hunted by the Gestapo for almost three years after they had entered Marseilles, Dupont was able to elude their clutches, largely because of his perfect alibi. Early in the war, a French friend of his had fallen in battle, and the young man's parents, deliberately neglecting to report his death to French authorities, turned over to Dupont their son's identity papers. By good fortune the young Frenchman had almost exactly the same build and coloring as Dupont. Having thus become a Frenchman (equipped with documents proving he had recently returned from a German war prisoner camp) Dupont could live without being challenged, at least until the Germans began to impress all young men into work groups. He was even able, on demand, to present documents (genuine) proving that all four of his grandparents were Aryan.

[…]

The reconstituted accounts of Czeck Aid were delivered to Donald Lowrie in Geneva, and under his direction, the original French accountant was able to continue auditing Czech Aid records, thanks to the young two men, "Thurmond and "Dupont" covert operations. Through additional underground negotiations, Stula, Slavomir Brazk and Pastor Toureille successfully established a new covert committee to aid refugees and fallen allied soldiers. From exile in Geneva, Dr. Lowrie was able to secure 20,000 francs per month for the new “committee” from Hugo Cedergren in Stockholm. The funds were filtered through Foreign Office officials in Vichy and delivered to the committee through the “black market” channels. Thanks to these funds, Stula and Brazk could continue at great personal risk, practically all Czech Aid relief services previously under the guidance of the Nîmes Committee. The funds helped save children, families and refugees, including allied soldiers, until the end of the war.” (Lowrie, 1963) 

[…]

Faced with constantly increasing danger, Dupont and Thurmond were able to maintain practically all the Czech Aid operations almost uninterrupted. For some months they worked out of the YMCA office in the rue Pytheas, aided by the French staff that was left. The YMCA had a good reputation with the Germans because of its world-wide services to war prisoners in Britain, America and India, and nothing in our Marseilles files would reveal any anti-German activity. But one day the Gestapo raided this office, incidentally giving Thurmond the narrowest escape of all those exciting years. As usual, the Gestapo broke into the office in the early morning. As each person, staff or caller, entered, a Nazi, revolver in hand, would take him to a back room, search his pockets, and warn him to remain silent and out of sight.  

When the Nazis got around to ransacking our office, a few hours later, they found some papers indicating that the frightened French student might have been who he really was, and from then on both Thurmond and Dupont worked with the knowledge that the Germans had offered a reward of 50,000 francs for information leading to their capture.

With both offices closed, the two young Czechs had to rely on helpful friends in Marseilles and across southern France. They rented a room in the house of a Czech workman in a Marseilles suburb to serve as headquarters for continuing operations.  

A paragraph from one of Dupont's reports at the end of 1943 tells the story: "Since the 'Office' offered only juridical and not material help, the 'Comite d' Assistance aux Refugies Tcheques' is proposed. This is supposed to be a private organization of seven people, friends of Czechoslovakia, which would conduct the social work hitherto done by the Centre d'Aide. It must be explained that officially the French know nothing of the fact that, although its property and offices were confiscated by the Gestapo, the Centre d' Aide still continues to function, underground. Vichy is insisting on the organization of this Committee for Aid of Czech Refugees, hence we shall have to comply with their suggestion. Since the lists of those helped by this Committee would be available to the Germans, we will take care that only those persons appear in the books who are too old or too ill to be in danger of being sent to Germany. We shall continue to care for all the others, as hitherto, in secret." Thurmond had persuaded the French postal officials to permit him, against all regulations, to copy the lists of earlier Czech Aid payments and was thus able to reconstitute those files, so that the Czechs never missed a month's payment of allowances.

Pastor Pierre CharlesToureille●, Committee for Aid of Czech Refugees (Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés Tcheques), French YMCA, Marseilles. (France; Lowrie, 1963; Subak, 2010) Honored by Yad Vashem November 6, 1973, File 813.  See Appendix E for Yad Vashem biography.

During the occupation, the French clergyman Pierre Charles Toureille was posted to southern France as the chief minister of foreign Protestant refugees. Concurrently, he served as the deputy chairman of the Comité de Nîmes, a committee appointed by the Vichy government to coordinate the work of French and foreign humanitarian organizations and to advise the Government on foreign refugees, primarily Jews. Pastor Toureille helped many Jews. This assistance was necessarily secret and undocumented, so we know only of cases that came to light after the war. One of the people assisted by Toureille was Robert Papst, a Hungarian-born Jew who in 1942 had married a Protestant woman in France with Swiss nationality. He provided Robert Papst with a forged identification card in the name of Parlier and hired him as a member of his office staff in Lunel. In the course of 1943-1944, Gestapo agents visited the office to investigate the activities of the clergyman and his staff. Papst’s forged papers spared him from arrest, but Pastor Toureille was interrogated seven times and tortured by the Gestapo on suspicion of aiding Jews. The Sperbers were another Jewish couple whose lives were saved by virtue of Toureille’s assistance. Toureille attested falsely that they were Protestants and helped them find refuge in an abandoned house in the Alps in the département of Isère. In June 1943, when the Sperbers had a son, the pastor helped them cope with their desperate financial circumstances by regularly providing small sums of money and provisions.

On November 6, 1973, Yad Vashem recognized Pastor Pierre Charles Toureille as Righteous Among the Nations.

Vladimír Vochoc●, Czechoslovakian Consul in Marseilles, France, 1940.  Czech Consul Vladimir Vochoc, stationed in Marseilles, distributed many Czech passports on his own authority to Jews and anti-Nazis who wanted to escape from Marseilles to Spain and Portugal.  Vochoc worked closely with Varian Fry of the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), Dr. Frank Bohn of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Dr. Donald Lowrie of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in supplying Czech visas.  For his life-saving activities, Vochoc was arrested by Nazi and French authorities pending possible deportation.  Two months later, he managed to escape to Lisbon. Honored by Yad Vashem February 2, 2016, case 13204.  See Appendix E for Yad Vashem biography.

(Lowry, 1963, p. 48.  Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 18-19, 32, 40-41, 49, 57, 80-82, 208. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 107-108, 119, 137, 141, 192-193. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House), pp. 38, 87, 111, 188. Klein, Anne. “Conscience, conflict and politics: The rescue of political refugees from southern France to the United States, 1940-1942.” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 43 (1998), 298-299.  Archiv der socialen Demokratie, NL Vladimir Vochoc (transl. By Vera Pikow). Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 143-144, 148. Ebel, Miriam Davenport. An Unsentimental Education: A Memoir by Miriam Davenport Ebel. (1999).  Moore, 2010, pp. 23, 24-26.  Vochoc, Vladimír, Compte Rendu (London, 1941), 18.  Coll Archiv Joseph Fisera USHMM RG-43.028 A 0069.)

Helen Lowrie, Nimes Committee, wife of Donald A. Lowrie  (Lowrie, 1963; Subak, 2010, pp. 33-35, 53, 60, 62-64, 81, 84, 152-153, 157, 182)

Mr. Stevenson (USC), American Friends Service Committee, AFSC (Marseille), Camp Les Milles, Secretary of the Nîmes Committee.