Käte Haas

Käte Haas and the Second World War

Käte Haas (née Oppenheimer) was born in September 1904 in Stuttgart. She came from a middle-class family and her father was a doctor. Her parents were Jewish and, although they never seem to have been very observant, this fact affected her life from the start. This did not mean that she experienced anti-semitism in a direct way, but Stuttgart was a highly stratified society and there was comparatively little social mixing between the Jews and the rest of the population. In fact, this stratification was even carried over into Jewish circles: it was therefore important to attend the circles where young people would meet the ‘right’ kind of Jews and eventually find suitable partners. Although Käte ’s father appears to have been traditional in most respects, he was advanced in his attitude to women’s education, and he started a co-educational primary school. This was reflected in Käte ’s own outlook and she seems to have taken her own studies very seriously, developing a reputation for being far more of an intellectual than her younger brother, Hans. Later she thus went to university, initially at Munich and later at Tubingen, to study law and economics and this was extremely unusual for women at the time.

In August 1929 she married Richard Haas, who was also from a middle-class Jewish family in Stuttgart. Her brother Hans went to Egypt in 1929 to work for his uncle (having already spent some time in Paris and London) and both her parents died within eighteen months of the marriage. Perhaps this reinforced the closeness of her relationship with Richard. In any case, she evidently loved him very deeply. He was four years older than her and aspired to be a University chemistry teacher. However, although the Nazi regime was not established until 1933, Käte later claimed that the fact that they were Jewish already meant that neither of them could now achieve their ambitions. Käte had taken a year a year out from university when they married, but when she returned, she was told that she could not submit her thesis because she was Jewish and Richard was debarred from becoming an academic for the same reason. By now the economic depression was devastating Germany after four years of relative success and presumably the universities were operating a stronger numerus clausus policy in relation to Jews. Richard therefore began to work in a chemical factory.

When the chemical factory was bought by a Swiss firm, they moved to Switzerland and stayed there for three years. However, their work permits then expired and, as Hitler had now come to power, they now decided to go to France. No entry was permit was needed, but since they were German nationals they could not be employed. However, a relative sent them money to start a business and Richard’s best friend, who lived in Berlin, asked to be an associate so that he would have a base if he needed to leave Germany in a hurry. He was able to send some money every day and the company, which produced industrial oil, prospered. Käte helped her husband with the business and by 1939 it was employing twenty people. Living in their flat in the Square du Thimerais, they may have hoped that their future was now assured. However, from about 1936 it had become increasingly evident that war was probable and she later claimed that they never had children because of the uncertainty of the times.

As soon as the Germans invaded Poland on 1st September, all German nationals were asked to report to the authorities and on 8th September Richard was taken into custody. When she later recollected these events, she made light of them, but her contemporary diary reveals a totally different situation. After Richard was taken, Käte became quite desperate. She could not eat and lost 10 kgs., and by 20th September feared that she would never see him again. She realised that she had become totally dependent on him, confiding in her diary on 23rd September:

I now became aware of how much I have become “Mrs” in the marriage with you. All my independence, of which I was so proud before, fell from me. I know that I am nothing without you – only live for you and without you I feel meaningless. Before, I now and then wished that I would have a free hour now and then and I was thinking about all the things I would do. Now the free hours lay in abundance before me and my only aim is to overcome them as quickly as possible. I would prefer to sleep all the time so that I do not need to think. Because when I am thinking, I am thinking of you and sometimes, I believe that I am not able to endure it anymore without you.

Nevertheless, she tried to overcome her depression and pessimism by continuing to work. By now she had also learned that he was being held in Vierson (near Bourges) and was able to correspond with him, and this also relieved her anxiety.

The diary stops on 5th October, implying that he was released and they were probably now also given a ‘passe-partout’ which stated that they were working for the French and allowing them to travel freely. However, this had been a deeply distressing episode and their life back together lasted only during the ‘phoney war’ period for, when the Germans invaded Belgium in May 1940, they were called up again and had to go to a sports centre in Paris. Richard was then sent with all the men to the Italian border, while was sent in a train (on a 24 hour journey without food) to a barracks in Gurs, to the west of Pau, in the Pyrenees.

Gurs had been built the previous year to house refugees of the Spanish Civil War – especially former soldiers of the International Brigades. However, its primary purpose changed almost immediately and it was to become an internment camp with appalling conditions. It was a vast site, consisting of a collection of shacks, designed to hold 15,000 men. However, women and children were now also held there and, at its peak, the total population was 18,000, the majority of whom were Jews who had escaped from Germany. When she first arrived, Käte shared a dormitory with sixty women, with the bed next to the exit occupied by a German non-Jewish woman, who would not let Jews go in and out of the door. Käte therefore asked for a transfer to another section of the barracks and, as she could speak French, she was put in charge of one of the dormitories, which contained recent arrivals from Austria. She and the cook divided the food equally between the sixty women (something that was not done so scrupulously in all the dormitories). When the French surrendered to the Germans on 18th June they were all released. However, she, like many others, stayed on for a while because they did not know where to go. Eventually, she went down to a local hotel where was given a job, washing up in exchange for food and a room.

Although the conditions at Gurs were harsh while she was there, Käte was extremely fortunate to have left when she did. Later that summer the Nazi authorities began deporting Jews from Germany and the occupied zone in the North to the areas controlled by the Vichy authorities. In October they rounded up 6504 in Baden and the Saarpfalz and dispatched them in sealed trains for Lyon. After wrangling between the French and German authorities, the German Jews finally reached Gurs on 25 October. By then some were dead and within the next few months over 1000 people (out of a total camp population of 13,500) died of a variety of diseases, including starvation, dysentery and typhoid. Subsequently, the inmates became dependent on foreign charities for the survival, but many of the Jews who did live until August 1942 were then deported to the extermination camps. Had Käte not left during the brief interlude in which there was a choice, her chances of survival would thus have been minimal.

Her bedroom in the hotel was in the attic and full of bugs and fleas, so she tried to sleep on chairs in the dining room. When the hotel manager found out, she was thrown out. Meanwhile she had managed to contact Richard, who told her to go to the wife of someone in his camp, who lived in Lyon with three children. Käte was authorised to leave Gurs on 14 July and, when she arrived in Lyon, the woman put her up. However, she would not let her stay in the house during the day, so she had to tramp the streets and went without food for nearly a week. But she then heard from Richard that, when the Italians had declared war just before the fall of France, the people in his camp had been marched from the Italian border to the Ardèche . He told her to move to Le Cheylard –about one hundred miles south of Lyon. Since this area was to become so important to her for the rest of her life, it is worth saying a little about it at this point. Even now – more than sixty years later – Le Cheylard is a rather inaccesible small town in the hills, almost three hours by car from Lyon. In 1940, when Käte arrived by train, it must have seemed quite remote – a poor market town in rather barren agricultural hills and mountains. In fact, the Ardèche itself was one of the most isolated areas in rural France. Yet, perhaps for this very reason, it was also an area to which many people were to seek refuge during the war. Apart from other Jews, including those of German origin, there were also many people from Alsace and Lorraine, who moved there after the Nazi annexation of their homeland following the Armistice, exiles from Spain and, after 1942, even an upper class British couple whose Chateau in Cassis was occupied by German forces. There was a large Protestant minority in the Ardèche, which had itself been persecuted after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and many of them were sensitive to the position of other persecuted minorities. The village of Chambon-sur-Lignon, which was nearly 80% Protestant, and has gained legendary status for saving between a thousand and five thousand Jews during the war, was just across the mountains in the Haut-Loire, and there were elements of this protective tradition in the Ardèche too. Käte and Richard were therefore never the only foreigners in this poor rural community and they do not seem to have encountered the kind of hostility often experienced by refugees and asylum seekers in twenty-first century Europe. However, it is also important not to exaggerate the extent of the resistance to the Vichy regime in the region. Before November 1942 (when the division between Occupied and Non-Occupied France was abolished) there were only a few hundred committed members of the Resistance in the whole of the Ardèche ; and it was the introduction of the Compulsory Labour Scheme under which French workers were send to Germany, rather than anti-Nazism per se, which really mobilised the opposition forces.

When Käte arrived at Le Cheylard in the summer of 1940, it was full of all types of people fleeing from the Germans, so she could not get a room for the night. A guard let her sleep in a railway carriage with wooden seats, but in the morning a French soldier came in and started making advances so she ran away. Fortunately, she saw Richard in a window and so they were re-united after about two months of separation. They now had to decide the next move.

When forced to leave Paris, they had handed over their business to a French employee and he made trips down to the Ardèche to bring them money. They were therefore not entirely destitute, but it was not easy to find a place to stay. However, they managed find shared accommodation in Accons, a tiny village five kilometres from Le Cheylard, which is approximately 550 metres above sea level and bitterly cold in winter. In 1940 it was really isolated and only had about ten houses and some scattered farms at the top of the hill. They now rented one of the houses with two other couples. Each couple had one room and they all shared a kitchen but after a while they quarrelled and wanted to separate. Fortunately, the mayor of Accons was a strong believer in helping refugees and his daughter (Mme Viotto) now let Richard and Käte rent a flat in her house. This was opposite the mairie, which was at the time a boys’ school. However, it was only a temporary arrangement for, when her nephew (who had been in the army) and his wife returned, they had to move from here as well, staying in a hotel for a week until they found a mill below Accons. This was known as the ‘moulin’ (and is currently labelled 5 million) on the west bank of the river Dorne at Mandé. It had no toilet, no floor and no roof, and the owner let them have it rent-free until the end of the war on condition that they did repairs.

By now the situation of the Jews in France was becoming increasingly difficult. On 3rd October 1940 the first Statut des Juifs was brought in by the Vichy regime, which meant that Jews were excluded from many jobs, and the next day a further law gave Prefects the right to intern foreign Jews. The following March a new post was established when Xavier Vallat became Le Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives, so as to harmonise anti-Jewish legislation in Vichy France with that in the German-occupied zone. Anti-Jewish propaganda was increasing throughout France and in Paris (within the German-occupied zone) the first mass arrests and internments at Drancy began in May 1941. The next month Vallat introduced a second Statut des Juifs for non-occupied France, which defined Jews more strictly. It also restricted the number of Jews in schools and excluded them from work in liberal, commercial, industrial or artisanal professions. In September 1941 Theodore Dannecker arrived in France as SS-Obersturmfuhrer to reinforce the anti-Jewish policies. In March 1942 the first train, with over a thousand Jews, departed from Drancy to an ‘unknown destination’: none survived. Two months later Jews in the Occupied Zone were forced to wear the yellow star and in July 1942 nearly 13,000 Jews were seized.

So far the deportations had only taken place from the Occupied Zone, while the position of Jews in the rest of France was dependent upon the zeal with which local officials carried out the restrictive policies which had been introduced by the Vichy regime. It is a matter of debate whether Richard and Käte should have seen the way things were going and tried to escape to Spain as many others did. It is possible that they were considering this as – at some point during the war - Käte acquired a false identity card bearing the name Catherine Barbin, and claiming that she had been born in Paris and was now living in Guéthary in the Basses-Pyrenées. However, they did not move and were now in great danger as the Vichy Prime Minister, Pierre Laval, bargained over the future of Jews in their position.

The French had agreed to carry out the mass arrests and deportations in the Occupied Zone on condition that only foreign Jews were included in these policies. The Germans had not been happy with this and Dannecker had demanded that the Paris arrests should include 40% of the naturalised French Jews. This had led to serious disputes between the Vichy government and the German authorities. Eventually, the French authorities decided that their priority was to rid France of the foreign Jews and, in order to achieve this, they offered non-French Jews from the free zone in the place of naturalised French Jews in the Occupied Zone, and this was agreed. In July 1942 the Vichy regime thus agreed with the Nazis regime that the following month it would hand over 10,000 Jews. The imminent ‘round-up’ (rafle) that was to take place in the free zone was thus organised entirely by the French government through lists drawn up either by the a Groupe de travailleurs étrangers or by the Departmental Prefect. Of course, this was not announced publicly so Richard and Käte had no warning of the change of policy, beyond the fact that the general atmosphere had become more threatening.

On 13 January 1942 Richard applied to renew his residency permit. This was supported by the Mayor of Accons, M.Valette, who gave him a very supportive reference and the permit was renewed without difficulty for a further three years from the 3rd February. However, early the next month both he and Käte were picked up by two police on the grounds that they had been staying in the Hotel du Midi in Le Cheylard for approximately three months, although they were now resident in Accons. As foreigners they needed to inform the authorities of such movements. The police had checked their residency with the Mayor of Le Cheylard and took the case to a formal hearing on 7 March, rather than either turning a blind eye to the ‘offence’ or simply asking them to follow the stipulated procedures. This was indicative of the increasingly repressive and xenophobic atmosphere, but perhaps Richard and Käte, who claimed not to know of the regulation, simply regarded it as an isolated incident by two officious policemen. Richard also tried to take some positive steps to protect his position.

At this time he had no job and it was extremely difficult for a Jewish foreigner to get work under the stringent labour controls. These were operated by the system of ‘Groupe de travailleurs etrangers’ (GTE), responsible to the ‘Commissariat à la lutte contre le chomage’ . However, Richard had a very high level of specialised skills in chemistry and engineering and the area was a centre for textile and silk production. At Carmantran, which is on the road between Le Cheylard and Accons, there was a silk factory run by a father and son, ‘Les Etablissements L.Ducros et Fils’ and at some point Richard contacted them. In a subsequent letter to the Prefect the younger Ducros claimed that Richard had given his services free of charge for a year in an aspect of production involving diverse fibres; and in the early summer of 1942 Ducros asked the Director of the area GTE (no.133) at St Privat to give him a contract, which was agreed on 1st July. Richard must have hoped that, by demonstrating that his expertise would help French production, he would gain some security. However, following the agreements between the Vichy regime and the Nazis, plans were soon underway to round up foreign Jews in the area on 26 August.

Although Richard and Käte seem to have remained generally optimistic about their own position, there was clearly an increasingly menacing atmosphere. In Accons itself there was one other German Jewish couple, the Schlesingers, and a German Jewish man in his fifties, Théodore Markwald, living alone at Villebrion, on the other side of the road from Accons to Dornas. There were other Jewish refugees in Le Cheylard, and Richard and Käte sometimes spent time with some of them, including the Richards and the Schiffs. But by the summer of 1942 some clearly felt increasingly insecure. In her diary Käte thus recalled that on 22 August they had ‘wanted to encourage the Schiffs, who were present and feared deportation’. Others, such as Markwald, were also in a very precarious economic situation without even having a ration card and relying on local farmers for help. In general, the Jewish refugees probably found ordinary people reasonably sympathetic – though they too were facing acute shortages – and this may have encouraged a belief that the environment was generally benign. At the official level, however, the situation was quite the reverse.

Preparations for the round up were organised under the instructions of the Prefect for the area and a secret list was prepared on 13 August. In fact, the Prefect was particularly zealous in carrying out the policy so that 42 foreign Jews, including Richard, were arrested before the specified date. The police of Le Cheylard drew up a list of people who could be arrested because they were not useful for the economy or sometimes for other reasons. For example, Théodore Markwald was arrested for illegally crossing the demarcation line. He obviously feared that this might lead to deportation and, on 22 August, wrote a pathetic letter to the Prefect, attaching a certificate of the medical-military authority declaring that he was unsuitable for life in a camp because he had glaucoma. Declaring that he lived in a wretched way, never hearing either from his son in South Africa or his daughter, who had disappeared in Paris, and without even knowing what had become of his grandson, a French national. He had, he insisted, always been an honest citizen, who had never done anyone any harm, and he appealed to the Prefect, with trust and hope to restore his lost sense of calm . His plea was ignored and he was arrested on 26 August. Another man, Léonard Judel, also in his fifties, was taken because it was alleged that he had been involved in the black market. Nothing in particular was noted against Richard, but Buisson, the director of the GTE based in Saint Privat who had granted him the contract of employment at the Ducros factory, noted that he had a ‘fair attitude’. [%E2%80%98comportement moyen’].

In all probability, the list of those to be arrested was compiled simply to meet targets set from above, and the majority of those chosen were already on records kept by the GTE. There was also close liaison between the Prefect, the GTE and the police. The Commandant of the Gendarmerie of the Ardèche first instructed the individual commanders to provide a list of French and foreign Jews in their area on 11 August, but a week later complained that they had not supplied all the necessary information and insisted that this must reach him by 22 August at the latest. The Le Cheylard police provided a list of foreign Jews in the area on 20 August. This also confirmed that it would not be harmful to the French economy if any of those on the list ceased to be employed. Obviously, Richard had hoped that his position with Ducros would offer him some protection, but he could not have anticipated the perfidy of the Director of the GTE in Saint Privat (named Buisson) who had given Richard the contract of employment at Ducros. In fact, it is possible that this made him still more vulnerable, for his name was now on the GTE list that supplied most of the names of those to be rounded up, and the police probably first went to the Ducros factory to arrest him and then commandeered the company car to find him. Subsequently the GTE office kept the Prefect informed about what was happening to those who had been picked up. In fact, all the agencies involved, including the police at Le Cheylard under the chief, Pierre Roux, seem to have carried out their work with zeal. Richard, for example, was not at home when they searched for him, but they made sure that they found him (see below). And by 25 August they also knew that the round-up was for compulsory deportation and some would have been aware of the fate awaiting the deportees. Thus a note that day to the brigrades of the gendarmerie in the Ardèche from the Commandant in Privas stated:

It can be indicated to the Jewish foreigners that they are being sent to Poland (Lublin) where a Jewish state has been created and that Germany has given an assurance to the French government that they will not be maltreated.

For Käte, Richard’s arrest and subsequent disappearance was, of course, totally traumatic She wrote a contemporary account of what then happened in a diary entry on 9th September, her 38th birthday:

A new year of life begins. Again, I start writing a diary after Richard suddenly was suddenly ripped out of my life 17 days ago. I am writing for him, with the reservation and in the fear of never seeing him again. These two-and a half weeks were very bad for me and certainly also for him. Sometimes I fear that I am really going crazy. The separation was so swift that I did not realise at first what it means. The Saturday of the 22nd August started like all days: breakfast, then, Richard went to work. At 12 o’clock, we met at Fanny’s for lunch. In the afternoon, we went shopping, went to Rosenthal for half an hour, where we spoke of the future without knowing, what was threatening us. We wanted to encourage the Schiffs, who were present and feared deportation, we just did not know, that we spoke on behalf of ourselves. Then, we played Bridge at the Richards. On the way home, we were overtaken by the car from the company, to which Richard had belonged since the end of July and picked up. We were driven home and there we were told that Richard must go with them. However, he would be home again on Sunday or Monday. It should have made me suspicious, however, that the gendarmes had the right to take me with them if I wanted to. But I did not think straight and the two of them swore so well by all saints that I believed them. Richard and I parted without suspicion certain to see each other again soon. It hurt me a little that he did not look back when they drove off. I had given neither clothes nor anything else to him, besides provisions for the night drive. And since then I am alone.

This account can be supplemented by some documentary evidence. As soon as Richard was taken, Käte appealed to his employer, Ducros, to intervene. There were two grounds on which it was hoped that this might be successful: first the fact that Richard had initially entered France before 1933 and therefore might be exempted from the category of ‘foreign Jew’; and secondly, the importance of his work. Ducros was probably not sure to whom to address any appeal and may have made several attempts before writing to the Prefect on 26 August – by which time Richard had, in fact, already left for Fort Barraux. Nevertheless, he did his best, attaching evidence about Richard first entering France in August 1932, and asking him to be freed from captivity. Receiving no reply, he wrote again at greater length on 1 September. Here he recounted that on the evening of 22 August a man in civilian clothes and a policeman had taken Richard off in a small lorry. As this passed the factory, Ducros senior had told the man in civilian clothes that Richard needed to finish the experiments with fibre production on Monday 24th and that this could not be done without his presence. He received the reply that Richard had his bicycle with him and would return on the Monday morning. However, since then they had had tried everything to ensure that he was returned to them for 48 hours, but had heard nothing, apart from vague responses about journeys to St Privat, Fort Barreux and the Prefecture of Privat. This meant that they had now to been forced to abandon the work that they had been carrying out for a year, meaning a loss of about 200-250,000 francs. They had hoped that the contract with Richard would be honoured for he was extremely useful for their work.

This was a careful letter, couched in terms to make the maximum appeal by emphasising Richard’s economic importance, but it was certainly a real attempt to secure his release. However, the reply from the Prefect (carrying the imprecise date of September 1942) disregarded all the arguments and evaded all responsibility by claiming that all this was the affair of the GTE and the Commissariat à Lutte Contre le Chomage. This was a lie, for it was the Prefect who had given instructions for the arrests and it was he who decided what would subsequently happen.

There was a rapid succession of Prefects in the Ardèche during the Vichy regime and they all appear to have collaborated in the deportations. The incumbent in August 1942 was Eugène Hild and he remained in this post until the end of the year before moving on and becoming Prefect of the Drôme. He appears to have been particularly zealous in his implementation of the anti-Jewish policies, Yet while the Prefect was ultimately responsible, the GTE certainly also played a key role in close co-operation with the police. 52 people, all of whom were registered with the GTE, were originally listed for arrest, of whom 42 were actually arrested. 10 of these were subsequently released because they were in a specific category (see below) and another 10 managed to escape. Richard was therefore one of a group of 32 from the area arrested in this first round-up.

This leaves a further question. Käte initially believed that Ducros was doing everything that he could to secure Richard’s release and accepted his advice that there was no point in getting a lawyer. A little later, she clearly came to believe that he had lost interest and would do nothing more. She may have been right, but it also seems that he was probably justified in his assessment of the situation. Since it was the Vichy government that had organised the round-up in the non-occupied zone through the Prefect, Ducros’ intervention could probably have been effective only if he had particular influence over the Prefect or had important contacts above him. He was therefore probably right in believing that, as an individual, he could do little more in Richard’s case. And at this stage, as already noted, the Resistance in the area was still comparatively weak and the deportation of the Jews would not be their primary concern. In any case, on 2 September – almost certainly before Ducros received his reply from the Prefect - Richard had already been sent from Drancy to Auschwitz and his death. As will be shown, the continuing impact of all this on Käte was almost unbearable. But before looking further at her life and feelings in this period, there is another aspect to consider: the plight of some of the other foreign Jews, who were not taken in August 1942, and her attitudes towards them, both at the time and in retrospect.

It must have been difficult to understand and accept the fact that Richard had been selected when others, including herself, remained free. In general, she continued to see some of the remaining foreign Jews in the area. Further round-ups took place in 1943, and some of her acquaintances again survived. The Richards managed to escape secretly just before their capture and survived in the nearby commune of Les Ollières. Another couple, the Roths, seem to have convinced the police that they were not Jewish. Two other couples resorted to medical evidence to prevent or postpone deportation. This was a paradox: for although the Vichy authorities were well aware of the probable fate of the deportees, medical evidence demonstrating that a person could not survive the journey or the camps could provide delay or exemption from the arrest. Despite their earlier fears, the Schiffs managed to produce enough evidence of this kind. The case of the Schlesingers was more elaborate. Ludwig Schlesinger was often warned of possible raids and went into hiding, but on 26 February 1943 he was arrested. However, he claimed to have heart problems and asked for a doctor’s visit. In fact he lived in a house in the village rented by a doctor (Dr Bouzol) and it was he who carried out the examination. According to the history of Accons by Dominique Charre, Schlesinger gave his ration of tobacco to Bouzol, who produced a long and convincing letter about the multiple factors that would render him unfit for a journey or life in a concentration camp. No doubt this was one of the many instances of a sympathetic doctor circumventing the persecution, and the Schlesinger family survived the war, returned to Germany and helped to establish a twin town arrangement between Weilmünster and Le Cheylard. Of course many more were deported.

In general, Käte seems to have continued to have contact with some of the other survivors and at the end of the war she would travel to Paris with Mr Richard. However, there was one person against whom she harboured great resentment, which would grow in later life. Almost fifty years later her recollection of the events differed slightly. She now recalled that on 22 August the local police had sought three men, under 45, one of whom was Richard. They went to the mill but Käte and Richard were out and Käte subsequently expressed her belief that they would not have looked any further for them. However, they also went to the house of another couple who were friends of Richard and Käte: Paul and Yvonne Elsas. Paul was a German Jew (also from Stuttgart) who was an artist and Yvonne was French. When the police arrived, Mme. Elsas managed to convince them that her husband was too sick to travel. Because she was French they left him. According to Käte, she also told them where to find Richard.

Over the years she became convinced that Richard had been betrayed by Mme. Elsas. It is impossible to verify this, since there are only two pieces of evidence – neither very compelling. The first is that Käte obviously disliked and distrusted her even at the time. Thus on 20 September 1942, she wrote in her diary:

At 10am, I was woken up by Mrs. E, who wished to clear the air about what happened. It was a torture for me. I actually did not quite understand what she wanted exactly. She repeated several times, that she is not as bad as I would think. Does she know what I think? The matter apparently is very bad for her. Does this give her the right to disturb us? Then the perfidy, when I said, that I do not doubt Richard for a minute: "One never knows the other completely! " This she also said to Richard about me!

But this implies that she suspected Mme. Elsas of making advances to Richard rather than that she had betrayed him to the police. The only other evidence is that, in July 2002, Käte’s friend, Mme. Viotto (then aged 93), expressed her belief that Yvonne Elsas had not only betrayed Richard, but others too. Whether she had own reasons for this view, or whether Käte had planted the idea in her mind, is unclear. It is now impossible to prove or disprove all aspects of this account: certainly Yvonne Elsas might have tried to save her husband at Richard’s expense – deliberately or inadvertently. However, it is unlikely that this would have made very much difference. Käte was probably assuming that the local police were basically benign but, as already noted, they had planned the arrests before the official date of the round-up and there is little reason to believe that they would have been deterred simply because Richard had not been at home when they called. And in the Ardèche as a whole, the police rounded up 137 out of the 201 on their list – a higher proportion than in some other Departments. Furthermore, there is now additional relevant evidence for, on 21 August, following a Ministerial instruction, the Prefect issued instructions to exempt six categories from arrest: those older than 60; those who could not be transported; pregnant women; fathers or mothers with children younger than five; those whose spouse was French; and those whose names had been included in a list circulated in January 1941. Paul Elsas would therefore have been exempted on the grounds that his wife was French. Research by Dominique Charre has also uncovered some important evidence about him.

Elsas had been in France since 1930, and he and his wife were married in a Catholic service in March 1939. They then took refuge in Le Cheylard soon after Richard and Käte. In 1941 he declared that he was Catholic and informed the Prefect that he could not be considered Jewish. In the round up in February 1943 he was arrested, but released on the order of the Prefecture on the grounds that he was married to a French woman. This release is surprising as neither his professed Catholicism nor his marriage would normally have protected him from the anti-semitic legislation at this stage. However, later documents indicated that he also made contact with the Resistance in 1943 and, because of his knowledge of German, he was placed in Privas in the government office which sent workers to Germany. Working there from January 1944 he sabotaged the programme and informed the Resistance about the activity of the office. He also seems to have thwarted German action against the latest Prefect of the Ardèche, Julkes Mariacci, who had been in the post since September 1943, and who the Germans regarded as taking a passive attitude towards the sabotage of the deportations. In recognition of all, Elsas was later admitted into the Anciens de la Résistance Active de l’ Ardèche.

Whatever the circumstances were immediately before Richard’s arrest, Käte was devastated by it: she could not eat and both her physical and mental health deteriorated quickly. In later life, she would become a confirmed atheist, but at this stage she believed in God and prayed constantly. Like many others in such situations, she also experienced guilt feelings, wondering whether they were being punished for caring only for each other and not doing enough to relieve the suffering of others. However, she was not completely paralysed for, almost immediately, she sent a telegram to Laval, saying that her husband had been arrested in error and imploring him to return him. She also consulted various people about seeking legal advice and, on 2 September even wrote a personal letter to Pétain. In reality, she had little faith that any of this would achieve anything, confessing in her diary that she had sent a ‘ridiculous telegram to Laval and a letter to Pétain’. In her desperation, she was prepared to try anything.

By 9th September, she already knew that Richard had been taken to Vénnissieux.

The following account, taken from Paul Webster’s book, Pétain’s Crime, gives a grim account of what happened while he was there:

Vénnissieux, an industrial suburb of Lyons, was one of the key staging posts for Jews arrested in the South. A former temporary barracks set in an old factory with fifteen-foot high brick walls, the concentration camp was placed under the guard of colonial troops from Indo-China, commanded by a Frenchman. An estimated 4000 Jews passed through the camp, at least 1300 during the last week of August. The conditions were among the worst experienced by deportees. Suicide attempts were common, with twenty-six reported on one night alone.

Between 26 and 29 August, an ecumenical welfare group was given the responsibility of sorting potential deportees from those who could claim exemption. Webster continues:

The chaos and suffering at Vénissieux was so unbearable that the French police officer overseeing the sorting process left on the first night, giving the welfare team the chance to intercept official orders...which overrode all age and nationality exemptions. The orders were kept hidden and the team saved about 500 adults and 108 children who would otherwise have been sent to Drancy.

The attempt to carry out the mass deportations from Vénnissieux also led to a vehement protest by the Archbishop of Lyon, Cardinal Gerlier, and a temporary crisis in the whole Vichy collaboration with Nazi policies in relation to the Jews. It is also significant that the French media carried news of the protest, so that Käte was aware of it, talking in her diary of ‘poor, powerless France’, where only protest rather than action was possible. The impact of the intervention by the Catholic church was also reflected at local level. Käte thus noted that the priest in Le Cheylard had told people that they should be charitable to the Jews and that the instruction was being followed. But none of this was of any help to Richard for, despite the attempts to sabotage government policies, he was one of 545 detainees who were transferred to Drancy.

To what extent was Käte aware of what was happening to her husband? Although she would not have known of the extermination policies, she was more conscious of the dangers than might be expected. On 9th September, she wrote in her diary:

Richard's way: St. Privat - Fort Barreuse - Camps of the Indochineois in Vennissieux near Lyon and then deportation with unknown destination or maybe known however: Poland?

And in her letter to Pétain a week earlier, she had written:

I address myself to your humanity and to your goodwill. I address myself to the only person in whom I can confide. My husband has just been taken in a convoy (?) which people say.. is leaving for Poland. I only have him in the world and my heart is broken by this separation. ........We love France and we are ..ready to serve it with all our heart. Monsieur le Maréchal, I have trust in you and it is in this trust that I find the strength to write to you. Is it possible that my husband can be returned to me? I implore you in his name, I implore you in my name and I assure you, Monsieur le Maréchal, of my respectful admiration and my most profound gratitude. [my emphasis]

Again, on 16th September, she wrote:

I just heard news about Poland: hunger, epidemics, maltreatment, murder. My God, protect my husband and give me the strength to persevere.

The next day, the last communication she was ever to receive from Richard arrived. Dated 31 August, the card told her that he was leaving Vennissieux ‘for an unknown destination’. Telling her, ‘I love you more than ever’, he ended ‘For always, your Richard’. Her immediate reaction was that this might mean ‘Goodbye for ever’, and she cried, screamed and prayed for hours’.

For the next two weeks she staggered on, fluctuating between complete collapse and a refusal to abandon all hope. Often she lacked the strength and will to get out of bed and her increasingly poor health was reinforced by unusually cold weather, with the temperature falling to 14 degrees inside the mill. The trauma that she was suffering is illustrated vividly in the last diary entry in this period on 4 October 1942:

After a completely sleepless night, in which the most dreadful thoughts pursue one: I saw Richard dead before me and the worms had already begun their work or I saw him in the hell of Stalingrad or in the hands of Nazi sadists, I saw him feel all the sorrow of the world with his own body - and I could not help – fell asleep around 7am until 11am.

Later in the day, she visited some acquaintances and, in her own words, then ‘had a complete breakdown’. Yet although she sometimes felt suicidal, her instinct for survival was strong and it was, of course, possible that Richard would return. Madame Plantier, a farmer’s wife, who lived in a very small house up a lane on the north side of the road between Dornas and Le Cheylard, near Brolles, had befriended her and sent her two children, then four and five, to see her. Käte became particularly close to one of them, Blondine, and later said that, through talking to them, she gradually came out of her state of shock. But life was now a real struggle.

By now her own situation was perilous. In August the police had only picked up men, but there was no reason to believe that she would not be taken herself. In fact, she was convinced that she would be arrested by mid-October and spent a great deal of time tidying the mill and throwing away old letters in preparation for this. One morning she was terrified:

At 4 am, someone knocked wildly at my door for 10 minutes. I did not dare to move and did not open the door. Who could that have been? Someone that wanted to frighten me? Or did they come to get me as well?

In November 1942, when the division between the Occupied and Free Zones was abolished and the German and French authorities shared power throughout the whole country, she became still more vulnerable. Her fate would be determined by the attitude of the local people.

She had been deeply depressed by French officialdom even before November – describing a letter from the Prefecture – probably the reply to the letter from Ducros - as ‘completely Nazi [in] style’. But her experience of ordinary people was quite different. Apart from the families to whom she was the closest, many others helped, with food, physical tasks, and even special concessions, such as free dental treatment. At one point, she talked of everybody being friendly and nice, and treating her as a sick person; a little later she remarked, ‘I must look really bad for people to have so much pity for me’. Such attitudes did not change with the German occupation of the area. This did not, of course, mean that everyone was ‘angelic’ or even that those who did the most for her were always kind. Thus when, in June 1943, a member of the family that had done the most to protect her was to be sent to Germany under the compulsory labour scheme, one of his relatives told her:

Everyone in France is suffering – only the Jews have money and are doing alright.

She was naturally extremely upset and wondered whether she should ever go to their house again, but fortunately, the incident blew over. And, in general, she was well treated by local people, including the Catholic priest of Accons, who visited her in June 1943. This was in the context of the increasing privation in the area as the Nazis exploited the French economy ever more harshly.

Her survival was dependent on ordinary people, but it is highly unlikely that she could have remained at liberty without the connivance of at least some of the police. Although they have been zealous at the time that Richard had been picked up, subsequently there was some subtle sabotage of Nazi and Vichy policies. This may explain two rather surprising entries in 1943 in notes from the police in Le Cheylard to headquarters in Tournan, which include Käte’s name amongst those who presented themselves to the police. Given what had happened to Richard, and the fact that this was just after others had been rounded up (or managed to escape or avoid deportation through claiming illness) it seems unlikely that she would have volunteered herself in this way unless she knew that she would not be taken. When orders for arrests were issued from the headquarters in Privas, it seems that some of the police sent warnings of the impending action. Certainly, Käte experienced this, for the local French police protected her by warning her every time the Nazi forces were nearby and she would then hide in the hills. Once they did not have time to tell her and she was sheltered in the attic in the Plantier’s home. This was a very large, high-ceilinged room, built in the eighteenth century, and reached by a ladder. There she hid under the straw . She never knew the ‘high society’ of Le Cheylard: it was local farmers and a policeman with whom she made friends.

Käte was always a proud person and never wanted to accept charity. She was not in a position to do very much for those who helped her but, in return for food, she sewed, knitted and cooked for them and every time there was a family celebration in the area she was asked to make puddings for the farmers, who fed her in return. There was thus a network of people in the whole area of Accons and Le Cheylard, who knew her and protected her from the Gestapo.

She may have survived in this way, but her state of mind did not improve very much. When she resumed her diary for a few days, after an eight month break, on 8th June 1943, she described her inner feelings in a very poignant way:

Now, I am again starting to keep a diary. For the umpteenth time? First the teenager diary. Then the great diary of the student years, then three times for Richard, in order to bridge the separation. This time without much hope in this way: an account just for me, because I have the feeling, that I am starting to lose myself completely. I dream away hours and days and if I continue like this, I soon will be without substance and empty. I must collect my thoughts again and must find a way to make something out of myself again, that has some shape. Actually I have wanted to start writing again for a long time, the will was there, but the decision on the implementation was missing. I probably tried to get clarity though the encouragement from various acquaintances, but I never got beyond the preliminaries. So everything that I did and thought remained locked inside of me. And consequently: I have the feeling that my head is blocked and that I am not capable of thinking anymore. It really can not go on like this anymore. I have to draw up a certain maxim for myself, otherwise I will get completely crazy. I do not believe that one can notice the condition of my soul externally: in the presence of other people, I display a completely different nature from when I am alone. I succeed in chatting about everything and nothing (politics, books, weather - and the main theme restocking!). If my counterparts knew how little interest I take in all these conversations. Then, when I am alone, howling misery comes over me and I lie in bed for hours because I do not have the energy to undertake anything. I eat out of nervousness: one day nothing at all and one day much too much. I do not feel close to any human being anymore. – even though everybody is so nice to me. I long for Richard: mentally and bodily. Will I ever have the joy to see him again? Today, it is 291 days since we were torn apart. I had hoped that time would act as a healer. But the wound is still as open, as on the first day. How long will all this still last? There are many hours when I think of suicide – very many in fact. But then, the thought of not knowing definitively keeps me back and the thought that we might see each other again after all. And then I have such fear of this reunion. Both of us will have changed a lot. Will the bond between us have remained? Or will we have gone in such different directions that we can not get back together again. x How did I spend these last 7 months? If I look back, everything seems bad to me, like a grey endless street without purpose and aim. My whole life has consisted in waiting and hoping, that everything will pass. But the time is so long, will I persevere until the end?

In fact, she persevered by setting herself educational tasks. She began to study mathematics and English, she read about the history of France, and about spiritualism and religion. Always a highly intelligent and well-informed person, her mental survival probably owed much to the fact that she buried herself in books and disciplined herself to make measurable progress in maths and English. In this way, she developed a protective shell but perhaps also reinforced an enduring tendency to cut herself off from other people.

By 1944 it was becoming increasingly evident that the Germans would lose the war, but this did not make the situation any easier. The Normandy landings in June inspired the Resistance organisations to announce an insurrection and Le Cheylard was chosen as the headquarters of the Secret Army and departmental committee for the Liberation. However, there was little co-ordination between the various movements within the Resistance and a tendency to assume that, if the Germans attacked Le Cheylard, they would advance in a conventional military operation from Privas. In fact, the German approach was far more subtle, as they employed guerrilla tactics themselves, moving over the mountains in two directions, and making use of helicopter cover during the actual battle on 5-6 July. The result was disastrous for the French: 73 resistance fighters were killed or disappeared and 240 injured, with some of these dying later, and 34 civilians were killed and more than 50 injured. The two main forces of the maquis were also installed in Accons – the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), organised by the Communists were installed in the château of la Mothe, and the Forces françaises de l’intérieur (FFI) at Monteliet. As the Germans moved towards Le Cheylard, some of them came through parts of Accons (though not the village itself) and there was an exchange of fire, leading to seven Resistance fighters being killed or injured and another was executed in a field. Three young men were arrested by the Germans, but released when they left Le Cheylard on 6 July. The German forces also set fire to several buildings, including la Mothe itself.

Apart from witnessing some of the skirmishes, Käte was personally affected by the battle. For one of the burnt-out houses was that of the Fontanel family and they now moved to the Mill, meaning that she had to leave it. She now took a room at the back of the Bar de Rocher, almost opposite the Ducros factory in Carmantran, where Richard had worked. German forces in the area collapsed quickly in the latter part of August and the Liberation of the Ardèche was officially proclaimed on 7th September. Käte remained in her room until January 1945.

Throughout the war Käte attempted to get news of Richard. In April 1943 she wrote to the Union Générale des Israélites de France – a rather dubious organisation used by the Germans while theoretically protecting the Jews – but they had no information to give her. In such letters she used her own name, but simply gave her address as Accons/ Ardèche – a potentially risky thing to do. In 1944 her efforts increased. In February she told the Red Cross at Vichy all she knew about Richard’s fate after his arrest, but the reply on 3 March simply stated that the organisation was no longer able to get information about interned civilians unless an exact address was available. She was advised to write to the Délégation générale du gouvernement Francais pour les territoires occupés. Although she immediately did so, she either received no reply at all or none with any information and in August 1944 she wrote to the Red Cross again.

By now she was able to become active in other ways too. In August 1944 Paris was liberated and by late October most of the country was free of German occupation. At this stage she joined the Union des Juifs pour la Résistance et l’Entre’Aide. There is no evidence as to whether she was a committed participant in this organisation, but presumably it at least enabled her to feel a little less isolated in her suffering. At the same time she also went for an interview at St Etienne to join the FFI (Forces francaises de l’intérieur) – now part of the provisional government - hoping to work as an interpreter. However, she was presumably unsuccessful in this and, in any case, her major preoccupation was to find out what had happened to Richard – still desperately hoping that he was still alive.

On 21 December she was able to secure the following official notice from the Gendarmerie Nationale:

I the undersigned FENARD, Marcel, gendarme at the brigade of Le Cheylard (Ardèche ) certify that M.HAAS, Richard, was deported for Germany, on the date of 22 August 1942.

Since Obligatory Labour Service had been introduced just after this (on 4 September 1942), this document could be interpreted as suggesting that Richard had been taken to Germany along with thousands of French nationals who had been forced to work there. It could therefore offer a basis for hope that he was still alive. She naturally wanted to believe that this was the case, but her diary entries just after his arrest show that she thought it more likely that he had been deported to Poland.

For the local people life had obviously improved and she was invited to celebrations with wine, champagne, dancing and singing. But even after five years in the village, she ‘always had the old feeling – of staying aside and being a foreigner’ and asked poignantly: ‘Will I ever find a home again?’

By now a trip to Paris had become practicable and, on 15 January, she began the journey.

It was Monday. I rose at 4 o’clock. After having locked up my house, I left on foot, loaded with two big packets: my bag and the rest of my provisions that I wanted to take to Mrs. Richard. It was freezing cold, the snow cracked under my steps when I walked to Le Cheylard. I felt frightfully alone and abandoned and a great fear of change overcame me. At 5 o’clock I was at the Richards who had breakfast waiting for me. Mr. Richard was leaving with me. I was tense and couldn’t eat. I took a bowl of coffee and a tiny bit of bread and fruit to take onto the coach. We arrived just when the doors opened and quickly found two good seats. So far so good. I worried a bit about my little suitcase that had been put into the boot, but Mr. Richard reassured me. Then I saw the load on the roof of the bus. At 6 o’clock we left. At first I had to fight a big heartache, while Mr. Richard talked to me the whole time in such awful French that I had trouble understanding him. After St. Sauveur I felt better. After Ollières morning broke. We passed through very picturesque countryside, semi hidden by fog and where the contours were partly veiled by snow. It resembled a dream countryside. From la Voulte the destruction of the houses added to my sadness. We had to make a detour via le Pouzin, because the bridge of Valence had been destroyed. We had to cross the Rhone on foot, because the loaded bus would have been too heavy for the fragile bridge. Arriving in Valence the first problem: parts of M. Richard luggage had been forgotten in Cheylard - Then some wrong information: our train for Paris was cancelled. But a good soul at the station information desk reassured us. Our train would leave but it would be the last one. - What should we do? Go back to Cheylard or continue the journey? I decided the latter, because it had been so hard to leave. M. Richard and I took refuge in a Café…. ..Towards 4 o’clock we went to the station to wait again for half an hour in the non heated waiting room. I ate a slice of bread ..and an apple: that will be all my dinner. While walking though the train Mr. Richard and I got separated, but I didn’t mind, because he talks to everybody and his French is awful. I know that I also make some mistakes - but nevertheless not like him. I got to the corridor of a second class carriage, and then was unable to move backwards or forwards. Through the kindness of another traveller I finally succeeded in sitting myself on my suitcase, my back against the window. When I wanted to rise, I had to pull because my fur coat was frozen against the panes. In these conditions the journey was clearly hard work. In the compartment, 8 people were comfortably installed, but for a quarter of an hour nobody had the politeness to offer their place. Yet they were well off people that spoke only of bars, movies, theatre and the black market. Indeed this war has made people deeply selfish and bad mannered. Towards 8 o’clock in the morning the sun rose and I was able to look outside a little: lots of villages and restful cities and untouched by the events. On the other hand ...other places are frightfully ravaged. What madness, the war!! We arrived towards 10 o’clock at the Gare de Lyon. After one cup of coffee (…!) hastily consumed in the Café of the station I parted with M. Richard. Some memories came back to me: I thought about the many times that I have done the Neuilly..route with Richard and I was not able to hold back the tears. Then arrived at Violette Jean’s who hugged me and welcomed me with warmth, especially when I gave her the meat, a chicken and a pound of butter. She had not been eating well at home.

Her general anxiety about the whole trip was reinforced by the atmosphere in France at the time. In the immediate aftermath of the liberation, there had been summary executions of some 10-12, 000 collaborators and in this climate she was now intensely conscious of her German accent and her companion’s poor French.

She found it very difficult to be back in Paris, confiding in her diary that she now faced:

an infinite number of days of waiting probably with the certainty at the end of not seeing Richard again. For months and months I have tried to accustom myself to this thought – but I don’t think about it.

Although she was seeing old acquaintances, she was obviously extremely unhappy, often crying. On 1 February, another official document was issued by the Police Générale, stating that Richard had been interned as a Jew in Drancy on the orders of the German Authorities of Occupation and deported on 2 September 1942. Although this gave no information as to where he had been sent, Drancy was by now notorious as the transit route to concentration camps, and Käte was clearly distraught again.

She had returned to Accons at the end of January and in early February saw a tiny notice in a newspaper:

To the families of those who were deported or interned:

Those families who have no news of their relation who may be civilian or military can contact le Service de cas individuels, 83 avenue Parmentier, Paris (10e).

There was no sign as to whether this was a governmental or non-governmental organisation, but Käte wrote and subsequently provided all the details she possessed about what had happened. A few months later, she received a reply that appears totally authoritative and official. Entitled ‘Questionnaire de Recherches des Juifs, déportés, disparus, dispersés etc.’ it provided full information on Richard’s itinerary from St Privat to Drancy and stated that on 2 September 1942 he was taken from Drancy, with the destination being Auschwitz.

The document was undated, but it is clear that it arrived sometime between February and September 1945. In theory, its contents could have enabled Käte to accept the finality of Richard’s fate – however tragic and painful this was for her. But it did not have this effect. Instead she felt that her life had fallen apart and she obviously wished that she had killed herself when Richard had been captured in 1942. She probably broke down completely and, when she tried to resume her diary on 27 September, she was obviously still totally distraught and could not sleep even when she took pills. Her subsequent behaviour suggests that she could not accept the fact that he had died in Auschwitz and was only able to continue with the hope – however slender its basis in reality – that he might return. If so, she may have found some solace in the official document she received from the French government in December. This paper, from the Ministere des Prisonniers Deportés and Refugiés, confirmed that Richard was deported to Germany on 2nd September and, ‘according to our files has not returned to this day’. In retrospect, it is clear that this was designed to demonstrate the innocence of the Vichy government in relation to the Holocaust by insisting that it had sent Richard to Germany. This implied that he had gone there under the forced labour scheme - rather than to Auschwitz. But, paradoxically, this lie by French officialdom was probably more palatable for Käte than the stark truth that she had received some months earlier.

She was thus able to re-establish her life in Paris. After returning there, she resumed working in the business that Richard had set up, gradually re-establishing a reasonable relationship with the person who had kept it going during the war. Subsequently she became the manager of the French branch of a British electrical goods firm (Londex) – a post that was arranged for her through relatives and friends from Stuttgart now living in London. Her material circumstances improved quite rapidly, but her state of mind was much less healthy. She saw other people, but continued to feel isolated, devoting herself to her work and her books, rather than establishing close friendships or new relationships. She was, however, overjoyed to be reunited with her brother, Hans, and her sister-in-law and children, when they spent seven weeks with her in Switzerland and Paris in the Autumn of 1946. During the month in Switzerland, she finally felt like a ‘normal person’ and for the first time for years, forced herself ‘to think neither of the past nor the future, but to do nothing but walk, eat, sleep and talk with my family’. Three years later, Hans and his family left Egypt and moved to Britain. This meant that she was now again in fairly close proximity to him and his five children (Hannah, Ralph, Margaret, Ines and Susan) and, particularly after his wife died at a tragically young age at the end of 1954, she was to see them all very frequently, sharing most summer holidays with them. However, she was deeply marked by her wartime experience and never told her brother – or perhaps herself – the complete truth about what had happened.

For years she waited for Richard to return and she always insisted that he had probably been taken to Germany on the forced labour scheme. Yet in 1950 she had finally received confirmation from the French government that this was not so. On 19 January of that year an official ‘Acte de Disparition’, sent by Le Ministre des Anciens Combattants et Victimes de Guerre, confirmed that he had indeed been deported to Auschwitz on 2 September 1942. Two years later she appeared to accept the truth by even joining an organisation of those whose relatives had been in Auschwitz. But this was only temporary: subsequently she reverted to the earlier version and totally exonerated the French authorities from complicity in the crime.

Because of the trauma of Richard’s capture and her gratitude to the local people for saving her, the Ardèche continued to play a central role in her life after the war. She took frequent trips to Le Cheylard while working in Paris and in the late 1960s, after her retirement, she built a beautiful house at the top of the hill at Accons. For years she divided her time between Paris (still living in the tiny flat that she had shared with Richard) and her new home in the Ardèche . In 1994, at the age of 90, she became too ill to return to Paris and her nieces and nephew arranged for a team of carers to look after her in her house, one of whom was the daughter-in-law of Blondine Plantier – the little girl who had revived her spirits after Richard had been taken. Finally, on 12th July she died and was buried in the cemetery in Accons next to a grave she had made for her husband. The war had cemented a relationship of 62 years between a German Jewish refugee and a tiny village in the hills of the Ardèche .

Michael Newman, March 2003; revised January 2014.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Beatrix Dimmock for transcribing and translating the diaries of Käte Haas. I am indebted to Dominique Charre for his very extensive help in numerous ways. He has written an unpublished history of Accons, from which I have quoted, and has also supplied numerous documents from French governmental and departmental archives (and his own interpretations) that have provided a much richer account of the wartime experience than in the earlier version of this history.