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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Initially published as No Place to Lay One's Head - the unforgettable story of one woman's struggle to survive persecution in wartime France __________ 'Poignant love letter to literature' Clare Mulley, Spectator, Books of the Year 'A book that wholly merits publication... it's rare to find an account of the camps that's so feisty and eccentric' Lara Feigel, Telegraph 'An astonishing memoir... as gripping as any thriller... stark and chilling... we owe [Frenkel] a huge debt of gratitude. In sharing her bitter taste of bitter history, she has shown us the worst of humanity - but also the best' Christina Patterson, Sunday Times __________ In 1921, Françoise Frenkel-a Jewish woman from Poland-opens Berlin's very first French bookshop. It is a dream come true. The bookshop attracts artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. It brings Françoise peace, friendship and prosperity. Then, in the summer of 1939, the dream ends and Françoise's desperate, headlong flight from Nazi persecution begins. Unfolding in Berlin, Paris and against the romantic landscapes of southern France, A Bookshop in Berlin is a heartbreaking tale of human cruelty and unending kindness; and of a woman whose lust for life refuses to leave her, even in her darkest hours.
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‘[A] remarkable survivor’s memoir – a French equivalent to the anonymous A Woman in Berlin, and a nonfiction counterpoint, as it were, to Némirovsky’s Suite Française… Terribly moving and terribly haunting’
NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE, DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘[A] poignant love letter to literature’
CLARE MULLEY, SPECTATOR, BOOKS OF THE YEAR
‘There is a wild beauty to the prose… sharply specific… unbearably sad’
FINANCIAL TIMES
‘A remarkable lost-then-found account… Both an illuminating depiction of wartime France and a gripping and affecting personal account of endurance and defiance’
ECONOMIST
‘A book that wholly merits publication… it’s rare to find an account of the camps that’s so feisty and eccentric’
LARA FEIGEL, TELEGRAPH
3
A BOOKSHOP IN BERLIN
ONE WOMAN’S FLIGHT FROM THE NAZIS
FRANÇOISE FRENKEL
PREFACE BY PATRICK MODIANO DOSSIER COMPILED BY FRÉDÉRIC MARIA TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY STEPHANIE SMEE
PUSHKIN PRESS CLASSICS
Contents
Preface
The copy of A Bookshop in Berlin that was recently found, I’m told, in Nice, in an Emmaus Companions charity jumble sale, had a curious effect on me. Perhaps because it had been printed in Switzerland in September 1945 for Geneva-based publishers Jeheber. That publishing house, now defunct, had in 1942 published L’aventure vient de la mer, a French translation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Frenchman’s Creek, published in London the previous year, one of those English or American novels banned by the Nazi censors but sold covertly and even on the black market in Paris under the Occupation.
We don’t know what became of Françoise Frenkel following the publication of A Bookshop in Berlin. At the end of her book, she recounts how in 1943 she smuggled herself across the border into Switzerland from Haute-Savoie. According to the note at the end of the foreword, she wrote A Bookshop in Berlin in Switzerland ‘on the shores of Lake Lucerne, 1943–1944’. Sometimes strange coincidences occur: in a letter sent by Maurice Sachs a few months earlier, in 8November 1942, from a house in the Orne where he had taken refuge, I happen upon the title of Françoise Frenkel’s book in the course of a sentence: ‘It appears it’s rather my path, if not my fate, to have no place to lay my head.’*
What was Françoise Frenkel’s life like after the war? These are the scarce pieces of information I have been able to gather about her thus far: she recalls, in her account, the French bookshop she had established in Berlin in the early 1920s – the only French bookshop in the city – and which she apparently managed until 1939. In July of that year, facing imminent danger, she abandons Berlin in all haste for Paris. But in Corine Defrance’s study ‘La Maison du Livre français à Berlin (1923–1933)’ we learn that she ran this bookshop with her husband, a certain Simon Raichenstein, about whom she says not a word in her book. This phantom husband is supposed to have left Berlin for France at the end of 1933 under a Nansen passport. It seems identity papers were denied him by the French authorities, who issued him with a deportation order. But he remained in Paris. He was taken from Drancy to Auschwitz in the convoy of 24 July 1942. He had been born in Russia, in Mogilev, and it appears he lived in the 14th arrondissement.
We find a trace of Françoise Frenkel among the State Archives of the Canton of Geneva in the list of persons recorded at the Geneva border during the Second World War; 9that is to say, those who were granted permission to remain in Switzerland after crossing the border. That list provides us with her true full name: Raichenstein-Frenkel, Frymeta, Idesa; her date of birth: 14 July 1889; and her country of origin: Poland.
One last trace of Françoise Frenkel, fifteen years later: a compensation claim in her name dated 1958. It refers to a trunk she had left in the ‘Colisée’ storage repository at 45 Rue du Colisée in Paris in May 1940, and which was confiscated on 14 November 1942 on the grounds it was ‘Jewish property’. In 1960, she is awarded compensation in the sum of 3,500 marks for the despoliation of her trunk.
What did it contain? One coypu fur coat. One coat with an opossum collar. Two woollen dresses. A black raincoat. A dressing-gown from Grünfeld’s. An umbrella. A parasol. Two pairs of shoes. A handbag. An electric heat pad. An Erika portable typewriter. A Universal portable typewriter. Gloves, socks and handkerchiefs …
Do we really need to know more? I don’t believe we do. What makes A Bookshop in Berlin unique is that we cannot precisely identify its author. This eyewitness account of the life of a woman hunted through the south of France and Haute-Savoie during the Occupation is all the more striking in that it reads like the testimony of an anonymous woman, much as A Woman in Berlin – also published in Switzerland in the 1950s – was thought to be for a long time.
If we think back to our first readings of works of literature, around the age of fourteen, we knew nothing of their 10authors either, whether it was Shakespeare or Stendhal. But that naïve and direct reading left its mark on us forever, as if each book were a sort of meteorite. In this day and age writers appear on television screens and at book fairs; they’re constantly interposing themselves between their works and their readers, and turning into travelling salesmen. We miss our childhood years when we would read The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, written under the pseudonym B. Traven, a man whose identity remained unknown even to his publishers.
I prefer not to know what Françoise Frenkel’s face looked like, nor the twists and turns of her life after the war, nor the date of her death. Thus, her book will always remain for me that letter from an unknown woman, a letter forgotten poste restante for an eternity, that you’ve received in error, it seems, but that perhaps was intended for you. That curious impression I had upon reading A Bookshop in Berlin was also the effect of hearing the voice of somebody whose face one can’t quite make out in the half-light and who is recounting an episode from their life. And that reminded me of the overnight trains of my youth, not in the ‘sleeping cars’ but the seated compartments which used to create a great sense of intimacy between passengers, and where somebody, under the night light, would end up confiding in you or even confessing to you, as if in the privacy of a confessional. It was the feeling that you would no doubt never see each other again which lent weight to this abrupt intimacy. Brief encounters. You retain a suspended memory of them, the memory of somebody who didn’t have time to tell you everything. The 11same can be said of Françoise Frenkel’s book, written seventy years ago but in the confusion of the moment, still suffering from shock.
I ended up tracking down the address of the bookshop run by Françoise Frenkel: 39 Passauer Strasse; telephone: Bavaria 20-20, between Schöneberg and Charlottenburg. I imagine them in that bookshop, she and her husband, who is absent from her book. At the time she was writing, she was probably unaware of his fate. Simon Raichenstein had a Nansen passport, since he belonged to that group of émigrés from Russia. There were more than one hundred thousand of them in Berlin in the early 1920s. They had settled in the Charlottenburg neighbourhood, which, as a result, had come to be known as ‘Charlottengrad’. Many of these White Russians spoke French, and I assume they were the main customers of Mr and Mrs Raichenstein’s bookshop. Vladimir Nabokov, who used to live in the area, no doubt one evening crossed the threshold of that bookshop. No need to consult archives or study photos. All you need do, I’m sure, if you want to find a trace of Françoise Frenkel in Berlin, is read Nabokov’s Berlin stories and novels, which he wrote in Russian and which are the most moving of his works. You can picture her on the crepuscular avenues and in the poorly lit apartments of Nabokov’s descriptions. Leafing through The Gift, Nabokov’s last Russian novel and a farewell to his mother tongue, you come across the description of a bookstore which must have resembled that of Françoise Frenkel and 12the enigmatic Simon Raichenstein. ‘Crossing Wittenberg Square, where, as if in a colour film, roses trembled in the breeze around an old-fashioned stairway that descended into an underground station, he made his way towards the bookshop … the lights were still on … Books were still being sold to taxi drivers on the nightshift, and he made out, through the yellow opacity of the shop-window, the silhouette of Misha Berezovski …’
In the last fifty pages of her book, Françoise Frenkel recounts a first failed attempt to cross the Swiss border. She is taken to the police station in Saint-Julien together with ‘two girls in tears, a dazed-looking little boy and a woman worn out from exhaustion and cold’. The following day she is transferred by bus, together with other fugitives who had been arrested, to the prison in Annecy.
I find these pages moving, having spent many years in this part of Haute-Savoie. Annecy, Thônes, the Glières Plateau, Megève, Le Grand-Bornand … Memories of the war, of resistance fighters, lived on during my childhood and adolescent years. Fingerprints. Handcuffs. She appears before a tribunal of sorts. As luck would have it, she is given a ‘minimum suspended sentence and pronounced free’. The next day she is released from custody. On leaving the prison, she walks in the sunshine through the streets of Annecy. I am familiar with the path she happens to take. She hears the murmur of a fountain that I, too, used to hear in the silent, stiflingly hot early afternoons on the shores of the lake at the end of the Pâquier promenade.13
Her second attempt to smuggle herself across the Swiss border is a success. I often used to take a bus to Geneva from the Annecy bus station. I had noticed it would pass through customs with never any inspection whatsoever. Yet, as it approached the border, from the Saint-Julien-en-Genevois side, I would feel a slight tightening within. Perhaps the memory of a sense of menace still hovered in the air.
patrick modiano14
* The original French title of the book, Rien où poser sa tête, translates as No Place to Lay One’s Head.
A BOOKSHOP IN BERLIN
Foreword
It is the duty of those who have survived to bear witness to ensure the dead are not forgotten, nor humble acts of self-sacrifice left unacknowledged.
May these pages inspire a reverent thought for those forever silenced, fallen by the wayside or murdered.
I dedicate this book to the MEN AND WOMEN OF GOODWILL who, generously, with unfailing courage, opposed the will to violence and resisted to the end.
Dear reader, accord them the grateful affection deserved by all such magnanimous acts!
In my thoughts, too, are those Swiss friends who took my hand just as I felt myself sinking, and the bright smile of my friend Lie, who helped me continue to live.
F. F.In Switzerland,on the shores of Lake Lucerne,1943–1944 18
I
A French bookshop in Berlin
I don’t know exactly when I first felt the calling to be a bookseller. As a very young girl, I could spend hours leafing through a picture book or a large illustrated tome.
My favourite presents were books, which would pile up on the shelves along the walls of my childhood bedroom.
For my sixteenth birthday, my parents allowed me to order my own bookcase. To the astonishment of the joiner, I designed and had built a cabinet with glass on all four sides. I positioned this piece of furniture, conjured from my dreams, in the middle of my bedroom.
Not wanting to spoil my delight, my mother let me do as I pleased and I was able to admire my classics in the publishers’ beautiful bindings, and the modern, contemporary authors whose bindings I would lovingly choose myself, according to my whim.
Balzac came dressed in red leather, Sienkiewicz in yellow morocco, Tolstoy in parchment, Reymont’s Paysans clad in the fabric of an old peasant’s neckerchief.20
Later, the cabinet was positioned against the wall, which was covered in a beautiful, bright cretonne fabric, and this move in no way diminished my delight.
And then, time passed …
Life had led me to Paris, for long years of study and work.
Every spare moment I had was spent along the riverbanks in front of the bouquinistes’ old, damp cases of books. Sometimes I would dig up a book from the eighteenth century, in which I was particularly interested at the time. Sometimes I thought I had discovered a document, a rare volume, an old letter; always a fresh, if fleeting, moment of joy.
Such memories!
The Rue des Saints-Pères, with its dusty, dark boutiques, troves of accumulated treasures, what a world of marvellous discoveries! Oh, the bewitching years of my youth!
And time spent lingering on the corner of Rue des Écoles and Boulevard Saint-Michel at that huge bookshop that used to spill out onto the footpath. Works with uncut pages, skimmed through amid the noise of the street: horns honking, students and girls chatting and laughing, music, snatches of popular songs …
We readers were far from distracted by this hustle and bustle, which was part of our student life. If that commotion had disappeared and those voices had fallen silent, it would quite simply have been impossible to keep reading on the corner of the boulevard: a peculiar sense of oppression would have weighed upon us all …21
But happily there was no such thing to worry about then. Certainly, the war had reduced the pitch of our general gaiety by a few tones, but Paris was alive with its animated, insouciant atmosphere. The Latin Quarter rippled with youth, street corners still hummed with song, and book lovers continued their furtive reading in front of tables laden with treasures provided so generously to everybody by publishers and booksellers, with friendly goodwill, and no thought of profit.
*
At the end of the first war, I returned to my home town. After my first outpourings of delight at finding my loved ones safe and sound, I hurried to my childhood bedroom.
I stopped in my tracks, astonished. The walls had been stripped: the floral cretonne had been skilfully peeled off and removed. All that remained were newspapers stuck up against the plaster. My beautiful library with its four glass panels, the wonder of my youthful imagination, stood empty, seemingly ashamed of its own decadence.
The piano, too, had disappeared from the drawing room.
Everything had been taken away under the Occupation of 1914–1918.
But my family was alive and well. I spent a happy holiday in their midst and returned to France full of vim and vigour.
When I didn’t have lectures at the Sorbonne, I studied diligently at the Bibliothèque Nationale, as well as at the Sainte-Geneviève Library, my favourite place.22
Upon my return from Poland, I worked in the afternoons at a bookstore in Rue Gay-Lussac.
Over time I grew to know my bookish clientele. I would try to fathom their desires, understand their tastes, their beliefs and their leanings, try to guess at the reasons behind their admiration of, their enthusiasm for, their delight or displeasure with a work.
By and by, after observing the way a book was held, almost tenderly, the way pages were delicately turned and reverently read or hastily and thoughtlessly leafed through, the book then put back on the table, sometimes so carelessly that its corners, its most precious part, were damaged as a result, I came to be able to see into a character, a spirit, a state of mind. I would place the book I considered appropriate down close to a reader – discreetly, however, so they wouldn’t feel it had been suggested to them. If they happened to like it, I glowed.
I started to grow fond of my customers. When they left the shop, I found myself walking with them a little way in my imagination. I wondered about the impact the book they had taken would have on them; then, I would impatiently await their return to hear their thoughts.
But there were other times, too … when the sheer intellectual vandalism of a customer would drive me to distraction. For there were some people who desecrated a work, heaping it with angry criticism and objections, until its contents were quite falsely distorted!
I have to admit, much to my bewilderment, that it was more often women who were guilty of this lack of moderation.23
Thus I had discovered the necessary complement to a book: its reader.
Generally speaking, a perfect harmony reigned between one and the other in the little store on Rue Gay-Lussac.
Every spare moment I had was spent at publishers’ showrooms, where I would go to discover old acquaintances as well as new releases, objects of surprise and delight.
When the time came for me to choose a profession, I didn’t hesitate: I followed my calling to be a bookseller.
*
It was December 1920 … I was off to pay one of my customary short visits to my relatives. On the way there, I stopped in Poznań, Warsaw, then, after holidaying with my family, I went to Kraków.
In my suitcase I was carrying the first two volumes of Les Thibaults by Roger Martin du Gard, Les Croix de bois by Dorgelès, and Civilisation by Duhamel, books I thought would best convey my admiration for the rich flourishing of postwar French literature to the friends and booksellers I intended to meet.
My plan was to open a bookshop in Poland. I visited those three cities, one after the other, and saw that booksellers everywhere were displaying handsome collections of French books. There did not seem to be any demand for another French bookshop.
I decided to stop briefly in Berlin on my return journey in order to see friends there, and then to take the night train, which would arrive in Paris first thing in the morning.24
As we wandered along Berlin’s grand boulevards I loitered, as I was wont to do, in front of the window displays of the big bookshops. We had walked down Unter den Linden, Friedrichstrasse and Leipziger Strasse when I exclaimed:
‘But you don’t have any French books!’
‘That’s quite possible,’ came the reply, laconic and indifferent.
We resumed our promenade, retracing our steps, and this time I went into the bookshops. Everywhere I was assured that demand for French books was almost non-existent. ‘We have a few classics in stock.’
Newspapers and journals? Not a trace. Vendors in their newsstands responded ungraciously to my enquiries.
Left with this impression, I returned to Paris.
Professor Henri Lichtenberger, to whom I recounted the outcome of my travels, said to me simply:
‘Well then, why don’t you go and open a bookshop in Germany?’
One publisher exclaimed, ‘Berlin? Now that’s a major city! Why don’t you try your luck?’
My dear professor and friend, P——, announced, ‘A French bookshop in Berlin … you could almost call that a crusade.’
My sights were not set so high: I was just after an occupation, that of bookseller, the only one that mattered to me. The Berlin I had glimpsed through the winter fog was sprawling, sad and morose, but the prospect of working there was not without its attractions.
It was in this frame of mind that shortly afterwards I headed back to Germany’s capital.25
*
My first step was to approach the French Consulate General, where I outlined my plans with all the enthusiasm of my convictions, emphasising the moral support I’d already garnered.
The Consul General raised his arms heavenwards:
‘But Madame, it seems you are unaware of the current moral climate in Germany! You don’t appreciate the true state of affairs! If you knew the difficulties I already face just keeping on a few French teachers here. Our newspapers are only sold in a few rare newsstands. French people come all the way to the Consulate just to get hold of them, and you want to open an entire bookshop? They’ll burn it to the ground!’
I discovered later that the Consulate in Breslau had been ransacked by a German mob after the plebiscite in Upper Silesia.
At the French Embassy, I was only able to meet with a young attaché; he was hardly more encouraging. But after a week of enquiries and some consideration, I had made my decision: there were no French books to be had in all Berlin, a capital city, a university town where you could already feel the pulse of new life. Given time, a French bookshop would surely succeed.
To me, Germany was not a complete unknown. I had spent some time there as a girl to perfect my German and to pursue my music studies with Professor Xaver Scharwenka.
I later had a second stay in Germany and enrolled in a semester of courses at the Leipzig University for Women.26
I was not unfamiliar with the great German masters, the country’s thinkers, poets and musicians. And with their influence in mind, I had every hope my bookshop in the capital might succeed.
Of course, in such a bureaucratic city I had to complete numerous administrative formalities before I could get started. The first civil servant I saw in Berlin revealed himself to be firmly opposed to the sale of exclusively French books. We managed to agree on the description of a Centre for Foreign Books. My German interlocutor was also of the opinion that it was a bad time to be implementing my plans.
And so, notwithstanding official objections, my attempt to establish a French bookshop in Berlin saw the light of day. Its first site was on the mezzanine of a private house, in a quiet neighbourhood, away from the city centre.
Parcels started to pour in from Paris, bringing beautiful volumes with the colourful covers so typical of French publishers; books filled the shelves, climbed all the way to the ceiling and lay strewn all over the floor.
Scarcely had I finished setting up when customers started to arrive. At first they were mainly women, it’s fair to say, and foreigners for the most part, Poles, Russians, Czechs, Turks, Norwegians, Swedes and numerous Austrians. A visit by a French man or woman was a significant event. There were very few French expatriates remaining. Many who had left on the eve of the Great War had not returned.
It was always a big day for my beautiful female customers when the newspapers and fashion magazines arrived, and they 27would swoop on them with exclamations of delight, spellbound at the sight of the designs they had been deprived of for so long. The art publications had their ardent admirers too.
My lending library was very well received. Soon readers had to add their names to a waiting list to borrow the books, which were being taken by storm.
Some months later, increasing customer numbers forced me to consider expanding, and the bookshop moved to the capital’s fashionable quarter.
1921! This sparkling era was marked by the resumption of international relations and the exchange of ideas. The German élite started to make an appearance, very cautiously at first, in this new French literary haven. Then Germans started to appear in ever-increasing numbers: experts in literature and languages, professors, students and members of that aristocracy whose education had been so strongly influenced by French culture, those who even then were known as ‘the old generation’.
What a curiously mixed clientele. Famous artists, celebrities, well-heeled women pore over the fashion magazines, speaking in hushed tones so as not to disturb the philosopher buried in his Pascal. Next to the window display, a poet leafs reverently through a handsome edition of Verlaine, a bespectacled scholar scrutinises the catalogue of a bookshop specialising in the sciences, a high school teacher has gathered about him four grammar textbooks, solemnly comparing the chapters grappling with the agreement of participles followed by the infinitive.28
I was surprised to realise the extent of German interest in the French language and to see how familiar some of them were with its masterpieces. One high school teacher pointed out to me the dozen or so significant lines missing from the edition of Montaigne he held in his hand. He was right – the edition was abridged. Upon hearing a few lines of a French poet, one expert would be able to say the author’s name without hesitation. Another would be able to recite from memory the maxims of La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort, and Pascal’s Pensées.
This bookseller’s life allowed me to mingle with congenial eccentrics. One German customer, a man who knew his grammar, had been on his way out after making a purchase when he’d heard one of my staff saying, ‘Au plaisir, Monsieur!’ He made an about-turn and asked for an explanation of this expression. He wanted to know if it was just a commercial pleasantry, or if one might also use it socially, and in what circumstances, et cetera and so on.
He wrote the expression down in a notebook and thereafter never once failed to offer an ‘Au plaisir’, accompanied by a knowing smile on his visits to the shop.
Like harbingers of diplomacy, consulate and embassy staff appeared first; soon they became regular customers. Then came the attachés and, finally, bringing up the rear, Messieurs, the diplomats themselves, and above all their wives.
As for His Excellency, the French Ambassador, I received a visit when the bookshop opened in west Berlin.
He thanked me for my initiative, selected several volumes and, in that manner so particular to the French language that 29combines with ease both firmness and courteous civility, told me that Romain Rolland and Victor Margueritte, one a deserter of the French cause, the other a pornographer, hardly belonged in a self-respecting bookshop. On the other hand, His Excellency did commend to me the works of René Bazin, Barrès and Henri Bordeaux.
When he had left, I felt both proud and wistful. Despite all my best intentions, I knew it would be impossible for me to take his advice.
The wife of one foreign ambassador, as intelligent as she was lovely, adored browsing through books. She would spend hours looking around and would always discover some volume or other that took her fancy. One day, unafraid to sully her beautifully manicured hands rummaging through the dusty bargains piled high in a back room of the bookshop, she told me quite delightedly:
‘Were I not the wife of a diplomat, my dream would be to be a bookseller.’
From that day on, our friendship was sealed. I would hunt things down for her from the bouquinistes in Paris, she would send customers my way and alert me to the arrival in Berlin of respected French people and celebrities whom we could invite to the lectures and receptions we organised for famous authors passing through Germany.
Claude Anet, Henri Barbusse, Julien Benda, Madame Colette, Dekobra, Duhamel, André Gide, Henri Lichtenberger, André Maurois, Philippe Soupault, Roger Martin du Gard – they all came through the bookshop.30
Some of them would give talks. They would speak on literature, art, memories and impressions; they would attract professors, students, French expatriates, an entire audience of the worldly and well-educated. After the lectures we would listen to French records and songs, or readings from poetry and plays.
With the help of willing French people, we also staged ‘theatrical performances’, scenes from Marivaux, Labiche, from Docteur Knock by Jules Romains, sometimes even sketches inspired by current events that we ourselves would write. We had as many as five hundred German school students at some performances.
Similarly, the Shrove Tuesday celebrations organised by members of the French community grew to be a significant event for our customers.
In his book Dix ans après, Jules Chancel described one of these parties, its atmosphere and what a success it was.
In my work as a bookseller, I had come to enjoy the enlightened support of Professor Hesnard, press attaché and author of an excellent study on Baudelaire. He would help me with his discreet advice.
The cultural attaché who came to Berlin in about 1931 provided infinitely precious support too, and words cannot describe how indebted I am to him for his erudition and loyalty.
In September 1931, I saw Aristide Briand come in, accompanied by an official who was acting as his cicerone. After offering me his congratulations, he enquired whether I had 31established my business in the spirit of the Franco-German rapprochement.
‘I do indeed passionately hope for such a rapprochement, just as I hope for a strengthening of relations between all peoples in this world,’ I replied, ‘but I established my business here in Berlin on purely intellectual grounds. Politics leads to injustice, blindness and excess. And following an angry discussion between two customers of differing nationalities, I’ve always tried to ensure that politics is no longer discussed in the bookshop,’ I added.
As I watched political events unfolding around me, I had made many an observation in my capacity as a bookseller, witnessed conflicts brewing, sensed the rise of various threats. I would, indeed, have welcomed a chance to speak openly with that great statesman, whose aspirations inspired confidence. But he had company.
Instead, my suspicion of matters political won out. I do not regret not asking Briand any questions, nor having voiced my fears. How quickly was his idealism shattered after that!
I had not opened the Pandora’s box at the bottom of which slumbered a ten-millennia-old hope for possible harmony in this world.
*
Briand’s visit conferred a new prestige upon my bookshop and brought increasing numbers of customers. Years of fellowship, peace and prosperity followed.32
However, starting in 1935, serious complications set in.
First came the question of currency.
In order to pay for my French book orders, I required a new customs authorisation each time. I had to provide evidence of the need to import the items. So I gathered references from all sorts of places. Schools issued me with order forms, as did high school teachers. Universities ordered through official channels.
Individual customers completed forms, which I then submitted to the special department responsible for reviewing imported books. To complete my stock, I called on the support of the French Embassy. The work grew laborious.
From time to time, the police would turn up unexpectedly. On the pretext that a particular author was blacklisted, the police officers would inspect everything, confiscating books. Thus they removed copies of Barbusse, later those of André Gide and, lastly, a great number of other works, among them those of Romain Rolland (who had already been condemned by the French Ambassador).
To fill the gaps created on my shelves, and in an ironic twist, a French correspondent in Berlin reporting for a newspaper from the south of France turned up in the bookshop just at that moment, bringing me his work entitled En face de Hitler. It was … Ferdonnet, who was to become wretchedly notorious as a Radio-Stuttgart broadcaster. In self-important tones, he asked me to display a copy of his work in the window. I replied that in accordance with my publishers’ instructions, I did not display political works. He replied:33
‘You do know that I could easily insist …’
Then, in an imperious tone:
‘Well, I expect you to sell it nonetheless!’
Police regularly came to confiscate various French newspapers that they had on their list. In turn, this prompted my customers to appear before the shop had opened in order to pre-empt the inspectors. However, the number of authorised French papers grew increasingly limited.
For several weeks, only Le Temps was tolerated. When I heard that all other papers were banned, I rushed immediately to order sufficient copies of it; my customers were desperate for news from abroad. Readers were able to buy it for a week or so. But one fine morning, an inspector informed me that Le Temps had now been blacklisted too. He confiscated all of the stock, to the great disappointment of my customers.
Hide newspapers? Keep them under the counter? ‘Distribution of prohibited newspapers’, that would have had me sent to a concentration camp.
From that moment onwards, French dailies were no longer available in Germany. They disappeared once and for all.
All these restrictions were the general order of the day.
But with the promulgation of the Nuremberg race laws (at the Party Congress in September 1935), my own personal circumstances became very precarious.
The Nazi Party knew that my bookshop fell, in a manner of speaking, under the protection of French publishers. The German authorities, true to their policy of anaesthetising public opinion, hesitated before causing a scandal. On the 34one hand, they tolerated my business representing French literature; on the other, they held my origins against me.
My mail included notices, invitations, orders to attend this or that meeting, to take part in that demonstration or Nazi Party rally. Booksellers’ associations instructed me to audit my stock and to turn over to the special auditing department any books contravening the spirit of the regime. Attached to all of these forms were questionnaires relating to my race and that of my grandparents and great-grandparents, on both maternal and paternal sides.
In the end, my assistant no longer showed me these depressing documents; he took his motorcycle and made the rounds of government departments, providing them with the requested information. He emphasised my status as a foreigner to iron out difficulties in the short term and to allow me the time to prepare for the winding up of my business.
There were more and more incidents. I remember one affront I was forced to endure a few days before Christmas. Numerous parcels containing gift books had just been delivered by two postmen. Tables were weighed down with beautiful publications for adults, colourful picture books for children. Magazines, reflecting that immaculate French taste unlike anything else in the world, burst from their packaging and were greeted with cries of wonder from the customers.
There was that fever in the air so typical of the time of year!
All of a sudden, the front door of the shop flew open with a crash and the Nazi ‘block warden’ burst in. This 35gorgon-headed woman was holding two empty tins in each hand.
‘Do you speak German?’ she shouted.
‘Of course,’ I said, rather astonished.
‘These four tins, do they belong to you?’
‘I don’t know, I’ll ask my housekeeper; may I ask why you wish to know?’
‘They’re yours. I know they are and that’s what I’m telling you! Every German knows there’s a container to dispose of tins, and it’s not the rubbish bin, it’s a special crate with a sign on it! You’re going to have a stiff fine to pay! Put that on your Christmas “bargain” sales account,’ she added, her eyes full of hatred.
The shrew left. A diplomat who had witnessed the scene told me how, for several days, he had been uncertain as to how to dispose of an aluminium tube bearing the injunction in red: ‘Do not throw away’. He didn’t dare put the tube into the wastepaper basket in his hotel room, nor leave it in the street. At last he had the idea of leaving it at a pharmacy, where he was congratulated on behalf of the Party. This anecdote raised a laugh at the time but did not, however, dispel the general feeling of unease.
I was outraged.
Citing the famous ‘one-pot meal’ regulation, the same building superintendent would come to inspect my pots whenever she pleased. She would lift the lids, sniffing the contents, then depart with a Nazi salute.
Furthermore, I owe my first contact with the Gestapo to that woman.36
I had taken advantage of the Easter holidays to visit my cousins in Brussels. We had discussed the possibility of moving my bookshop to their city. The result was negative. From there, I had left for Paris, as I did every six months. I was planning to take steps to sell the whole business to French purchasers. My advertisements had appeared in a trade newsletter. A couple agreed to spend a few weeks in Berlin, working in the bookshop, before deciding whether to take on my business.
The day after my return, I was summoned as a matter of urgency to the police station.
On arriving at the Gestapo, I had to pass through three metal gates, each opened then closed and locked again after me by a man in a black SS uniform. I followed him down long corridors with barred windows. At last he stopped in front of a door and, after knocking, took me into a sort of cell.
Sitting at a table in front of me was a young blond-haired man in uniform: twenty years old, not yet shaving, his face red and blotchy, eyes a washed-out blue, his demeanour furious. He gestured to me to sit down.
‘Are you Frau So-and-So? Father’s name? Mother’s name? Race? Age? Date and place of birth? Identity papers! You are accused of having left at Easter for an unknown destination and of crossing the border illegally.’
‘I travelled on a normal German exit and re-entry visa; I went first to Brussels and then on to Paris.’
‘Why to Brussels?’ he shouted.
‘To visit my Belgian relatives.’37
‘What did you take with you when you left? Currency? Gold? Diamonds? You might as well confess, we’ll find out in any event!’
He continued to raise his voice and I became increasingly distraught.
‘I took nothing of the sort,’ I replied, holding myself together. ‘I went to Paris, as I usually do, after stopping first in Belgium, and I returned in accordance with the permit noted in my passport here.’
He shoved the passport away, saying:
‘Be that as it may! But why exactly did you travel to Brussels by automobile?’
It was obvious he thought he had found the weak point in my journey, and he fixed me with an angry, suspicious stare.
But I had regained my composure.
‘I took advantage of some friends travelling to Brussels who offered to drive down the Autobahn. I didn’t want to leave Germany without having seen this road the whole world is talking about at least once.’
‘Ach! Our Autobahn is indeed colossal,’ agreed the young officer, with a beaming smile that he then furiously suppressed.
‘Let’s see. You’re free to go,’ he finished off, ever more officious.
