Eutrusca
05-10-2004, 00:10
Britons secretly kept in postwar French camps
After the liberation De Gaulle's government held on to internees from many
countries in officially closed centres to hide collaboration
Jon Henley in Paris
Monday October 4, 2004
The Guardian
The government of Charles de Gaulle held hundreds of foreigners, including at
least three Britons, in an internment camp near Toulouse for up to four years
after the second world war, according to secret documents.
The papers, part of a cache of 12,000 photocopied illegally by an Austrian-born
Jew, reveal the extent to which French officials collaborated with their
fleeing Nazi occupiers even as their country was being liberated. They also
show that, when the war was over, France went to extraordinary lengths to hide
as much evidence of that collaboration as possible.
The documents are in a mass of registers, telegrams and manifests which Kurt
Werner Schaechter, an 84-year-old retired businessman, copied from the Toulouse
office of France's national archives in 1991. They are uniquely precious: under
a 1979 law most of France's wartime archives are sealed for between 60 and 150
years after they were written.
"This is an untold story of the dark side of France's liberation 60 years ago,"
Mr Schaechter, a former musical instruments salesman, said at his home in
Alfortville, a Paris suburb. "French functionaries were involved in a national
scandal that continued until 1949: the despicable treatment of allied and
neutral civilians interned during the war."
Mr Schaechter's activities - last year he used some of the papers to try to
force the French railway SNCF to admit its responsibility in shipping 76,000
Jews to Nazi death camps - have infuriated some French historians, who say
their privileged access to classified archives has been compromised. But others
have backed the campaign for freer access to documents relating to a part of
France's past that it has long preferred to ignore.
By far the most awkward of his recently unearthed documents are those that
appear to show that Noe camp, 25 miles south of Toulouse, continued to function
secretly for several years after the war. Noe was one of 300 camps set up after
1939 to hold Jews, communists and other "anti-French" militants, Gypsies,
common criminals and enemy aliens.
Many of its inmates were quickly shipped out as France was progressively
liberated in the summer of 1944. But, said Mr Schaechter, not everyone could be
got out in time: "Allied bombing of the railway lines, and intensified fighting
on the ground, meant many simply could not be moved."
Officially, the only camps still open after 1945 were a handful housing
Romanies, stateless persons and French collaborators. But Mr Schaechter says
his documents indicate that a "special section" of Noe was active until at
least 1947.
Among the papers is a letter dated February 23 1946 from the camp's director to
the prefect in Toulouse. It seeks to "draw urgent attention" to Noe's
"increasingly delicate financial situation", adding that sums seized from those
"sheltered" in the camp "are no longer adequate to meet the costs of
maintaining it, or of feeding [the inmates]". The camp's accounts show that
inmates were still being forced to pay for their "lodging" in September 1947.
There are also letters between the interior ministry's inspectorate of
internment camps and the prefecture querying the number of "administrative
internees" held in the departement's camps. They are dated March 5 and March 29
1949 - three years after the last internment camp in mainland France was
officially closed.
Photocopies of the camp's registers from 1945, 1946 and 1947 show that Noe's
postwar inmates, along with citizens of Switzerland, Sweden, Holland, Belgium,
Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Brazil, included three Britons: Abdul Hussan,
born in 1901 in Port Louis, Mauritius; Leonard Wynne, born in London in 1891;
and Alfred Smith, born in Manchester in 1888.
Mr Schaechter believes they were not released at the end of the war because it
would have been too embarrassing.
"The last thing De Gaulle wanted, when he was trying to build up France's image
as victor and hero," he said, "was to reveal the true extent of its
collaboration by freeing neutral and allied internees held in French camps by
French guards."
The papers also show that officials continued to deport inmates of all
nationalities to a near-certain death in Germany even as France was being
liberated.
A neat register shows that, in March 1944, Noe contained inmates of 25
nationalities, including three Americans and 13 Britons aged between 21 and 55,
and one other Briton aged over 55.
On June 24 1944, two weeks after the allies landed on the beaches of Normandy,
the camp commandant wrote to the Toulouse prefecture. "I have the honour to
inform you," he said, "that on the 22nd of this month nine British citizens
were transferred to this camp." Their names include William Rogerson, born in
Manchester in 1874; Edward Josephs, London, 1898; and Walter Slack, Hull, 1891.
On June 26 the commandant informed the prefecture that he had four American
"guests": Moore Sumner Kirby, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1895;
Herbert Lespinasse, Stamford, 1884; Gerald McLanghin, Detroit, 1898; and James
Smith, Los Angeles, 1904.
Some of these Britons and Americans "regrouped" in Noe on the eve of the
liberation were wealthy residents of the Cote d'Azur; Sumner Kirby had married
Leonida, Princess Bagration-Muhranskaja - later the wife of Vladimir, a grand
duke of the Romanovs - in Nice in 1934. Others, such as Joseph Edwards and
Thomas Berridge, were farmers or agricultural labourers.
Many, without doubt, were on the last transport of aliens to leave Noe-Longages
station on July 30 1944. This "transfer" is referred to in a telegram from the
camp commandant on August 28 - two days after a million cheering French men and
women thronged the Champs-Elysees in Paris for Charles de Gaulle's victory
parade. Mr Schaechter believes most of them ended up in Dachau; Sumner Kirby is
known to have died in the Leau concentration camp near Bernberg, Germany, on
April 7 1945.
But what happened to those, many elderly and infirm, who stayed? Some are
marked "transferred". Others were moved in 1947 to Pithiviers or Rivesaltes
camps, both officially closed. Some are marked: "Agreed with Mr Casse - to be
lost". And what that means, no one knows.
After the liberation De Gaulle's government held on to internees from many
countries in officially closed centres to hide collaboration
Jon Henley in Paris
Monday October 4, 2004
The Guardian
The government of Charles de Gaulle held hundreds of foreigners, including at
least three Britons, in an internment camp near Toulouse for up to four years
after the second world war, according to secret documents.
The papers, part of a cache of 12,000 photocopied illegally by an Austrian-born
Jew, reveal the extent to which French officials collaborated with their
fleeing Nazi occupiers even as their country was being liberated. They also
show that, when the war was over, France went to extraordinary lengths to hide
as much evidence of that collaboration as possible.
The documents are in a mass of registers, telegrams and manifests which Kurt
Werner Schaechter, an 84-year-old retired businessman, copied from the Toulouse
office of France's national archives in 1991. They are uniquely precious: under
a 1979 law most of France's wartime archives are sealed for between 60 and 150
years after they were written.
"This is an untold story of the dark side of France's liberation 60 years ago,"
Mr Schaechter, a former musical instruments salesman, said at his home in
Alfortville, a Paris suburb. "French functionaries were involved in a national
scandal that continued until 1949: the despicable treatment of allied and
neutral civilians interned during the war."
Mr Schaechter's activities - last year he used some of the papers to try to
force the French railway SNCF to admit its responsibility in shipping 76,000
Jews to Nazi death camps - have infuriated some French historians, who say
their privileged access to classified archives has been compromised. But others
have backed the campaign for freer access to documents relating to a part of
France's past that it has long preferred to ignore.
By far the most awkward of his recently unearthed documents are those that
appear to show that Noe camp, 25 miles south of Toulouse, continued to function
secretly for several years after the war. Noe was one of 300 camps set up after
1939 to hold Jews, communists and other "anti-French" militants, Gypsies,
common criminals and enemy aliens.
Many of its inmates were quickly shipped out as France was progressively
liberated in the summer of 1944. But, said Mr Schaechter, not everyone could be
got out in time: "Allied bombing of the railway lines, and intensified fighting
on the ground, meant many simply could not be moved."
Officially, the only camps still open after 1945 were a handful housing
Romanies, stateless persons and French collaborators. But Mr Schaechter says
his documents indicate that a "special section" of Noe was active until at
least 1947.
Among the papers is a letter dated February 23 1946 from the camp's director to
the prefect in Toulouse. It seeks to "draw urgent attention" to Noe's
"increasingly delicate financial situation", adding that sums seized from those
"sheltered" in the camp "are no longer adequate to meet the costs of
maintaining it, or of feeding [the inmates]". The camp's accounts show that
inmates were still being forced to pay for their "lodging" in September 1947.
There are also letters between the interior ministry's inspectorate of
internment camps and the prefecture querying the number of "administrative
internees" held in the departement's camps. They are dated March 5 and March 29
1949 - three years after the last internment camp in mainland France was
officially closed.
Photocopies of the camp's registers from 1945, 1946 and 1947 show that Noe's
postwar inmates, along with citizens of Switzerland, Sweden, Holland, Belgium,
Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Brazil, included three Britons: Abdul Hussan,
born in 1901 in Port Louis, Mauritius; Leonard Wynne, born in London in 1891;
and Alfred Smith, born in Manchester in 1888.
Mr Schaechter believes they were not released at the end of the war because it
would have been too embarrassing.
"The last thing De Gaulle wanted, when he was trying to build up France's image
as victor and hero," he said, "was to reveal the true extent of its
collaboration by freeing neutral and allied internees held in French camps by
French guards."
The papers also show that officials continued to deport inmates of all
nationalities to a near-certain death in Germany even as France was being
liberated.
A neat register shows that, in March 1944, Noe contained inmates of 25
nationalities, including three Americans and 13 Britons aged between 21 and 55,
and one other Briton aged over 55.
On June 24 1944, two weeks after the allies landed on the beaches of Normandy,
the camp commandant wrote to the Toulouse prefecture. "I have the honour to
inform you," he said, "that on the 22nd of this month nine British citizens
were transferred to this camp." Their names include William Rogerson, born in
Manchester in 1874; Edward Josephs, London, 1898; and Walter Slack, Hull, 1891.
On June 26 the commandant informed the prefecture that he had four American
"guests": Moore Sumner Kirby, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1895;
Herbert Lespinasse, Stamford, 1884; Gerald McLanghin, Detroit, 1898; and James
Smith, Los Angeles, 1904.
Some of these Britons and Americans "regrouped" in Noe on the eve of the
liberation were wealthy residents of the Cote d'Azur; Sumner Kirby had married
Leonida, Princess Bagration-Muhranskaja - later the wife of Vladimir, a grand
duke of the Romanovs - in Nice in 1934. Others, such as Joseph Edwards and
Thomas Berridge, were farmers or agricultural labourers.
Many, without doubt, were on the last transport of aliens to leave Noe-Longages
station on July 30 1944. This "transfer" is referred to in a telegram from the
camp commandant on August 28 - two days after a million cheering French men and
women thronged the Champs-Elysees in Paris for Charles de Gaulle's victory
parade. Mr Schaechter believes most of them ended up in Dachau; Sumner Kirby is
known to have died in the Leau concentration camp near Bernberg, Germany, on
April 7 1945.
But what happened to those, many elderly and infirm, who stayed? Some are
marked "transferred". Others were moved in 1947 to Pithiviers or Rivesaltes
camps, both officially closed. Some are marked: "Agreed with Mr Casse - to be
lost". And what that means, no one knows.