Trudy Gold
Rescue and Resistance in France, Both Jewish and Non-Jewish, Part 3

Trudy Gold - Rescue and Resistance in France, Both Jewish and Non-Jewish, Part 3

- Before I start, I think because when we’re dealing with this period of history, it’s so very, very complicated, what I would like to do is just to give you a few dates so that you know exactly where I am, and why was it there were so many refugees, particularly children in France at this period. Now, if you remember, refugees had flooded into France, really, from 1933, onwards from Hitler. Some of the great film men who later finished up in Hollywood, all sorts of interesting characters escaping the grip of Nazism, plus of course, a lot of people who’d fought on the wrong side or maybe the right side in the Spanish Civil War, so they were in this country, in France. Then what happens is that, of course, France had its own version of the Kindertransport, so there were a lot of unaccompanied children in France. And then, let’s go through the dates. The fall of France is in May, 1940. And from May, 1940, onwards, what then happens is you have Vichy in the south and German occupation in the north, with the French on the border just past the south of France. So you all know where I am at this stage. Now, up until, really, the middle of 1942, nobody really knew what the Nazis were up to. We now know with the hindsight of history that the Final Solution, as we know it, began with the invasion of Russia on the 22nd of June, 1941. And of course, tragically, that was what Father Desbois called, “the Murdering by Bullets,” and over a million people were murdered in Eastern Europe, starting in Lithuania. The most appalling, appalling tragedy. Now, some news had leaked back, but had anyone really put a picture on it? The Wannsee Conference in January, 1942, of course, was retroactive, and that’s where the Nazis actually wrote the whole thing down.

The deportations from France begin in the summer of 1942. The Nazi occupation of Vichy is November the 10th, 1942. That’s when the German army enters Vichy. And it’s on the 3rd of September, 1943, that Italy capitulated. So it’s important that you get those dates into your head. Why, because it alters the way that Jews, well, it alters what happens to Jews and it also alters the way that those who were trying to help had to change their methods. So important to remember. And the other point is the Allies, when did the Allies reach Normandy? June the 6th, 1944, and they take Paris, or rather, de Gaulle takes Paris. William, of course, is taught absolutely brilliantly about this. The taking of Paris is August, 1944. So, can we start with the first slide? This is George Garel. Now, George Garel was in the Resistance. I’ll give you a little bit of background on him in a minute. But first of all, I want to talk about an organisation that he was an important part of called OSE. It was a Jewish children’s rescue organisation that actually had been founded in Russia in 1912 by a group of young doctors. Think about the situation in Russia in 1912, it’s the last years of the reign of Nicholas II. The persecutions are at their height. And a group of doctors came together to provide a sort of rescue organisation for Jewish children, Jewish orphans struggling, either children orphaned or children in the most terrible poverty. In 1917, after the Czarist Revolution, well, the revolution against the Czars, it moves to Berlin. It’s a very creditable organisation.

Albert Einstein was its honorary president. In 1933, Hitler comes to power. It moves to Paris, and in 1940 it centres in Montpelier in Vichy. Now, there were 280 employees working for this organisation. Remember, at this stage there’s internment in Vichy. But the OSE is allowed into the camps to give medical aid, all sorts of welfare. And by November, 1941, there were 28,000 internees and roughly 5,000 children, and these children had to be fed and clothed. Something else which we discussed when we looked at Varian Fry and the other rescuers in Marseille, please don’t forget that America did not enter the war until December, 1941, after Pearl Harbour and after the Germans very, very stupidly declared war on America. So up until that time, there were a lot of American relief organisations. There were also a lot of Jewish relief organisations, mainly in Lisbon who were supplying funds. Organisations like the Joints, the World Jewish Congress, doing incredible work. Now, at the same time, the Quakers, the Unitarians, there were all these kind of organisations who were willing to help. We’ve looked an awful lot at the dark side of the moon, but there is a light side too, and the light side of the moon is people who have a moral compass. So, the Red Cross, the Quakers, they are actually helping funnel money to the OCE so that social workers can feed and clothe the detainees. Over 3,000 of these detainees tragically died of malnutrition and disease. So it’s an incredibly important work. By 1942, in August ‘42, the policy is deportation. And what then happened is, the OSE has to evacuate the children from the camps, and this happens with the help of many non-Jews. And if you remember, it’s also the time of the wearing of the yellow star.

Now, it’s fascinating because France is a secular country, and so many teachers were absolutely horrified by this, that what they did is they began to help. And so you had Teachers Networks, you had all sorts of networks of people who were helping to try and save children. So, these children, illegally evacuated, what are you going to do with them? They have to be placed in non-Jewish homes, institutions, and many of them. eventually smuggle them out of the country. And to accomplish this, George Garel, he was a 33-year-old engineer. His name was actually Garfinkel. He was already a member of the Resistance and he left it to form what became known as the Garel Network, the first entirely clandestine network to rescue children in Vichy. He had his headquarters in Lyon over the next 12 months. And, of course, in Lyon, you have later on the infamous Klaus Barbie. Over the next 12 months, with three dozen workers, mainly women, this is important because when it’s talking about saving saving of children, it’s so often the women. Not many of the leadership were women and we don’t need to debate why that is. But many of the women who actually worked in the saving of the children, they hid 1,600 children. Now, bearing in mind, they’d also had to deal with the French Kindertransport. Now, they also, in order to keep the children sane, they’re moving them from refuge to refuge. They, in the end, set up homes for 200 refugee children. George Loyer, who I’ve already mentioned to you, he was the cousin of Marcel Marceau, he was part of OSE and he thought they had to pay particular attention to physical education, survival skills.

But physical education because, look, these children have lost their parents. Many of the parents of course were murdered, but some of them, some were later reunited, thank goodness. But the majority of them, they didn’t know they’d ever see their parents again, so you can imagine the kind of stress. You know, we can think of it this way, lockdown, age range 11 to 14, something like a quarter of all children have severe mental problems as a result of lockdown. Now, magnify that by a hundred times, a thousand times, and you get the kind of problems that OSE has to deal with. Now, again, thanks to people on lockdown, there was in Chabannes, one such home was the Château de Chabannes, 400 Jewish children were saved. And a film, which I’ve been told about, and I think we’ve got the details on lockdown, was a documentary made by Lisa Gossels. It’s called “The Children of Chabannes”. There were 14, what they called chateau mansions, places of instruction. And the other point, ORT, the extraordinary ORT which teaches people, Jewish people, vocational training. They were also operating because you’re saving the children, you’re hiding the children, you’re feeding the children, you’re clothing the children, but there’s something else you’ve got to do, you’ve got to look after their minds. And in between June and September, 1941, Garel supervised three transports which brought 350 children through Marseille and he managed to get them to the US, sponsored by an American committee, the Committee for the Care of European Children. Again, he was assisted by the Quakers in Marseille.

The Quakers and the Unitarians are such heroes of this story. And unfortunately, nearly all of those children lost their parents, were murdered, their parents were murdered, let’s not use euphemisms, but they made it to America. Now, André Solomon of OAC was responsible in the area around Gurs Concentration Camp. And in 1941, he started bringing children out of the camp, because at this stage, you still could get the kids out of the camps. Now, he had a very interesting career, did George Garel. One of the things he did, he worked together with his brother-in-law, Charles Lederman, and a man called Abbé Alexandre Glasberg, who I’m going to come on to in a moment, he helped those who have been imprisoned under the statute , that they had an operation to screen prisoners. The Nazis and the Vichy did allow OSE into the camps. It’s very much like the Judenrat in Eastern Europe, let the Jews work with the Jews. And when the Germans took the free zone on the 11th of November, 1942, Joseph Weill, who was the director of OSE, the medical director, the Germans had placed it under the Union Générale des Israélites in France. So, it’s now placed within the structure. The Germans love to deal with structures. He was told that the Germans were, Joseph Weill was informed that the Germans had targeted many of the shelters, because they’re moving now to deportation. So, they asked Garel to set up this underground network to hide all the children under 16. And remember what that meant, false passports, false papers, all sorts of false documents including food coupons, and also to find safe houses and networks, who can you trust?

Which organisations can you trust? Which people can you trust? And it was his job to actually find all these kinds of things. And he obtained help from Cardinal Jules Saliège, the archbishop of Toulouse, and the authorization from him to place children in ecclesiastical institutes in his region. He later on, just to finish his story, he survived the war. He married a colleague of his, Lili Tager. She was also in the Resistance. They had seven children and she herself had been very much involved in saving children. And after the war, he became the president and the first chairman of OSE. So, he had a very important role. Let’s now talk about Jules Saliège 'cause he’s fascinating. Can we move on please if you don’t mind, Lauren? Yeah. Jules-Géraud Saliège. He was, of course a Catholic. What was the role of the church in all of this? And it’s a very, very complicated story. As you know, there is this very long tradition of Jew hatred within the Catholic Church. And it’s something, when we have finished our lectures on Albania and Romania, we are switching to Germany for about three months. And I have decided that I’m going to give two lectures on the whole history of Jew hatred. I think it’s important, and I’m actually going to give a whole presentation on the problem with the church from a Jewish point of view. Because, of course, you have this terribly negative teaching of the church. And this man, he was the military chaplain in World War I.

He was appointed Archbishop of Gap by Pius XI. And in 1928, he becomes the Archbishop of Toulouse. Now, he was a man of huge conscience. You know, Pius XI, Pius XII, they have incredibly controversial records that we have touched on and I think we will go back to touching on more. But this is a man who really, as a human being, he had a very strong moral compass. Because I think when you study this particular period of history and all the horror of it, what stands out more than anything else? What makes people brave? What makes people rescuers? Where is that moral compass? And if we could only learn, I’ve said this to you before, if we could bottle it, I think we could change the world. Anyway, the free press has been silenced in France, and it’s at this stage that a Jewish communist called Charles Lederman asked him to alert public opinion as to what was happening to the Jews. And he read his famous political letter the following Sunday, and other clergy followed suit. And I’m going to mention them because we have to honour them. Monseigneur Théas, who was Bishop of Montauban. , Bishop of Marseilles. Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon. And Bishops Bayonne and Albi also allowed it and they denounced the roundups in defiance of Vichy. This is a kind of turning point, and this is part of the sermon that he read. He’d been approached by Charles Lederman, who of course was in the Resistance. And he wrote, this is the letter. “The Jews are real men and women. Not everything is permitted against these men and women, against these fathers and mothers. They are part of the human species. They are our brothers like so many others.

A Christian should not forget this.” And overnight, this became a very important manifesto. He survived until he was 86 years old. And he was declared a Righteous, one of the Righteous by Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem only ever declares gentiles Righteous, it’s fascinating. Other Righteous Jews have been given honours by different countries. But Yad Vashem, this is particularly, the honour is for the Righteous gentiles. So this man, as early as November the 23rd, 1941, he had protested to Vichy against the Jewish policy. Now, this is something, and another sermon of his. “Women and children, fathers and mothers treated like cattle, members of family separated from one another and dispatched to an unknown destination. It has been reserved for our time to see such a sad spectacle. Why does the right of sanctuary no longer exist in our churches? Why are we so defeated? The Jews are men and women. Foreigners are real men and women. They cannot be abused without limit. They are our brethren.” So I think a very, very, very strong sermon. Can we go on, please? I just wanted to show Fort Montluc, which was from November, 1942. The Gestapo used it as a prison, an interrogating centre and an internment camp. It’s estimated that over 15,000 people were imprisoned there. 900 were murdered. Jean Moulin, the great hero of the French Resistance, was held there, cell 1130. And if you want a lovely irony of history, because they do exist, Klaus Barbie was forced to spend a night there in cell 1361 just before his trial. Now, can we go on please?

This is Madeleine Dreyfus, another person of huge courage. She was an OSE field worker, and she’s going to be one of those who’s going to bring children to that extraordinary village, Le Chambon, absolutely extraordinary, which I will come onto today. She was born, Madeleine Kahn, and she married Raymond Dreyfus. They had two sons. She was a psychologist. She studied Adlerian psychology. And October, 1941, her husband lost his job because of the anti-Jewish laws, and the family fled to Lyon. She began working for OSE as a psychotherapist. She tried to deal with some of the tragedies of these youngsters, the kind of problems, the horrors that they faced as a result of everything that’s happened to them. And she was given control of the Lyon, Le Chambon area and it was linked to the Garel Network. And several times a month, I want you to think about the bravery of this woman, she would take small groups of children from 18 months old to 16 years from Lyon to St-Étienne, and then transfer them on the local train to Le Chambon. Sometimes, children were given by parents, but others had managed to hide at the time the parents were arrested. Most children had already been given false Arian identity papers. But what about the children who were not born in France, children who spoke Flemish, children who spoke German? They had to be taught to call each other by French names. They weren’t allowed to reveal their identity in any way.

And, in fact, this is a very controversial story because what about the children who were hidden in churches? Yes, they were taught the catechism because sometimes it would save their lives. In some cases, those children were converted because there is disbelief in Catholicism that only through the Catholic Church can somebody be saved. However, in others cases, the children were taught the catechism because that saved their lives. It’s a terribly complicated story. So, she managed to find shelter for over a hundred children. She often returned to the children to bring them clothes, because it’s all done in a sort of shuttle service. You take them from one point to another. Imagine how many people are involved in this. It’s quite an extraordinary undertaking. They had to be given food, clothes, and sometimes she managed to smuggle letters from parents, but the parents couldn’t know where their children were hidden. And in November, 1942, she’s got two small sons of her own, she’s already pregnant with her third child who was a daughter. Annette was born in Lyon in August, '43. And according to her husband, I’m quoting from him, “My wife resumed her trips between Lyon and Le Chambon.” A few weeks later, her husband’s sister-in-law and her two children were deported. The husband was terrified. He’s terrified for his children. He begs his wife to stop for the sake of her children, who don’t have, they don’t have the right documentation, but she decides not to. November the 23rd, 1943, she received a call from the father of a child she had hidden at a school for deaf mutes. What she didn’t know was he was being held at gunpoint, it was a trap.

And she was sent to Fort Montluc in Lyon and she witnessed the execution of many resistors, and she told the story. She was deported to Bergen-Belsen, and an incredible woman, in camp, she tried to raise morale and to humanise. There are lots of examples of this in camps. I mean, Leo Baeck, in Theresienstadt, of course, he was the great Reform Rabbi. They had no books. Obviously, they had no books, but everyone has a story. And he basically said, “Look, the Germans are trying to dehumanise. We must stay human.” So everybody, I mean, if you sit and think, every one of you has a field of expertise that you could talk about. Whatever your areas., whether it’s in business or in the professions or in everyday life or whatever, everybody is fascinated by somebody. And he encouraged people to tell their stories, art, literature. She managed to survive. She was liberated and she was repatriated. She was liberated, of course, in May the 18th when Belsen was liberated by the British, and Sheikh was repatriated. She went back to her work and she remained an Adlerian psychology until her death, until her death in 1987. Now, and after she was arrested, she was replaced by a man called André Chouraqui, who was ironic, he went to Palestine after the war. And when it was Israel, he became the assistant mayor of Jerusalem. So, why is she getting the children to Le Chambon? Because as I’m going to tell you in a minute, that whole village tried to save Jews. Jewish groups, OSE Scouts, Zionists, that becomes a great focal point to then to get them over the Swiss border. Now let’s talk about the next man, Abbé Alexandré Glasberg.

Here he is. He was born a Jew in Zhytomyr in the Ukraine. He travelled around Central Europe. He converts to Catholicism and ultimately becomes a priest in France. After the armistice, he set up a charity, Christian Friendship to Help Jews. He was supported by Cardinal Pierre Marie Gerlier, and under his sponsorship, hundreds of Jews were hidden. After the beginning of the deportations in the summer of '42, he went underground. He works with rescue organisations, Jewish organisations. It’s interesting, he’s converted, but he worked with Jewish children being sheltered by non-Jews, making sure that they knew they were still Jewish. And after the war, ironically, he worked for Mossad Aliyah Bet, the Organisation of Illegal Immigration. A lot of French actually helped in the sending of the boats to Israel, to Palestine, the most famous of all the refugee boats, the exodus. Don’t forget that it left France, it actually left France with, I think it was something like over 900 Holocaust survivors on board. Can we go on, please? Here we have Father Pierre Chaillet. I wanted to show you some of the faces. He was a Jesuit. He also found hiding places for Jewish children. He was proclaimed Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. No, I couldn’t find a picture of him. Let’s go to Henri de Lubac. That’s Vénissieux Camp, which is outside Lyon. Children were brought out of the camp by Glasberg. Remember, I told you, he could get them out. This is before the Nazis implemented the Final Solution. Then you had to find papers for them. Who knows who was bribed?

You had to find papers, all sorts of papers. It’s a huge operation. And isn’t it interesting to know that so many thousands of people were actually involved in something for the good? Having looked at the dark side of France with Vichy, I think it’s quite important to finish my series on France with the positive. Can we move on, please? Here, we have Henri de Lubac. He was born to a very wealthy French family from the nobility. He was schooled by Jesuits. He became a professor of theology at the University of Lyon. He was very against Nazism. He wrote a very important piece, called “Christian Testimony”. He was violently against antisemitism and he became very, after the war, he was always in trouble with the Conservative bishops, but he was instrumental in Vatican too. Many of you will know that it wasn’t until the '60s the Vatican actually forgave the Jews for the crime of deicide for all generations. But the conservatives insisted that the Jews of the time still did it. But he was one of the good guys who was trying to take it out of the Catholic Weltanschauung. Okay, can we go on please? I have so much information today. This is Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. This is that wonderful village. Can you all find it? I think we can actually make, you can actually make it bigger, can’t you? Oloron-Sainte-Marie. Okay. Le Chambon, do you see where it is?

It’s just down from Lyon, you see? That’s why Lyon was such an important stopping-over place. And this is a quote from one of the people in Le Chambon. And the whole village has been honoured by the way. Nobody asked who was Jewish and who was not. Nobody asked where you came from. Nobody asked who your father was or if you could pay. They just accepted each of us, taking us with warmth, sheltering children, often without their parents. “Children who cried in the night from nightmares,” this is from Elizabeth Kaufmann, a former child refugee in Le Chambon. So, it’s not just Le Chambon, it’s the villages in the surrounding regions. The region actually in the end provided salvation for about 5,000 children, including three and a half thousand Jewish children. It was led by Pastor André Trocmé of the Reformed Church. He was a Huguenot, and that’s very important. And his wife, Magda, and an assistant pastor called Edouard Theis, they offered shelter, private homes, hotels, farms, schools, out in the countryside. They forged identity papers, rasion cards, and in some cases they, themselves, guided the children to Switzerland. And you see, it’s quite a long journey, isn’t it? Remember, you take the train to Le Chambon, and then how are you going to do it? On little trains, coaches, and as we’ve already discovered, once you get near the Swiss border, on foot over the top. And because, I think, what is so extraordinary about Chambon, it was the whole village. They came together, and villages in the surrounding region, now why? Okay, it was part of Vichy. It seems, because of course a lot of people have tried to study it, what made this village so special? There were other villages, I’ve already talked about one.

They were Huguenots, remember, and they had been persecuted in France, the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. You may remember that that was in the reign of Catherine de’ Medici when her daughter, Marguerite, married the future Henry IV of France, the family. I don’t know those of you who’ve listened, a long time ago I gave a lecture on this. The family, what they did, they perpetrated this terrible massacre against the Huguenots and it very much steals into the imagination of generations. And later, this village, they provide shelter for all sorts of Protestants escaping over to Switzerland, why? Because Switzerland became Protestant under Zwingli. It’s so important. One of the problems we are teach in Jewish history is you have to know a little bit about the history of the surrounding peoples. So, also, when they were guiding Jews to safety in Switzerland, they were aware, and they write about this, it was the same route that their persecuted brethren had previously took. The Huguenots, it’s a kind of Low Church and they also were very, very suspicious of anything authoritarian. They refused to cooperate with Vichy. They refused to take an oath of loyalty to Pétain. They refused to ring church bells in his honour. You know, this came up when we talked about the Albanians. There are certain people who have very strong instincts. And in a collective, can you imagine if everyone in your collective thinks the same as you? You’d loathe mindless bureaucracy.

You’d loathe authoritarianism. And it seems that these people, that’s what they were like, they loathed that kind of world. So, after the establishment of Vichy, Trocmé himself has embarked on a career of civil disobedience, and often preached against antisemitism and protested against the roundups, particularly at the Vélodrome d'hiver. You see, there was knowledge, they knew what was going on. And he made a public sermon on August the 16th as a response to what had been going on in d'hiver stating that, quote, “The Christian Church should kneel down and ask God to forgive its present failings and cowardice.” So, he’s the catalyst, this man of huge moral courage. Though he’s the catalyst, it involved many other Protestant pastors, also Catholics, American Quakers, Jews, Swiss Protestants, and non-believers. You see, there’s no monopoly on courage. When you look at Le Chambon, there’s an awful lot of, in a way it’s quite easy to understand, to get through to why they did it. They were Huguenots. They loathed authority. They had a very strong moral compass, but there were lots of other people involved. There were Catholics involved, Conservative Catholics, of course, Jews, of course, Quakers, but there were lots of non-believers. And also, it had nothing to do with your socioeconomic or educational level. It had nothing to do with that. Didn’t matter if you were a man or a woman. None of these factors, you can’t pinpoint what makes a rescuer. I think you can pinpoint in a way what happened at this particular place, though. So can we have a look at Pastor André Trocmé? Oh here we have some pictures of Le Chambon, yeah. Can we go on, please? That’s Pastor André Trocmé. Yeah, he’s got such a gentle face hasn’t he?

And now let’s look at his wife. She lived a very, very long life. And there you see her at Yad Vashem, when of course she was honoured. So remember, this goes on from December, 1940 to September, 1944. The inhabitants, the population of the village was 5,000, and a village, the village is around about 24,000. They saved around 5,000 people. It’s absolutely extraordinary. It’s estimated that every one person who was saved, it took another five people to save them. And the towns over, when Trocmé calls for resistance and rescue, he presided over this extraordinary rescue operation. So, as I said, they’re housing the Jews wherever they can. And with the help of Pastor Edouard Theis, who was director of the local college in Cévenol, they were taken on the perilous journey through the French towns and villages under assumed names with forged passports to the Swiss border. And as I said, the children had to call each other by their French names. And you’ll remember when I talked about Marcel Marceau, he got them all to play football with each other. Remember his great miming technique? He taught the kids how to mime. And that extraordinary story where he came across a group of German soldiers and it was the end of the war, so he arrested them, they gave in. Now, also, they have to be smuggled over the border to Protestant supporters on the Swiss side. Because the Swiss authorities, invariably, when Jews tried to cross the border, they were driven back. So, there were supporters on the other side of the border, so this was very carefully arranged. The French saviours had to take the children to Swiss saviours, it’s quite a mountainous region, and then they would be taken to safe houses in Switzerland.

Now, Daniel Trocmé, who was a cousin of André, directed the children’s home, La Maison des Roches at Le Chambon. Unfortunately, he was betrayed by a German officer who was actually convalescing at a military home. André was arrested. He was taken to that terrible camp for interrogation. He admitted his role and he was sent to Buchenwald where he died in April, 1944. André himself was arrested, but released. Why was he released? Were they not prepared to do it to him? I don’t know. It’s an extraordinary story. Later on, one of the residents was asked about motivation. And she said, “It was the most natural thing to do to help those people.” And when I conclude this presentation, I’m going to show you something by Pierre Sauvage, you know, the brilliant documentary filmmaker. He was born to parents who were refugees there. And, of course, his film, “Weapons of the Spirit”, and I believe you can get it on YouTube or Prime, you really should look at it. So, 35 of the residents of Le Chambon have been proclaimed Righteous Among the Nations. Okay, now, important to remember, the whole of the Plateau was seen as a place of refuge. And here you have Edouard Theis and André Trocmé. I should also mention that the Swedes contributed funding. This again, happened through Lisbon. Remember, there are diplomats. Sweden, Portugal, all these places are neutral. I’ve already talked about some of the consorts. Money was needed.

You needed money for documents and for food. And, you know, the children in Le Chambon, they even attended school and took part in youth organisations to maintain normalcy. You know, children from different classes competing against each other. The children obviously attended Protestant schools, but Trocmé insisted that they had clandestine Jewish services. He believed it was his duty. They were Jewish children, he must keep them Jewish. And, of course, they had to be looked after psychically because the fear of impending raids, other refugees flee to the Le Chambon. There were quite a few Spanish Republicans there, also, anti-Nazi Germans, many young Frenchmen seeking to avoid deportation. Don’t forget that in the end, over two million Frenchmen were deported to Germany for slave labour. That’s what really turned the French and that’s when the Resistance became very strong. Also, about 42 members of the Resistance took refuge in Le Chambon. Now, of course, the pattern changed after the German occupation. Students were arrested. Five of them were identified as Jews and sent to Auschwitz. And that is, of course, when Daniel Trocmé was murdered. Now, Roger Le Forestier, Le Chambon’s doctor, he was the one who was responsible for forged documents. He was actually shot in Lyon by Klaus Barbie’s men. And it was in 1990 that Yad Vashem recognised the whole village. So, it’s really worth spending a bit more time finding out about La Chambon. In a sea of darkness, it makes us feel better about the human spirit. Even though for some it ended tragically, nevertheless, it shows what is possible when people turn to the light. And now let’s look at another man who turned to the light, a man called Jean Deffaugt.

And here you see him, he’s with his children. He was the mayor of Annemasse, which was on the Swiss border. This is where many of the escape routes for the fleeing Jews converged. He made it his business to visit Jews who were caught by the Germans, fleeing to Switzerland. They were always interned in a hotel annex where they were interrogated by the Gestapo. He collects food, medicine, blankets. He’s a brave man. He goes into this hotel which is really a Gestapo prison to try and help the people. On one occasion, the Gestapo agreed to release children under 11, provided he promised to bring them back. This is towards the end of the war. Deffaugt then passed them onto a Father who hid them until the Allied Liberation. This is very much towards the end of the war. And a few weeks later, after the liberation, it was arranged to give them to Jewish organisations. He was given an award by Yad Vashem in 1965. And he kept in touch with a lot of the children he saved. Here you can see a picture of him with his children. Now, can we go to the next slide, please? This is Marianne Cohn. May the 31st, 1944, she worked for OSE. 28 Jewish boys and girls between the ages of four and 16 with her, she was 21 at the time.

What happened was, they were captured by the Germans. The Jewish Underground asked Deffaugt to smuggle Cohn out of the hotel, but she refused to go. She’d been involved in this mission many, many times. So she said, “I’ve saved more than 200 children and if I were free, I would continue to do so. On July the 8th, look how late it was, she was actually abducted. Think about Paris, think about the liberation of Paris. It’s July the 8th. Cohn was abducted by the French Military, the militia and she was murdered. Deffaugt managed to get all the children out. And the town was liberated on August the 18th, 1944. All the children were later relocated to Geneva, and as I said, Deffaugt was still on in touch with them. Can we go on to the next slide, please? Yes, this is a poem that Marianne Cohn wrote, because she wasn’t just arrested by the Gestapo, she was tortured. "Tomorrow I will betray, not today. Tearout my nails today, I will not betray. You don’t know how long I can hold out. But I know. You are five rough hands, with rings. You have hobnailed boots on your feet… Today I have nothing to say. Tomorrow, I will betray.” So this 22-year-old girl was murdered. It reminds me a little of Hannah Szenes, that extraordinary courage that she’d run lots of missions. She’s caught on a final mission and they offer to smuggle her out because she’s so important, but she will not leave the children. And in the end, the children are saved. There’s been a documentary on her as well.

Isn’t it fascinating how now there’s such a fascination? One of the things I find most peculiar, there are so many programmes about the Shoah. And, of course, we’re coming up to Holocaust Memorial Day, and yet, antisemitism is going through the roof. As the Americans would say, go figure. And that’s one of the issues that I really want to look at later on in the course. I think it’s terribly, terribly important. So let’s go on and let’s talk a little bit about her before we get to the film, because she’s a fascinating, she’s a German Jewish origin. Her family were intellectuals. They left Germany for France after the rise of the Nazis. Her parents had been deported as German nationals. And she and her sister were taken in by the Jewish scouts and began to rediscover her Jewish identity. And she starts smuggling as early as 42. And it’s absolutely extraordinary, and there’s now Stolperstein in Berlin where she came from to her memory. And one of the children was a woman called Renee Bornstein and she was part of the group of 32 children who was helped by Cohn. And the problem was according to her, they missed the train at Annemasse, so arranged for a lorry and the lorry was taken by the Gestapo. That’s how they were caught. So her parents, ironically, this woman survived and was luckily, was reunited with her parents. I remember when I was in Poland, I met a couple of elderly Frenchmen. We were in the remains, the Bema, that was all that was there, of the shul.

And we were talking to them and they had been children in France, five and seven, when their parents had sent them away. The parents didn’t make it and they survived, and they’d become incredibly successful and they were going back to Poland, to the village the family originally came from. So, Pierre Sauvage. Of course, Pierre Sauvage, a brilliant filmmaker, he was the son of a very influential French writer and his Polish-born wife. What happens is they survived the war. They survive in Le Chambon. He’s born in 1944. The family moved to America and decided they weren’t going to be Jewish anymore. Pierre returns to France when he’s 18 years old and goes to stay with his cousin. You will have heard of his cousin, Samuel Pisar. He fell in love with French cinema. He was brought back to America, actually, by the extraordinary Otto Preminger. And he became a reporter for “LA Public Television”. He gives many, many lectures on the Shoah and in 1987, he made “Weapons of the Spirit”. conspiracy of goodness. At the moment he’s working on a film on Peter Bergson. Peter Bergson was, of course, the leader of the Irgun in America, and very, very extraordinary man. Another story, another time. Can we have a look at the children, the “Weapons of the Spirit”, please Lauren?

CLIP BEGINS

• I am a Jew, born in Nazi-occupied France. At that time, a spiritual plague was still sweeping throughout the western world. It produced the Holocaust, the Holocaust that mutilated my family, burned my roots, wiped out one third of my people. This was my mother’s family in Poland before the war. They killed her mother, her younger brother, her sister, her brother-in-law, her little niece. And yet, my parents and I and many others were sheltered in a village in the mountains of France. I returned there to find out why? In the beginning, a few Jews made their way to this tiny corner of the world. And the peasants and villagers of the area took in the Jews who came, and the Jews kept coming. And the people of Le Chambon kept taking them in. Individuals, couples, families, the children, the elderly, people of all ages, those who could pay and those who couldn’t, Jews without accents and Jews with accents, doctors and merchants and intellectuals and homemakers from Paris and Warsaw and Vienna and Prague. It’s on a train very much like this one that my parents arrived in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the fall of 1943. A friend had steered them here and they rented a room in a farmhouse with some peasants named, . Not much as left of the farm. My mother was pregnant and on March 25, 1944, a Jewish baby had the good fortune to see the light of day in a place on Earth uniquely committed to his survival.

CLIP ENDS

• I think we better stop there, Lauren. Lauren? I think we better stop because it’s so gripping. But you can get hold of it on YouTube and I really do advise you to watch it. I think we will stop there because I can see quite a few questions. Thank you for doing that, Lauren. Let’s have a look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: “Trudy, have you read the book, ‘The Vatican in World Politics’? It’s about how the Vatican was in cahoots with Franco, Hitler and Mussolini ”

A: Look, it’s a real problem. How did they get the children out of the camps, provided you could get visas for them or take them away? And you’ve got to remember, Hitler, he had a policy. He didn’t have a murder policy until, it doesn’t begin in France until the middle of 1942. Look, we know now, we know a lot we didn’t. Look, at the time, nobody could put the picture together. We know now that it begins, the actual shootings, which Father Desbois calls “Death by bullets,” that begins in Eastern Europe. They murder over a million people. It’s beyond imagination. These are numbers. These are lives. And then, what happens then is the Wannsee Conference, and he’s gone for global war, remember. But up until October ‘41, Jews were being released from camps in Germany, provided there was somewhere for them to go. If you’ve got them visas, you got them supplies, you could get out. That’s how they did it.

Yes, Marianne, I did know. I had to make that Chateau Montintin, it was one of the chateaus. There were 45 different chateaus in France that saved children. I had to make choices.

Q: This is interesting. This is, Rose. Hi, Rose. “I wonder if Adolfo Kaminsky, the forger, was involved in forging documents for the little ones?”

A: I don’t know. “This does not have to do with today’s topic, but I want to shout out to the Red Cross during the war. My late father fought the South African forces for the Allies. He was captured in North Africa at the Battle of after two years and spent the next three years as a POW, first at a camp in and later, a camp in Germany. Food was scarce. He was so grateful for the Red Cross care packages. They likely helped many from starving to death. And he wrote a check on a piece of tissue paper, making a donation to the Red Cross, which the bank in South Africa honoured.” Oh well, that’s a lovely story. There have always been good people.

“In some cases, they refused to return them after the war.” Yes, there were. What happened, do you remember you’ve got Pius XII on the people throne and there were cases, there were some cases where families did survive and they tried to reunite with children who had converted. But on the other hand, you had others who kept the children as Jewish and kept lists so that if parents did come. Many of the children in the end were taken to Palestine, then Israel, yeah.

This is from Shelly. “My late friend, Reggie, was a hidden child in a French church. She said she was a Protestant, so she didn’t do Catholic prayer. She thought the priest knew she was Jewish, but didn’t say anything. She was fortunate enough to be reunited with her mother and sister out of the war.” Yes, she got away with it and presumably she had a French accent. I think it was far more difficult, but let’s get ruthless, it was easier to hide girls than boys because of circumcision. It was also easier to hide native French speakers.

Q: “What happened to Madam Dreyfus?”

A: She survived. She survived.

“Marianne, one of my Swiss best friend’s mothers had been converted to Protestantism, was German, but living in France and working as a nanny in Paris. She was interned in Gurs and a Protestant vicar who knew Dr. Trocmé managed to get her out of Gurs by a young vicar from Switzerland who married her to get her out and bring her to Switzerland.” Oh goodness, I didn’t love this lockdown vows. These are the stories that you don’t read in the books. Wendy and I are trying to work out what to do with all these stories. I have a feeling that in about 20 years, PhD students will be combing our archives for these kinds of stories.

“Yes, there’s an excellent book by Caroline Moorehead called "Village of Secrets”, telling the story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and its neighbouring parishes.“ Yes, I’m going to contact Caroline. I’m seeing her at Jewish Book Week. There’s also a very interesting book on the women in the Resistance with Anne Sebba. And I’ve asked her to lecture, but the point is she’s also just, she’s written a book on Ethel Rosenberg and I think in a way I’ve got to make a choice. Maybe you’ve got views on that? Yes, Caroline’s a great writer.

This is someone else. Only a number. "My first cousin was hidden by a nun in and survived the war. This nun saved many Jewish children. My cousin took me to meet her when my family visited France after the war.” Righteous Among the Nations. Thank you Steven. Thank you.

“There were 500 people in .” Look, they had to save anti-Nazis. They also saved people who’d fled from Spain, Franco. Europe was a pretty dark place, even before the Nazis conquered France. Yes, Muslims honoured by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations. Don’t forget that the Saviours in Albania were Muslim. In all, Israel has named 70 Muslims Righteous Among the Nations. How many of them are Albanian? I think 50. Maybe you can look that up or you know that, Steven.

Q: What is the name of the documentary about Marianne Cohn?

A: I cannot remember, but I’m sure somebody online will.

This is a shame, from Sally, “Pertaining to the previous lecture on Albania. "I found the movie better on the internet, "but it lacks an English translation.”

Ah, Glenda, “Watch "Best of the Promise”. It is in English,“ thank you. "All of a sudden, no longer seeing the slides.” You should’ve been.

“Samuel Pisar was an Anthony Blinken’s stepfather.” Don’t you just love the byways of history? And now he’s helping the Ukraine.

Q: “When did people really know what was happening in the concentration camps?”

A: The question of knowledge. You know, we live in a world of instant now. The first knowledge, look, the first concentration camp was established in Dachau in 1933, and it was in all the local newspapers. It was the British who invented concentration camps, remember, in the Boer War, I presume you are talking about the death camps? The Russians, after the Nazis broke the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and invaded Russia, the first people to bring, send back knowledge of the killings, the shootings were the Russians, themselves, and the Polish Underground. There was an extraordinary Righteous Pole who smuggled himself into the Warsaw Ghetto and then to the edge Treblinka. There were lots of escapes from Auschwitz. There was a minute silence in the House of Commons. The nine Allied Governments exiled in London, they created the declaration. Yeah, December the 17th, 1942, they talked about the murder of the Jews of Europe. Now, did people believe them? Today, when people talk about atrocities in the Ukraine, you see it. Television was a very new thing. Very few homes had televisions. In England, people have bought televisions for the Coronation in '53. My family did. I remember this. One of my earliest memories. So we know that when Belsen was liberated by the British and the films were first shown at the cinema, although people knew, they didn’t know. They didn’t believe. You see, it’s so complicated. You need to be a psychologist to delve into that, Amelie.

This is Enid Kushner. “We know a family, the husband was a Huguenot of Le Chambon. He converted Judaism, changed his name from La Bank to La Van and moved to Israel. He wrote a book in French, which I tried to get translated to English. We visited his wife. He had died in Israel.” Oh, that’s an extraordinary story. Yeah. One of the things I think is a problem, which I find absolutely fascinating and I think has got a lot to do with anti-Semitism today, there’s no linkage between '45 and '48. People don’t know how essential the creation of the state of Israel was after the Holocaust. And I think this is something, any of you who have any influence whatsoever, that’s what has to go onto the syllabus. That’s what has to go into public consciousness.

Now, this is from Lynn. Hi, Lynn. “Abbé, she is of course our expert on the Arab world. Abbé Glasberg later helped issue French visas to get Iraqi Jews out in the '40s. In Operation Babylon, the Mossad agent, Shlomo, described how he met Glasberg at an Asiriam monastery in Northern Iraq. Glasberg was helping get Asirians and Hillel was passed off as his personal assistant.” Oh, that’s amazing. Oh, that’s amazing, Lynn. We need more lectures on '48. I know that’s one of your areas. I shouldn’t ask you publicly but I am.

Q: “What is the name of the documentary?”

A: Which one are you talking about? Are you talking about “Weapons of the Spirit”? “Weapons of the Spirit” by Pierre Sauvage, it is definitely on the YouTube.

Bernice, “I saw this movie maybe 30 years ago and could not believe these wonderful people acted save the Jews when the whole of Europe wanted to kill them”. Bernice, there were righteous people everywhere. Look, we’ve looked at the Albanians. When we move to Romania, you will see that there were many Romanians who saved Jews, including members of the Royal Family. It’s very difficult to pinpoint. I think most people were indifferent. And why were they indifferent? Fear, or was it because, and this is my contention, that Jew hatred was so deep in the psyche of the Western world. It begins with Christianity, but then it somehow, it takes route. Look, there’s not a positive image of a Jew anywhere in literature until the Jews by Lessing, and it fails on the German stage because no one can imagine a Jew as a hero.

This is Ellie. “During my work at the Claims Conference, I found out how heavily the French people were involved in the Shoah, but this is a light shining through the clouds.” Thank you, Trudy. Ellie, I’m so glad you said that because, honestly, I dunno how you feel receiving all this information, but I sometimes just have to turn to the light for my psychic health, and I’m sure you all do too. But we’ve had a tragic history, but the point is we have survived. And there is this kind of almost a mystical side to the Jewish experience, I believe.

It’s “Weapons of the Spirit”.

Oh yes, somebody else saying, “Samuel Pisar is the stepfather of Anthony Blinken. Samuel wrote the words of "Bernstein’s Kaddish”. Samuel was good friends with the conductor, James Conlon, just conducting the work in Baltimore. And Samuel Pisar’s wife and daughter narrated the work. Anthony was present. It was very touching.“ Oh, that’s amazing information. I didn’t know he wrote the words of "Bernstein’s Kaddish”, which is incredibly powerful. You know, we’re coming up to Holocaust Memorial Day and on the Sunday before, Rex Bloomstein, who appears on “Lockdown”, he’s a very good filmmaker, he made a film called “The Gathering” about, I think it was 5,000 Holocaust survivors met, or was it 7,000, met in Jerusalem in 1981 and he filmed it and he’s going to be talking about it. And then the night before Holocaust Memorial Day, I’m actually interviewing Anita Lasker-Wallfisch because she’s 97. She’s one of the cleverest people I’ve ever known in my life. She told me a story the other day that I think I should pass on to you. Because they, of course, when the Russians were advancing to Auschwitz, because towards the end of the war, murdering Jews becomes just as important. You know, they’re losing the war and they’re still murdering Jews, she was part of the deportation back to Belsen. And she told me about a friend of hers, Hildy, who she’s just been in contact with. Hildy is 99 and lives on a kibbutz. Hildy was part of the orchestra, but she actually wrote the scores out. And as they were being deported, Anita said it was incredibly brave. She ran back into the bunker to get her little, she’d managed to hide a tiny little edition of “Goethe’s Faust” and she kept it. She needed to take it with her, extraordinary story. And so I’m going to interview Anita, not just about the war, but what she thinks about Holocaust Memorial Day, etc..

“Shlomo Hillel, that is.” Thank you. Thank you, Lynn.

Yes, Ellie, this is very important. We haven’t even touched Switzerland yet. Oh, there are so many things we can do as we meander through the world. Ellie’ saying, “Did you know about the Protestant minister in Zurich who gave powerful sermons against the Swiss policy, led to huge protests in the revision of official Swiss policy.” The Swiss did incredibly well out of the war, didn’t they?

This is Shula. “I have a friend in Jerusalem from Chambon, who is now 95. She converted to Judaism. Her parents who saved Jews in Chambon refused to be recognised as Righteous gentiles because they did what any human being should do.” Oh, that’s so lovely. And Joy is saying, “Hi, Shula.” Isn’t that extraordinary? “They did it because it’s the right thing to do.”

How do you inculcate a sense of moral conscience? One of Hitler’s most interesting statements, “I can never forgive the Jews for inventing moral conscience.” Of course they didn’t but the point is, that’s what he said.

This is from Marion. is a documentary by Director Sam about a French woman, Jewish in the Resistance, that I produced.“ Thank you, Marion. We have such a talented group. What happened to Madam Dreyfus’ children and her husband? They survived. Part of his family were murdered but they actually survived.

Oh this is Gloria Rodan, hi. "I have a unique photograph of a large group of resistors in France. He was a cousin.” Do you think you could send us a copy of it? “Ethel Rosenberg, please?” Yes. I think we will. In June, it’s actually the anniversary, so I think we’re going to ask Anne to do it then.

This is from Cynthia. “Six members of my late husband’s family, all French speakers, were hidden on the Isle of for five years,” extraordinary. You see, there are pockets of goodness everywhere.

Ah, this is from Steven. Thank you so much, Steven. “In awe, Israel has named 70 Muslims Righteous Among the Nations. ” Thank you for that. “There’s now over 27,000 from 50 countries.” But Steven, I think you would agree that for every one who was saved, it took a lot of people, and there were many people who didn’t want to be honoured. I mean, I have a friend in Holland who was saved, and the people who saved him refused. They said, “We did it because it was the right thing to do.” And I think there are lots of cases like that. Because what a bleak world it would be if there really were only 27 righteous people in 50 different countries. I don’t want to believe that.

“Albert Camus was a few kilometres from Marianne, was a few kilometres away from Le Chambon in 1942 and knew Dr. Trocmé. He started writing "The Plague” there. Many of the characters in the book are called by the names of Le Chambon.“ What’s to say? What’s to say? Thank you.

Oh, Irene said she saw a wonderful one-man play about Jan Karski in New York last year. He was an incredible man. I talked a lot about him when we covered Poland. I actually had the honour of meeting him. He was extraordinary. He believed when he brought the news back, he would be believed, but he wasn’t. And that also came from Jews.

This is from Alan. "I have a copy of a document from the Netherlands Red Cross advising my mother and family back in South Africa that their mother, my grandfather in hiding in the Netherlands, was alive, surviving the occupation. Another shout-out for the Red Cross,” fantastic. Yeah, good people.

Q: “So between ‘39 and '42, there was no knowledge of what was happening?”

A: No, I didn’t say that Emily. There was knowledge, but was it believed? You don’t find many press articles. It’s interesting, my father was very, very political and he was not an emotional man, but he had actually procured poison for the vulnerable members of my family if they crossed the channel. And he was not an emotional man. And he knew something terrible would’ve happened if the Germans had crossed the channel. Look, you’ve got to remember, all the anti-Semitic moves of the Nazis up until '39 were reported in the British press. And there were foreign correspondents. The Americans were in Germany right up until Pearl Harbour. That’s why people like Varian Fry and all those other extraordinary Americans we talked about were able to be in France rescuing, although the State Department didn’t think much of it. You do know, of course, that the PBS documentary by the brilliant Ken Burns has finally been shown on British television. If you haven’t seen it, you can get it on playback. And it’s one of the greatest documentaries. I think he’s brilliant and it’s a wonderful documentary. It’s hard to watch by the way, but it’s a brilliant documentary.

Q: “When did Churchill know about the intent to exterminate Jews?”

A: The secret listeners knew about it quite early on. Look, the Final Solution begins with the invasion of Russia. The first killings are in June, July, 1941. Look, following the German Army into battle went the Einsatzgruppen and the hit squads. 3,000 SS, the pillars of SS manhood, most of whom had PhDs from top universities, aided and abetted by fanatics from Lithuania, Romania, Latvia, Ukraine, what can I tell you? And Poland, most terrible ravages, the Polish Underground got a lot of information back. Remember, the Polish government in exile was in London. It was actually the Polish government in exile that set the whole chain going. But remember, there’s a minute silence in '42, in December the 17th, 1942. But lots of information had come through and the Wannsee document was leaked to Switzerland to the World Jewish Congress. But did people believe it?

This is Daniel Deronda in the 1800s, portrayed a Jew positively, G. Bochnik. Anyway, may I just say, there wasn’t a positive image until 1786 when “Nathan the Wise” was written. Daniel Deronda is 19th century, written by the wonderful female, Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot. Now, I should tell you, there’s a very good film of Daniel Deronda on, I think, Prime or Netflix. There’s philosemitism in British writing in the 19th century. Think Walter Scott. Think “Ivanhoe”. Think Byron’s “Hebrew "Melodies”. But it’s up until the Enlightenment, there’s nothing. You can argue Shakespeare with me if you want. So that was later. It was actually, Daniel Deronda was written the 19th century. Yes, she writes very positively about Jews. She was very friendly with some Jews in Cambridge who were involved in translations. Mary Ann Evans was a woman outside of her time. She lived with a man out of wedlock. She was a very, very strong, clever woman. But don’t forget, most women changed their names when they became writers. It’s not just George Eliot. Please think the Brontës, they all changed their names. But you also have a lot of anti-Semitism with British writers. Think T. S. Eliot, G. K. Chesterton, Hillel Belock, Ezra Pound, do you want me to go on? John Buchan.

Q: Did members of the French resistance recognised by the French government for their work?

A: Patrick’s going to be covering this. It’s so interesting how the French dealt. Remember, William talked to us about de Gaulle. The free French, they needed a French state to bolster up against Communism because there was a good chance that France could’ve gone Communist. Thank you, Susan. Thank you.

This is from Lillian. “My father spent the war hidden in Monte Luco during the war with the Germans occupying a few blocks away.” Oh my goodness. “Yes, there’s a wonderful statue of Jan Karski at the Poland Museum in Warsaw.” If you ever get the chance to go to Warsaw, I think the Poland Museum is one of the great museums of the world in terms of Jewish history, it’s brilliant. And I believe there is a new exhibition of photos there that are worth seeing.

Ah, Steven, I love this. The existence of 36 Righteous people is first mentioned in the Talmud. There are no fewer than 36 Righteous people in the world who greet the Shekhinah in each generation. Another Talmudic passage mentions the Righteous people, most of them unknown who sustain the world. Yes, it’s the legend of the 36 Just Men isn’t it? Do you remember André Schwarz-Bart, the “Last of the Just”? And in his terribly brilliant but sad novel, the “Last of the Just” dies in Auschwitz. But, of course, this legend of the Just Man.

“Yes, my partner who unfortunately died, he was a Talmudist and he often used to tell me these kind of stories.”

Yes, Nina Sweet, “Charlie Chaplin’s, "The Great Dictator” was an early anti-Hitler film. The film industry was doing business with Germany at the time of Chaplain’s film.“ We haven’t spent enough time looking at the film business, and we will be doing more. Yes, Hollywood was very interesting. Before 1939, there are a few films that are anti-Nazi, but the word Jew is never mentioned. And it is something that, now that I’ve got better at using technology, because I have people who will do it for me, I’m so bad. I’m really, really rubbish, because film is my other great love. In fact, completely changing the subject, I want us to be happy on Valentine’s Day, so I’m actually going to look at romance in the English language cinema, because I think we need a break.

Martin, "the Spanish and I believe others use concentration camps copied by the British, a development from the invention of barbed wire. Horrific, because these were, the Nazis’ appropriation of the expression was an intentional lie. Very different in purpose and modus operandi. The intention was to imply the Nazis were only doing what the British had done, in which they were stopped when the Nazis were found out.” Yes, of course, the concentration camps in Germany had a very, very dark side. But some of the concentration camps in South Africa were very, very dark too, I’m afraid, Martin. South African friends have studied this period and talked to me about it. And I knew some of the boers, of course, it was nothing to the scale of the Nazis. And don’t forget, the Nazis then created death camps. Look, many thousands and thousands of people died in concentration camps, but it’s in the death camps there were factories of death that were actually established for the purpose of death. You know, this is modernity gone crazy. I knew a brilliant historian called Gerald Fleming. He was the first Western historian into the KGB archives. into the Russian archives, beg your pardon. Don’t forget that the Russians had occupied the area, that area of Berlin which was Gestapo headquarters. He found the plans for the establishment of Auschwitz, the names of the gas company, the electric company, the architects, all the secretaries. Do you know how many people were involved in establishing death centres? And they had to be on railways and the railway lines had to work and the trains had to run on time. It’s taking humanity. You know, the best educated nation in the world did this. It’s a story.

“In Salonika, something very terrible happened. It was the rabbi who gave the Germans…” Emily, I am not an expert on Salonika, but a colleague of mine, Mark Levine, is going to join the faculty to give two lectures on Salonika. It is very much his subject. So, wait for that. And sometimes lists were given without knowing what was going to happen to them. Although, Salonika was late, so I don’t want to say anything until we have an expert amongst us.

Okay? I think that’s everything.