A Packhorse Called Rachel

1.

The Raid.

It has been more than fifty years now, but I can never forget the day:

February 2nd, l944. This is the University of Clermont-Ferrand. More precisely, its Faculty of Science.

I kick the laboratory door and enter. Some students turn around (sorry boys and girls but I overslept), others are absorbed in their analysis, or pretend to be. They are studying medicine. Most of the staff and students have fled here from the university of Strasbourg, now hopelessly Nazified. Clermont-Ferrand, the capital of the Auvergne, well anchored at the foot of its volcanic mountains, escaped the onslaught of the occupation by its geographic situation, south of the demarcation line. Only until November 1942, that is. By December, the demarcation line disappeared and France was totally invaded. In l940 my parents and I had taken refuge in Clermont thinking (hoping) the French government in Vichy would protect its Jewish citizens from the Hun. It did the reverse: I was given no choice but to take refuge again, this time in the laboratory of organic chemistry. The brave and handsome professor Clément Vallette appointed me as his assistant (that’s why I say he is brave) and pays me a nominal fee from his own pocket because he knew it was not safe for me, as a Jew, to appear on the university’s register. Vichy had to ignore I existed. I should be afraid but I am not. I am 19, and female, and blond, and still possessed with the arrogance of youth. But by the end of this day, February 2nd, I will be different forever.

The students are my friends. We fool around a bit and exchange confidences between experiments, to while away the time and give each other a little human warmth in the chilly, hungry world the grown-ups have created for us. Outside the window snow falls. An acrid smell drifts over from the far end of the room. Everyone in the lab begins to cough and sneeze. I hope no one is boiling ether! I call out.

Francine turns around and in a mewing tone says: I am, Mademoiselle. Is it wrong?

I cry, everybody out! It’ll explode! Out! I yell at the top of my voice Out! Out! herding them like a sheepdog. I shove those who have frozen in place. My colleague Hervé appears and seizes those who won’t budge. He yells: Get the hell out of here! Go now! Think later! I fetch the fire extinguisher which for some inane reason is kept down the corridor leading to the lecture theatre. Hervé grabs it, pulls off the cap and directs a stream of foam onto Francine’s steaming crucible. Soon the lab looks like the snowy landscape outside.

The danger has passed. The tension breaks. Foam is all over the place and suddenly it is funny. We double up with laughter. We cannot stop. I notice Hervé’s beautiful, even teeth. I have never seen him laugh before. At last we regain control of ourselves. We’ve saved the students, staff of the science faculty and perhaps even those of the Arts faculty next door. In fact the whole of the impressive modern building, Léon Blum’s Prize baby. Elected president in 1936, he was to give the provinces a chance to free themselves from the yoke of Parisian Academic supremacy. He financed generously the creation of new universities and the modernization of the old ones. A major problem remained: to fill these establishments with staff and students. The exodus of students and staff from Strasbourg filled the void; they had flocked together to reach Clermont-Ferrand, arriving at the university’s gates in l941, many of them without time to present their applications and credentials, all exhausted and starved. They were received with open arms, led straight to the canteen and given shelter, no questions asked.

We’ve saved all that. We feel good. No time to relax though. Can we come in? asks a girl, poking her nose around the door. Before I reply the others reappear and they all push into the room. They are a bit shamefaced because they ran, even though we forced them to. Visachel Rosenthal comes up to me. He is my favourite student, tall and lanky as a greyhound, working faster than the others, looking slightly bored. I join him sometimes to know what he’s thinking. He rarely opens up his inner thoughts but lately he told me that his father had fled from Strasbourg a little later then he did and that he was without news. Where could he have gone he wondered?

Though he is usually so very pale, at the moment his cheeks are flaming. He says, angrily: You shouldn’t have chased us away like that! I say, But we needed room to control… He interrupts, That’s not my point. He is annoying me. We have just saved the building and all the people in it. Can’t he see that? I say, more harshly than intended: You’d have preferred us to die together?

Yes, he says. Yes.

He turns away from me and goes to the window. The import of his remark strikes home: we had our opportunity to end it all. Now we’ll have to go on as before…we’ll have to return to Babylon, to captivity, and all because of…me. I suddenly see his future, mine and many others linked by a common fate, the one running in front of his eyes right now through the winterscape and which I sense as imminent, too.

After consulting with Hervé I tell the students they are free until the lecture at eleven o’clock. Is Vallette giving it? asks a student. Yes, on cholesterols. I say. One pretty, outspoken girl cries, Oh, help! and several others join in. I leave them to it. Hervé follows me into the assistants’ room which is also used by members of the academic staff because it is the only one with heat. Some squat on the floor for lack of chairs. They drink coffee made from lupin seeds (courtesy of the Prof. of Botany) and chew on biscuits of maize and saccharine which are not only as hard as wood but also taste like wood. We talk about sideways. Two high-ranking Gestapos make their appearance. They look like coal-black shining crows, their left wings marked with the blood-red insignia, the devil’s swastikas well in evidence. They stop short in the doorway as if afraid we might contaminate them if they enter any further. They click their heels and make their darting fascist salute. Alle raus! they croak, a guttural, twisted, strident sound which makes us jump in spite of ourselves. We wish to appear calm no hope! Some of us spring up like clockwork toys, others stay glued to their seats.

I stand and wait. From the back of the room a voice hollers ‘Warum? and the sound reverberates like thunder, like Wroom! It is professor Baumgartner. He was one of the first academics of Strasbourg to flee, soon to be followed by other members of staff. However, a minority of them did not dare leave hoping the war would soon be over. Others stayed collaborating with Hitler’s Alsace in view of a quick promotion from the new administration.

Baumgartner’s escape had been an ordeal; childhood polio had left him with a limp and a humped back and forces him to waddle when he walks with the aid of a stick. Helped by his son and a student, the journey through Switzerland and occupied France must have been an ordeal one can only surmise.

Befehl! Alle raus! Schnell, schnell!

The crow who just opened his beak blinks. He looks daggers at Baumgartner and shouts Sie auch!, then turns and exits, followed by his twin. They are immediately replaced by two Wehrmacht (in green) who point their rifles at us. We have no choice but to file out.

Baumgartner refuses. Ich bleibe hier! he intones and bangs his stick on the floor with such might that the two Wehrmacht turn their rifles at him. Are they going to shoot? We wait for gunfire, for the dwarf to fall in his own blood…but they don’t shoot. A stroke of pity? Baumgartner won’t move. He brandishes the stick like a maniac. Some of us return into the room to help him out of his chair but we get the butt of a rifle in the ribs. Pushed out by force none of us will ever know what happened next.

The incident in the lab; some people are amused, others angry that I allowed my students such liberties.

It’s clear not everyone shares the same sense of humour (or of the ridiculous). Comments start to fly about among the tobacco smoke making a few pipes tremble on the way. They glance at me sideways, someone launches the attack: You ought not to let those idiots get on by themselves. I continue to nibble my biscuit, disregarding the double assault on the students and myself. There is more to come: Clément Vallette adds Our future medics don’t seem to have much scientific flair which meets with general approval.

True. As it happens, a delegation of students recently approached me after hours to discuss their difficulties with certain subjects in chemistry. They were fed up with cholesterols, toad venom and other complicated molecules covering the Prof ’s blackboard. They thought that he had forgotten that they were not going to be chemists. You tell him, they said, we can’t. He’s too high up, he gives us the shivers. I agree to speak to him, but I said I would have to pick the right moment. God only knows why I think this is the right moment! With all the tact I can muster I tell the professor what my future medics have told me.

Ha! he says, they are frightened to think. Tell them they’ve only to cut my lecture.

But your lectures are part of the course, I say.

They want me to make them optional, is that it?

They want them out of the course. I feel as if I’m shrinking.

My answer is NO! As I said, let them cut my lectures…if they dare!

He leaves the room, plainly meaning I have nothing to add. A few seconds later he reappears, his face strained and white, his eyes unseeing. We hear strange noises from the corridor. Heavy authoritarian steps, doors being wrenched open –voices shouting in German. We look at one another, petrified. German voices have never been heard within the walls of our sanctuary. It’s a raid says a colleague.

Perhaps not say the professor, but they’ll interrogate the lot of us. He leans against the door to keep it firmly shut. Our ears are buzzing. The door opens woosh! Vallette gets the push and stumbles We don’t see the professor again until we are taken outside. He is crouching in the snow of the courtyard of the science block, hatless, coatless. Did he surrender? Doubtful. Perhaps they hit him across his hump with their rifles, perhaps something worse. Meanwhile, we are making our way to the cloak-room. Verboten says a voice from a distance. We are walking in a file to join the others already standing in the yard forming a circle round Baumgartner whose eyes are fixed on his stick marking a ring, a line not to be crossed again…not to hurt him again. We have joined him, miserable sheep, like him without our winter gear, standing in the melting snow.

What do they want from us, these jack-booted monsters?

Just look at them! They are on an improvised platform, sitting in arm-chairs taken from the staff room we’ve just left, warmly wrapped in fur-lined leather coats which gleam in the sun - the generous sun out of the clouds to warm us a little.

Bayonets oblige us to clasp our hands on top of our heads. An unbearable apprehension seizes us, we must look like quivering puppets held by invisible strings glued on to our heads and arms. We wait for something to happen. We don’t have to wait long; a series of events unfolds before us like a waking nightmare. We can’t believe what we’re seeing because we don’t want to. We have to. The evidence is too strong.

Among the flock of strutting, sinister birds appears a familiar figure. It’s one of us - Maurice de St Pré. Maurice is a law student, a former cadet at St Cyr. We are filled with hope, some of us even smile. All is well, we know that he is in the Resistance and of his contacts with London and Spain. He provides false passports and helps both students and staff to escape through Spain. He is very handsome, twenty three, with eyes even bluer than usual this morning because of the reflection from the shining snow. He’s going to spin them a yarn, he’s so clever…

Something is terribly wrong, though. He smiles, but not at us. He speaks and gesticulates with the monsters in charge with ominous familiarity. St Pré hands them one, two, three sheets of paper. Whatever for? One monster starts reading the names on the first page in guttural German accent. He pauses after each name. The walls echo them back. The names called come before an improvised tribunal. St Pré faces them, self-important, legs apart, so steady - whilst ours tremble like Hell. With a slight gesture of the hand he sends some to the right, others to the left. The ones on the right are sent back