Cahors, France, Monday November 10th

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We were not in good physical form this morning. We were glad that we had booked in for two nights so that we could explore this town. First up, we wanted to contact our children, using Skype at the internet café, and check our emails. We had good chats with Joel and Aidan. Holly was not answering and we didn’t know Rohan’s new Australian phone number (an alarming thought in general, but understandable since most of our contact has been by email with only a rare phone call). A walk to the supermarket, the bakery and the Tourist Bureau, and particularly back up all the stairs at the hostel, completely did us in. I had pain in both hips, and when I massaged one spot, it seemed to make it worse. Keith was stiff and had pains in both his feet. I was sure that I would not be able to enjoy the walking tour of Cahors that we had just gathered the information for, so we decided to leave that until later, and to rest and type for a while. Once I read that there was a museum dedicated to the history of the Resistance opening at two o’clock, my afternoon was spoken for.

The Museum has a plaque on the wall which says:

The Republic of France

in homage to the victims of racism and anti-Semitism and of the crimes committed against humanity under the authority and at the hand of the so-called ‘Government of the State of France’

(1940 – 1944)

We never forget.

(my translation)

It is amazing what a good effect a truly wonderful museum, on a topic of great interest to me, has on my fatigue and pain levels. For three and a half hours I was completely unaware of my body. The Resistance Museum is beautifully set out, with information boards supplemented by detailed transcripts of oral histories, files on everyone who was deported or who is known to have served in the Resistance, files of private and public letters, newspaper articles, photos and memorabilia. It is a research haven, with the files on people cross referenced to all the other items. We were each lent a booklet in English which would have enabled us to make sense of each room, had we not been able to read French. It was so interesting that we just sat down and read the booklets right through before we started on the displays.

During the Second World War, Germany invaded France and the army marched into Paris on 14^th June, 1940. Luckily the possibility had been anticipated and over 3,200 art works, including the Mona Lisa, had been removed from the Louvre and hidden in the Lot Valley. Thousands of people took to the roads with what belongings they could carry or push, ahead of the invasion, seeking safety. Marshal Petain, a respected World War I hero, was made Head of State on June 16th following a series of desperate, confusing and dodgy political moves. He took over government and gave himself extraordinary powers. The French government had been changing gradually since 1934, with the interplay of factions leading to a more authoritarian style of government leadership. On June 17^th, Petain ordered French soldiers to lay down their arms and cease all resistance to the occupation, and asked the Germans for armistice terms. At this stage, Italy under Mussolini had invaded France in the Savoy Region. General Charles De Gaulle fled to England, where he worked to rally the French and other nations in the cause of freeing France. In a radio address on June 19^th, he famously said:

Is the defeat final? No! This is a world war. All the mistakes, all the setbacks, all the suffering will not stop us. Every means in the Universe will be use to crush our enemies. That which will be the flame of the resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.

(Museum translation)

Three days later, Marshal Petain signed an Armistice which declared that fighting would cease and that the French Government would ensure that all its authorities would conform with German regulations. In effect, it became a government of collaboration, and contributed positively to the German war effort economically, through the media, through applying more and more repressive measures on its own citizens, by creating an armed police force that carried out German commands, in cooperating with the use of French soldiers and others to take active parts in combat and in developing youth organisations. I asked whether there had been the imposition of the German language on the citizens, and there had been an attempt that was not very successful.

Under the terms of the armistice, France was to supply manpower and materials to the German war effort. The country was divided into four zones – Occupied, Free, Exclusion and Annexed. The Lot valley was in the Free Zone and the Resistance movement was very strong here. It had the aims to refuse defeat, to refuse collaboration, and to re-establish democracy and the rights of citizens. Ordinary people took enormous risks to keep the flame of liberty burning, with women and children playing active and very dangerous roles alongside men. They sabotaged the Germans in all their activities, educated and informed the French, and worked to support the allied war effort in intelligence gathering and fighting and delaying troops. There was great support from Britain and eventually America, and finally in 1944 France was liberated. Resistance fighters continued to delay and defeat the movement of troops back to Germany after France was liberated, and many then joined the French army.

This summary is well known. What was so special about this museum was that there was documented evidence for the detail of what life was like for the individuals involved and of the horrors experienced by those deported to work and death camps. I could have spent a week there and still not have finished reading and thinking.

Although in the Free Zone, there was the fear that the occupation would soon extend to all of France, particularly once it was clear that the Petain government was more than cooperating with the Germans. Formal Resistance Movements were set up in Cahors and Figeac. In November 1942, the Germans marched into the Lot Valley.

A group of ten young resistance members had raised the French flag at a school, to lift the morale and inspire the students. They made a good escape and all was well until the Germans captured one member of the group, who, under torture named the others. They were all deported to work camps, and at the end of the war, only four had survived. They were all under twenty-one. Other actions were much bigger and more daring, such as a raid on the aircraft factory at Figeac, where research and development plans, machinery and materials were destroyed. I was reading the original reports of these actions, often written in pencil and with a section for ‘losses’ at the end. The statue of Leon Gambetta, a much honoured Minister of War, who in 1880 had led the French to defend themselves against a Prussian invasion, was draped with the French flag, and his spirit was called upon to support the current fight. The leader here, Jean-Jacques Chapou, ‘Capitain Philippe’, was eventually caught and killed, and I read the file on his mother, who was deported. I looked for a long time at her photo; at her face of suffering and pride.

The section on women resistance fighters had many photos and the women could have been anyone, they were so diverse in appearance, age and clothing. They were particularly useful for delivering messages, organising rendezvous and collecting intelligence, and children were even less likely to be questioned when on Resistance work. One woman related how she had ridden 70 kilometres on her bicycle one day, carrying messages that would have had her killed if they had been discovered. Another day she entered a supposedly safe café with a message for someone, only to find some German soldiers in it. She ordered coffee, and eventually a meal, so that she could outwait them but they stayed on and on. She was amazed when they began to sing the ‘Internationale’, and seemed to indicate where their sympathies lay, and that their uniforms were disguises. Even so, she made no move because it could have been a trap. Eventually, much later, she was able to deliver that message.

The BBC kept the French informed via radio, and a cartoon of an empty street with a lone dog in it was supposed to show what happened at British transmission times. Airdrops were made of leaflets, often in the form of anti-German cartoons, to keep up French morale and to keep people informed of the progress of the war in general.

I had been reading some newspaper articles, published in 1942, with a preponderance of German War successes on the front pages and articles about aspects of French life that were considered to be fitting in with the occupation aims. There was a long article about the Scouting movement, and from it I was not sure where their sympathies lay. They seemed to have been given a very good wrap up, but there was nothing very informative in it. I asked a fellow browser, who I knew spoke both English and French, what he made of it. He read the article but, like me, was none the wiser. He undertook to let me know if he found the answer, and eventually after lots more reading, he asked the lady at the desk. The Scouts had been a movement that had actively cooperated with the Germans, and had formed part of their youth activities.

People were killed by firing squad as ‘examples’ to the local communities. Others were deported to labour camps (where few survived), had their houses burnt and their belongings confiscated. This only served to make the Resistance members more determined, and for others to consider that it was time to join and to take action. A reprisal rampage by the Germans, who were unable to identify the perpetrators of the resistance acts and the many others who gave them support and succour, left many villages razed and people killed at random. Still the spirit of the people was not destroyed, and more people had reasons to stand up for the freedom of their country.

There was a very wise note on collaboration, and on the importance of seeing the complexity of life during those times. Some types of resistance were active and dramatic, while others were more subtle, such as in the non-supply of information or going very slowly with production. Some people were in positions which made it very difficult for them to be seen to be opposing the regime, and yet they may have provided food or money through third parties to those taking more active roles. Others were afraid for their lives and the lives of their families, and acted as they did out of compulsion. One aspect of this museum is that it does not indulge in accusations against those ordinary people who may have seemed to collaborate. Instead, it clearly points the finger at the then Government of France, and on those who freely chose to betray their country.

A whole room was devoted to what happened in the labour and death camps. It was horrifying looking at the piles of emaciated corpses lying behind the German guards, who are posing for photos. Other photos showed the experiments that were carried out on prisoners, with one showing a man being frozen so that the impact until death on the human body could be noted. After the end of the war, President Eisenhower ordered that the German people be shown what was done in their name by Hitler and his ministers, and many photos showed long lines of German men, women and children filing past endless lines of disinterred corpses. They are being overseen by American soldiers, who have driven them from their villages to see this sight.

My final read was of the letters written home on their last nights by condemned men. Each was written by a man soon to face the firing squad. Some were patriotic, saying that although they will die, it is worth it because they have been able to help in the fight to free France. Others were entirely personal, with a very sad one asking his sister to go to his girlfriend, and to tell her that she would have been his wife one day and that her love, and that of his family, was sustaining him as he faced death. He begged his sister to tell his parents that he wished his girlfriend to be treated as one of the family, and to be given the help and support that he would have given her had he lived. He left messages for other friends as well, as postscripts to his pencil letter. I felt fairly overwhelmed, and, in a strange way, as if the trajectory of the whole year had been leading me to this place.

Keith had long since deserted me, finding the French reading a bit too arduous, and was back at the hostel. Some old men, who had gathered to chat downstairs, and whose conversation had suggested that they had been involved in the Resistance or in researching it, had finally left to face the world of 2008.

I remembered the verse in the section on the women, and felt that it must equally apply to men. It said something like, ‘If you ask your grandmother to tell you about her life, and if in her eyes you see that for her, she is still twenty years old, then give her a hug for us all, for she has fought for the freedom of France and of us all.’

Later, after I left the musuem, I felt that the intensity of what was experienced in those years, would have been very hard to move on from. I wished that I had another day to read and to talk to the old men who had gathered there about their lives. I felt sad and forlorn and felt my sore hips with every step down the road.

Of course, I was much later than I had intended back at the hostel and it was nearly dark by the time we walked down to see the 700 year old Valentre Bridge, which is beautiful and was part of the medieval fortifications of the town. It is said that the architect was impatient with how long the bridge was taking to complete so he made a pact with the devil to enlist his aid. As the bridge neared completion, and realising the consequence of his pact being death and hell, he gave the devil buckets with holes in them to slow him down. The devil cottoned on and every night, as revenge, he took the top stone off the tower, so the bridge could never be completed. This story doesn’t make any sense logically, since why would the devil not do something sensible like plug up the bucket holes, so that he could get his reward of a soul? It all seemed so silly in comparison to my day’s reading.

It was a pleasant short walk, but I doubted if I could walk ten kilometres, let alone the twenty-one that we had in mind for the next day. We had typed lots but not posted any blog pages for ages. We had emails to answer. We took the unprecedented step of deciding to stay for another day, interrupting the flow of our pilgrimage for the sake of it being able to continue to be a pleasure in another day’s time. We felt great relief at having made that decision, and I celebrated by reading late, then was disappointed with the happy ever after ending in ‘Northanger Abbey’.