But the German police and Gestapo got tougher once they were released. They raided a school in Le Chambon in June, arrested eighteen students, and discovered that five of them were Jews and sent them to a labor camp where they were killed shortly after they arrived, and news of it got back to France. They had also arrested Pastor Trocmé’s cousin Daniel, sent him to the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp, and killed him. It was a powerful message to the OSE workers in Auvergne and all over France. The German High Command was not going to tolerate their dissidence and disobedience forever, no matter who supported them outside France. It made all the OSE units increasingly careful, and their operations even more clandestine than before. And from then on, Gaëlle did missions for them with greater frequency, which became increasingly dangerous for her, but it didn’t stop her. If anything, it made her more determined to make a difference and do all she could for them and the children. By the fall of 1943, she had transported dozens of children, all of whom were destined to go to Auvergne, and from there as many as possible were taken across the Swiss border, most of them via Annemasse, their preferred route, which had worked well for them so far.
The Gestapo in Lyon became particularly vigilant and hostile to anyone transporting Jewish children, and Gaëlle had several close calls but succeeded with her missions every time. It was the only thing that made her life worth living as the war droned on. Her OSE contacts said she led a charmed life. Her code name, once she became a regular transporter for them, was Marie-Ange. She was nineteen years old by then, and Rebekah had been gone for almost two years. It felt like a lifetime to Gaëlle now, and each time she delivered a child into safe hands, destined to be taken to Le Chambon, elsewhere in France, or over the Swiss border, she prayed that it would somehow be a trade with God, and that one day her beloved friend would come back alive. There had been no news of her since they left.
Chapter 5
In the spring of 1944, the war was going badly for the Germans, and the Resistance was making inroads and causing havoc in occupied France wherever it could. The Allies were hitting them hard in bombing raids over Germany, casualties were high on both sides, and the tides had begun to turn. By June, with talk of the German army withdrawing from Paris, there was wholesale looting of museums, as important works of art were being stolen by German officers to take back to Germany. The High Command and its art commission had officially removed what it wanted from the Louvre for the past four years. And Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe and famed art collector, had come to Paris twenty times and taken trainloads of art treasures back to Germany for himself. Hitler had come only once.
In addition, Jewish homes had long since been plundered and their possessions appropriated by whichever officer wanted them as spoils of war, their fortunes having been seized in the name of the German government. And now even lesser officers were taking whatever they could. The loss of France’s treasures was a source of outrage to the French, though not as much as the loss of life, which was even more acute in the final battles.
But the only thing that interested Gaëlle were the missions she was still doing for the OSE, to get Jewish children, some of whom had been hidden for years by then, safely to the Huguenots and the Red Cross and over the Swiss border. If anything, they had stepped up their efforts to save every child they could, and Gaëlle had become an important member of the Resistance since the first child she had transported a year and a half before. She had lost track by then of how many children she had smuggled to safe houses and into trustworthy hands. She had no idea how many children the various organizations dedicated to them had saved, but it was said to be well into the thousands most likely, and some said well over five thousand. And the war wasn’t over yet, although the end seemed to be near. The panic of the German army was some indication that it was already planning its retreat, and grabbing everything they could before they left. In many cases it amounted to boldfaced theft, under the auspices of being the spoils of war.
Gaëlle had just completed a mission, transporting an eight-year-old girl, who had been hidden in a dirt basement for two years, and her benefactors were afraid she’d get caught before the Occupation ended, so they had asked for the OSE’s help, and contacted the Quakers in Le Chambon. Everything had gone smoothly, Gaëlle had never lost a child or been caught yet, and she was lying on her bed, resting afterward, when Apolline came upstairs to tell her that the commandant wanted to see her. He never sent his soldiers upstairs to deliver messages and intrude on them. And he had remained respectful and polite. He still inquired about Gaëlle’s mother, who had dwindled to a shadow of what she had once been. And although she was very thin, from the little food they had to eat, Gaëlle had grown more and more beautiful, and at nineteen she was lovelier than ever. And she was very grateful that neither the commandant nor his soldiers and officers had ever been inappropriate with her, which was contrary to the stories one heard in the village. Several of the local girls had gotten involved with the officers and enlisted men, and even had babies with them, to the outrage of their fellow countrymen, who spat on the women as they walked past and called them traitors.
“Do you know what he wants?” Gaëlle asked Apolline as she followed her downstairs, and spoke in a whisper. Her father had told her never to keep the German High Command waiting, and to always be respectful to them.
“He didn’t say. He just asked for you to meet him in the living room.” And when she did, he was staring into space, as though his mind were a million miles away. He inquired after her mother as usual, and Gaëlle reported that she was no better, and was suffering from the heat, which made her blinding headaches worse.