Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [107]
PART FOUR
1942
TWENTY-TWO
First Round-up
IN MID-JANUARY, THE GERMANS relaxed the requirement for the Americans in Occupied France to report weekly to the German military. Instead, they could go to the local French police. The American Legation in Switzerland notified the State Department in February that, while a few hundred American men were being held in camps, ‘no women yet interned, men over sixty and needing medical care liberated and Americans form separate group from other foreigners’. The Swiss Consulate, representing American interests in Paris, relayed a message from the German authorities to the American Legation in Berne that the internments ‘should be considered exclusively as a provisional measure and that each case will be examined separately’.
‘The German authorities eased restrictions on 340 American hostages held at Compiègne,’ United Press reported from Vichy on 29 January 1942, ‘and indicated some physicians needed in American hospitals in Paris may be released if the hostage quota is maintained by internment of other Americans in their places, it was learned today.’ The dispatch added that the Germans, who allowed the men to keep radios and receive family visits, had improved conditions ‘to insure good treatment of German nationals in the United States’.
Mme Edmond Gillet, director of social services for the French Red Cross, was the first official to send a full report on Frontstalag 122 to the American Embassy in Vichy. On 27 January, she wrote to diplomat S. Pinckney Tuck, requesting that he ‘consider this information confidential, in other words to use it only in so far as concerns the assistance to be given to the Americans’. Frontstalag 122 was not one camp, but several. Mme Gillet listed Sector A for 1,200 French communists and other political internees, 300 Russians and sixty Yugoslavs. The Americans were in Sector B with other civilians whose countries were at war with Germany. Sector C was for 1,200 Jews, who had been ‘arrested in Paris [and] were interned in the camp as a measure of retaliation. They are subject to particularly harsh treatment.’ She added, ‘They are not allowed to receive packages, letters or visits. But, among the interned Americans are a few Jews who are allowed to benefit from the treatment granted to Americans. This creates a very delicate situation.’
The Germans, who directed the camp from the Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich (Military Governor in France) Headquarters at the Hôtel Majestic in Paris, informed Mme Gillet that the Americans were given ‘preferential treatment’. They, unlike the other prisoners, were allowed to receive two family visits, two letters and three postcards each month and parcels of food from the Red Cross. ‘At the same time,’ she wrote, ‘the French Red Cross, in cooperation with the American Hospital and the American Library, made a shipment of books, armchairs, tables, chairs and various other articles for the creation of a Camp Recreation Center.’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun opened a branch of the American Library in the camp, and one of the prisoners was made camp librarian. The French Red Cross was assiduous in providing care to the Americans, shipping them ‘three tons of sanitary products and foodstuffs’ in the first week.
Vichy was not at war with the United States, and the two governments retained diplomatic relations. No Americans were interned in the Unoccupied Zone. French police in Paris did not assist the Germans, as they had with the Jews, in incarcerating American citizens. The Vichy authorities extended the licences of the three American banks still doing business in France, Chase Bank, J. P. Morgan and Guaranty Trust. The Germans allowed them to keep branches staffed by French employees in Paris. Chase had already