Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [125]
The Swiss Consulate in Paris, acting for the United States, prepared a report on the internments for the American Legation in Berne:
The arrests began Thursday morning September 24, 1942 and ended on the evening of September 26. In the meantime each woman was examined not only from a medical point of view but also regarding her identity. Certain ones were immediately released due to their poor health.
Upon arrival of each bus the French Red Cross distributed gratuitously chocolate, biscuits and English books for the travel.
Sylvia received presents from friends who came to the zoo. The Germans allowed the women to take walks ‘in a minute garden where, over the distant hedge we could see any friends who cared to come and have a try at making themselves heard and at hearing our voices in unison calling loudly for that something in the top bureau drawer etc.’.
Drue Tartière, the American former actress and wife of Dr Thierry de Martel’s nephew, Jacques Terrane, had been picked up on 24 September from her house 20 miles south of Paris in Barbizon. Drue had left Radio Mondiale and become active in the Resistance, hiding Allied flyers in her house. She had rented a second house in the countryside as a rendezvous for résistants and a hiding place for British weapons and agents. She thought the Germans had arrested her as a résistante and feared that she might betray her comrades under torture. During two uncomfortable nights in German police custody with a 64-year-old American neighbour, Marion Greenough, she came to realize that she was being interned merely as an enemy alien. When she and Miss Greenough arrived in the Bois de Boulogne on 26 September, Drue wrote, ‘A crowd was gathered around the large glass-enclosed structure as our bus drew up to the big door of the Jardin d’Acclimatation. People outside the glass windows along the terrace were trying anxiously to catch glimpses of their loved ones within.’ Outside, rain poured on the old men, women and children desperate to know what would happen to their imprisoned mothers and wives. A report by the YMCA noted, ‘On Sunday visitors were not allowed, but friends soon discovered that by paying five francs admission to the Zoo they could reach a place where they could see and talk with the American women through a double row of gratings with German guards in between. Everyone considered it a great joke that they could pay admission to see their friends in the Zoo.’
In a make-shift dormitory on the second floor of the monkey house, Drue enjoyed a reunion with old friends. ‘The first person I ran into was Gladys Delmass, who had worked at the Paris Mondiale radio station after war broke out,’ Drue wrote. ‘She was a very bright girl from Hartford, Connecticut, educated at Vassar and Cambridge, England, where she had become an authority on Elizabethan literature. ’ Gladys was married to a Frenchman, Jean Delmass, who worked for the Vichy government. Drue saw another friend, the sculptress Elsa Blanchard, whose family she had known in Pasadena, California. She was introduced to Sarah Watson, directress of the Paris student hostel, the Foyer International des Etudiantes, ‘short and round, with the pink skin of a baby, snow-white hair, and a kindly, illuminating smile’. Drue thought her ‘soft South Carolina accent added to her charm, and her attractions were enhanced by a lively wit and keen intelligence’. With Miss Watson was another directress of the hostel, Mary Dickson. Sarah Watson introduced Drue to Sylvia Beach, whom she knew by reputation as the ‘proprietor of the famous bookshop in the Rue de l’Odéon, Shakespeare and Company,