No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [53]
The newspapers documented the tour with photos of Edith sharing conditions at the stalags—grooming herself alfresco, having her shoes mended by the camp shoemaker, sitting with a group of emaciated men. She was also seen visiting Berlin, where the first person she met was from Belleville, but there was no record of her many photographs with the prisoners, taken as souvenirs of her visit. On her return to Paris in October, Piaf told a reporter that the prisoners were “top-notch,” then, as she was hustled away by the press, shouted the stalags’ watchword, “Solidarité.”
Edith’s morale got a boost in January 1944, when she again applied to the SACEM for recognition as a lyricist and this time passed the test. The set theme, “My song is my life,” could have been chosen for her. Confirming her new status, Paris-Midi published her lyrics: “Ma chanson, c’est ma vie, / Et parfois, le bon Dieu / Y met sa fantaisie / A grand coup de ciel bleu.” (“My song is my life / And sometimes, the Divine / From out of the blue / Makes use of mine.”) Though the article does not mention Germany, she was already planning her next trip there. Dédée’s Resistance group was preparing false identity cards made with the enlarged faces from her souvenir photos; Edith was to distribute them, along with supplies to help the prisoners escape.
Before leaving, she gave the interview that told her cover story. The singer had received numerous letters from her pals in the stalags, she explained, as well as visits from their mothers and sweethearts, urging her to return. She knew about the Allied bombardments, but what mattered to her were the prisoners. Accompanied by her orchestra, a humorist, a dancer, and an actor named Robert Dalban, Edith and Dédée left for Berlin in February with the fake identity cards concealed in their suitcases.
It was snowing when they arrived. Their hotel lacked both heat and food; it was hard to find much to laugh about. Returning to her room with a bag of apples after going out for food, Edith exclaimed, “It’s all I could find in this shitty country!” As Dalban set upon the apples, she produced a roast chicken—the sort of joke she liked to play even in desperate situations. An ominous summons to meet Goebbels, head of Nazi propaganda, turned out well when Piaf’s party, including Bigard and Dalban, were received instead by a General Wechter, Goebbels having been called away. The general said that, as the head censor in Paris, he had been at the A.B.C. on the night when Piaf nearly caused a riot by singing “Le Fanion de la légion.” “We adored that song,” he said; “still, given the public’s reaction, we had to remove it from your program.” He gave Edith his card and said he would do anything he could to help.
Edith’s troupe visited eleven stalags but had to cancel their tour of the smallest, near Nuremberg, when the Allies stepped up bombardments. She compensated for this missed opportunity by singing at another camp, even though no transportation was available. “Edith, the pianist, and I walked through the snow,” Bigard recalled. “She couldn’t keep going, she was exhausted, we had to make a chair with our arms to carry her.” General Wechter himself could not have saved her if he had learned that she was distributing identity cards, maps, and compasses. Sometimes the escaped prisoners caught up with her tour and were passed off as musicians. After officials at one camp became suspicious and told Piaf to leave, she feigned illness to gain time so that those who were to join them would not be caught. “We were too fearful to try this again,” Bigard wrote: “the plan had become too dangerous.” She added, “[Piaf] was exceptionally brave.”
When they returned to Paris on March 5, Edith learned that her father had died two days earlier. He was barely sixty-three. On March 8, she attended the funeral service at the Church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Belleville, the occasion for a rapprochement with her half sister, Denise, their brother,