Prison and Deportation, #02
Msgr. Gabriel Piguet's Memoir
This is the second installment of my translation of Msgr. Gabriel Piguet’s memoir Prison and Deportation. If you would like to read the rest of the book, you can order a copy here. You will find other excerpts here.
Chapter 4
Prison 92
After my first interrogation on Whit Sunday I was driven in a Gestapo car to a military prison, that of the 92nd Infantry Regiment, which was already infamous in Clermont because of how many prisoners the German police had interned there.
The instructions given to me were precise: I was to be subject to an exceptional and extremely strict regime on certain points, and a favourable one on others. Nobody was to know that I was there, to which I replied: “That's impossible, you can't kidnap a bishop that easily. By tonight, or tomorrow at the latest, the BBC will make my arrest known to the whole world.” No sooner had I been locked in my cell than prisoners sneaked up to greet me, respectfully and cordially, with a brief glance through the door.
I was alone in a very narrow cell; light entered through a slit window, and it often smelled badly because of its location. I remained there for forty days, and I was not allowed to take exercise in the courtyard as other prisoners were permitted to do. I had the right to receive daily parcels from the bishopric, including newspapers. After five days, thanks to the intervention of my excellent neighbour and friend the Bishop of Le Puy, I was given my own portable chapel. I therefore had the great satisfaction of celebrating Holy Mass every day, but until the end of my stay I was strictly forbidden from receiving the kinds of visits that other prisoners were allowed. On the other hand I did have a modest bed and a set of white wooden boxes, which served as an altar, as well as a toilet and a desk installed in my cell. It took me just three steps forwards and three steps back to walk between these objects, and it was so narrow that my cassock invariably brushed against them. It made for a very short trip, but it was my only only physical exercise, and I paced countless difficult kilometres.
When I returned to this miserable cell at 3 a.m. on the morning of Wednesday 31 May, after a night-time interrogation by the Gestapo, it seemed like a place of peace and comfort. I was driven back in a van, surrounded by five policemen who were armed to the teeth; there was something sinister about travelling through Clermont at breakneck speed, in the middle of the night, under this strange escort, not knowing where I was going, but knowing very well how often crimes were committed under the cover of darkness.
However, I give thanks to God for the kind favour He granted to me throughout my captivity: I did not lose my sense of complete spiritual calm for one moment, and remained in union with Christ through my priestly vocation and through what St. Paul refers to as quae sursum sunt, “the things that are above.”1
The prison guards were not members of the German police force, but of the Wehrmacht. The ones who usually dealt with me were all non-commissioned officers, and they were middle-aged. Despite the language barrier, which was not insignificant, these men were strict in their discipline and execution of orders, but respectful towards me from the outset, and after a little while they seemed to feel a certain sympathy for me.
Every ten or fifteen days, sometimes more often, I received a visit from the German chaplain. He behaved very properly towards me, hiding his embarrassment and summed up his thoughts on my detention, the conditions of which he wished to improve but lacked the means to do so, with these innocuous words: “C'est la guerre.”
At the end of forty days, and after complaints that had been ineffective initially, I was given permission to leave my cell every day — but on the condition that no one was to see me.
Since I was already known to all the prisoners, who always used to give me a secret greeting as they passed through the corridors, I had no trouble getting my guards to admit that these outings would not reveal anything new about my identity. However, right up to the last day, I was never alone on my walks: a non-commissioned officer used to accompany me along the narrow, circular path which was off-bounds to other prisoners. I was still denied access to the common courtyard.
After forty-six days, thanks to the chaplain's intervention with the police and the favourable attitude of the non-commissioned officers, I was finally transferred to another cell on the upper floor of the prison. It was still very modest but lit by a proper window. Shortly before the end of my stay, this room was even freshened up — it was given a coat of whitewash and the ceiling plaster, which had been damaged during a bombardment, was also repaired.
What I liked most of all was the view over the men's prison yards. From my first day in that cell, I was able to exchange daily greetings and even a few brief words with my fellow prisoners. These connections also enabled me to pass some food on to young men and friends, priests and laypeople, who were particularly hungry.
During my time in prison I learned about something I had been unaware of previously, namely that the Gestapo were torturing certain prisoners during their interrogations. Yes, the inmates knew that the screams they heard during their interrogations in the prison and in the villas in Chamalières, which had been requisitioned by the Gestapo, were the result of beatings and abuse that the police were inflicting on detainees.
This was how they obtained confessions or secrets related to people's duties and professions. One of my companions, a medical doctor, had been beaten regularly. The deep abscesses that had formed and reformed as a result of the ill-treatment he had endured would not heal. I also saw an unfortunate French officer in the courtyard, said to be of Jewish origin, who could barely walk with the help of his comrades; his legs were bare and he had been beaten so badly that they were purple. I was told that died as the result of a subsequent beating, but I was unable to verify this. At the same time, another officer who was being treated in the infirmary next to my cell was suffering from a terrible high fever; his body was covered in bruises, a painful consequence of the torments he had endured. At his request, in secret, I was able to visit and make a blessing. The German doctor who was a reservist in the Wehrmacht and a German nurse, whom the prisoners all remember with fondness, treated him conscientiously and carefully. Fortunately, the doctor was a specialist in skin diseases, and was able to treat his case. Thankfully this sick French officer and a member of the Young Christian Workers who had been wounded near Saint-Plour, whom I had also been able to visit clandestinely, were judged unfit for transportation and left behind in Clermont when the prison was evacuated.
When I returned to France, the officer and the Young Christian Worker were among the first people to visit me at my residence.
How many others were brought to my attention as victims of the Gestapo's cruelty! On one occasion I prayed for a French colonel I did not know, but who was in such a bad state from the blows he had received that I could not tell whether I was imploring divine assistance for a dead man or a dying man.
I asked for this same providential protection for all of my fellow prisoners during my daily Mass when, after the Holy Sacrifice, I made the sign of the cross three times and pronounced the episcopal blessing over the different sides of the prison. It seemed to me that this was a way to reach out to my dear companions and their needs, lifting them away from the harmful actions of a satanic power and placing them under the beneficent influence the Blessed and Almighty Trinity, before entrusting them, through the recitation of my rosary, to the maternal care of Our Lady.
I repeated this blessing with emotion on several occasions, and was sometimes asked to give it at the solemn moment when people left the prison. I used to say it in a very loud voice while the embarrassed guards turned a deaf ear — some of my fellow prisoners used to like to remind me of this when they returned.
The misery we endured, the harsh deprivation of freedom, the disappearance of prisoners who were presumed to have been shot, the sadness of group departures, which was usually preceded by a verse from the Scout's Farewell,2 did not mean there were no cheerful moments in the prison. These were expressed in song and in an equanimity that most of us liked to share with our fellow prisoners.
Sadly, the number of prisoners increased as the days went on. The rooms freed by the departures were immediately filled with new prisoners who had been apprehended in Clermont or somewhere else in the region.
There was a bell used to sound whenever the front door was opened and then carefully locked shut again, and it rang day and night, sometimes with only very brief periods of quiet. It announced the steady arrival of new guests, who were being brought in constantly by an angry and hostile police force.
I never sat idle in the solitude of my cell. After morning Mass, my days were very full with prayer and reading. Indeed, I was allowed to receive books from the bishopric, and a constant stream of new ones arrived to replace what I had read.
In fact, Prison 92 was teaching me and my fellow inmates about the sort of life we would be forced to lead in Germany. We were learning the great truth that a man who is in prison and physically confined is still, in spite of everything, a free being in his thoughts, ideals, and — if he is religious — in an ever-deepening faith and an invincible hope.
In this way, we overcame circumstances and the insolent and fragile power of an execrable police force working for a despicable political regime that we knew had no future. This Christian optimism was a comfort to many prisoners.
I should also mention the good news that came from the kitchens. We called it “The Cook's Report” and it is the sort of custom that always springs up, in wartime and peacetime alike.
We were always on the lookout for news from foreign radio reports that reached us through wily intermediaries or clandestine letters. Whether true or not, whether exaggerated or simply a hoax, this news was part of the prison atmosphere. It has to be said that, from 6 June when the Allies landed in France, right up to the end of the war, French prisoners savoured the joy of freedom that was denied to them but for which they still hoped; it was being regained little by little, then rapidly and invincibly — if not for themselves, then at least for the country. And that was the main thing.
On Friday 18 August, at 6 p.m., I was suddenly informed that I would be leaving immediately. Everyone who was leaving had been informed hours earlier, except for me. Why was I the exception? I was given one plausible but dubious explanation: The departure list contained my personal name, but all the guards referred to me as “The Bishop” and I was told they did not realise that the prisoner Gabriel Piguet and “The Bishop” were one and the same.
Later on, when I was able to see just how straightforward (or rather how deceitful) the Nazi Reich was, I had doubts about this explanation, as I had about so many other things.
So, having been warned, I rushed to pack and went down to the vehicles and make this hasty departure. However, it was called off and I returned to my cell. I would not be there much longer.
The following day, Sunday 20 August at 10 a.m., the Allied forces had advanced and made contact with the French Resistance in the interior. This prompted the German police to make a decision that we had feared but which surprised none of us: All of the prisoners would have to be moved immediately to another, obviously unknown destination
They assembled us in the prison courtyards. All of the men and women from Prison 92 were gathered together. The two patients who were too sick to be moved, whom I mentioned earlier, were left in the care of the Red Cross, while the Prince of Bourbon-Parme and I were each locked in our own cells; we were later reunited in mine, only to be removed at the very last moment.
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Colossians 3:1
Le chant des Adieux, composed by Jacques Sevin in 1922 and sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. Msgr. Piguet is probably referring to the final verse, which ends with: “For the Lord who sees us all together, will know how to reunite us.”