Prison and Deportation, #03
Msgr. Gabriel Piguet's Memoir
This is the third instalment 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 5
The Journey from Clermont to Rothau
It was about 4 p.m. when a Gestapo van came to collect me and the Prince of Bourbon. A policeman sat between us, and two others rode in front next to the driver. We had barely advanced a few metres when I saw a nun who worked at the cathedral office. She was doubtless taking a parcel to the prison. From the car I made a gesture of benediction, quite natural for a bishop, understandable in such a case and a very appropriate way to make the imminence of my departure clear. But as I lowered my hand the policeman struck it angrily and, teeth clenched, called me a Kirchenfürst — a “Prince of the Church.” Was this irony? Rage? Perhaps both. At least the nun saw the gesture and realised that I was being taken away. The alarm was sounded.
There was a large, draconian security force at the Clermont railway station. There were plenty of guns and they were certainly ready to be fired, as we had learned in the past all too often. They were careful to keep the population at a distance. No one was allowed to approach. It was easy to see that all of the station staff were very sympathetic to our plight, but they were obliged to remain silent.
The railway tracks had been blown up a few hundred metres away from the station. When I returned, I learned that the S.N.C.F. employees had caused the explosion themselves and forced the train to come to a halt. My brother, who had never been allowed to visit me in prison, pressed his case with the chief of police and obtained permission to come to the station and embrace me.
I was in a third class compartment with the Prince. Three SS soldiers surrounded us, armed to the teeth. They wasted no time informing us that they had orders to shoot if we made the slightest movement. This had no effect on us; it was not as if we expected sensitivity and thoughtfulness.
The neighbouring compartments of the carriage were occupied by French men and women who were leaving with the Germans. We felt an all-too-understandable sense of melancholy. “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Christ's words applied here perfectly. Along the way I realised that many of the unfortunate people who left France at the moment of its happy liberation had been deceived by propaganda.
From my compartment I could see several of my priests and members of the faithful from Clermont-Ferrand hiding behind barricades. They had come to greet me. They were carefully and constantly kept away. It was almost 6 p.m. by the time the train pulled out. Would I ever see my beloved Auvergne again, or the harmonious line of domes that crowns Clermont? Would I ever set eyes on that familiar horizon with the spires of the cathedral — my episcopal city and my beloved diocese, from which the German police had torn me so brutally? At the moment, this secret was known only to divine Providence. But it was my privilege to have the full confidence of God's children!
Fifty of my fellow inmates were in freight cars. The different way we were being treated led me to believe that I was being taken away as a prisoner, but nevertheless as a bishop. I was all the more disillusioned afterwards. In the eyes of the French and my diocese my departure, cruel as it was, seemed less odious in this special compartment. But at the same time, it made it easier for the Germans to keep a close eye on me and my illustrious companion; escape was basically impossible.
There are 15 kilometres between Clermont and Riom. It took us about an hour to cover the distance. The train sat on a siding for the whole night and until well into the next afternoon. This was the first stop on a journey that would see many more delays, and which would be a very close run thing. The tracks were always being blown up en route to our destination. Our train was only able to run more or less normally from Dole. It took us nine days in total! There were many serious and even tragic incidents along the way, such as the one at Paray-le-Monial, where a group of partisans attempted an attack. They were, however, poorly organized and outnumbered. Many were killed, and those taken prisoner were shot on the spot. There is no way for me to give an accurate account of this one-sided battle, since I was kept in my seat under close surveillance. Bullets cracked and holes appeared in the houses overlooking the station. From my compartment, I gave conditional absolution when my companion told me that he could see a condemned man tied to a post. After reciting the brief liturgical formula that may have joined the unfortunate man's inward religious act, I heard the shots of his execution.
Paray-le-Monial! A city and shrine that I have known particularly well since my childhood. It was there that I came to pray before I followed my vocation and entered the seminary. I had returned a few years later, before beginning my priestly ministry, and I visited again ten years ago, just before I began my episcopate, on the very day I arrived in Clermont.
On that grim morning, the fact that we were passing through Paray while being deported to Germany seemed to me a sign that, en route to a new, unknown, and perhaps the final stage of my life, I was under the care of the Sacred Heart. I had invoked the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Our Lady from the very first moment of my captivity. Right until to the end, I knew Whom I could trust, and Who alone could offer me protection.
After spending a morning and an afternoon waiting in Paray, we set off again in a convoy that consisted of five trains, one of which was assigned to the German Red Cross and the other to the German Air Force. The convoy did not get very far, since the tracks were mangled everywhere. We spent the night in Saône-et-Loire, between Palinges and Génelard.
We traversed an entire department that I knew inside out. It was my home diocese and I had crisscrossed it regularly during my pastoral ministry, first as director of works and then as vicar general.
They informed us that the rails had been wrecked not only in front of the first train, but between each of the five trains in our convoy from Clermont-Ferrand. How could we have known? In fact we were not making any headway and the Germans were worried and furious. One officer spoke of having the prisoners shot if the maquis attacked. The train was under heavy guard at every stop; shots rang out from the train constantly. The workmen on the platform ahead of our train were in charge of making quick repairs, and it took them all of the following day to finish the job. That night, we finally arrived at Montchanin station. Our rate of progress did not improve: We spent the next day in the outskirts of Santenay and the following night, Thursday to Friday, near Chagny. We arrived in Beaune on the afternoon of Friday 25 August, but we did not reach Dijon until late in the morning of the following day. It had taken us a week to cover the three hundred kilometres between Clermont-Ferrand and Dijon. This slow pace continued Saturday evening, when we came to a stop at Genlis, between Dijon and Auxonne. An ammunition train had just jumped out in front of us, and was being attacked British aircraft. They could tell that our train was transporting civilian prisoners, and we witnessed the magnificent skill of the British airmen who managed to destroy the engine of our train without damaging any of the carriages. We were forced to remain in our compartments, and we looked on as the Germans took cover behind hedges or trees. Our guards pointed their rifles at us, ready to shoot if we should try to move.
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We remained at a standstill for more than 24 hours, and it was not until Sunday evening that we left Genlis and headed to Auxonne, where we arrived during the night.
We had been harassed by the maquis up until that point but on the following Monday, the ninth day of our journey, the convoy picked up speed. We travelled through Dole, Belfort, and Strasbourg until we arrived at Rothau, our final stop, on Wednesday morning.
At the start of our journey we were given just one loaf of bread per person, with a single ration of butter... This had to last us ten days and nights. The Red Cross and people acting on their own initiative in Riom, Montchanin, Sampigny, Beaune, Dijon, Genlis, Auxonne, and Besançon provided us with food. While we were stopped we learned about which parts of France had been liberated, and that Paris was now free. From the train we could see that the roads of France were full of columns of German vehicles heading back to the border.
In the sadness of my departure, the sight of the long-awaited German retreat and the joy of knowing that the Allies and the French Resistance had been victorious were a source of great comfort and hope.
At every stop on the train, a uniformed policeman kept close guard around my carriage and gave strict orders to the SS men in my compartment. This same man mercilessly prevented civilians from approaching our train and seemed particularly suspicious of the priests who attempted to see me at the various stations.
The doyen of Marthuret managed to approach the train and speak to me at Riom, while I spoke to the curé of Chagny at Sampigny and the vicar-general at Dijon.
At Riom, Montchanin, and Genlis, women and girls from the Red Cross were able to give us something to eat. In Besançon, a vicar-general was prevented from seeing me himself, but he cleverly arranged to get a parcel into my hands. In Beaune, some of my relatives who were members of the Red Cross managed to come and talk to me for a few moments.
The next day, a German non-commissioned officer told me that they had increased the number of guards on duty that night because they were afraid that the bishop's family and the local population might attempt a raid!
A French man who worked for the Gestapo encouraged me and the Prince of Bourbon to consider making an escape, but he looked like a provocateur. Would this not be a very simple way for the Germans to get rid of us? If we had been caught organizing and attempting an escape, it would have legitimized any punishment. We did not hesitate to decline this young man's clumsy and suspicious offer. He was boastful and inexperienced, and he soon contradicted himself when I started to ask questions.
Our journey was marked by another incident: Between Chagny and Beaune, given the difficulties we continued to encounter en route and the increasing likelihood of an air attack as we approached the border, I believed the dangers we faced were mounting and I baptized a baby who was being taken away with his French parents.
The peril was so real and had such an salutary effect that several of the SS men who took turns standing guard over my compartment asked me to give them absolution, fearing that something would happen that would put their lives at risk.
It was an opportunity for me to better understand the perverse duplicity of the Nazis. These SS volunteers were not all Germans; some of them were foreigners, often from the Banat region, and they had volunteered for the SS because they were given a Nazi kind of choice: sign up for the SS, or be shot immediately. There is a strange undercurrent beneath the outward appearances of a totalitarian regime. For me, the confidences of these men who had been forced to join the SS were only the initial examples of an odious hypocrisy within the Third Reich.
Some men managed to escape from a boxcar while our convoy was en route. I received news of them several months later: some had been killed or injured when they fell from the moving train, and others were recaptured by the Germans. Apparently not many of them escaped successfully.