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| (most of them were Protestant)
Pastor Boegner, the courageous President of the French Protestant Federation
in Paris, had created for them a special organization by the name of "Aumônerie
des Estrangers" or "Foreigner's Group." He had placed this entity
under the authority of Pastor Pierre Toureille, a rotund, prodigiously
gifted polyglot from Lunel near Montpellier, who had organized his parishioners
into local groups, shepherded by a local pastor for emergencies of any
kind, whom he gathered and visited regularly. He always brought them
the latest news about deportation and how to avoid it. The Gestapo
at Nîmes had an eye on Toureille and interrogated the courageous
man frequently. But since Toureille insisted that he was in no way
interested in the grandparents of his flock and ministered only to authentic
Christians, they let him go each time. The truth was, however, that
many non-baptized Jews were welcomed among his "parishioners," no-questions-asked.
Since Toureille was the proper brother-in-law of Dean Leenhardt, the master forger of our group, a good number of our cards went to Lunel and from there to the constituents of the "Aumônerie." Having heard, through the Dean, about the bilingual Pierre Séguy, Toureille approached me in the early months of 1943 with the request that I help with occasional visits to his people, whose language was German rather than French. My contribution was certainly not a major one, as I did not want to travel extensively with my forged documents, good but still not flawless. I did make a small number of visits, though, especially during the vacation periods, to the groups in my home base of Grenoble and nearby Lyon. It was in Grenoble that I met a couple who were to become a cause célèbre in France after the war: Doctor and Mrs. Finally. They lived, with their two small boys, in La Tronche, a suburb above the city. They came often to our meetings and I visited them in their home. Mrs. Finally was a strikingly beautiful woman and her husband was handsome as well. The Doctor, abrasive in some ways, spoke to me once about his relatives who had been able to emigrate to Palestine, and with whom he wanted nothing to do. Though well off, these relatives had evidently refused any help to him and his wife, despite repeated appeals. Neither of the Finallys was baptized, but they considered themselves part of our group. One day, French policemen took them away, leaving the children in the apartment. The two boys were taken in by neighbors, who protected them further by having them baptized under the neighbors' family name. After the war their Israeli relatives found out about them and demanded their return to their family. The battle went to the courts and into the newspapers. Much like the Dreyfuss affair, the case of the Finallys split France right down the middle, as the two boys were delivered, against their apparent wishes, to their Israeli relatives. I was, by that time, already in the United States and heard of the case only through sketchy reports. I might have testified at the trial; I might have reported the deep aversion of the parents for the relatives who now wanted to "help" the family. There was no evidence presented at the trial that the parents had links to a Christian group. But my testimony would most probably not have helped, anyway. In French jurisprudence, family rights override any other consideration. One of the bonuses of working
with Pastor Toureille was the fact that a |
