Home > Work > Resistance: A French Woman's Journal of the War
1 " ... we know that the Americans are not far off, and everyone, Germans included, is longing for them to arrive. A Russian woman, the prison's unchallenged fount of all wisdom and general repository of all the latest 'news', has announced that they will be here for Easter. Easter falls on 1 April. Although it smacks a little of an April Fool's joke, her prophecy gains credence. The Americans will be here for Easter! "
― Agnès Humbert , Resistance: A French Woman's Journal of the War
2 " Then, between two sheets of paper, they discovered a third, left there by accident. Clearly written at the top were the words, 'Copy and circulate'. It was the front page of Résistance, mercifully unfinished. Ordered to explain it, I admitted with a suitable degree of reluctance that it was a copy of a tract exhorting the French people to hoard all their nickel coins. I said I had abandoned the project as I was such a bad typist, but that I had made five copies that I had left on seats in the Métro. All in all, it was a plausible story that would only cost me two or three months in prison. I chuckled inwardly as I thought about the Résistance file, with its four hundred names and addresses, lying quietly hidden — together with copies of all the tracts we had published since September 1940 — under the stair carpet between floors. After asking my permission with great ceremony, my gentleman visitors used my telephone to report back to their chief on the success of their mission. Then they hung up, and invited me to leave with them. It was at this point that I remembered the Roosevelt speech that Léo had given me two days before, which was still in my handbag! I asked permission to go to the toilet, which they granted, though not without first snatching my bag from me and ordering me not to shut the door. "
3 " ... he informed me coldly that I was in the hands of the Gestapo, and that I was about to learn that the German police are quite a different matter from their French counterparts. Following this amiable introduction, two or three officers entered the room. I was made to stand in the middle of the space as the Germans circled round me, looking me up and down with jerky, staccato movements, screaming like lunatics all the while, to the accompaniment of some sort of music emitted at top volume from an enormous radio. The din was indescribable....* I asked a typist, who also seemed to be an interpreter, if she would be kind enough to translate what the gentleman were shouting at me, as if they were questions I should be happy to answer them.*Though these techniques seem farcical today, this was how the SS embarked on their 'work' in Paris. When they realized that these ridiculous performances were eliciting no information they improved their methods, so gradually attaining the finesse of semi-drowning in bathtubs filled with ice water, electric shocks and the rest. "
4 " Wanfried, 29 March 1945We have the compelling feeling that we are entering our final hours of captivity. They must have doubled our dose of bromide, as despite all our excitement we keep dozing off, heads on the table. Nobody tells us anything; they just warn us to keep quiet. There's no question of work any more, and we please ourselves how we spend our time. From the dormitory window we can see endless columns of refugees, both civilians and military ... "
5 " Wanfried, 31 March 1945There certainly don't seem to be any food shortages in town. All day long, we see women parading beneath our windows bearing aloft enormous tarts to cook in the baker's oven. Easter cakes, no doubt. We wonder whether we might be given a little extra to eat tomorrow, as our hunger is intolerable. "
