On November 11th 1942 the Free zone fell under the control of the Axis forces. Lyons and its region were occupied by the Germans. For numerous Jewish refugees hailing from the territories of the Reich and who had managed to escape the August roundups, it was time to flee once again. Dr Bernard Halpern was investigated by the Gestapo from the month of November 1942 and fled initially to Aiguebelette in the pre-Savoy Alps and then managed to cross over to Switzerland. Many were unable to flee the terrible oppression which struck the town.
The Gestapo in Lyons
In September 1942 a special Commando of the Sipo SD was established in the free zone in Lyons. The S.S. set up headquarters in the Charbonnieres Casino and rapidly began to track down resistance radio operators and to conduct a census of the Jews in the region. It was during this period that the Wehrmacht invasion of the southern zone was prepared. The Gestapo then arrived in Lyons, setting up headquarters at the Terminus hotel behind Perrache station. The Gestapo was divided into several sections and also set up headquarters at Place Bellecour and at the Military Health School on Berthelot avenue. The Lyons regional command extended over the departments of the Rhone, Savoie, Haute-Savoie, Loire, Drome, Isere and part of the Ain. Out of the six sections in Lyon, one presented a particular danger to French and foreign Jews. Section IV was directed by Klaus Barbie and in charge of the repression of “enemies of the State”.
Section IV was in charge of tracking down Jews and members of the resistance, torturing and deporting. It was also in charge of counter-espionage, information services and the manipulation of agents. Although Dr Knab was the hierarchical chief of the KDS in Lyons, Barbie’s Gestapo enjoyed a large degree of autonomy, particularly with respect to the hunting down of members of the resistance and “Jewish matters” in general. Barbie was given some missions by Knab but more often such missions came directly from General Oberg in Paris, to whom he was personally responsible for his operations. The orders Barbie received were unequivocal. On the one hand he was to protect the Wehrmacht against the actions of the Resistance, and on the other he was to participate in the implementation of the “Final Solution”, under the authority of Adolf Eichmann.
The Milice: auxiliary of the Gestapo.
In January 1943 Marshal Petain created the French Milice, which aimed to actively support the policy of collaboration. He nominated Darnand to its head, a man who was profoundly right wing who had immediately pledged his unconditional support and cooperation to the Marshal after the armistice. In January 1944 Peain authorized the creation of the Milice martial courts, which were from then on permitted to judge and act according to its own will. The Lyons Milice was directed by Paul Touvier and consisted of around 700 men who fitted the criteria set by Vichy, namely “morally prepared and physically able volunteers, ready not only to support the new State in their actions but also to cooperate in the maintenance of order.”
Sipo-S.D: abbreviation for the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst, German State and National Socialist police Gestapo: abbreviation for Geheime Staatspolitzei, State secret police S.S.: Schutzstaffel, protection squad, paramilitary organisation integrated into the Nazi regime S.D.: S.S information services.
Oberg, Karl: S.S. general in Paris Knab, Dr: Regional commander of the S.S. in Lyon Eichmann, Adolf : S.S. commander in Berlin, in charge of the implementation of the Final Solution
Paul Touvier : Head of the Milice in Lyons
Paul Touvier, head of the Milice in Lyons, organised a roundup of Jews to avenge the death of a collaborator. At the time of the trial of Paul Touvier in March 1994, journalist Annette Lévy-Willard retraced the case of the execution of 7 Jews in Rillieux-la-Pape in June 1944 in the newspaper Libération:
The Allies had landed on the Normandy Coast three weeks previously; on this 28th June 1944 the tide turned for Vichy. Some collaborators started to make contact with the Resistance. There were still the indomitable, groups of militias and above all the Vichy propaganda man whose voice thundered each morning on the radio against the English, the Freemasons, the Jews: Philippe Henrio, Vichy State secretary for Information. On this morning of June 28th, at dawn, a group of “militias” arrived at the home of Philippe Henriot, who opened the door to them. They killed him on the spot and then, it is said, gave the military salute before his body. This commando of resistance members had just achieved an incredible feat, one of those that make history. Vichy no longer had a spokesman. The news was officially announced by Laval at 12h40 on the radio. Enraged, the militias went on the hunt for hostages to execute in revenge. In Macon, they killed seven people in their homes. Testimony: In his cell at impasse Catelin, premises of the Milice in Lyons, Maurice Abelard, 24 years old, arrested several days previously for membership of a London radio network, and his prison companions heard cries from outside, learning “before mealtime” that Philippe Henriot had been killed, and imagining the consequences for them when the Militias came yelling “Bastards, you’re all going to get it!” On the morning of June 28th, the cell still contained only half a dozen prisoners. Firstly there was Siegfried Prock, 42, an Austrian refugee who had been rounded up by two militias at the Helder hotel where he was living under a false identity: the Milice had found his name on the file of Jews that the French administration was obliged to provide to armed bands of militias. There were also two members of the resistance, one nicknamed Mimile who had been arrested several days previously. “He had been severely beaten but hadn’t talked”, recalls Maurice Abelard, questioned by Judge Getti in 1990. In the same six square meter cell was Louis Goudard, 24, resistance member, arrested on June 21st. There was also an unknown man, a young Jew “with a Parisian accent”, recalls Abelard and Goudard, “who sang opera in the cell”. At the time that Henriot’s death was announced on the radio, Paul Touvier arrived at Lyons from Vichy. “A man I knew gestured to me to stop: he leaned over and said to me: “They’ve killed Philippe Henriot. De Bourmont is looking for you everywhere”, Touvier explains. He went to the Progres, the regional headquarters of the Milice, where his boss, De Bourmont, is said to have announced that SS Knab had decided to have “a hundred Jews” executed. According to Touvier, De Bourmont negotiated for it to remain an “exclusively French matter” and obtained for the number of victims to be “limited to thirty”. In his multiple declarations on this subject, Touvier did not specify what he did over the course of this afternoon. He was satisfied with repeating: “my role consisted in selecting seven prisoners”. On this early afternoon Touvier had sufficient resistance members imprisoned in his Milice prison to execute them in reprisal. Yet, visibly, it was Jews that he wanted to kill, since he sent his militias on the hunt for Jews in Lyons. The cell filled with hostages all day long. “On the day of the 28th of June the door opened and closed constantly” recalls Abelard. It was then that Glaeser arrived. This person made a great impression on me, he was very distinguished. I said to him that I was a member of the resistance and I asked him why he had been arrested. He replied to me: “I am a Jew.” I let out an exclamation that led all to understand that I thought he was lost. He then added: “Yes, I know but we’re going to remain dignified and not lose our self-control”. Leon Glaeser was rounded up by the militias at the station. A lawyer and legal counselor, he was know in Lyons for directing the Jewish defense committee, an organization for support and mutual aid for victims of Nazism, and of non-armed resistance. These activities meant he traveled frequently, which was the reason for his presence at the station on this day of June 28th 1944. A fortnight later, militias would go to the house of his wife and embezzle the money of the Jewish defense committee. Touvier’s militias continued their hunt until sunset, rounding up Jews who had already been located in Lyons. Some of them, such as Emile Zeizig, had not hidden themselves, feeling above all French. Born in 1887 in Saint-Foy-lès-Lyons, and non-practicing, Emile Zeizig had nevertheless, and against the advice of his friends, registered himself as a Jew.
Nighttime roundups in Lyons At dinnertime on this 28th June, four militias turned up at the Nouveautés store at place Xavier Ricard in Sainte Foy-les Lyon. They began by stealing from the till. Then they moved to the first floor, beat up Emile Zeizig in front of his wife, searched the apartment, stole money, jewels, papers, and took Zeizig away. In the course of the 1945 enquiry, Lucienne Zeizig formally identified the man who had taken her husband: Jean Reynaudon, interim chief of the 2nd service, associate to Touvier. Reynaudon returned on June 29th with other militias to loot all the merchandise of the torture victim. Still at dinnertime, another group of militias went to a restaurant in Lyon, the Pied de cochon. Edouard Lew, 34 years old, representative of a fashion house, was dining with his friend Claude Ben Zimra, 24 years old, decorator and also a refugee in Lyons. Each evening they would meet in this restaurant. On entering, Lew noticed two men in a front-wheel drive. He had hardly sat down when the two men burst into the restaurant with pistols in their hands, yelling “identity check!” Lew recognised in astonishment one of the men: it was one of his clients, Lucien Brogi. The militias took Lew, Ben Zimra and a third man and pushed them into the back of the Citroën. “The person who was arrested with us was completely terrified and said to me: “I don’t know who you are but I am a Polish Jew, I have a wife and children and I know that after the assassination of Philippe Henriot, the Milice is looking for Jews as hostages to shoot””, recalls Edouard Lew who answered him: “Calm down, nothing will happen to us, they don’t shoot people just like that…” Lew had genuine papers but without the stamp “Jew” and he asserted to the militias that he was not a Jew. His friend did not yet have false papers. “Brogi turned towards Claude and said to him “You are a Jew”. Claude shrugged his shoulders without saying a word. Brogi retorted: “You know, we have a very simple way to find out whether you are telling the truth”. Claude didn’t answer.” Lew was finally released. The militias kept Ben Zimra and the third Jew. During this time the Milice rounded up one more Jew: Maurice Schuisselman, 64 years old, a morocco leather manufacturer, born in Varsaw. He was arrested by the milician Edouard Arnaud, retired police commissioner, head of family allowances, in a delicatessen with two other “inspectors”. Arnaud stole the money that Schlusselman had on him, and then handed him over to “chief André”. A seventh Jew, Louis Krzyzkowski, 46, born in Poznan (Poland), toymaker in Paris, also arrived in the cell. It was ten o’clock in the evening, and there were now eleven prisoners in the tiny Milice cell. Maurice Abelard was collected and locked into the large communal room. At daybreak, Henri Gonet, who conducted interrogations for Touvier, opened the door of the cell with a list in his hand, testifies Louis Goudard: “Gonet first called three non-Jewish youths whom he sent to the large room where Abelard was; Then Gonet called seven Jews in a row by name. Finally, my name was called. I asked with irony if I could take my belongings. Gonet answered that it wasn’t worth the trouble. The eight men – Prock, Glaeser, Ben Zimra, Zeizig, Schiusselman, Krzyzkowski, the unknown man and Goudard – were lined against the wall in the corridor. Touvier walked along the line. “He called Gonet and they consulted one another in whispers.” Louis Goudard, the only non-Jew of the group, was put back in the cell. Refuting Touvier’s allegations, Goudard declared: “None of these seven men were members of the resistance, I can assert as much because I was in charge of the intelligence for the FTP at regional level. It was an act of racism.” Shooting at dawn Edmond Fayolle, who denied his involvement in the crime along with the other militias, nonetheless admits to have witnessed, together with Arnaud, the departure of the seven victims with the militias: “It was three o’clock in the morning when I saw the guards armed with submachine guns accompanying the prisoners (…) Previously I had seen and heard the boss Touvier giving orders. He had asked if the boxes were ready… I suppose that Touvier took part in the execution, having ordered the preparations.” The van left, preceded by Touvier’s front-wheel drive. It was 3h30 in the morning. Another Jew, Max Rozencwaig was brought by the Milice. Touvier then said: “He’s lucky, if he’d arrived a quarter of an hour earlier he would be leaving with the others to be shot.”
After the execution at dawn by the men of the Milice, German soldiers arrived in the area a little later in the day. At 5 o’clock in the morning, a neighbor to the cemetery at Rillieux-la-Pape heard shooting. Superintendent Faury immediately was immediately called to the locality, and picked up a badge of the Milice. He wrote that morning, June 29th 1944 in his report: “On the side of the dirt road that runs the length of the west wall of Rillieux cemetery seven corpses of men of Jewish profile are laying on their backs with their legs in the direction of the wall. All have multiple bullet wounds, both on their heads and chest. Close to each one is a white cardboard rectangle on which is written in large letters a name, followed by an initial.”
All except one, the unknown man who sang Tosca before being assassinated.
