Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris

CHAPTER 1. GERMAN NIGHT

1 The duke of Windsor David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich: A History of the German Occupation, 1940–1944 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), 8.

2 “the laboratory of the” Frederic Spotts, The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 11, 7–8.

3 no farther than Portbou Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, trans. David Koblick (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1991), 113–115.

4 On the afternoon of Edmond Dubois, Paris sans lumière (Lausanne: Payot, 1946), 57. The air raid is used with effect by Irène Némirovsky in the opening of her novel Suite Française, trans. Sandra Smith (New York: Vintage, 2006), 3–5.

5 “like a badly-cut” Alexander Werth, The Last Days of Paris: A Journalist’s Diary (London: H. Hamilton, 1940), 124.

6 from the north, the east, and Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, trans. Jonathan Griffin and Richard Howard (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1998), 59.

7 More often, residents Roger Langeron, préfect de police, watched from his window, June 11–13, 1940, Paris juin 40 (Paris: Flammarion, 1946), 16, 28–29.

8 Rumors thrived See, for example, the telephone conversations intercepted by commission de contrôle de Dijon, Antoine Lefébure, Les Conversations Secrètes des francais sous l’Occupation (Paris: Plon, 1993), 58–62.

9 estimated six to ten million Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 120.

10 Paris saw its population Jean-Pierre Azéma, De Munich à la Libération 1938–1944 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1979), 62.

11 “a boot had scattered” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras (New York: 1942; edition 1968), 68.

12 “There never has been” Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964), 42.

13 At least sixteen This figure only includes known cases in Paris, and not those outside, including Albert Einstein’s nephew Carl in the Pyrénées. Ian Ousby, Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940–1944 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 170–171.

14 stuck his arm Nossiter, Algeria Hotel: France, Memory, and the Second World War (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 3. There is some question on his method and the reasons for his suicide. See, for instance, Thomas Kernan, France on Berlin Time (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1941) and Herbert R. Lottman, The Fall of Paris: June 1940 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 354–355.

15 “the rights of the occupying power” Article III of the Armistice Convention. For more on the exploitation, Jacques Delarue, Trafics et crimes sous l’occupation (Paris: Fayard, 1968).

16 “working together” Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 19.

17 There were lavish Otto Abetz, of course, downplays this part of his work in his postwar memoir, Histoire d’une politique franco-allemand 1930–1950: mémoires d’un ambassadeur (Paris: Librairie Stock, 1953).

18 “dancing with false” Time, March 27, 1944.

19 As of October 3, 1940 Serge Klarsfeld, Le calendrier de la persécution des juifs de France 1940–1944 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), I, 29–33.

20 “Aryanized” For more on Aryanization, see Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonnances. Aryanisation et restitution des banques en France, 1940–1953 (Fayard: Paris, 2003).

21 “eliminate all” Law of July 22, 1941, translation by Paxton, Vichy France, 179.

22 “special train 767” Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz: le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France—1942 (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 42–43.

23 75,721 Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers 1981), note to p. 343. This figure includes 815 Jews arrested in Nord and Pas-de-Calais, noted by Serge Klarsfeld in Le mémorial de la déportation des juifs de France (Paris: Klarsfeld, 1978).

24 four darkest years Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 353.

25 A French law Jean-François Dominique, L’affaire Petiot: médecin, marron, gestapiste, guillotiné pour au moins vingt-sept assassinats (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1980), 99.

26 Massu could have He had, of course, worked around the legal hour before. See, for instance, Georges Massu, Aveux Quai des Orfèvres. Souvenirs du Commissaire Massu (Paris: La tour pointue, undated/1951), 230.

27 a total of forty thousand agents This figure is taken from the size of the Gestapo in 1944, recorded in, for instance, Edward Crankshaw, Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny (New York: Da Capo, 1994), 95.

28 The garage at No. 22 Organization Todt requisitioned the garage on September 8, 1940.

29 “calm and order” … “attacks of the communists” C. Angeli and P. Gillet, La police dans la politique (1944–1954) (Paris: Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1967), 17.

30 The subordination was to be This was the view of Philip John Stead in The Police of Paris (London: Staples Press Limited, 1957), 162, and others at the time, such as Maurice Toesca, who emphasized the risks of militia taking over in Cinq ans de patience 1939–1944 (Paris: É. Paul, 1975), 168.

31 Commissaire Massu arrived Georges Massu, L’enquête Petiot: La plus grande affaire criminelle du siècle (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1959), 30.

32 At ten o’clock Jacques Delarue and Anne Manson, “L’affaire Landru de la Libération: Docteur Petiot 21, Rue Lesueur,” in Gilbert Guilleminault et al. (eds.), Les lendemains qui ne chantaient pas (Paris: Denoël, 1962), 22.

33 “Petiot has” Alomée Planel, Docteur Satan ou L’affaire Petiot (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1978), 38.

34 “Radio Paris lies” Fernande Wagman, The Demarcation Line: A Memoir (Xlibris, 2004), 112.

35 Patrolmen Fillion and Teyssier still Teyssier Audition, March 16, 1944, and Fillion Audition of same date, APP, Série J, Affaire Petiot, carton n° III.

36 “it smells like death” … “If I told you” Albert Massui, Le cas du Dr Petiot (Brussels: E.D.C., 1944), 10–12.