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

CHAPTER 8. A DELIVERY

1 “Paris had been” Jean-Paul Sartre, “Paris Under the Occupation,” originally published in La France libre (1945), and reprinted in The Aftermath of War (Situations III), translated by Chris Turner (New York: Seagull Books, 2008), 22. Turner has a slightly different translation.

2 Potatoes were peeled Lucie Aubrac, Outwitting the Gestapo, translated by Konrad Bieber, with the assistance of Betsy Wing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 19.

3 Wartime diets in France Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 233. A possible exception, of course, was Italy. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 360. Paxton also thinks that France was worse off than “Eastern Europe, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia.”

4 the “ballet of buds” Georges Massu, L’enquête Petiot: La plus grande affaire criminelle du siècle (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1959), 130.

5 “Did she confess?” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 103.

6 “Gentlemen” … “Simple mania” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 131, 103–106.

7 “Assassins!” Le Petit Parisien, March 16, 1944.

8 Georgette Petiot was driven Report March 20, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° II.

9 Georgette’s father Report, February 6, 1945, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

10 “humming, whistling, and” Jean-François Dominique, L’affaire Petiot: médecin, marron, gestapiste, guillotiné pour au moins vingt-sept assassinats (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1980), 45.

11 “love the people” Dominique, L’affaire Petiot, 58.

12 “Drain Petiot” John V. Grombach, The Great Liquidator (New York: Zebra Books, 1980), 78.

13 “It’s a vile political” Claude Barret, L’affaire Petiot (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), 44.

14 twenty-one residents Report, March 18, 1944; APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° II.

15 According to Alicot Report, March 18, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° II. The stays, from September 11, 1940, to February 22, 1944, are listed, with room numbers, in a Brigade Criminelle report two days later, also in carton n° II. See also René Kraemer’s interview with Madame Alicot in Le Matin, March 28, 1944.