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

CHAPTER 14. DESTINATION ARGENTINA

1 “verbal trance [that] gave free rein” Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso, translated by Jane Marie Todd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 200.

2 “humor and inexhaustible spirit of invention” Ibid.

3 As the play ended Maurice Toesca, Cinq ans de patience 1939–1944 (Paris: É. Paul, 1975) 220–221.

4 “A year before” Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, translated by Peter Green (London: Penguin Books, 1988), 569.

5 “We constituted” Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, 575.

6 “filled with the joy” Ibid.

7 Fourrier appeared nervous Georges Massu, L’enquête Petiot: La plus grande affaire criminelle du siècle (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1959), 160–161.

8 Fourrier told Raoul Fourrier, Audition, March 19, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.

9 “the doctor is a charming” … “nice commission” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 163.

10 “Jo la Ric” Raoul Fourrier, Nouvelle Audition, March 19, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III. “Iron Arm Jo” or “Iron Arm Géo” were often reported, for instance, in Le Matin, March 27, 1944.

11 “no choirboy” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 169.

12 Hesse Chamberlin, Audition, September 8, 1944, BDIC, Fonds Delarue, F° Delta RES 787 4.

13 “discretion, efficiency” Philippe Aziz, Tu Trahiras sans vergogne. Histoire de deux ‘collabos’ Bonny et Lafont (Paris: Fayard, 1970), 76.

14 “François the Corsican” A police report from Lyon described him as a “dangerous individual,” April 21, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I.

15 “dark-haired and elegant” Ibid.

16 “La Poute” Report, April 17, 1944; APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I.

17 “difficult, even impossible” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 168.

18 “gave him the chills” Paul Georges Jobert, Audition, March 21, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.

19 François the Corsican went first Many writers, including Massu later in his memoirs (page 168), mistakingly make Jo depart first.

20 at the end of October 1942 APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I.

21 an estimated 1.4 million Paul Georges Jobert, Audition, March 21, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.

22 “Really, did you not” … Massu, after the interview, felt Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 168–169.

23 network Vengeance Some of its exploits are in François Wetterwald, Vengeance: Histoire d’un corps franc (1946), Victor Dupont’s memoir Témoignages, and the archive on the organization Wetterwald donated to the BDIC. See also the website Turma Vengeance, at chantran.vengeance.free.fr.

24 “set Europe ablaze” M. R. D. Foot, SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France 1940–1944 (Frederick, Maryland: University Publications of America, Inc., 1984), 11.

25 Section DF was smuggling M.R.D. Foot, SOE in France, 94.

26 British Military Intelligence Section 9 (MI 9) M. R. D. Foot and J. M. Langley, MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1980).

27 not least in Raising morale was another important consequence, a “marvellous effect” in the words of Airey Neave in Saturday at M.I.9 (London: Hodder, 1969), 20.

28 at least 313 Jews Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 257.

29 Smugglers had long See Lisa Fittko, Escape Through the Pyrenees, translated by David Koblick (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991) as well as the works by Émilienne Eychenne, such as Montagnes de la peur et de l’espérance: Le franchissement de la frontière espagnole pendant la seconde guerre mondiale dans le département des Hautes Pyrénées (Paris: Édouard Private, 1980) and Les Pyrénées de la liberté (Paris: France—Empire, 1983).

30 “the people of the port” Daniel Judah Elazar and Peter Medding, Jewish Communities in Frontier Societies: Argentina, Australia, and South Africa (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 67. See also Robert Weisbrot, The Jews of Argentina: From the Inquisition to Péron (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979).

31 “The federal government” Haim Avni, Argentina and the Jews, trans. Gila Brand (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1991), 9.

32 “deny visas” … “uncorrupted” Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón’s Argentina (London: Granta Books, 2003), 28–37.

33 “Monsieur le commissaire” … “I am unable” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 170–174.

34 Pintard would eventually say Edmond Pintard, Audition, March 20, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III, and another one on March 22, 1944, also in carton n° III.