Spring 2004 Feature

A Friend in Paris:
    “Bonjour, mes chers amis américains!
            La France est avec vous!”

by Mary Gegerias, Professor of French

Jean-Paul Schlienger

In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, and the liberation of France from Nazi occupation, and in light of our government’s stormy relations with France over the issues of terrorism and the war with Iraq, the Bulletin is pleased to feature the following article.

Late on September 11, 2001, like many American francophiles in the United States, I received numerous urgent calls from friends in France, expressing their horror and dismay as flashes of the ugly terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center multiplied on their TV screens. All the supportive messages were truly heartfelt and appreciated, but one such call from a very special Paris friend, a French Resistance fighter and Buchenwald survivor during World War II, moved me to tears.

Fifty-seven years after D-Day, Jean-Paul's undying gratitude for the American GIs who risked their lives to free him and his fellow prisoners resounded in his simple words, “Bonjour, mes chers amis américains. La France est avec vous.”

Jean-Paul (early fifties) with younger brother, François, to his right, and his younger sister, Marie-Claire, and brother Alain to his left. Back row: cousins (all nephews and nieces of the two Alains in the text). Both François and Alain because doctors.

And although there has been disagreement since then with some of what our country has done in the war with terrorism and particularly with the invasion, war, and occupation of Iraq, Jean Paul’s message has basically been the same.

Thoughtful and articulate, Jean-Paul has always been sensitively mute about his horrendous war experiences. On rare occasions, however, when persistent world turmoil stirs deeply embedded memories, he does give me insights into fragments of his past—to reconstruct "his story."

And one such memory recalls the words of the victorious General Patton as he was led through the cells of Buchenwald by a chance, frail survivor whose name happened to be Jean-Paul:

“Had my mother ever told me that these atrocities existed, I never would have believed her! Never . . . Never. . . Never . . .”

Jean-Paul's memory of the words continues to be very vivid. Patton repeated the negative again and again, softly but firmly, as he looked down on his fragile, decrepit-looking companion, a tired old man, broken in body and spirit—in reality, a young man hardly out of his teens. Still speaking quietly, his quivering lips revealing unfamiliar Patton gentleness, he stood tall and strong, a four-star general whose victory-bound American GIs had come upon the battered, collapsed body of this young French Resistance fighter buried in the winter snow amongst abandoned frozen cadavers.

Miraculously, this young fighter had not died. Miraculously, he had not been shot. Rather, his mind and body had given way, only flash seconds before his fellow prisoners, standing nude in the frigid winter snow surrounding the walls of Buchenwald, had been executed. Kicked aside by the relentless enemy assuming that he was dead, he lay motionless—one day, two days, one hardly knew—with only an occasional movement of his limbs that ultimately caught the horrified glances of the vigilant, rejoicing, victorious American soldiers moving into Buchenwald.

And several months later, this recovering former prisoner was transported back to Buchenwald from a military rehabilitation center in the Alps to guide General Patton on a tour within Buchenwald's "walls of hell." Still a fighter, but not yet cured, he was tormented by unshakable guilt of his survival because he was weak while his fellow prisoners, almost all of them Jewish, had died because they were strong.

"Had my mother ever told me that these atrocities existed, I never would have believed her! Never . . . Never . . . Never . . ."

When the Germans occupied France in 1940, Jean-Paul was 15 years old. With deep roots in Britanny and Alsace, his family had for several generations lived in Paris's Latin Quarter, around the corner from the oldest church in Paris, L'Eglise Saint Germain-des-Près, not far from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand where the young teenager and his siblings studied Greek, Latin, and the French classics. He loved these intellectual challenges. But in the depths of his heart, he dreamed of becoming a doctor like two favorite uncles, both of whom shared the name Alain—his mother's younger brother, Alain J., and his aunt's husband, Alain B.

Jean-Paul's father, crippled during World War I, had been a great source of inspiration for his son, but unlike Uncles Alain, he was not a doctor. On the other hand, Doctors Alain J. and Alain B. were his idols, his role models at home and in class, and as hostilities increased during the war, they became his heroes, conspiring against the enemy within the underground labyrinth of the French Resistance. How could he not demonstrate his patriotism and love of France in the same way?

Like his uncles, Jean-Paul became involved, engagé, committed, but unlike his uncles, he was a school boy. His uncles escaped capture. The young messenger was caught and sent to Buchenwald, where he lived the experience of death until Patton's soldiers came upon his broken body.

"Had my mother ever told me that these atrocities existed, I never would have believed her! Never . . . Never . . . Never . . ."

In 1945, Jean-Paul was called upon to testify before the International Tribunal at the Nuremberg trials. The cigarette scars on his back, arms, and legs, reminders of prison torture, still visible, were somewhat healed; the deep inner scars, still hidden, were visibly painful. Yet when asked to identify any of the men lined up before the judges as perpetrators of some of the most heinous crimes in the history of man, Jean-Paul's refusal startled the assembled jurists and journalists from around the world.

Though recurring nightmares kept Buchenwald faces and atrocities very much alive, he had no guarantee that his memory was unimpaired by the ravages of time. He was determined never, ever, to send an innocent man to his death regardless of unrelenting pain, undeniable proof.

"Had my mother ever told me that these atrocities existed, I never would have believed her! Never . . . Never . . . Never . . ."

For many years, Jean-Paul's parents, younger brothers (both doctors), and sister—for many years, his sons (one of whom is a doctor), and daughter—for many years, Jean-Paul, himself (not a doctor but a wounded veteran), and his wife have welcomed American students, teachers, and friends into their home in Paris's Latin Quarter, still around the corner from Paris's oldest church, l'Eglise Saint Germain-des-Près.

Happy dinners for visiting Americans in Jean-Paul’s home are overwhelming expressions of gratitude for his debt to General George Patton and the American GIs. The word revenge is never pronounced. And on September 11, 2001, Jean-Paul made many urgent calls from Paris to the United States, from Paris to Boston. The message repeated over and over again was as follows:

"Bonjour, mes chers amis américains. La France est avec vous!"

Omaha Beach, Normandy, France.