Finding the Holocaust at the Flea Market (Part One)

One of my favorite things to do in the whole world is to go to a Parisian flea market. The huge flea market north of Paris (which gave flea markets their name) is great, but the best markets are generally the more casual and less organized “brocantes” (temporary/itinerant flea market) or “vide-greniers” (literally, “attic emptiers,” like a community yard sale).

When a “brocante” to be held just a block away from our apartment, I thought “What great news!” Little did I realize that I would buy something there that would, in its small way, both make history and somewhat reduce Sara's resistance to my flea market purchases.

VIEUX PAPIERS
For as long as I have been going to Parisian flea markets, I've “specialized” in “vieux papiers,” literally “old papers.” These can consist of old letters, engravings, etchings, watercolors, maps, pages from books, bills, propaganda, magazine ads—you name it. I love them for several reasons—they're not fragile (like glass or ceramics), they're easy to get home and store (dozens of pages can fit in one flat portfolio), you can cover your walls with them (100 knickknacks are clutter, 100 framed “old papers” are décor), they're cheap (most vendors don't know what they have), and they're omnipresent (2,000 years of French history creates a lot of paper).

At the brocante near our apartment, I found a best-case scenario—a vendor with a large stand full of diverse merchandise, with a little pile of “old papers” off to one side. Among the papers, I found one bundle of papers in a plastic sleeve that piqued my interest. It included a decades-old book cover from my favorite French book store, an old shopping bag from my favorite department store, vintage versions of the market bags that fruit and coffee vendors might give Sara on one of her market trips today, and the like. You always get better prices at flea markets by bundling several items, so instead of picking out the couple of items I liked best, I just asked the price for the entire bundle. I think it was about ten euros, or $15.

I brought the bundle home, but put off looking more closely at the papers until the right before I went to bed at 3AM. Bleary-eyed, I pawed through the pile, knowing already that I got a good deal, when I came across a smaller bundle of papers I hadn't noticed earlier. As I looked more closely at these dozen pages, my heart came fully up in my throat.

The documents, all World War II-era, told the story of a French Jew who had survived the Holocaust, and his fight for justice towards those who had betrayed him.

DISCOVERY
Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. If it were not for the fact that the sad story was actual historical reality, I would say it had a compelling cast of characters. But since it is all true, I will just say that the individuals involved are all archetypes for the different ways those living in France during the war reacted to its circumstances.

First, there is the author of most of the documents, Doctor Nathan Salzberger. He lived and had his offices on Boulevard Sebastopol, not far from where the Centre Pompidou stands today. From the documents, it seems like he served in the French army as a doctor, but was captured at some point, and was held in a military prison in Germany before being released to live in southern France.

At some point, probably after his capture, Nathan's brother Melchior and his wife Helene come to live in Dr. Salzberger's apartment. They live there unperturbed for some time, but later take refuge in the apartment's seventh floor “chambre de bonne.” (Most French apartments come with a tiny “chambre de bonne,” or “maid's room,” on the seventh floor. These rooms date from pre-elevator days, and are still seldom accessible by elevator, so despite having good views they are usually cheap to rent. Today, most Parisians rent these rooms out, have their elder teen or adult children live in them, or just use them for storage.)

THE WICKED LAVERGNES
Having now met all the “good” individuals in this drama, it is time to meet the “bad” ones. Like most buildings, the Salzbergers' building had a live-in concierge named Amelie Suzanne Lavergne, who lived with her husband Georges. The Lavergne's adult daughter, Georgette, lived elsewhere in Paris but was a frequent visitor. Georgette was also sleeping with a Nazi solidier named Erich Kahnt.

In early 1943, the Lavergne's denounced Dr. Salzberger, in absentia, as a Jew. The Nazis came and emptied his apartment and office of all of the doctor's furniture and belongings, though the Lavergne's ended up with some of the best pieces. By denouncing Salzberger, they also were then able to rent out his old apartment, which they did. (I am assuming that Salzberger, as a prisoner of war, could not or did not have to pay rent, so by having him evicted, the Lavergnes were able to profit directly.)

Standing in the way of their moneymaking scheme, however, were Salzberger's brother and sister-in-law, who were still hiding out in the “maid's room” at the time. The documents detail how Madame Lavergne told the Nazis about the two Jews living upstairs, how she accompanied them up to the sixth floor, and how, when the Nazis almost stopped short and decided to leave, she urged them to keep going. They walked up the few extra steps, broke down the door, and arrested Melchior and Helene. Helene was then sent to the temporary prison camp of Drancy, a way station on the trip to the concentration camps. According to Dr. Salzberger's handwritten testimony, “her poor physical state left no hope of her survival.”

The Lavergnes remind me of the Thenardiers, the amoral innkeepers in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. They would do anything to make a quick buck, including turning on each other when the moment was right (as we will see later).

One anecdote from the documents demonstrates the depth of the Lavergnes' depravity. At some point following Dr. Salzberger's release from the military prison, but just prior to the Lavergne's betrayal of his brother and sister-in-law, Melchior and Helene entrust the Laverges with a suitcase to sent to Dr. Salzberger in the south of France. In a report written after the war's end, Salzberger outlines the suitcase's original contents in meticulous detail: “a blue suit, a blue gabardine overcoat, three shirts, three pairs of long underwear, five pairs of socks, two pairs of shoes, six ties, one scarf, twelve collars, and a hat.” However, when the suitcase arrived in the south of France, Salzberger was shocked to open the bag and find a used German suit on top of the rest of the suitcase's disappointing new contents: carrots and turnips. The Lavergnes had taken the suitcase from Melchior, promised to send it to Dr. Salzberger, then stole its contents. They replaced the missing clothes with the vegetables (likely rotting) to mask the missing weight, and one of Nazi Erick Kahnt's old suits on top to lend the appearance that the suitcase was full of the promised clothes.

[to be continued in Part Two]