A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead Read Free Book Online Page A

forces with Jacques Decourdemanche, known as Decour, a scholar and teacher of German, a tall, thin, sporty young man who had spent the years before the war writing for various left-wing publications. The message of L’Université Libre was clear: words are themselves actions, and actions motivate; we have to say no to the occupier. The relationship between its founders was somewhat complicated by the fact that Decour and Maï were lovers.
    Soon sought by the Gestapo, Jacques Solomon went into hiding in the house of a professor at the Lycée Fénelon, where he continued to work on the new paper. ‘The French,’ he repeated, ‘must freely be able to read and think French in France.’ In the evenings, Hélène took over the distribution of L’Universit é Libre , using the Café Wepler in the Place Clichy as a meeting place, or dropping off bags containing copies in the lockers of stations, later to be collected by others to distribute. Maï, who had good contacts inside the PCF, liaised with party members, while another friend, Viva, the daughter of Pietro Nenni, head of the Italian Socialist Party, offered to help print some of the issues on the presses that she and her husband ran. Viva, who was 25, had come to Paris with her father when he was forced by the attentions of Mussolini’s secret police to seek refuge abroad, and she had finished her studies in France. She was also a striking looking young woman, with a mass of dark curly hair. Decour, who was teaching at the Lycée Rollin, cycled around Paris exclaiming: ‘In the country of Descartes, reason will triumph.’ It was still possible, in the winter of 1940, to be light-hearted about opposing the occupiers; the young resisters felt purposeful and elated.
    In the weeks to come, L’Université Libre would comment on every arrest, every turn and step in the war, every Nazi edict and prohibition. In its wake soon came plans for other papers and magazines, designed to keep de Gaulle’s flame of resistance alive by extolling all that was best and most important about French culture.
    One by one, other young intellectuals were drawn into the fold. One of these was Charlotte Delbo, the 27-year-old daughter of a metalworker from the Seine-et-Oise who had risen to run his own shipyard. Charlotte was a tall, clever young woman with a long thin face and remarkable green-grey eyes. She was quick and funny and could be sharp. Both her parents—even her working-class Catholic Italian mother who had emigrated to France with her family before the First World War—were atheists, and it was from them that Charlotte, the eldest of four children, had picked up her strong anti-Fascist beliefs. There had been no money to send her to university, so Charlotte left school after taking her baccalaureate and trained as a secretary.

    Charlotte Delbo, assistant to Louis Jouvet and a member of the Jeunesse Communiste
    In 1932, just as the PCF was entering its new phase of expansion and recruitment, she joined its youth wing, Jeunesse Communiste. Here, she was able to study at night under the Marxist philosopher Henry Lefebvre. Maï and Georges Politzer were friends of Lefebvre. The following year, working as a secretary by day, Charlotte began to contribute articles to a paper put out by the young communists, Jeunes Filles de France. Fascinated by the theatre, she was sent one day to interview the director and actor Louis Jouvet, who had recently taken over the Athenée theatre. Jouvet was captivated by the intelligence of her questions and the speed with which she took down his words in her neat, rapid shorthand.
    Two days later, he offered her a job as one of his two assistants, taking notes for the course he gave in theatre at the university. Charlotte, meanwhile, met and married Georges Dudach, the son of a metalworker in an aeronautics firm. At the age of 12, Georges had started as an apprentice in the business but when it became clear that he was intelligent and studious he had