Our last post started talking about a Dutch expatriate named Bernard as an exemplar of the confusion of the Occupation. Bernard was one of those Dutch expatriates who responded to a request for help from a refugee by creating an entire rescue network and helping just about anyone who asked for help. He was in contact with Dutch-Paris but preferred not to join any group.
Bernard fell victim to a rumor. He also fell victim to the collapse of trustworthy government during the Occupation and Liberation. In his case the branch of government that descended into lawlessness was the police, aided and abetted by the fact that the legitimate police had lost the people’s trust by collaborating.

On 1 May 1944, two Dutchmen in their late 20’s showed up at Bernard’s home outside Lyon asking for help to get to Spain. They showed him Dutch army papers, said they had a contact in Toulon and asked for 5,000 French francs. Both men had worked as nurserymen in the region around Lyon before the war.

While the two, let’s call them River and Field, were at Bernard’s house, another Dutchman living in Lyon who we’ll call K. arrived. K had been working with Bernard to help many Dutch refugees to hide and get to Switzerland. K bore the terrible news that his brother and his wife and three children had all been arrested for being Jews. Nevertheless K offered to take River and Field to his house for the night and put them on a train to Toulon the next day. Bernard gave the two young men 1,000 French francs.

When K and River and Field got to K’s home, River and Field told him that they actually worked for the Gestapo. But, they said, they were tired of their dirty work and needed 30,000 French francs to get away from the Gestapo. Also, they had been looking for Bernard for some time on behalf of the Gestapo. K did not have that kind of money but he gave them 12,000 French francs as payment for not arresting his family.

Were these two in the Dutch army? It’s unlikely. Were they in the Gestapo? Maybe. The only thing we know for sure is that they were taking advantage of the uncertainty of the times and the fear that resisters and refugees lived in. And they were quite good at extortion.

The next day, River and Field went to Marseilles to find someone whom Bernard and K had mentioned. They got money out of him too. K consulted a lawyer and some resistance friends then went to Bernard’s house to beg him to go into hiding. Bernard first went to Marseilles to warn the man whose name he’d given. Fortunately the man had lost some money but not his liberty and was able to go into hiding.

Bernard and the French family who had been deeply involved in rescuing people with him all went into hiding at a hotel in a mountain village for the next four months at Bernard’s expense. At the liberation, they went back to the villa where they had been living to find out that River and Field had returned several times during the summer of 1944 with stories of how Bernard owed them money, a typewriter and clothes.

At the liberation Bernard filed a complaint with the French police, who arrested Field. In late 1945 he filed an official complaint with the Dutch authorities because he had heard that both Field and River were living at liberty in Haarlem.

It’s impossible to know from the available documents whether Field and River were collaborators, but they were certainly criminals. It was an easy time to be an extortionist. All you needed was the bravado to claim to be Gestapo and the names and addresses of people who had reason to fear the Gestapo and who would be unwilling to contact any authorities because of their own illegal work helping others. Of course it was entirely possible to both work for the Gestapo and be a criminal. The Gestapo paid a bounty on refugees and resisters and they couldn’t have cared less if their employees made something extra on the side through extortion or theft.

Gestapo? False Gestapo? For resisters, rescuers and really any civilian it didn’t matter. The fear was the same and there was no safe way to check a self-proclaimed Gestapo agent’s claim.