Searching for the Dutch-Paris Escape Line
International Gossip
In August 1942, the corporal in charge of the Swiss border post of Biaufond sent his superior a report that was so interesting it made its way to Bern within days.
It’s important to know that the border crossing of Biaufond/La Rasse lies on the Franco-Swiss border east and slightly south of Besançon. Because that region of France fell into the “reserved zone,” the Germans controlled the French side of the border there.
Apparently the Swiss and German border guards there were on friendly terms because the German customs agent in La Rasse told our Swiss corporal across the barrier that the Gestapo had arrested a French couple who ran a hotel in Maîche, 19 km north of the border in France, and a third, unnamed person in connection with an organization that smuggled fugitives from France into Switzerland.
The Gestapo simply disguised themselves as fugitives from Belgium and Holland complete with false Belgian and Dutch papers and presented themselves to the hotel keeper’s wife. For a fee of 2,000 French francs each, she told them how to contact a passeur who would get them into Switzerland. The Gestapo followed her directions and paid the 5,000 French francs per person demanded by the smuggler. But once en route, the Gestapo arrested the passeur and then went back and arrested the hotel keeper and his wife.
Later in the day our Swiss corporal had a little chat with a French garage owner who acted as the mail carrier between Biaufond and Maîche and who was running an errand for “the Germans.” The Frenchman confirmed the arrest of the hotel keepers by the Gestapo.
This story doesn’t have anything to do with Dutch-Paris, but it does offer some interesting insights into the times. It demonstrates the very real threat to rescuers of Gestapo agents provocateurs masquerading as fugitives. And it illustrates the fact that if there were groups like Dutch-Paris who were willing to take the risks of helping people flee persecution without any thought of compensation, there were others who were willing to exploit the desperation of those same desperate people. Not all passeurs were benevolent. Some were in it for the money.
The story also demonstrates how quickly news traveled without a free press or reliable and reliably private telephone and postal connections. And I’m sure you’ve noticed that the gossip was doing the international rounds without much regard for the reinforced borders of Occupied Europe.
The local people usually knew what was going on. Whether they chose to share it with outsiders or pass it up to their superiors was another question entirely.
- Tags: Border Crossings
Claude Bénet
August 29th, 2012 at 8:18 am
After reading your article and because I had met former passeurs or friends or descendants of passeurs, I would like to point out that most passeurs were paid for their service. And even if it may first look dishonest, we must take into account that most of them, apart from risking their lives, had to leave their job or any other professional activities to help people across the border. Their task often took days and was sometimes repeated several times a month, so there was no oher way they could make a living. They also had to pay for food in safehouses or sometimes bribe the police (mainly on the Spanish side of the border).The question to know how many did it for the money and how many did it just to help will remain for ever. To my knowledge most wanted to help but, they had to accept the money.
Claude Benet
(Author of “Passeurs, Fugitifs and Espions, Andorra during the Second World War.- Published in French. Toulouse. 2010)
Megan Koreman
August 29th, 2012 at 10:05 am
You make an excellent point. The situation on the Franco-Swiss border, however, was different than that on the Franco-Spanish border. The route through the Pyrenees usually took days and involved difficult mountain trekking. Furthermore, the Germans patrolled the Pyrenees more intensely than the Alps. Unlike the fugitives they were guiding, the passeurs had to cross the Pyrenees twice on every trip, once going to Spain and once coming home. Although some people did, indeed, make difficult mountain treks into Switzerland, it was also possible to walk through someone’s home or garden into Switzerland. Passeurs rarely needed to be away from home as long for the trip into Switzerland as for the trip into Spain. It was possible to be a passeur into Switzerland and still keep your day job.
Both the French and the Swiss authorities were far more lenient towards “volunteer” passeurs and their charges than they were to paid passeurs and their charges. In the Pyrenees, the Germans made no distinctions between paid and unpaid when shooting or deporting those they captured.