I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed for a documentary about a Dutch Jew who was in southern France from 1940 to September 1942.* Like Weidner, this man, whom we’ll call Sal, was involved with the efforts of the Dutch consulate in Lyon to help Dutch Jews in 1942. The director asked me a few questions that would be interesting to think about in the blog.

For example, she asked me if I thought that Sal would have been part of Dutch-Paris if he had stayed in France after September 1942. The answer is no. Resistance was a “by invitation only” club. Resisters didn’t advertise in the help wanted section. They invited people they trusted to join and risked their own lives and maybe those of their families every time they judged someone to be trustworthy enough. If that person was careless or talked too much or straight out sold them to the enemy they would all suffer.

In the case of Sal, Weidner let him know in 1942 that he had ways to get refugees into Switzerland but did not elaborate or invite him to join his escape line. Neither he nor his colleagues at the time trusted Sal because Sal was known to be heavily involved in the black market. Now you can argue that refugees were not allowed to work in France so they had no other way to make a living. But the black market was beyond the pale for Weidner. He knew plenty of refugees who did not deal on the black market, including his second in command. He also knew that the consulate was paying Dutch refugees allotments that were big enough to live on. He had no doubt that it was possible to rescue people without dealing on the black market yourself because he was doing it.

You could argue that it was pretty high and mighty of Weidner to disdain black marketers when he and everyone else in Dutch-Paris lied and broke the law every day by using false documents and sneaking people over borders. But Weidner would say that he was breaking corrupt laws (the Nazis’ and their collaborators’) in the service of a higher law (God’s). And, most importantly, he was not profiting from the misery of others. It was the profiting that he drew the line at. In fact he had harsh words for a different Dutchman in Amsterdam who sold false documents to Engelandvaarders at high cost even though those papers worked very well.

So although Sal certainly had the sort of talents that would come in handy in a clandestine escape line, Weidner would not have invited him to join Dutch-Paris because he was, somewhat ironically, not honest enough for that particular illegal organization.

*The documentary (as yet untitled) will be released in Europe in Spring 2018.