Continuing from last time, the date was June 21st, 1943. Dark clouds were gathering over Lyon. The head of the French Resistance, Jean Moulin, code-named “Max”, was on his way to a secret meeting with other key people in the Resistance movement.
Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo, and the Milice had been hunting for him with all they had. The longer Moulin operated, the higher the level of risk became. In fact, the reason for the meeting was to name his replacement, in case the Nazi’s did get to him.
The Fateful Meeting
Max and a couple others met first at Place Carnot. They were late, so they hurried along on their way. The meeting would take place at a doctor’s house in a suburb of Lyon – a Dr. Dugoujon. When they arrived, Dr. Dugoujon’s secretary let them in, thinking they were more patients lining up for the doctor to see.
The others were already there. But as soon as they had walked in the door, a bunch of black Gestapo sedans quietly pulled up around the house. It was a trap.
Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon himself, was among those who stormed the house. No one fired a shot. The Nazis rounded up the “patients” and started questioning them. The Gestapo knew they had captured some of the leaders of the Resistance, and they knew that one of them was the infamous “Max” – the man who knew absolutely everything about the French Resistance — but they didn’t know which one he was.
They all had phony identification, of course. Max even had a paper with his doctor’s appointment on it. He had some other papers, too, which he managed to chew up and swallow before being discovered.
Questioning at Dr. Dugoujon’s house got the Nazi’s nowhere. They separated the prisoners and took them to various places to be questioned more severely. Klaus Barbie did a lot of this kind of work at his headquarters in Lyon. It’s the same building that houses the Center for the History of the Resistance and Deportation now.
I walked down the same hallway as many of those who had been caught. They’d have been on their way to what would no doubt be a very unpleasant questioning session. The hallway and adjacent rooms seem to look now the way they must have looked back then. I can tell you that it makes you stop and think and gives you a chill or two, to say the least.
Max is Identified
After several days of questioning, beatings, and the kinds of torturing that the Gestapo was famous for, no one had broken. Finally, one of them cracked, and gave up the identity of Max. Now they had the one man who had to know all the secrets there were to know about Resistance operations.
They moved Max to Montluc prison. From that point, the interrogations went on for weeks. The details of the interrogations have been obtained from others who were kept at the same location. They aren’t pleasant. The Gestapo and Barbie personally did everything they could think of to get Max to start talking, but he gave them nothing.
After two weeks, Max’s injuries prohibited him from being able to speak, so one day the interrogator put a piece of paper and a pencil in front of him and told him to start writing. Max picked up the pencil, but he didn’t start writing, exactly. He used it to draw a caricature of his interrogator, which apparently made the guy rather upset.
After a month, Max had given them nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Barbie received orders to bring the prize to Nazi headquarters in Paris, presumably because his bungling had not resulted in the desired information, even when he had this potential gold mine in his hands.
But there would be no talking at this point. Max couldn’t have given them anything now if he’d wanted to. He was barely alive. He died a few days later. Klaus Barbie’s testimony is that he committed suicide by throwing himself down a stairway when they weren’t looking.
Looking Back…
Even today, no one knows who the rat was, or how the trap was set for the ambush. And as you can imagine, there has been no shortage of effort to find out. There are some pretty convincing hypotheses, and some people have even named names, but no one really knows which namer is telling the truth. And there always seems to be some detail that fouls up the theory.
But it didn’t really matter for Jean Moulin, anyway. He knew his days were numbered. One can carry on in secret for only so long when being hunted they way he was. But in the short time that he worked to unite the French Resistance, he left his mark, that’s for sure.
But now it’s time to leave the Center for the History of the Resistance and Deportation and take the tram and the Metro back to the hotel. This place has been awesome. The people who’ve put it together have done an amazing job. My visit today is one I won’t soon forget.
To be continued…
