Laval Museum

Laval Museum

Yves Pourcher

Professor at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail Research Group LISST-CAS

Translated from the French by Cynthia J. Johnson

Abstract • This article details the results of a very long investigation into the life of a charac-ter who incarnates the darkest years of French history. Pierre Laval, fi rst a cabinet member and then Council President, was the leader of a collaboration government under German occupation. The research was undertaken in the archives that his son-in-law, Count René de Chambrun, had assembled in his offi ces and apartment in Paris. It led to the discovery of a new source: the private notebooks that Josée, Pierre Laval’s only child, had kept between 1936 and 1992. Once deciphered and analyzed, this source constitutes an extraordinary narrative of the period. It reveals the complicity of a worldly, fashionable milieu that never opened its eyes to the seriousness of what was happening. It reconstitutes the choices and cultural codes of French high society, which submitted meekly to the Nazis. This text em-phasizes issues of methodology and the diffi culties that writing this story entailed.

Keywords • Josée de Chambrun, collaboration, France, Pierre Laval, Nazis, social butter-fl ies, witnesses

Introduction

The article that follows depicts the setting and the circumstances in which I carried out the research project that was later to become my book, Laval vu par sa fi lle (Laval seen by his daughter).1 That work was focused on recon-stituting the daily life, the choices and codes of this hidden world of French High Society leading up to the Nazi occupation. What fascinated me, as an historian and political anthropologist, was the contrast between the codes, gestures, and appearances of their refi ned world with their daily schedule of cocktail parties and horse races, and the terrible, tragic choices they made and ways in which they rationalized those choices.

But to explore those questions, I fi rst had to gain access to their world through Count René de Chambrun. I had to take a long time to penetrate this milieu’s codes, to suspend disbelief or judgment enough so that this in-credible historical witness would open up to me. This process was delicate, complicated, and diffi cult, both personally and professionally. How to retain

Historical Refl ections Volume 38, Issue 1, Spring 2012 © Berghahn Journalsdoi: 10.3167/hrrh.2012.380108 ISSN 0315-7997 (Print), ISSN 1939-2419 (Online)

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some semblance of neutral, scientifi c objectivity faced with rationalizations of genocide, and a discourse that justifi ed all the tragic decisions that in-directly supported it? How to integrate and accept this high society milieu enough to understand it from the inside, to understand these historical sub-jects and their decisions from their own point of view, yet not get sucked into them? I thought that the process of research in such circumstances was worthy of being shared with fellow scholars, and raised its own questions about the process of research, the role of the observer, and what some call “scientifi c objectivity.” That is the goal of the article that follows. For these purposes, I have chosen a more narrative form of history, being infl uenced by the microhistory of Carlo Ginzburg,2 that small details often reveal much more than a mass of data.

This text is the result of the accumulation of extensive research con-ducted on the darkest moment of French history, marked by the defeat of France and the German occupation. In trying to understand this period, Robert Paxton3 has stressed the importance of analyzing the choices that contemporaries had to make. Philippe Burrin, following this line of research, emphasized the role of what he describes as the “daily accommodations” people made in relation to circumstances and to their various needs.4 Al-though I was convinced that these scholars were right, about the importance of individuals’ daily negotiations for understanding this period, nonetheless I asked myself, what could I possibly add to what had already been written and the numerous books that stretched out along library shelves?

After a period of wandering and refl ecting, a path opened up before me, thanks to a chance meeting with an exceptional historical witness and the discovery of an unpublished source. Yet the risk was great—the project appeared before me as a formidable trap, with snares of misunderstand-ing, error, manipulation, and paralysis. While working, I was almost entirely isolated and on a schedule that seemed endless. My daily routine consisted of face-to-face meetings with an old rich man who was powerful and very clever. Each passing day highlighted the complexity of this period. Behind the huge responsibility of the people who had collaborated with the Nazis, there arose countless shadows, hesitations, and doubts about the facts and their interpretation.

But the most important results, and what is the most interesting contri-bution of this research, lies elsewhere—in entering into the world of French high society, in which appearances and political theatre have in fact long concealed the impact of these people’s choices and their own responsibility. To reconstruct this world, I needed to build a narrative whose threads would connect together the moments in time, places, and people that I had cho-sen—all this so that the reader would grasp the importance and signifi cance of the stakes at hand. Behind the veil of gestures, words, and codes among polite society a different scene was being acted out: a terrible political choice that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people, while the elite continued their ordinary lives by attending salons and horse races.

106 Historical Refl ections • Spring 2012

Pourcher • Laval Museum 107

Pouring through the evidence, thousands of images paraded past my eyes. Behind these images, another story slowly appeared—that of a girl and her father, Laval. With her words that were blind to the reality of the situa-tion, a girl described the daily life of her father who, because of events, had returned as head of state. There, once again, I had to sort through bias and daughterly love to be able to reconstruct and explain, with mere words, this period, the falling apart of a world, and how this family veered off course. But before I could tell that story, I had fi rst to penetrate into this closed uni-verse of French high society, where, in an intimate setting, the scene that began to take shape resembled an impressionist painting …

Laval Museum

That’s what it was, an actual museum spread out over several locations, through which paintings, furniture, precious objects, and documents fl owed.

Laval Museum—father and daughter—with several addresses. In Paris, the offi ces at avenue des Champs-Élysées, the apartment at place du Palais-Bourbon, and then the two châteaux, la Grange-Bléneau, in the Seine-et-Marne, and Châteldon, in the Puy-de-Dôme.

For me, the story began with the idea of a book on Laval. Why Laval? I came to the idea over time. After publishing a book on daily life from 1914 to 1918,5 I wanted to deal with the period following it, usually designated as the “interwar period.” I saw it as a general failure: political, economic, military, and intellectual bankruptcy. As for my editor, he had suggested I write a book on the Auvergnats.6 There was a real story in it, he told me, and a promising market. The book could be sold to the frequenters of the cafés of Paris, where numerous bougnats7 lived. And also, with my work on the Lozère,8 a neighboring department, had I not already laid the founda-tions for a larger project? I hesitated: the interwar period, the Auvergnats! Little by little, the man with the white tie appeared.9 Laval, the upstart, the horse trader with a swarthy complexion, with the look of a gypsy, always a cigarette in his mouth. I proposed the idea. The editor accepted. He wanted a traditional biography: Laval, lawyer, politician, minister, president of the Council of Ministers, traitor, incarnation of our national shame. Later, my project changed radically, passing from the father to the daughter, and be-cause writing in essay form seemed necessary, I had to fi nd another editor. But that is another story!

To begin, I took the plunge and contacted the secretary of René de Cham-brun, Laval’s son-in-law, the Count, international lawyer, former chairman and CEO of the Baccarat Crystal Company. I had met him once before, ten years earlier, for my work on the elites of Lozère. In response to my call, I received an invitation to visit the La Fayette château, in La Grange, on Sat-


urday, 28 October 1994. I followed the map that had been sent to me. The Count, eighty-eight years old, still very lively, welcomed his guests. He gave a guided tour, showing us portraits, objects, telling stories.

“We only slept here four nights in all,” he made a point of telling us.

In a room called the “room of misfortune,” in memory of the suffer-ing that the Revolution had infl icted on the wife of La Fayette, Josée de Chambrun had ordered two armchairs brought from her father’s château at Châteldon. “As a symbol of their common misfortune,” the Count added. The La Fayettes and the Lavals: as having the same history! As I was leaving, I signed the guest book, leaving a trace of my visit.

What had I written then?I no longer remember.

Two weeks later, Thursday, 10 November 1994, I went to 52 avenue de Champs-Élysées and entered the grand offi ces of the law fi rm. “You have ac-cess to everything!” René de Chambrun told me as he greeted me. I saw piles of fi les, books lined up on the shelves of a bookcase, photos, and a bottle of mineral water from Châteldon,10 “the water of Laval,” placed on a pedestal table. The Count called his secretaries right away. They brought books, press articles, and photocopies of letters, which I put in my briefcase. These were my archives, my fi rst on the subject.

The Count drew closer to the photos. He showed me his father, his mother, in France, in America, in Morocco; him as a teenager, playing rugby for the French team. Some days later I was set up in a meeting room, and poured through the fi les. Someone had told me where the photocopier was. I went there often.

“You have to enter the director’s offi ce without knocking,” the secretary said to me, “otherwise the dog barks.”

So that’s what I did. I would open the door, I would take a fi le, I would leave, I would read, I would photocopy. My archives were taking up more and more space. Now and again, the Count would come by. The Count! It took me some time before being able to call him Monsieur le Comte. In the beginning, I couldn’t. I called him Mister, Maître,11 or I nodded in recognition of him. Later, I grudgingly accepted it. One evening, he told me he had to go to Switzerland the next day to take part in an American television program on Chanel. He wanted, he added, to respond to the attacks of Edmonde Charles-Roux, 12 because he, René de Chambrun, knew everything about Coco for the very good reason that he had been her lawyer. Before leav-ing, the secretary had talked to me about Laval’s biographers, Fred Kupfer-


man and Jean-Paul Cointet,13 two professors who had come to work here. I thought of all these researchers who had passed through, consulting the same archives, and then writing different histories.

The Count had retired the previous year, but had kept a few clients. A secretary worked full-time for the Josée and René Chambrun Foundation.14 She photocopied, fi led, wrote.

The following day, the Count being absent, I set myself up to work in his offi ce. It was raining that day in Paris. Suddenly, the telephone rang. René de Chambrun was calling from Switzerland.

“Is he there?” he asked the secretary.She told him that I was working.

I would take up these lawyer’s fi les, meticulously ordered with head-ings written in bold black marker. History was unfolding before my eyes: “Childhood of Pierre Laval,” “Photos of Mrs. Laval and her family,” “Pierre Laval, lawyer at court,” “Laval, Mayor of Aubervilliers,” “Minister of Jus-tice,” “Pierre Laval and the Colonial Empire.” I also found fi les on each of his close associates, letters by Josée Laval, transcripts of the trial. I continued to photocopy.

The secretary had described the Foundation’s holdings to me: a large portfolio of stock in Baccarat Crystal, the building at 58 de la rue de Vau-girard,15 which had belonged to Chambrun’s parents, the apartment,16 the châteaux. To libraries and individuals, she would mail the books that René de Chambrun had written to defend the memory of his father-in-law. The following days, I went back to my place in the meeting room or in the large offi ce. Each morning, I would settle in, I would take notes in Clairefontaine notebooks that I had numbered, and I would photocopy. The evenings, at home, I piled up the documents and I would reconstruct a political career.

Little by little, the life and career of Laval appeared to me. His birth in 1883 at Châteldon, a small town near Vichy, into a family of shopkeepers; his studies that ended with a bachelor’s degree in law; his setting himself up in Paris as a lawyer. On 20 October 1909, Laval married the daughter of the mayor of his hometown. He defended the poor and the trade union-ists, was politically committed to the Left, was elected deputy of the Seine department, then mayor of Aubervilliers, a working-class town near Paris. He was named a cabinet minister. In 1931, he was chosen as the president of the Council of Ministers. He was chosen once again in 1935. Laval had by this time become a man of the political right wing, owner of a large fortune acquired through investing in the press, publishing, radio, and the stock ex-change. As signs of his success, he became owner and master of the château and the springs of his hometown.


Driven from power at the beginning of 1936, Laval worked hard in the shadows defending the idea of an alliance with Fascist Italy. After France’s defeat, he supported Marshal Pétain and, on 10 July 1940, he orchestrated the death of the French Republic. Master architect of the policy of collabo-ration with Germany, Laval placed the government and the police at the

Figure 1 Laval and his daughter on their way to the United States. Copyright J.-L. Douat


occupier’s disposal, handing over Jews, opponents, and forced laborers. He became the epitome of the evils of collaborationist France—and a marked man. Following Liberation, after a botched trial, Laval was executed by fi r-ing squad on 15 October 1945. In the national memory, he represents trea-son and the one who gave Jewish children to the Nazis.

On Wednesday, 30 November 1994, for the fi rst time, I went to Châtel-don, Laval’s hometown, where his château was located. The secretary had arranged for the tickets. At 8:54 AM, at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, I joined René de Chambrun in a fi rst-class compartment.

“It’s a pilgrimage!” he said to me.

The train had begun to pull out of the station, and immediately he began telling stories: “My mother-in-law told me that I was an Auvergnat from Chicago.17 She added that the Auvergne was in the Puy-de-Dome, perhaps the Cantal.”18

Then, he continued with his stories. Outside, the landscapes rolled by. I excused myself to go to the restroom. When I returned, the Count was sleeping. At Vichy, we got into a taxi. The servants were waiting in the court-yard of the château. They greeted the Count. It being the hour for lunch, we went into the dining room. Yet René de Chambrun continued talking. He still had stories to tell: about France, America, before the war, after … René de Chambrun was an incredible storyteller, a passionate defender, the vigilant guardian of a peculiar sort of memory. He had seen great men, lived during important times. He described them, repeated them, unceasingly.

After lunch, he led me to the libraries of the château.“Make yourself at home here, even more so than in Paris,” he told me,

slipping away to take his nap.

I went into Laval’s offi ce and found books that had been dedicated to him, copies of documents that had been deposited at the Hoover Founda-tion, at Stanford, copies from German archives. Continuing my exploration, I found rooms, other books, paintings, mementos. Going up to the fi rst fl oor, still more books, lined up in a row. The Count had told me that his wife, Josée, wanted three rooms in the château to be set aside for the work of researchers. When he awoke, he led me into the garden. We walked along together. Then he showed me the family burial vault, practically a mauso-leum. “Pierre Laval,” “Elisabeth Laval”: these were carved on the plaques. “The bodies will be moved here,” said the Count. “My father-in-law was the man that I loved the most among all those that I have known.” A bit further along was the tomb of the dogs. As I was leaving, René de Chambrun gave me a book that Josée had written about her dog, Siki.


On the way back, he talked, then went off to rest. I wrote down my impressions in a notebook. The following days, I returned to the offi ces at avenue de Champs-Élysées. In the entrance, on the wall of the corridor, I saw portraits of La Fayette, Washington, and other heroes of the American Revolution, all in a line. René de Chambrun was reading. He had books brought to me: those by his mother,19 by others. He would prepare, accom-pany, comment on my reading. He had already found a title for my book: “From youth to sacrifi ce,” he told me. “The last eyewitnesses are disappear-ing,” he would say repeatedly . He was haunted by the fear of oblivion, of abandonment, the historical disappearance of Laval. He continued to fi ght for the preservation of his memory.

I continued to pour through the fi les. All around me, the law offi ce was bustling. From New York, London, Nice, there were calls about cases; other stories were unfolding. “Today, because you have been very kind,” the Count said. He offered me a copy of Chérie Chérie, the book his wife had written about Paul Morand, number 45 of 125 copies made on vellum from the Auvergne that had been printed for her in 1979.

In Tours on 19 January 1995, where I taught anthropology. Looking for books about the Occupation, I went into a small bookstore run by a chatty elderly lady. She spoke to me about the weather, her book collection, of Pétain whom she had liked a great deal, and her childhood memories. She had seen the German troops come down the rue Nationale, a rearguard with covered carts pulled by horses taken from Poland. She also remembered the soldiers of the Wehrmacht who would go to train along the banks of the Loire singing Lili Marleen.

The days passed by, in the offi ces of René de Chambrun. The secretary would bring me archival boxes, and the Count was bustling about with the upcoming book, which Yves-Frederic Jaffré, the last of Laval’s living lawyers, was about to publish. He sent him written fi les that provided new elements for the defense. The book was published in September by Albin Michel, under the title: Il y a 50 ans Pierre Laval. Le procès qui n’a pas eu lieu [Pierre Laval: 50 years later, the trial that never took place]. The Count signed a copy for me: “To Yves Pourcher, this book of truth … and of history, before your own publication. Best regards.”

31 January 1995. Once again, I accompanied the Count on a trip to Châteldon. I went along with his habits, which by now I knew by heart. At the dinner table, I drank his preferred cocktail, one-third bourbon, two-thirds vermouth and ice, and I listened to his stories. The wine was served in a beautiful Baccarat carafe.20 The glasses were precious Harcourts. On the bookshelves, I looked through the books, I copied down the dedications. In the book by Joseph Caillaux, Ma doctrine, Flammarion, 1926, I found:


“To my very dear friend of all time, Pierre Laval, as a sign of my devoted affection.”21

I returned to 52 avenue des Champs-Élysées. “The German cultural ser-vices?” the Count said, in response to my question, “They were located at the other elevator. It was the Propagandastaffel!”22 I was taking notes, writ-ing continuously. On 8 February, he gave me the papers of René Bousquet,23 a collection of photocopies in an envelope.

Some days previously, 1 February to be exact, for the fi rst time I met Fernande Goldschmidt, a childhood friend of Josée Laval’s, at her home, 87 boulevard Murat, in the sixteenth arrondissement.

“[Josée] said that I belonged to the upper Jewish elite,” Fernande said. “When papa took on Laval as his lawyer …”24 She recounted their youth together, the interwar period, then the Occupation and the years that fol-lowed. Josée and Fernande would go out together; they visited Italy, Greece, Russia, went on cruises. Josée knew Fernande’s brothers and sisters. At the Hyaffi l home, she was treated as one of their own children. “At that time,” Fernande said, “Laval was a provincial who had connections.” One day, Josée realized that her friend’s religion was different. “When your sister was married at the synagogue,” she said to her friend, “I discovered there was a sense of rejection [by French society].” Josée’s marriage and her new circles meant that the young women saw each other less. But they remained close.

On the 17th of the same month, I went to the apartment at 6 bis place du Palais-Bourbon. Jeanne, who had been serving there for nineteen years, greeted me. As I went up the stairs, I saw the portrait that David had made of his then daughter, painted on the ceiling of the living room: the Cirque by José Maria Sert.25 Among these paintings, mirrors, and precious objects, on the ledge of the chimney and on tables, I glimpsed envelopes piled up, containing archives. Guided by the Count, I had a look around the rooms, passing through his bedroom, until coming to the bedroom that had been his wife’s. Finally, he told me to set myself up in the library that Josée had had renovated to copy Montesquieu’s library in his château at La Brède.

“It’s the Josée Museum!” he said to me.

The carpet was brown in color, the banquette covered in red leather, the framed photos placed on pieces of rare and precious furniture. I saw Laval, his wife, his daughter, his dogs, the French and foreign decorations, and innumerable books exquisitely bound. Looking up to the very top of the library, I found the theolodite and the telescopes of Savorgnan de Brazza.26 I began with an inventory. Josée had died three years earlier, in 1992. If


she had been living, I would never have been able to gain access to this place. She would not have allowed my presence. The places, the papers, the memories had to remain under her control alone; she chose those to whom she deigned to give them.

I went there nearly every day. To make the task easier, I had been given a set of keys and this worried me greatly. What would happen if I lost the keys? If someone stole my bag in the Metro? If the apartment was broken into? When I would arrive, I would open things up, I would settle into my seat. I would take an envelope, I would copy letters. When I was weary, I would look at the books, take them out, caress the leather bindings; I would look for pieces of paper between the pages, indicating dedications, notes, photocopies that she had slid in.

Sir Oswald Mosley, My Life, London, Nelson, 1968. He had been the leader of the British Union of Fascists. “To René and Josée Chambrun, with affection,”27 he had written.

I found books by Musset, Proust, Paul Morand, Marcel Jouhandeau, Princesse Bibesco, Pierre Benoit, Maurice Genevoix, Roger Peyrefi tte, and so many others.

In the morning, the Cadillac would be waiting. When the chauffeur would open the door, the dog would climb into the back, and René de Cham-brun left for his offi ce. One day, in order to represent Baccarat, he left for the United States on the Concorde. Upon his return, he told me that everything was coming along marvelously, as Laval’s cause was also gaining ground in the US. The days passed. I would write and put documents in folders to have photocopies made of them. In the evening, the chauffeur would bring the copies to me from the offi ce and I would bring them home. Over time, my apartment had become an archive. On one of my shelves, I placed a Baccarat sulfi de28 with an effi gy of Laval that the Count had given me.

Seated in the library, I continued my work. When I hesitated, I would write the names of people and places on bits of paper that I would leave con-spicuously on the green leather desk-blotter. The next day, René de Chamb-run would come by, and he would give me the answers. I fi lled up my index cards. One day, the Count told me he had made a discovery of some papers that Josée had gathered together about his parents, the Chambruns, and on Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, his paternal uncle. He promised me that he would have an envelope sent over. The Count continuously made discover-ies. He rummaged around, searched, found. It was as if, after the death of his wife, he was fi nally able to get into places that had been forbidden to him, to open the drawers, to read. On one of his innumerable envelopes, he had written: “Daily letters from Josée to René Chambrun, 255 in number! …


during that peculiar war, preserved by her and found by René de Chambrun in 1992.”

All the letters had been preserved, fi led, archived. There were hun-dreds of envelopes with the names Louise de Vilmorin, Paul Morand, Pierre Cathala, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and so on. Starting in 1945, the apart-ment at place du Palais-Bourbon had become a place of conservation, publi-cation, and activism in support of Laval.

One day, on the ground fl oor, in an adjoining room—a kind of garage—I noticed piles of books. They were the so-called memoirs of Laval,29 docu-ments from the trial, books written by his lawyers, his supporters, and other writings by René de Chambrun.30 To all this was added a series of documents that had been given to the Hoover Foundation, and published by it in the United States and by the publishers Plon in France: the accounts of Laval’s closest associates.

“These archives are now available to all those who would like to consult them in Hoover Tower, at the University of Stanford,” wrote the Director of the Hoover Institution and Library in 1957, in his presentation.

René de Chambrun had worked passionately to collect these accounts. He had solicited, pressured, demanded. “I’m dining with Hoover on Thurs-day the 28th,”31 he wrote in 1949 to his wife Josée, “thus I would like to have the accounts which are missing, that is to say, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79 and 80. Perhaps they have already been sent?”

It was to her that they were sent, to Josée Laval, Countess of Chambrun. “Here are three memories for the Hoover album,” wrote Paul Morand, from Vevey in Switzerland, on 6 October 1951. On 19 April 1956, Josée wrote to her husband to tell him that she had dined with Suzanne Abetz, wife of the German ambassador during the Occupation: “I told her about the develop-ment of the Hoover War Library so that she could tell her husband and tell Ernst (Achenbach).”32

“Whose idea was it?” I asked the Count.“It was mine. She would say, ‘All that, it’s a waste of time.’”

From France, selected archives were sent to the United States, now made available to the public by a rich American foundation. At the apartment where the copies were located, I read all these accounts and many other documents, private or administrative letters, and notes that supplemented my fi les. But one day, the Count presented me with new documents, which no one had seen before. He had spoken of them so often to me that I had ended up doubting their existence.


I remember that, on 5 July 1995, in the train that was carrying us to Vichy, I had seen René de Chambrun read small notebooks. They were dia-ries, Kirby or Hermès, on which, every day from 1936 to 1992, Josée had written down her appointments, her lunches and dinners, those she met with, the color of her dresses, and her feelings. The Count was discovering them, or pretending to do so. He would mark pages so that they could be photocopied. He was creating archives, leaving trails of breadcrumbs for me to follow. Patiently, I would gather the bits that I tried to piece together until the day when, fi nally, he let me have access to all the originals.

“1 January 1936. Lunch Prunier. Rugby match France vs. Russia. Mother has extraordinary fl owers. Ministry dinner.” It begins like this. For Saturday 5 December 1936, she had written: “4 o’clock: Pétain came to see papa at the house.” On the last page of the diary from the month of October 1941, another clue: “On the Cours Albert I, leaving Mlle Schneider’s home, my handbag was stolen. My diary was inside.”

Continuing with the snippets:“Monday, 27 August 1942. Anniversary of the assassination attempt.33

Review ceremony for the French legion that is leaving for the Russian front. I refuse. … Cinema: L’homme qui joue avec le feu.”34

“Thursday 4 November 1943. Uncle Charles35 wears a black tie as a sign of mourning for France. I said: My father wears a white one.”

“Friday, 14 July 1950. … Afternoon at Sigmaringen.36 Visit of the château. Cemetery, walks that papa did, stags, the Danube, black swans on the lake.”

The style is staccato. They are instants, broken up, scattered, stolen from the wind. I was in a labyrinth. There was a code—several perhaps?—for which I was constantly searching. I spent months reading, noting, writing index cards that I would supplement with letters and other documents. Often, I had the feeling that I was passing over an essential meeting, or an important moment. But patiently, I continued accumulating.

How had she kept her diaries? What had she wanted to say, and what had she chosen? I kept experimenting, exploring and, continuously, bought books about this period. From one year to the next, I identifi ed the people who would reappear again and again and who made their mark. I would follow them, accompany them. I would note the absences, those who left, the new arrivals. Friendships were formed, others were broken. History was weaving through these pages: places, names, days. Everything connected to her father was emphasized. “Papa Minister.” “Papa President.” “Important speech by papa, success.” And even: “Papa saw Stalin.” “He met Mussolini.” “Papa received by Hitler.” But I also saw what mattered to her: titles, châ-teaux, signs of affection, recognition, or rejection, horse races. On the seat-ing charts that she had drawn, I found names and the places assigned.


I slowly recopied her notebooks and her letters. Now, I was able to understand their messages. I felt her joys, her pains. I had discovered her immense pride. I also saw how Laval, while loving his daughter with a pas-sionate, unique, and exceptional love, also used her. Josée was his diamond that he had placed in a magnifi cent jewel box, a spoiled child jumping for

Figure 2 Josée and her father during their voyage to Rome in 1935. Copyright J.-L. Douat


joy at discovering high society, a young woman who had taken a count for a husband. On her path, I saw Paris, Deauville, Biarritz, princes, princesses, re-ceptions, balls, horse races, haute couture dresses, grand restaurants, travels to the United States and Europe. But everywhere she went, she represented her father; she was his informant.

Figure 3 Writing from a photo. Copyright J.-L. Douat


Inside my notebooks, I would slip in photos that I had found in folders or envelopes. I’ll take two at random. With the fi rst, it is 1929. It’s summertime at Vichy. A car is parked. The chauffeur opens the door. He greets them, his cap in his hand. Josée moves forward. Behind her, her father watches her. She is eighteen years old. In the second, it is 1931, on the L’Ile-de-France Bridge, during a trip that took Laval to the United States. Josée laughs. At her left, her father smiles. His pride is immense.

Pride, and blindness: the circle closes in. It is terrible. Laval is sure of himself. Sure of having the solution, of being indispensable, of being right even if all the world thinks he is wrong. His daughter follows him, accompa-nies him, comforts him. All around her, she imposes silence and submission. “Papa creates his cabinet,” she writes on 14 April 1942. Laval had come back into power under pressure from the Germans. “Arrival at Vichy, 7 AM,” she writes on April 29th, “I’m making my comeback! at the Hotel du Parc.”37

Her comeback! It is her due: sign of the importance of her father and recognition of his position. But on 22 June 1942, Laval declared on the radio: “I am hoping for a German victory, because without her, tomorrow Bolshevism would take over everywhere.” “I fulfi lled my role as leader,” he added. “He was never wrong,” Josée wrote later, “even in pronouncing his famous phrase ‘I am hoping for a German victory,’ which made me suffer so at the time.”

Doubt was impossible; remorse, forbidden. After Laval’s death, Fer-nande Goldschmidt went into the library of the grand apartment on place du Palais-Bourbon. Seated at her desk, Josée was sorting through papers. “Are you working on the rehabilitation of your father?” Fernande asked. Josée responded harshly: “Does one rehabilitate Jesus Christ?” Her father had become her religion. On 1 April 1973, in her notebook she wrote: “I am sixty-two years old, the age of papa when he was killed.”

I often saw Fernande during the years spent working on this subject. She spoke to me of Josée and recounted her life. After the French defeat, having had no news of her young brother who was a soldier, she had written to her friend Josée. But when Fernande learned that he was a prisoner in Germany, she left quickly to go fi nd him. “I can do nothing,” Josée answered her, “he is better off there.”

In 1941, the government had organized a census of the Jews, and Fer-nande turned once again to her friend. “Should we declare ourselves?” she asked her. Josée refl ected for a moment, then fi nally answered, “If I were you, I would not go,” proving that she understood how great was the danger threatening the Jews.


The morning of Tuesday, 12 December 1995, I arrived at the apartment. Paris was paralyzed by a general strike that had gone on for several weeks. “Monsieur is sad today,” Jeanne told me, “he says that there will be a war.” The Count arrived, highly agitated, and recounted Josée’s fi nal days for me. She told him: “Open everything up. You will have some surprises.” She had organized everything. He had never seen her write in her diaries. A few days later, Jeanne told me, “When we would go into the kitchen where the stove was, it smelled of burnt paper.”

Josée had sorted through her fi les, without touching her diaries.

I carried on. I recopied, and I listened. The Count invited me to lunch. In the immense kitchen of the apartment, we ate partridges from La Grange. “You cannot imagine,” he said to me, “what it was like to be the son-in-law of Pierre Laval. Had there been several of us, at least it would have been spread around. But as it was . . .” Another day, we were at the restaurant Maxim’s, at the Chambrun table. I accompanied him when he walked his dog. I had become a presence. I followed him, I waited for him. I always hoped to have other stories, new information. I felt a peculiar feeling for this old man, a mix of respect, gratitude, and curiosity. Yet, at times, I felt out-raged, the need to respond, to contest, the desire to throw in the towel. So I would distance myself for a few days, and then I would return.

Figure 4 The man with the white tie. Copyright J.-L. Douat


I let time fl ow by, paralyzed by the scale of the task. I continued to come, out of habit. What was I still looking for? I hesitated, I dragged it out. In real-ity, I was unable to cut myself off. Tired, or ill, the Count increasingly stayed in the apartment. He was expecting me to question him. In the fi nal days of the month of December 1996, I decided, fi nally, to leave. One evening, I told him that I would give back the keys the next day.

“So, what are you going to do?” he asked me, “Will you pass by from time to time?”

I agreed.

From Paris, I moved to Toulouse, bringing my Laval boxes with me. When I returned, I would pass by the apartment, and I would go to see Fernande. I had to wait for a long time. In the separation and the silence, I found the distance and the courage to take up the project once again. Little by little, I freed myself from the Count. In 1999 and 2000, I wrote a narra-tive about this history, composing it from my archives. From time to time, René de Chambrun phoned me. I could well sense that, at that time, confu-sion had taken hold of his mind. In the early months of 2001, everything was nearly fi nished. I sent the typed manuscript. The Count had read it, in sections, then reread it. One evening, he had thrown it in the garbage. When the secretary questioned him, he responded that the text was old, that he had written it a very long time ago. He had confused the books and gotten lost in the stories.

June 20th, I went to Paris to put together a fi le of photos. When I rang at 6 place du Palais-Bourbon, a young housekeeper opened the door. I had a strange impression; it was as if I had never left. In the offi ces of the Founda-tion, which had been moved to the ground fl oor of the apartment after he left 52 avenue des Champs-Élysées, I chose the photos. René de Chambrun arrived. He looked through them. One showed Pierre Laval and Fernand de Brinon38 at Vichy. “Ah! the traitor!” said the Count, pointing his fi nger at Brinon. In another, Laval and Scapini, “the ambassador of prisoners,” the Count specifi ed. He took another one. In it, you could see him with Josée before their marriage, young and smiling.

“The young lovebirds!” he said. “She is very beautiful.”“Have a copy made for me,” he asked the secretary.“But sir, it is yours!”“Yes, but have a copy made, all the same.”He continued to look at the photos, getting lost in his memories.I chose my photos and left.

The book came out in February 2002.39 When I returned to 6 bis place du Palais-Bourbon, the Count was very ill. He received me, but was ex-hausted, lost. He died on 19 May. I attended his burial mass. Some months later, I returned and fl ipped through the pages of the guest register of “Mr.


René, Count of Chambrun, Basilica Saint-Clotilde, Friday 24 May 2002.” Among the names of those who had signed, I found Diana Mosley’s, wife of the English fascist, one of the famous Mitford sisters. I had come to the end of the story. In the now unoccupied apartment, which had become a mu-seum of memory, and in the offi ces, the archives were preserved. But now, the new people in charge of the Foundation prefer to promote the La Fayette collection, less somber and more promising, and which greatly interests the Americans.

In Toulouse, in a corner of my apartment, I had put away my Laval boxes. I recently reopened them. Rereading my notebooks, which had be-come archives, I noticed what Josée had written in her diaries about the dresses she had worn.

“Wednesday, 22 March 1939. Lelong Collection. Ordered a blue evening gown embroidered with shells.”

“Thursday, 7 January 1943. Schiaparelli, to choose a robe of lavender-blue fl annel.”

“Monday, 17 April 1944. Balenciaga. Ordered a grey and white printed robe with sequins.”

After the war, it was Chanel, Dior, Saint Laurent.

In Paris and above all Châteldon, she had had her dresses arranged in armoires. “Do not throw to the wind,” she wrote in her testament, “the dresses which are at Châteldon and which may constitute a sort of museum of clothing over the last ten or twenty years.”

From the secretary of the Foundation, I learned that Hubert de Given-chy had asked for her Balenciaga gowns for the museum dedicated to that fashion designer. The remaining gowns were fi nally given to the Galliera museum. In thinking back over it today, I see that I had been, to a large ex-tent, ensnared by my passion for documents and objects and had neglected to open the armoires—if such a thing would have been allowed—to look at these gowns and to read them as marvelous archives in their own right. I should have told their story, read what Josée had written about them and the times she wore them. 40

Continuing my rediscoveries, I found copies of seating charts, menus, lists of invited guests that, together, form an exceptional narrative of high society life. I carried on and found, last night, notes she had taken when reading, written in notebooks or on papers gathered together in folders. I had noted a few of these phrases that I had placed here and there, among my pages, to illustrate or supplement archival documents. Among the choices of that avid reader, I note the following:


“On ne peut rien prévoir, mais toute chose arrive” (Anna de Noailles).[One can foresee nothing, but everything happens].

“Il faut mourir plusieurs fois durant qu’on est en vie” (Nietzsche).[It is necessary to die several times while one is still alive].

“Le bonheur cette chose qui n’existe pas et pourtant on sait quand on l’a perdu” (Lord Queensberry).[Happiness, that thing which does not exist, and yet one knows when one has lost it].

“Notre part de responsabilité, là aussi, pourrait être un jour grande. Il suffi t de peu de chose pour déterminer le cours d’un fl euve entre deux versants” (Alexis Leger).[Our share in responsibility, that too, one day may be considered large. Very little suf-fi ces to determine the course of a river between two slopes]. 41

“L’avenir fantôme aux mains vides qui promet tout et qui n’a rien” (Victor Hugo).[The future, that phantom with empty hands, who promises everything and who has nothing].

In these prophecies, in verse or in prose, I fi nd what is, perhaps, essen-tial: the fi erce refusal of doubt, the exclusion of any sense of guilt, and last but not least, the poor argument of fate. Words taken from others, out of context, to say that never—O! Never!—were we wrong.

Notes

1. Yves Pourcher, Laval vu par sa fi lle (Paris, 2002). 2. For example, his most famous work: Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms:

The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Balti-more, MD, 1980). Ginzburg was infl uenced by the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.

3. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York, 2001).

4. Philippe Burrin, La France à l’heure allemande 1940–1944 (Paris, 1995). 5. Yves Pourcher, Les Jours de guerre. La vie des Français au jour le jour entre 1914 et

1918 (Paris, 1994). 6. The Auvergne region of France is located in the heart of the Massif Central.

Its capital is Clermont-Ferrand and the people from that region are called Auvergnats.

7. During the nineteenth century, a number of people from the Auvergne had moved to Paris to ply their trade as coal merchants.

8. Yves Pourcher, Les Maîtres de granit. Les notables de Lozère du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours (Paris, 1987 [1995]).

9. Laval always wore a white tie.10. Since the sixteenth century, the village of Châteldon has produced a renowned

mineral water.


11. French term of address used for lawyers.12. Edmonde Charles-Roux, L’Irrégulière, ou mon itinéraire Chanel (Paris, 1974).13. Fred Kupferman, Laval (Paris, 1987) and Jean Paul Cointet, Pierre Laval (Paris,

1993). There are others, notably Geoffrey Warner, Pierre Laval and the eclipse of France (London, 1968).

14. The Josée and René de Chambrun Foundation was created in 1959.15. In Paris.16. Located at 6 bis place du Palais-Bourbon, in the seventh arrondissement of Paris,

near the Assemblée Nationale.17. René de Chambrun was the son of Général de Chambrun and Clara Longworth,

originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. He is one of the descendants of General La Fay-ette. His uncle, Nicholas Longworth (1869–1931)—brother of his mother—was speaker of the House of Representatives. He married Alice Roosevelt, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt.

18. Puy-de-Dôme and Cantal are departments in the Auvergne region.19. Clara Longworth Chambrun was a specialist on Shakespeare. She also wrote

Shadows Like Myself (New York, 1936) and Shadows Lengthen, the Story of My Life (New York, 1949).

20. After the war, René de Chambrun revived the business of Baccarat Crystal, of which he had become the principal stockholder, president, and CEO.

21. Joseph Caillaux, important politician, president of the Council of Ministers. This dedication shows the kinds of relationships that left-wing, non-communist poli-ticians had before the war.

22. These were the services of the Propagandastaffel von Gross Paris, which controlled the press, the radio, and propaganda in the occupied zone.

23. René Bousquet, named secretary general of the police by Laval in April 1942. He organized the repression and deportation of Jews, including the roundup of Vel d’Hiv in July 1942. Condemned in 1949 to the minimum sentence of fi ve years of dégradation nationale [loss of civil rights], Bousquet afterwards led a brilliant career at the French Bank of Indo-China and in the press. He socialized with the former president of the Republic, François Mitterrand. Bousquet was killed by a mentally unstable person on 8 June 1993.

24. Laval’s law fi rm represented businessmen, corporations, and fi nancial groups. The father of Fernande, whose maiden name was Hyaffi l, was a wealthy ship-owner who transported merchandise between Rouen and Algeria, notably for Pernod. Several associates in Laval’s law fi rm were Jewish (Maurice Blum, Roger Stora).

25. José Maria Sert (1874–1945), Spanish painter. In New York, he decorated the Waldorf Astoria hotel, the Rockefeller Center, and the apartment of the Harrison Williams family, as well as their home on Long Island.

26. Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (1852–1905), explorer of the African continent and founder of the French Congo. He married Thérèse de Chambrun, eldest sister of the General de Chambrun, René’s father.

27. In his second marriage, Mosley married Diana Mitford. They lived in France after the war.

28. A sulfi de is a sort of paperweight or ball made of crystal.29. Laval parle … Notes et Mémoires rédigés à Fresnes d’août à octobre 1945, preface by

his daughter, Mme. Josée Laval de Chambrun (Geneva, 1948); translated into English as The Diary of Pierre Laval (New York, 1948).


30. In addition to his other writings in French, see René de Chambrun, I Saw France Fall. Will She Rise Again? (New York, 1940); René de Chambrun, Pierre Laval: Trai-tor or Patriot? (New York, 1984).

31. Herbert Hoover, president of the United States of America, met with Laval in 1931 during an offi cial trip.

32. During the Occupation, Ernst Achenbach headed the political section of the Ger-man embassy in Paris. He was one of the creators of the anti-Jewish policy. In April 1943, Achenbach was called back to Berlin because his wife was American. A lawyer after the war, he was a deputy in the Bundestag, then a deputy to the European Union. His designation as European commissioner in Brussels was withdrawn after the revelations of his Nazi past by Beate Klarsfeld.

33. On 27 August 1941, in the Borgnis-Desbordes barracks in Versailles, a man fi red at Laval and Marcel Déat during a review ceremony for the fi rst contingent of Légion des Volontaires Français against Bolshevism.

34. L’homme qui joue avec le feu, directed by Jean de Limur, comedy, 1942.35. Charles de Chambrun, French ambassador, brother of the General de Chambrun

and René’s uncle.36. Sigmaringen was where the representatives of the Vichy government and col-

laborators took refuge after the Liberation of France and until the defeat of Germany.

37. Vichy became the capital of the French state under German occupation. The Hotel du Parc was the seat of government.

38. Fernand de Brinon, representative of the Vichy government to the German High Command in Paris, then secretary of state under Laval, was one of the principal artisans of collaboration. He was executed by fi ring squad on 15 April 1947.

39. Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fi lle. 40. I followed this path, changing to the register of fi ction and writing a novel, Yves

Pourcher, Trois coupes de champagne (Paris, 2009).41. Letter from A. Leger to Philippe Berthelot, Beijing, 3 January 1917, in Saint-

John Perse, Œuvres completes (Paris, 1994), 812.

Laval Museum

Documents

Transcript of Laval Museum