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- <text id=89TT2275>
- <title>
- Sep. 04, 1989: Remembrance
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Sep. 04, 1989 Rock Rolls On:Rolling Stones
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD WAR II, Page 46
- REMEMBRANCE
- </hdr><body>
- <p>"I Heard the Sound of Planes"
- </p>
- <p>By Genevra Willey
- </p>
- <p> Now 83, Willey was living with her husband Jim, an Army
- captain, ten miles from Pearl Harbor.
- </p>
- <p> It was a quiet morning, and we were lying in bed, talking
- about what the day would bring. Suddenly I heard the sound of
- planes, and I said, "Those aren't our planes." Jim called his
- base and asked if he should come down. They said no.
- </p>
- <p> The sound got louder, and he called back. "Get the hell down
- here," they told him. By then there was no doubt we were being
- attacked. They were machine-gunning the road -- dirt splashing
- all over. A bomb dropped about 600 yds. from our house. I went
- out on the back porch, and the planes were swooping so low I
- could see the pilots inside.
- </p>
- <p> The next day friends moved in with us. Their house had been
- riddled with machine-gun fire. We blacked out the house and had
- seven kids sleeping on cots in the living room.
- </p>
- <p>"The Soldiers Behaved Well"
- </p>
- <p>By Arletty
- </p>
- <p> Born in 1898, Arletty was France's most famous actress when
- war broke out. With such other French artists as Maurice
- Chevalier, Jean Marais and Sacha Guitry, she performed through
- the Nazi Occupation. After Paris was liberated, she was
- imprisoned for consorting with a German officer.
- </p>
- <p> The Occupation was really very peaceful. The soldiers
- behaved well. After a while, we ceased to notice them. The poor
- people suffered terribly, but we artists always found ways to
- buy coal or wood. As for food, we didn't eat a lot because we
- were all looking after our figures. Makeup was hard to come by,
- as were silk stockings. We used to wear Pan-Cake makeup on our
- legs, so it would seem as if we were wearing stockings. As an
- artist, I was committed only to my art, so it made sense for me
- to work. But people were jealous of my success and were only
- too glad to arrest me for a love affair that was none of their
- business.
- </p>
- <p>A "Very Polite" Hitler
- </p>
- <p>By Edda Mussolini Ciano
- </p>
- <p> Ciano, 78, is the eldest daughter of Mussolini, who had her
- husband Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italy's wartime Foreign Minister,
- executed for treason in January 1944. Her Rome flat is decorated
- with plaques bearing the likeness of her father, who was shot
- dead by partisans in 1945.
- </p>
- <p> I was at a hotel in Turin when it was first bombed (by the
- British) in June 1940. We all went downstairs to take shelter in
- the cellars. Beniamino Gigli (a famous operatic tenor) was there
- with his family, and so was Gianni Agnelli (now Fiat's
- chairman). Gigli was terrified of the bombs and exclaimed, "Oh,
- my God, I'm going to lose my voice!"
- </p>
- <p> I didn't see the Fuhrer as the caricature he has since been
- made out to be. He was very polite and had a soft spot for me. I
- maintain that it was not the Fuhrer who wanted things to happen
- the way they did.
- </p>
- <p>Life in the Resistance
- </p>
- <p>By Jacques Chaban-Delmas
- </p>
- <p> Premier of France from 1969 to 1972, Chaban-Delmas, now 74,
- headed a spy network in Paris for the Resistance, filching
- economic secrets. He was the only leader to stay in France
- throughout the war.
- </p>
- <p> Most men in the field worked an average of 40 days before
- they were arrested, but I managed to keep going for 3 1/2
- years. I must have changed addresses at least 20 times, and I
- changed my name so often I would momentarily forget which alias
- I was using. I would drop my information in "mailboxes" around
- Paris manned by the Resistance. It could be a restaurant, even
- a rock near a tree -- the places kept changing from week to week
- to keep ahead of the Germans.
- </p>
- <p>"It Was Incredibly Macabre"
- </p>
- <p>By Otto Von Habsburg
- </p>
- <p> The son of Karl, Austria's last Emperor (1916-19), Habsburg
- is now 76.
- </p>
- <p> The evening the government fled Paris, former U.S.
- Ambassador to Belgium Hugh Gibson invited us to a dinner at the
- Ritz with Clare Boothe Luce and a collaborator of Polish
- General Vladislav Sikorski. It was incredibly macabre: the city
- was two-thirds surrounded by German troops, the sky was lit up
- with artillery fire, and there, at the Ritz, everything was as
- it had always been: waiters in tails, the food, the wine. The
- proprietor asked us to sign his guest book. Years later, I
- learned from Field Marshal Rommel's chief of staff that he and
- Rommel were the next ones to sign, a few days later.
- </p>
- <p> We left Paris the next day for Bordeaux, where we arranged
- for Portuguese visas for as many Austrians as we could. By that
- time I was on a list of 49 persons the Nazis had asked the
- French to hand over. When we arrived at the Spanish frontier, it
- was closed on order of the Germans. I thought this was the end.
- But a customs official gave me a sign to follow him, led me
- behind the customs shed and said, "I know exactly who you are.
- Have you heard that resistance will continue? A certain General
- de Gaulle has called on us to continue. I shall leave for
- England tonight, and I could not care less how many of you I let
- pass." And so we reached Spain.
- </p>
- <p>The Unsated Ogre
- </p>
- <p>By Jean Lacouture
- </p>
- <p> The French historian and De Gaulle biographer, now 68,
- thought that after swallowing Czechoslovakia and Poland, the
- Nazis would stop.
- </p>
- <p> People thought the ogre had eaten and would be sated. Sooner
- or later there would be some sort of American mediation, Under
- Secretary of State Sumner Welles would come to Europe and say,
- Be reasonable, stop. "The white Marne," they called it (an
- allusion to the World War I battle) -- a battle that would shed
- no blood.
- </p>
- <p> When I got to Bordeaux (after the Germans had attacked and
- were nearing Paris), my parents had heard De Gaulle's June 18
- broadcast and were already Gaullists. I had just been through
- this cataclysm -- a debacle, the country slipping away -- and I
- thought, This guy is crazy. I was for an armistice. What else
- could we do?
- </p>
- <p> My greatest shock during the Occupation was the day I
- encountered an old lady I knew in Bordeaux. I didn't know she
- was Jewish, and I saw her walking down the street, feigning not
- to recognize me and trying to hide the yellow star sewn to her
- coat. I was filled with absolute shame. And I knew we were
- living in a terrible world.
- </p>
- <p>"Treated Like Pariahs"
- </p>
- <p>By Elisabeth De Miribel
- </p>
- <p> Now 74, De Miribel was an aide to General Charles de Gaulle
- in London when he led the Free French forces.
- </p>
- <p> When I first arrived in London, there were 800 Frenchmen.
- After France capitulated to Germany six months later, there
- were 20. Most returned to join the Vichy government since they
- knew the English were going to fight. Those who were about to
- return to France treated us like pariahs. They would cross the
- street to avoid running into us. They thought we were fools. I
- received a letter from my father prohibiting me from using my
- name in the service of the "Judeo-Communist-Gaullist
- conspiracy." He was very Petainist until the Germans marched
- into Paris; then he joined the Resistance.
- </p>
- <p>". . . It Was Awful"
- </p>
- <p>By Robert Merle
- </p>
- <p> Merle, 81, was a French army interpreter for the British
- forces when captured at Dunkirk. He is the author of the novel
- Weekend at Dunkirk.
- </p>
- <p> The British sent all kinds of boats. Big ones, little ones,
- paddle steamers, yachts, everything. It was gorgeous weather,
- hot and beautiful. Guys were lying on the dunes, shirts off,
- watching the combat between the British and German fighters.
- When they'd see a German fighter go down, they'd applaud.
- </p>
- <p> The most extraordinary thing was that the Germans did not
- machine-gun the thousands of men on the beach. The Stukas did
- attack the boats, and I remember one in particular, a paddleboat
- that had been bombed and caught fire. There were maybe 100 to
- 200 men grouped in the back of the boat because the front was
- in flames. But the wind kept whipping the fire back on them, and
- the men were crying. It was a kind of moan, but a collective
- moan, an inhuman moan. I tried to drag a man out of the water
- and up onto the beach, but there was an obstacle. It was half
- a human body. The head and shoulders were gone, the torso cut
- right away . . . Ah, it was awful.
- </p>
- <p>Living with the Blitz
- </p>
- <p>By Brenda Scott
- </p>
- <p> The wife of a London physician, Scott was 17 and living with
- her family on the city's outskirts during the blitz.
- </p>
- <p> My father had an air-raid shelter built in the garden. It
- was very claustrophobic, like a small ship's cabin with four
- bunks. We had some books, some torches, emergency rations and
- some sort of electrical supply. We slept in siren suits, which
- were like jump suits; mine was air-force blue, and my mother's
- was burgundy.
- </p>
- <p> You could always hear the Germans coming because their
- planes had such a distinctive engine noise. It wasn't so bad if I
- could be outside and see, but it was this feeling of being
- almost in a tomb. The awful thing was not to be doing anything.
- But we all knitted things for the armed forces, and so we would
- take our knitting out to the shelter.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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