Deciphering 80-year-old "immaculate and illegible" handwriting ...in French

     A couple of years ago, a historian friend in France went to the Drôme Department Archives, and photographed about 50 pages of correspondence that were by, about, to, or involving my grandfather. More than half of the pages were handwritten, so I went all ostrich-like for a couple of years, because reading 80-year-old cursive handwriting is hard work, but reading it in a foreign language is 10 times more difficult.

    Procrastinating had a silver lining, though - transcription tools have improved massively in the last two years, and I took advantage of AI to create the initial transcriptions. Then I did a stare and compare to ensure the transcript was correct (despite the improvements, AI does make mistakes, even with the best handwriting).  That worked well for four of the five correspondents (click to enlarge the samples):

The school teacher:

    No matter what country someone is from, a prerequisite for being a school teacher, is having excellent handwriting, and this guy's was among the best I've ever seen.  Seriously, his handwriting could be turned into a font - I'd call it Headmaster Cursive.

The police officer:

    His handwriting is actually pretty neat and easier to read (most of the time) than my grandfather's.  He also leaves a lot of white space between lines, which improves the accuracy of the AI transcription.  But, there is an unfortunate side effect of such neat writing - it exposes the fact that the guy made an unfortunate number of errors in capitalization, punctuation, and grammar. The pattern of errors the spell-checker flagged was completely different from everyone else - it wanted to correct practically every verb tense, for example, and he didn't bother with diacritical marks much.  This isn't to say he was a poor writer, exactly - his writing was clear and easy to understand, and it translated nicely.   

The farmer:

    This guy's writing was also reasonably neat, but very slanty with lots of flourishes. He was the oldest of the authors here; he was born in 1891; it may have been a generational style difference.  His writing also didn't seem to have many errors.

The engineer (my grandfather):

    Grandpa's handwriting is pretty average, neither particularly good nor bad. I'm used to it, so it's one of the easiest for me to read, even though it's actually the second messiest of the batch.  

The doctor (and commander)

The handwriting in black within the square stamp, and
the word, "Suisse" is actually my grandfather's. 

   At a glance, his penmanship doesn't seem so bad, but it is an unusually neat sample of his writing. It says (with clear words in blue, unclear words in brackets): 

"[lury/hevy] cher Lubinski,
Quel est actuellement l’organisme
chargé [ou/du] placement [on/des] enfants [eu/de]
[France/Frcine]?

    You may or may not be able to tell at a glance, but the doctor's handwriting is by far the worst.  Seriously, we all know the jokes about doctors' handwriting, but I wouldn't have expected it to be true across centuries (ok, only 80 years) and cultures.  Speaking of doctor jokes, here's one:

Hmmmm... leaning toward the 2nd one down,
but the 4th one is also a candidate.

 

    Here's a more typical sample of his writing:

    I got:

[recevori] [pecconuel/personnel] [le] [depau/dépôt/pefau] des [fancors/Français].

[fauell/Veuillez] [poscuilor/présenter] un [horuenp/bonjour] à  

Madame Lubinska et [?/aux]  

à [leor/tous] amical [forevelles/souvenir]

[signature]

    So yeah, immaculate and illegible is about right. 

My blood is not for the likes of Ixodes scapularis

I hates ticks. I hates them, I do.

I keep picking places to live that are the Grand Central Stations of Ticks. Hell, I even grew up in Missouri, which is no slouch when it comes to ticks (though it doesn't compete with New Jersey, and especially not with northern Minnesota).

One tick-borne illness 20 years ago is more than enough (Lyme Disease, but we caught it early, so no long-term effects), and I have a friend with another, though I don't know what it's called.  

Frankly, if I could push a button and incinerate all the ticks, I'd be sorely tempted.

Two days ago, I spent about 30 minutes pulling weeds. At bedtime, I remembered that I needed a tick check, and we found three of them attached to me - the tiny ones you can barely see.   We removed them (Lyme risk is low - they have to be on you for more than 24 hours before you are at risk for the disease, and these three had been on me for as much as 12 hours, but probably less) and went to bed.

But not to sleep. 

I got maybe 4 hours of sleep that night, because every little itch and tickle sent a jolt of adrenaline down my spine, and I'd feel around for the little blood sucker that I knew wasn't really there, but my imagination kept gleefully whispering in my ear, "What if?" 

By last night, I was so tired that I went to bed early and slept long and heavily, and now it's hard to shake the grogginess.

But I'm having my coffee, and I'm sitting here shielded from nearly head to toe in coveralls. Soon, I will put on my boots, hat, and mosquito netting, leaving only my hands exposed, because my blood will not be consumed by the likes of ticks.

In the spring of 2024,
protected from mosquitos and ticks.

1945: Arthur's Bicycles

French bicycle troops making their way to the front, 1939 
Source: The Atlantic

    I've been working through about 50 pages of correspondence that are to, by, or about my grandfather.  The letters had been in his commanding officer's files, but are now located in the Drôme Department archives in France. These letters are a lot of fun to read; it's like a peek into their lives in the immediate aftermath of WW2.  

    Anyway, I discovered a bicycle in one of the letters:  

P.S.: When will you come and get the bicycle that ROUX abandoned? If we delay, someone might steal it one day.

--Arthur Lubinski to Louis Robin, 9 February 1945

    Louis Robin was a local butcher who served in the same maquis unit as my grandfather, and after demobilizing, Mr. Robin helped to coordinate some of the efforts of the maquis food cooperatives. It makes sense - as a butcher, he had easier access to food and distribution channels.  He also served in the same section of the same Maquis company as my grandfather, an "SHR" group that supported all the different platoons and groups within the unit.  Léon Roux was a school teacher who seemed to know everyone in the area and had been an officer in the same Maquis unit, someone else my grandfather would have known well.

    Grandpa Arthur must have reached out to Mr. Roux about the bike, because I found another mention in letter dated a few weeks later:

     As agreed, I sent the bicycle to Mr. DRAGON last Monday.

--Léon Roux to Arthur Lubinski, 21 March 1945

    I certainly don't know for sure that it's the same bicycle, but from context, it seems like might be: Léon Roux left a bike behind, and Grandpa started writing people to find out where it needed to be, and finally managed to get the issue resolved.

    It's been 80 years since these letters were written, and I doubt the bike still exists, but I can hope, right? If you are interested, here is a series of wonderful photos of the bicycles used during WW2. Did you know both sides had bicycle machine-gun troops? And that they had bicycle ambulances, and tandem bikes that accommodated up to five people?

    Bicycles played an important part throughout my grandfather's story - he didn't own a car until sometime after he moved to the US in 1947 though he learned to drive while he was still in Europe (the government of France provided him with a car to use while he worked on the reconstruction). But after the invasion of Belgium in 1940, enough infrastructure had been damaged in the attack that public transportation wasn't an option for a while, so he rode his bike 40 km to work (about 2 hours each direction).  

    I don't know for sure what happened to that bike - but I thought perhaps he might have given it to his brother Paul when my grandparents escaped to France.  About a year later, Paul got himself from Belgium to Scotland via Switzerland, France, Spain and Gibraltar, but I mostly don't know how he did it.  Since he too was escaping, I thought maybe he pedaled the backroads at night on his brother's bike, and so I was thrilled when I came across this photo at the article linked above:

Soldiers walk their bikes along a partly frozen lake
on an alpine pass in Switzerland in 1943.
Source: The Atlantic

    It proves that my guesswork regarding how Uncle Paul got himself across Europe wasn't completely implausible. It took him about 18 months to work his way from Belgium to the UK, but about half of it was spent in the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp in Spain.  Even excluding his incarceration, it took a long time, so I think he couldn't have just taken a train, because then the trip would have been measured in days, not months.  So, I think he must have made the journey on foot, on his bike, with the help of underground networks, or some combination of all three (which is how I depicted it in Paul's book).

    After Grandpa escaped to and settled in rural France, he got a job as a farmhand to ensure his family stayed fed. I wrote — and this next bit is completely made up — that he borrowed a bicycle from his landlord so that he could get around the neighborhood more easily.  After they immigrated to the US, Grandpa was forced to buy a car, but I think he must have been nostalgic for his time pedaling around Belgium, because at some point he acquired another bicycle. I recall seeing it in his garage in Tulsa, although I never actually saw him ride it.  

    Interestingly, my grandmother never learned how to ride, and one of my aunts either didn't learn, or had difficulty learning. I too had trouble mastering the bicycle, which makes me wonder if there was a genetic component - but I had a gross motor development delay that meant I was poor at alternating movements (pedaling a bike, or the crawl stroke in swimming) but good at mirror-image movements (breast stroke or jumping jacks). I outgrew it by eight or nine, when I finally learned to ride a bike. 

Spring 1945: Arthur and Léon investigate the .... "Lentil Affair"

The opening of Léon Roux's 19 March 1945 letter
to Commander Planas

    It seems that bureaucracy is universal.  

    I first came across the Lentil Affair (and oddly dramatic-sounding name for something that must have been incredibly irritating for the participants) when I was going through some correspondence in the Drôme Department archives that was to, from, or about my grandfather.

    After the liberation of the region of France where my grandparents lived, there were still wartime shortages of firewood, food, paper, and many other things.  And then with the dissolution of Maquis units all over France, came the problem of what to do with the men and women who had fought to free France from the Nazis. Some maquisards joined the French army, but many (my grandfather was one) demobilized. Grandpa was lucky enough to have a job waiting for him (he was tasked with organizing the rebuilding of the Valence area), but others did not.  And with no jobs, people got even less to eat.

    Captain Planas was put in charge of the Valence-area FFI Amicable Association, which I believe must have been similar to our Veterans Association. In other words, he helped ensure his former soldiers and their families had access to inexpensive food and firewood. I think it must have been like going to work for the VA.

    And that is how, in late 1944, the Lentil Affair got started, commencing a six-month-long ordeal that punished just about everyone involved:

LENTIL AFFAIR REPORT

     When the 4th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Drôme was dissolved on September 20, 1944, it was agreed to establish among all - mobilized and demobilized - a veterans cooperative aimed at helping comrades in need, and facilitating better access to provisions for everyone.

     Lieutenant ROUX of Petits Robins, now demobilized, began searching throughout the Diois region for farmers willing to sell lentils, potatoes, apples, and other vegetables at fair prices for everyone.

     These negotiations were carried out openly, and a truck that we chartered, went to collect a load of lentils and apples, but in the meantime, the police took notice, and when the truck was on its way back, it was stopped by the police, and the goods were nearly confiscated.  Thanks to the personal intervention of Lt. ROUX, who was escorting the vehicle, the truck reached its destination safely.  

     Later, the farmers who had delivered the lentils were pursued by the Economic Control Office, a formal report was issued, and they were fined.  Once informed, Lt. ROUX phoned to notify us of the situation, and the Commander intervened with the police captain to have the legal actions stopped.

     He replied that the orders had come directly from the Ministry of the Interior, and that they were strict, but that it might still be possible to stop the matter by intervening with the Economic Control and General Supply Office, which we did, and I personally appealed to Superintendent FOLLET, and Former Intendant RAYMOND of the Maquis promised to intervene.

     However, around December 15, we were informed that the farmers were required to pay a fine before December 28. I again intervened with Superintendent FOLLET and Mr. DONNADIEU requesting that the prosecutions be suspended.  

     I thought the matter was settled, but about a week ago, we learned that the fine for each farmer had not been canceled, but had been reduced to 1,100 francs per farmer.

--Mr. Mammouth, date unknown, but probably early spring 1945.

    (Using all caps for last names is a convention used in French writing).

    From that, it looks like Léon Roux started buying food from local farmers in the fall of 1944. The following spring, he said this to Commander Planas:

Indeed, Lubinsky informed me that our 'lentil affair' was over. But I fear there has been another mistake, for the theater of operations was not Valdrôme; rather, it was Beaurières, or more exactly La Bâtie-Crémezin, a few kilometers away. But I will settle this question with Lubinsky.

-- Léon Roux, 19 March 1945

    Note: The misspelling of my grandfather's name (Lubinsky when it should have been Lubinski was a common mistake. For what it's worth, my family is Polish, and the suffix is spelled "-ski" in Poland.  They spell it "-sky" in Russia.

    Two days later, Mr. Roux sent a rather grouchy letter to my grandfather:

     Having been entrusted by Commander PLANAS with the unfortunate matter of the lentils purchased by the 4th Company’s Cooperative, I requested a report from MAMMOUTH, who previously dealt with the case. Please find the attached copy of this report.

     With this document, I visited Mr. FOLLET and Mr. DONNADIEU and there I was informed that the matter is settled and that the Mayor of VALDROME confirmed this in writing. Yet last Sunday you informed me that the lentils were not purchased in VALDROME but elsewhere, and that the fines were never reimbursed to the farmers.

    As for me, I deeply regret having become involved in this matter without having been properly briefed. Although this is unpleasant for me, I will resume inquiries as soon as you provide a clear and detailed account of the facts.

-- Léon Roux, 21 March 1945

    And finally two weeks later, Mr. Roux mentioned it a final time in another letter to my grandfather:

     Yes, Mr. Brun’s case was the only 'lentil affair'. He is the only one who received ... and paid!

-- Léon Roux, 4 April 1945

    Now, I have no idea who Mr. Brun is. Was he one of the farmers? Or was he an FFI member from one of the units based near Valence?  I'm guessing he was a farmer who sold lentils to the FFI cooperative, and that he received a citation and paid it. I can only hope that he was reimbursed for the fine, and that the Lentil Affair was genuinely over.

1944: Who then are you, Monsieur René Payot?

 "Who then are you, Monsieur René Payot, that in homes all over France, people gather every week to hear your voice, just as they likely do across all the oppressed countries of Europe?"

--Arthur Lubinski, October 1944 

René Payot
Source: Le Dauphine Libéré

     I've shared my grandfather's tribute to René Payot, but like (I suspect) most Americans, I'd never heard of him before coming across my grandfather's article. From what I've learned about him since, I think he must hold a place in Europe that is similar to that of Walter Cronkite on this side of the Atlantic, and Grandpa's tribute to Payot makes me want to read the transcripts of Payot's 12 or so broadcasts from the summer of 1944, though I haven't been able to find them.

    From what I can tell, Payot gave hope to millions of people who were living under Nazi occupation. It's hard for me to even imagine what that must have been like, gaining hope (rather than despair) from a journalist, because like most Americans, I have never lived under foreign occupation. And while I'm old enough to remember Mr. Cronkite, I am now living through a time of unprecedented distrust of the media. 

    There's not a whole lot about Payot on the internet.  There is no article about him on the English-language Wikipedia, and the one on the French Wiki* site is pretty rudimentary.

* If like me, you don't speak French, download translation extensions for your browser, and then the page will automatically display in whatever language you want.

    I did find out that in 1997, Michel Caillat published a book called René Payot, An Ambiguous Look at War, but it's in French and out-of-print.  I learned that his broadcasts were well-known for his objectivity and lack of spin, that he was trusted by the French, Belgians, and Swiss for being trustworthy, but I knew that already from my grandfather's writing.

    Payot was anti-communist and anti-Nazi, and while he initially supported the Vichy government in France, by 1942, he had become a staunch anti-fascist, and a supporter of Charles de Gaulle.  I did find that there is a scholarship in his name that is still being awarded today; it is supported by the radio stations of the French-speaking public media in Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Canada, among others.

    Other than that, my internet searches turned up little else, so I resorted to using AI to search for me (I know, I know), but it did gather a bit more than I had found before:

• His radio show was broadcast via the powerful transmitter in Sottens, Switzerland. Because it released unbiased information (the Swiss were officially neutral, though Payot was not), and because the Swiss army recognized how important unbiased reporting was, they protected it throughout the war.  
• He used the pseudonym "Puck," and was "known for his sharp political critiques," and sometimes satire.
• He was committed to Swiss federalism and democracy.
• He was inducted into the French Legion of Honour.
• There's a square named for him near the University of Geneva.
• His wartime broadcasts focused on communism, Nazism, and totalitarianism.
• He was good at analyzing complicated international events and reporting on them with a great deal of nuance to his listeners in a way that gained trust, by reporting the good and the bad (something the BBC also did during the war, and also gained trust because of it).
• His radio show continued until 1969.

      Perhaps Mr. Payot isn't well-known in America today, but when he died in Geneva in May of 1970, the New York Times published an obituary for him in the May 16, 1970 issue.

October 1944: Arthur writes a tribute (and proves he is a damn fine writer)

     It's funny what you find when digging through a loved one's papers after they die. There are the usual expected items, like paperwork and old bills, and often a surprise or two, but sometimes, one is lucky enough to unearth a beautiful story, a gift to those who are left behind.   This is about one such gift.

    But this story is quite different from Grandpa's other writing from that time.  He wrote it in his native French for one thing, and for another, I think he was trying to be eloquent. He always was a good writer, but this is something extraordinary.  It must have been important to him, because three years later, he carried this handwritten original across an ocean, and five decades later we found it in his files.

    And unlike his other personal writing, he didn't write it on his beloved yellow legal pads.  Instead, he wrote it on a blank police report of all things.   

Police report used in Valence, France during the
occupation. This is page 3 of a 5-page tribute.

    After France was liberated, government entities stopped using forms that said "d'Etat" on them (as it was associated with the collaborationist Vichy government, which by the end of the war was tremendously unpopular), and so the Valence PD relegated this particular report to be used as scrap paper.  Paper was still in short supply due to wartime shortages, and so scrap paper got used instead of being discarded.  Grandpa's FFI unit also took over the Valence police barracks immediately after the city was liberated at the end of August, 1944, so he would have had easy access to such scrap paper. 

    I've written about the first part of this article before - when I compared Grandpa's three versions of his escape up a mountain, with Dr. Michel Planas's version of the same event, but I now have access to much better transcription and translation tools, and I re-did the translation (as always favoring the literal and use of cognates as much as possible, yet making sure it works in English). Grandpa also used some very complex French sentence constructions that resulted in confusing phrases in the translation that sometimes contradicted what he actually said.  This time, however, I'm including the second part, a tribute to a Swiss war correspondent named René Payot.

    When I finished the new translation, I was left in awe at the beauty of his writing, which reads like it was written by statesman speechwriter with a side gig as a naturalist poet undergoing basic training. He writes of forced marches and storms in the mountains, of the treasured miniature radio he used to listen to Payot, and finally of the freedom of speech and conscience.

    See for yourself (the original French is at the end of this article):

Tribute to René Payot

The marching orders have just been given. The Company is leaving its forward position on the plain to join its comrades holding the plateau some thousand meters above. The endless column snakes along the mountain paths and trails, sometimes visible from afar, and at others plunges into the woods, where it could be said that friendly foliage physically hides it from the gaze of foreign birds of prey.  

Little by little, the pace of our ascent slows. A mounting fatigue takes hold of each man, his shoulders bend under the burdens of his mountain pack, his weapons, and as much ammunition as it was humanly possible to carry. The march has gone on for several hours, yet the company is still not halfway there. Time slips by.  Each step aches, and every moment, the pain in our muscles intensifies. Just two hundred more meters, and it seems we’ll no longer be able to go on. But at the end of that distance, willpower overcomes exhaustion, and we keep moving forward... We are still 10 kilometers from our objective, and drops of sweat flood our faces, stream into our eyes, and blind us, yet we keep moving forward.... 

A storm crashes into the mountain. Lightning streaks through the sky. Thunder crashes, almost wanting to shatter the stony path. Torrential rain drenches the forest.  It could be said that the earth and heavens merge into a single chaos. Not a thread on us remains dry. Our shoes, heavy with the water they have drunk, wade through the sunken trail, now a sudden rushing stream.  But we keep going, we always keep going... 

Night has fallen by the time the company finally arrives at its destination. They are to take over two farms and a shepherd’s hut. In near-total darkness—there is no electricity on the plateau — the various groups settle into sheds and haylofts. Guards are posted and kitchens are set up. 

Despite his extreme fatigue and the cold, the "radio man" leaves the farm in search of the mule convoy, which must have gotten lost in the mountains. Into the opaque night, the darkest night, he hurries off to find the column to which he entrusted his field radio - the little parachuted gem knows as "Biscuit."  

    An hour later, he's finally tuned in. Headphones on, pencil in hand, he jots down a few notes by the flickering glow of a candle. A few minutes later, he announces the latest news: “No message for us - Russian troops advanced 40 kilometers in 24 hours in the Bialystok sector. - A thousand American bombers attacked German fuel depots. - Enemy counterattacks repelled by the British southwest of Caen, etc..." 

In each person’s mind, the same thought arises: “All this and nothing to report — just blood on the distant Polish plain…”  To the west, the long-awaited day has yet to come. 

However, the radio man continues: "Yes, but it's Saturday night - in 30 minutes, at 11:15 we can catch René Payot on shortwave." 

“That’s true,” someone replies. “We missed it yesterday - we must catch it tonight.” 

And despite their exhaustion, a small circle of officers remains beside the radio man to hear what René Payot has to say. 

Who then are you, Monsieur René Payot, that in homes all over France, people gather every week to hear your voice, just as they likely do across all the oppressed countries of Europe where those with the most influence know French?  What explains this extraordinary influence you hold over millions of listeners? 

Above all, we all felt that at heart, you were an ally. Your country’s neutrality did not allow you to express this openly. But we understood, courtesy of your finely ironic and nuanced phrases, the jabs only a Gaullist would catch on the fly but the heavy German mind would miss, and most of all, your transitions, for which no description could ever suffice. 

But this is not the principal reason for your influence. Your sympathy for the Allied cause alone cannot explain your prodigious success, because that sympathy was already shared with us by every voice of the free world. We saw in you, Monsieur René Payot, a man who, in dissecting and analyzing the lives of nations, sought to set aside his own passions and partisan sympathies, a man who strives to judge with logic and intelligence alone. 

Sometimes you arrive at conclusions that dishearten us, and no doubt yourself as well. Yet we still welcomed them, because it made us feel closer to reality.  On the other hand, when you gave us information or deductions that matched our deepest hopes, they brought us even greater satisfaction, because we knew they came from a search for truth, and not from propaganda-- whether for a just cause or a harmful one.

It must not happen in the world of tomorrow, a world that will no doubt be striving toward improving the human condition and achieving a more just distribution of wealth -- it must not happen, I say -- that in such a world, great open minds don't have a place. It is essential that in society there always be men who speak and write freely, obeying only an inner need to seek what seems to be genuine truth, even if their ideas may contradict official propaganda, party rule, or corporate trust. 

I hope that in countries that remained free, and those becoming so again, we will always find both the critical and independent minds like yours, but also the conditions that allow them to flourish and speak. 

In the long dark night of the Nazi occupation, those conditions no longer existed, and yet through the ether, from beyond the Gestapo’s control, came the flickering light of the purest torch of Truth and Liberty.

Arthur Lubinski

Valence, October 1944

   

 Damn. That's good.

    There are a few "it could be saids" and similar phrases still in place, which are a little awkward in English (but are probably smoother in the original French), but I left them in to ensure that I remained true to his actual words. I think he must have written the story for publication, because he calculated the number of words in the article.

Page 6 of Grandpa's article, listing the word counts

     I don't know, maybe it was published somewhere?

    When I read this, I'm amazed at his talent (he was an engineer by trade, and not a writer), but I also feel a little uneasy, because I think just maybe ... that he was a better writer than I am.  

    I've always known my grandfather was a good writer.  He wrote a couple of books and many industry papers. A petroleum engineer once told me the story of taking a casing design class, and the professor handed out a copy of my grandfather's 1962 paper Helical Buckling of Tubing Sealed in Packers, and told the class "when given the choice of what to take with you to a deserted island, Arthur Lubinki's paper, or a beautiful movie star ... always chose the paper. The movie star will age, but the paper will always be beautiful."  

    It's also fitting that there's an industry award named for him, the Arthur Lubinski OTC Best Paper Award, that honors the highest quality paper presented at the OTC conference.  The award is often called "a Lubinski," as in, "he won a Lubinski."

Hommage à René Payot

L’ordre de marche vient d’être donné. La Compagnie quitte la position avancée face à la plaine pour rejoindre les camarades qui tiennent le plateau à quelque mille mètres au-dessus d'elle. L’interminable colonne serpente sur les chemins et sentiers de montagne, tantôt visible de loin, tantôt s'engouffrant dans les bois, dant le feuillage complice la cache, dirait-on matériellement, à la une des oiseaux de proie étrangers.  

Petit à petit le rythme de la progression se ralentit. Un fatigue grandissante s'empare de chaque homme, dont les épaules ploient sous le fardeau du sac de montagne, des armes et l’autant de munitions que il était humainement possible d’emporter. La marche dure déjà depuis plusieurs heures et la compagnie m’est pas encore à mi-chemin. Le temps passe. Chaque pas commence de provoquer une peine musculaire qui s'amplifie rapidement. Encore deux cents mètres, et nous ne pourrons plus, semble-t-il avancer. Mais au bout de cette distance la volonté vaine la fatigue, et l’on avance toujours … Nous sommes encore à 10 km du but, des gouttes de sueur inondent le visage, coulent dans les yeux, aveuglent, mais on avance toujours … 

Un orage s'abat sur la montagne. Le ciel est sillonné d'éclairs. Le tonnerre semble vouloir faire éclater les rochers. Une pluie torrentielle inonde les bois. On dirait que le terre et les cieux se confondent en un seul chaos. H m’y a plus sur nous un fil de sec. Les souliers, alourdis par l’eau qu'ils ont bue, pataugent dans le chemin creux, devenu soudain un torrent. Mais on avance, on avance toujours … 

La nuit est tombée lors qu’enfin la compagnie arrive à destination. Elle occupera deux fermes et une bergerie. Dans la quasi-obscurité, car sur le plateau il m’y a point d'électricité, les divers groupes se cassent dans les remises et les fenières. On organise le service de gardes, les cuisines.

En depit de tomte sa fatigue et du froid, le “radio” quitte la ferme a la recherche de la colonne muletiere qui a du se pendre dans la montagne. Dans la nuit opaque, la nuit incre, il s'élance à la recherche de la colonne a la quelle il a confié son poste de radio de campagne, le petit bijou parachute, dénommé “biscuit”. Un heure après, il est enfin à l'écoute. Le casque aux oreilles, le crayon en main, il prend rapidement quelques notes à la lueur vacillante d’une bougie. Quelques minutes plus tard il annonce les dernières nouvelles: “Pas de message qui nous concerne - Avance rus de 40 km en 24 heures dans le secteur de Bialystok. - Mille bombardiers américains ont attaqué les ressources allemandes en carburants. – Contre-attaques ennemies repoussées par les Britanniques au sud-ouest de Caen, etc…” 

Dans l’esprit de chacun naît ce commentaires “Somme toute R.A.S., sang dans la plaine de Pologne si lointaine … À l'ouest de jour tant attendu n’est pas encore venue”. 

Cependant le "radio" ajoute: “Oui, mais c’est samedi aujourd'hui; dans une demi-heure, á 23 heures 15, nous pourrons capter René Payot sur ondes courtes”. 

“C’est vrai” - lui répond-on- “Nous n'avons pu l’avoir hier, il faut le prendre aujourd’hui”. 

Et malgré la grande fatigue, un petit cercle d'officiers restera auprès du “radio” pour savoir ce que dira RENÉ PAYOT. 

Qui donc êtes-vous, Monsieur René Payot, pour que dans tous les foyers de France on se rassemble une fois par semaine pour vous écouter et qu’il en est probablement de même dans tous les pays opprimés d'Europe en ce qui concerne les élites qui connaissent la langue française? A quoi est dû ce prodigieux ascendant que vous exercez sur des millions d’auditeurs? 

Tout d’abord nous sentions tous que de cœur vous étiez votre allié. La neutralité de votre pays ne vous permettait point de l’exprimer ouvertement. Mais nous nous comprenions, grâce a vos phrases nuances d’une fine ironie, grâce à vos pointes qu'un gaullois saisissait au vol et qui étaient probablement sans justification pour le lourd esprit germain, grâce surtout à vos transitions pour lesquelles toute épithète semblerait vaine. 

Mais la ne gît point la principale raison de votre ascendant. Votre sympathie pour la cause alliée ne saurait expliquer votre prodigieux succès, car une telle sympathie nous était déjà acquise parmi tous les porte-parole des pays libres. Nous sentions en vous, Monsieur Rene Payot, un  homme qui pour disséquer, analyser les faits de la vie des nations, essaye de faire abstraction de ses sympathies, de ses passions, un homme qui pour juger, tâche de n’utiliser que la logique et l’intelligence.  

Parfois vous arrivez à des conclusions qui ne nous rejouissaient pas, - ni vous non plus, j’en suis sûr. Néanmoins nous aimions en prendre connaissance, car nous nous sentions alors plus près de la réalité. Par contre, lorsque les renseignement ou les déductions que vous nous communiquiez correspondaient à nos voeux profonds, ils nous procuraient un contentement d'autant plus vif, que nous les savions issues d'une recherche de la vérité et non d'un désir de propagande que cela soit au service d'une bonne ou d'une mauvaise cause. 

Je ne faudrait pas que dans le monde de demain qui sera sans mil donte oriente vers la recherche d’une amélioration de la condition humaine d’une plus juste répartition des richesses, il ne faudrait pas, dis-je, que dans ce monde, de grands esprits ouverts ne puissent plus trouver place. Je est indispensable que dans la société il y ait toujours des hommes qui puissent s’exprimer et écrire librement en n'obéissant qui à leur besoin inné de chercher ce qui leur semble être honnêtement la vérité, même si leurs ideas, peuvent déplaire à une propagande officielle, au parti qui détient le pouvoir ou à un trust quelaouque. 

J'espère que dans les pays restés libres, comme dans ceux qui redeviennent tels, ou trouvera toujours, à la fois, des esprits critiques et indépendants comme le votre, ainsi que les conditions qui leur permettent de s'épanouir et de s'exprimer. 

Mais dans la nuit obscure de la longue occupation nazie de telles conditions n’existaient plus apportait alors, a travers l'éther, incontrôlable, par la Gestapo, les reflets due plus pur flambeau de Vérité et de Liberté.

Arthur Lubinski

Valence, octobre 1944

A Rabbi, a Journalist, and the Bates Motel

 Prompt - Crossword Clues (400 words): Get yourself a newspaper and go to the crossword puzzle. Take two or three of the crossword clues and formulate a story around them.  For example: From the New York Times - In Tahitian it means “good.” From the Guardian - Blue swallow feathers fell from above.

***

    “Jesus, just look at him!” My college roommate’s ex-girlfriend exclaimed when she saw the rabbi walking down the sidewalk toward the hotel where we were to meet. In the 10 years since we graduated, she still seemed surprised when people didn’t look the way she expected.

    I glanced at the elderly rabbi. Side curls, a bushy beard, the typical outfit of a white shirt, and a dark coat and pants.  It was winter, so he’d donned a big parka over his long coat, and a fur hat covered his yarmulka. I noticed that he was a little stooped, but everything else seemed pretty normal.  “Yeah? He’s a rabbi. What did you expect?”

    “I dunno.  But I wasn’t expecting a hirsute himalayan.”  She was grinning slightly, expecting me to rise to the bait. I debated letting it go but decided to give her what she wanted.

    “Kate, Seriously, did you just call him an abominable snowman?”

    She grinned, then cracked up. “I might have.  He’s awfully hairy, and that fur hat and all.”

    I sighed.  “Remember, don’t offer to shake hands. Orthodox Jews don’t touch the opposite sex, unless they are family.”

    “Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Kate said. She was a journalist, and in public, she knew how to use tact … when she wanted to. When she was among friends, though, tact went out the window.  

    “Rebbe Cohen agreed to talk to you, but he’s Hasid, so it will be very easy for a shiksa like you to make him uncomfortable.  Be polite.”

    “Of course.” She rolled her eyes at my worries.  “Does he know that I’m also going to interview … Holy Mary Mother of Jesus … what’s a mosque holy man called again?” She looked frustrated this time.

    “Imam, and yes, he does.”

    “Ever since the explosion, I lose words.”  She was definitely not smiling.

    “Oh.” I’d forgotten that the embassy where she was staying on her last assignment had been bombed. She’d been in a part of the building that had remained standing, but the shockwave had knocked her into a wall.  The doctors thought she’d recover, at least physically.  I wasn’t so sure about the PTSD.  “Sorry.”

    “No worries.  So, why does he want to meet at the Bates Motel?”  We’d pulled into the parking lot of a rundown inn.  She was right. It did look like a creepy film motel.

    “Because it’s neutral ground. An Orthodox rabbi would prefer not to have a Gentile in his house.  But, this is important to the community, so he found a way to make it work.”

    We locked the car and went inside.  Instead of the brash, tactless friend, she had assumed the role of a professional and strode up to the rabbi. “Rebbe Cohen, my name is Kate Smithson with the Washington Post. Thank you for meeting with me.” She nodded and did not extend her hand.

    The rabbi smiled warmly at her, and spoke loudly to be heard over the Metro squealing to a stop nearby. “Of course, my child.  It’s not every day that the imam of a local mosque organizes safety patrols to protect Jews from antisemites.  He is a brother to us. The least I can do in return is to normalize the idea that not only are we all Americans, we are all sons and daughters of Abraham.”

--April 18, 2021

***

Notes: 

• Clues came from Washington Post crossword from April 18, 2021. I set the piece in D.C. because of that.
• I used 3 clues: 70. Hirsute Himalayan, 73. Mosque Holy Man, and 109. Creepy film motel.
• I wildly missed my 400 word goal; it's 550 words. It also doesn't feel like a stand-alone story, and feels like the introduction to something longer.

1945: Grandpa Arthur's 2nd daughter is born at a hospital in Valence, France.

Source: Memories of Drôme. Photo from the late 1930s.
Polyclinique de Notre-Dame Auxiliatrice, the hospital
where my mother was born.

        Grandpa Arthur told me a little bit about Mom's birth back in 1988 when I recorded his stories:

     Was it a hospital or maternité? I forgot. I think it was a hospital. Lillian was born in a maternité. It was only for birth. But this was a hospital. So when it became apparent she was supposed to go to the hospital, I went and got the car and drove her to the hospital ... and the hospital was not heated, by lack of fuel. It was freezing in every room. The only heating was in surgeries and delivery rooms. Otherwise it was not ...  [brrrr] ... shiver. So when I picked up Roma in the car to get her to the delivery room. How cold the delivery room was? Well, the doctor asked me to step out ...  And I was cold. I claimed I suffered more than Roma. Roma is laughing at that, but she was not cold, and I was. But all right. What else you want to know? The baby came, it was a daughter, my second daughter and very lovely. 

    You can read a rough draft of that chapter here, but keep in mind that it's definitely rough, and has been revised since I posted it (and will be revised further still).

    Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I had the following conversation with my mom:

Me: Can I get a photocopy of your birth certificate?

Mom: Why do you need that?

Me: Because sometimes there are clues on the document that will help with the story.

Mom: What sort of clues?

Me: Well, on Lilly's document, it listed the names and ages of the two out-of-work guys Grandpa paid to be his witnesses. It also provided the street address of the clinic where Lilly was born, and listed their home address, which allowed me to map out a plausible route for Grandpa to follow on the day of the invasion.  

Mom: Well, it's in the safe deposit box; give me a few days.    

    Mom's birth certificate proved to be just as useful as Lilly's. It:

• Corroborated their then-current address in Valence.
• Provided the street address of the building where my mother was born (44 Rue Amblard, Valence France), which confirms that it was indeed a hospital, and not a maternity clinic.  
• Listed the time of day she was born (the wee hours!).
• Cost my grandpa 2.50 francs in paperwork fees, and another 3 or so francs in other taxes.

    With the help of my historian friend in France, I learned that the building was constructed in 1935, and was originally called the "Polyclinique de Notre-Dame Auxiliatrice" (In English, "Notre-Dame Auxiliary Hospital"). 

    It was a public hospital at the time, but today it is privately-operated as a retirement home called La Maison de L'Automn ("the Autumn House"):

La Maison de L'Automn, today.
Source: MDRS.

1948: Grandpa Arthur describes my mom

Sylvie Jacqueline "Jackie" Byland née Lubinski,
age two or three.

    In a letter from 1948, my grandfather described how his children were doing, to a friend back in France*:

    She [Liliane] is eight and a half years old. Her English is nothing like her parents'. She speaks it without the slightest accent. Some French. It's good, but she lacks some complex vocabulary. And Dad is an absolute dictator, who totally forbids bilingual “salads”. Each language must stay pure.

    Sylvie is two and a half years old. Made (according to Dad) in France. Delicate, without appetite, a loud voice, and in perfect health. She is allowed a bilingual salad. 

--Arthur Lubinski to Dr. Jean Planas, July 29, 1948 

    I cracked up when I saw this, because Arthur obviously knew his middle daughter well, and except for the bilingual salad part, it's all still true, more than 7 decades later.   Mom is slender, doesn't eat much, and has always been healthy as a horse. And she has never had any difficulty making herself heard when she wants to. ❤️

Arthur Lubinski with my mom
seven months after immigrating to the US.

* Elle [Liliane] a huit ans et demi. Son anglais n’est pas comme celui de ses parents. Elle le parle sans le moindre accent. Som français. C’est bon, mais de mots compliqués lui manquent. Et papa est un dictateur, un absolu, qui interdit totalement la salade bilingue. Chaque langue doit rester propre.

Sylvie a deux ans et demi. Fabrication, d'après père en France. Frêle, sans appétit, voix haute et en parfaite santé. À elle la salade bilingue est permise. 

--Arthur Lubinski au Dr Jean Planas, 29 juillet 1948

1948: Arthur writes a letter to his commander

     I'm working on transcribing and translating a letter my grandfather wrote to his Maquis commander back in France, about 18 months after my family immigrated here. As I work on these documents, I'm amazed at how well my grandfather's voice comes through in his letter, even given my poor French and (probably) clunky machine translations.

    The man could write.  Take a look at the following excerpt:

    I'm very happy here. My lab rolls from one drilling site to another, all by itself. After some initial difficulties, I now have three surveyors who know their stuff and have perfect professional ethics. I therefore devote myself almost exclusively to the research work that fascinates me. Before emigrating, I feared that I would become a small cog in a huge gear train. I thought the entire face of America was like the butcher shops of Chicago (Duhamel's "Scenes from a Future Life") or the Ford assembly lines in Detroit. Instead, I found here a greater freedom than I have ever had.

--Arthur Lubinski to Dr. Jean Planas, July 29, 1948 

     *See below for the original French.

    It is striking how much hope is in his letter, and how positive he was, but what he didn't say is as important as what he did. Grandpa didn't mention his family's struggles to get by (starting over in a new country is expensive). He touched on the fact that his job took him from drilling platforms (even a few early offshore sites) to oil wells all over the American South and Southwest. He liked the job, which served as a crash course in petroleum engineering, but hated that it kept him away from his family for weeks at a time.  And I believe he was exaggerating when he said that he was devoted exclusively to fascinating research, though that became true later.

    

    He actually liked the job so much that he asked my grandmother if she would consider living in a camper, so she and their daughters could accompany him as he explored the Southwest.  My grandparents had been separated by war for most of 1944, and Grandma was used to being self-sufficient. She knew Grandpa would eventually find a job that would allow him to stay in Tulsa, and that the separation would be temporary.  So she said no, as she wanted a stable home for their girls, preferably one with good schools and near her brother (who was her only surviving relative - so far as she knew, the Holocaust erased everyone else). 

    Grandpa referenced someone named Duhamel in the excerpt, and I had to look that one up. In 1930, Georges Duhamel published a book called Scènes de la vie future, or in English, America's Menace: Scenes from a Future Life.  Like Dr. Planas, Duhamel was a French medical doctor who served in World War I.   In 1929, Dr. Duhamel visited the United States, arriving in New Orleans and traveling north along the Mississippi, then pausing for significant visits in Chicago and New York City.  

    His hosts introduced him to various aspects of America, trying to give him a genuine sense of the country.  He saw the slaughterhouses and the elevated train in Chicago, mass production in giant factories, and the subways of New York City. They also introduced him to our cultural influences, taking him to see museums,  architecture, movies, and sporting events.  He was impressed by our ingenuity and technical innovation, but horrified by our soulless consumerism and puritanical morality (he visited during Prohibition).  It doesn't surprise me that Arthur wasn't deterred by Dr. Duhamel's book.  As an engineer, he would have valued the booming industry and the efficiency it described.  

    Interestingly, I found a copy of Duhamel's book for $750. It's a first edition and is inscribed to H. G. Wells, of all people. I found myself wanting it for no good reason, because, damn, that's so cool (no, I didn't seriously consider buying it).  If you'd like to read more about the book, which many people consider to have planted the seeds of anti-American sentiment in Europe, this is the French Wikipedia page about it (I have my browser set to automatically translate).  The page is worth reading -- it makes many good points about American culture, but because this is my home, the scales weigh differently for me than they did for Duhamel. And if you are really interested, you can find the book in English on the Internet Archive, although you'll need to create an account to access more than the flyleaf and table of contents.

    And finally, it's fascinating to me that Grandpa worried about being insignificant here in the US, but happily didn't find that to be true.  I think most Americans know they are small cogs in a big wheel, but Grandpa was curious, hardworking, highly educated, and brilliant. And most importantly, he wanted to work somewhere that needed men like him, men who could point out a problem and then be given the freedom to solve it.  Even to a cynical American cog like myself, "I found here a greater freedom than I have ever had," gives me joy.

* Je suis très heureux ici. Mon labo roulant d'un chantier de forage à une autre jonetiance tout seul, Après quelques difficultés de début, j’ai maintenant trois orienteurs connaissant leur métier et ayant une conscience professionnelle parfaite. Je me dévoue donc presque exclusivement aux travaux de recherche qui me passionnent. Avant d'émigrer je craignais que je ne devienne ici une petite roue d’un immense train d'engrenages.. Je pensais que l'entier visage de l’Amérique est comme les boucheries de Chicago (“Scènes de vie Future“ de Duhamel) ou, les chaînes de Ford à Detroit. Au lieu de-tout cela, j’ai trouvé ici une liberté plus grande que je n'ai jamais eue.

--Arthur Lubinski au Dr Jean Planas, 29 juillet 1948

1934-1947: Where my grandparents lived during the war (the good and the bad)

 I know of eight places where my grandparents lived in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. I've found the addresses in my grandfather's writing, in letters from his brother-in-law, from archivists who looked them up in city records, and historian friends who traced previous owners of properties (when I knew the actual names of the people they lived with, but not the location of the property).  This doesn't count places my grandfather lived separately from my grandmother (when he was in the maquis, for example).

Of those 8 places (in chronological order)

• One is the apartment where my grandparents were probably living when they got married in 1935. I don't know when they moved in, or how long they lived there, only when they moved out (and into their next apartment). 
• One is the apartment in Brussels they were living in when my aunt was born and war broke out. They moved there on August 24, 1937, and moved out when they escaped from Belgium in the fall of 1941.
• One is farm in France where they lived for several weeks in June 1940 as refugees prior to the fall of Belgium and France, before returning to their apartment in Brussels.  I know what town they were in, but that's all.
• One Brussels address is almost certainly fake, or rather, it was a real address, but they never lived there.  They supposedly moved into the apartment 5 months after they'd escaped Belgium. I'm guessing it was some sort of false forwarding address (and I have evidence they were in France when they moved in according to Belgian city records).
• One early address in France is unknown, and I doubt I'll ever identify it.  Grandpa told me they lived in three places in Beaumont-lès-Valence, but only ever described the one where they lived for several years. He refused to talk about the other two.
• I identified one of the two Beaumont addresses Grandpa refused to discuss through letters he sent and received from an American consulate in Vichy, France. However, the address is incomplete by modern standards, identifying only the name of the homeowner and the town.  In those days "Chez Mouriquand, Beaumont-lès-Valence, France," was enough to get a letter to the right person.  My historian friend was able to identify that it was a farm and its physical location, but after the war, the farm was sold and developed into the Le Granges neighborhood, and we don't know which house is the one where they stayed.
• The third Beaumont address is one where they lived for about three years. It had been a disused cottage on a farm, originally at 11 Rue des Faures. The cottage was torn down after the war, and the farm has also been developed into housing, but the stone well they used for water is still there (and is considered a historical landmark). 
• The first address in Valence where they moved not long after the liberation of France (probably in late 1944 - I have a letter dated from December of that year, mentioning that they had moved). It was a tiny apartment. I got that address from letters he received from his brother-in-law in America, and it's also listed on my mother's birth certificate. From other letters, I know they were still living there in May 1946, but I'm not sure when they moved out.
• The final address in Valence where they were living when they immigrated to the US in early 1947. They lived there less than a year.

1946-1947: The Lubinskis' last apartment in France

    Sometime after May of 1946, my grandparents moved out of the tiny apartment on Rue du Parc and into 19 Boulevard Maurice Clerc in Valence, where they lived until early February 1947. Grandpa didn't go into much detail, but this is how he described their two homes in Valence:

    In Valence, we lived at two other residences ... The first where your mother was born. And later, after, we moved into a more spacious, pleasant apartment. 

    Rather matter-of-fact. I only found the address because my grandfather listed it as his permanent address on a form he filled out in February of 1947 when going through customs at La Guardia in NYC:

Grandpa's Customs and Immigration form
Click to enlarge any photo.

    There were streetcar rails running very close to the buildings, and a park or green space was located on the other side, so the light coming into the apartment would be dappled. I found a couple of historical photos of the street on old postcards, but I'm unsure of the year they were taken.   

Maurice Clerc Blvd Postcard
Source: itoldya archives

Maurice Clerc Blvd Postcard
Source: itoldya archives

    The apartment faces slightly south of east, which means that early morning sun would blast in through the windows, particularly in the winter.

Red pin is #19.
The building is fairly deep front-to-back

Google Streetview photo from 2018. The brown door
is #19. I wonder what floor they lived on?
Note the black shelter in the left foreground.

A better view of the black shelter.

    I love the balconies. But I can just imagine my grandmother fretting about the safety of my mom and Aunt Lilly.

Google Streetview photo from 2024 showing cafe seating out front.
I wonder if Grandpa parked his car there, too?

    I couldn't find any photos of the inside of #19, but there's a hotel with rooms to rent just a couple of blocks away, at #5.  

The building with the reddish-orange balcony at left is #5.
#19 is pretty far to the right. It's a darker tan building with balconies,
just past the black shelter noted above.

    Except for this photo showing the view from #5, the interior photos aren't helpful as it's a different building, and it's been thoroughly modernized (though it's quite lovely):

View from 5 Blvd Maurice Clerc
Source: Hotels in Valence

    It's strange to know that my mother lived there, although she has no memory of it (she was only 14 months old when they left France).