Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

Drancy on 15 September, discovered cells that measured three and a half metres by one and three-quarters, holding six people, with only two mattresses between them. Luizet at least achieved one objective, quite rapidly. On 20 September, Drancy was ‘liberated’ from the
fifis
and returned to the regular prison service.
    The main prison for those accused of collaboration was Fresnes. It held so many celebrities that one inmate, a ‘trustie’ who helped with the catering, used to take his autograph book with him on meal rounds.There were many members of ‘
le Tout-Paris de la collaboration
’, like the film star Arletty and the actor-playwright Sacha Guitry, who had met either at the receptions of the Luftwaffe General Hanesse or in Otto Abetz’s salon. Albert Blaser, the head waiter at Maxim’s, was also briefly in Fresnes, as were the singer Tino Rossi and the publisher Bernard Grasset. Rossi was never in danger of execution, but that did not stop one of his female fans from offering to be shot in his place.
    In Fresnes, Jean de Castellane was pleased to see Sacha Guitry. Castellane was something of a chatterbox, and since Guitry possessed a similar taste for
jeux de mots,
the two men made running jokes on the unsavoury conditions in the prison and on their own likely fate. Guitry later observed that beds which had been occupied by unexpectedly released prisoners were thought lucky and people clamoured to take themover.
    Many inmates tried to depict themselves as victims of a second Terror. But savage as the
épuration
was in some places, this was hardly September 1793. Outraged at their treatment, few asked themselves what the camps and prisons had been like under the Vichy government. One well-dressed woman, given a palliasse to sleep on, asked for another. When told that prisoners were allowed only one each, she replied that it would be needed for her maid, whom she wished to summon to look after her. Another daughter of Daisy Fellowes, Emmeline de Casteja, served five months in Fresnes locked up with prostitutes. Their chief amusement, she told a friend later, was to jiggle their bare breasts at the men in the block opposite.
    Before the war, Fresnes had no more than one prisoner for each of its 1,500 cells. Now there were 4,500 inmates. The
bloc sanitaire
was even more crowded than the
bloc pénitentiaire,
because many were unfit for the rigours of prison life. A considerable number were elderly and unaccustomed to a diet of dried vegetables and noodles.
    At the beginning, prisoners had no right to a lawyer. Whenever they wrote letters, the guards usually read them and made sure they were never delivered. The only contact with the outside world was established through four representatives of the French Red Cross. These four ladies were swamped with work. Whenever possible, they obtained the address of each prisoner and a telephone number where they could contact thefamily to inform them. In many cases the families had had no news and had been left destitute when the breadwinner was arrested.
    The work of the French Red Cross was greatly encouraged by the Prefect of Police, Charles Luizet, who was very keen to bring Fresnes back under control. Having managed to get the FFI guards out of Drancy three weeks after the Liberation, he was keen to purge the ‘auxiliary’ guards in Fresnes. It is alleged that in the early days of the Liberation a number of prisoners were taken out in the middle of the night and shot, and a few beaten to death; but since there were no reliable records of who had been arrested, and since the guards refused to release the names of those they held, the number of cases is impossible to assess.
    Partly prompted by a campaign in the Communist press claiming that traitors were living in style, the Ministry of the Interior commissioned a report on the prison. ‘It must be acknowledged,’ wrote the Inspector-General of Prisons, ‘that the auxiliaries have let us down badly.’ Jewels and money had been stolen from prisoners and a flourishing black market existed. The guards charged prisoners 300 francs for a packet of cigarettes, 3,000 for a bottle of alcohol, and sold extra clothes when the weather turned cold. They also took bribes for turning a blind eye during lawyers’ visits.
    Escoffier, the governor of the prison, tried to appeal to the better nature and patriotism of the guards, but his efforts clearly did little good ‘because trafficking continued just as before during