Basque Poppies: Survival Under the Swastika

By Francine Kosla

About the Book
A STORY OF SURVIVAL UNDER THE SWASTIKA
Based on true accounts of a French Basque family
Joseph Vienney, his wife and teenaged daughters were patiently resigned to wait out the German occupation until conscience, opportunity and the enemy arrived at their door. Shackled by the Nazis living under his own roof, Joseph engineered one of the most ingenious missions of WW II. But unless he could flawlessly choreograph events, the reprisals against the Basque population could only result in its genocide.
"Unendurable terror and despair tempered by quirky customs, humor and true honor defined."
About the Author
Francine Kosla lives on the California coast. Visit the author at
[e-mail]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887295206

Book preview

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The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2023 by Francine Kosla

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres

And so was my heart,

Giselle, Josef, and Nick until…

Ryan, Kyle Audrey and Grace came along.

This book is for all of you, my blessings,

that you may know from whom you have come.

Fear not your enemies for they can only kill you.

Fear not your friends for they can only betray you.

Fear only the indifferent who permit the

killers and betrayers to walk safely in our midst.

Edward Yashinsky,

German Jew who survived the Holocaust, only to die in a Polish prison.

PROLOGUE

Le 13 juillet 2022

When they found the old woman, she was motionless. Tall and slender in her youth, she now appeared dwarfed by her Chippendale reading chair. Though she detested anything traditional, still its time-sculpted contours and cheerful sage pattern suited her need.

Her quilted silk lap blanket also suited her need. Each evening she would read at length, her soul and body refreshed by the cool breezes from the lake. Her little cottage stood isolated but purposefully guarded by Black Forest pines. It was intentionally furnished in serene, neutral tones, granting her valuable mementos their due framework.

But the greatest of these treasures, lost and recovered, through time and war, now unnoticed, dribbled as tears from the book abandoned by her hands. The unidentifiable ebony-brown seeds of the wild poppy, now almost dust, had been her source of power for well over half a century. Her secret was to remain safe from the visitors, who efficiently closed the Bible and harbored it on the mantel. Later, the near-invisible talisman would be vacuumed away forever.

Chapter One

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore.

 –Andre Gide

Their marriage had been as ordinary as its inception had been extraordinary. Tim had often joked to his daughters that he had single-handedly liberated Paris, or, more specifically, their mother from the German Army. She married him, he reflected, because of his great valor and looks or great looks and valor—he could never remember in which order.

But with the end of World War II came the transition few were prepared for or easily able to adjust to. Tim and his wife, Catherine, initially attempted to make their life in France. The re-building of a country can afford immense opportunity, and Catherine’s father invited Tim to resign the Army Air Corps and join him in re-establishing the family vineyards and farmland in the south of France. Although Tim was grateful, he had lost interest in France. His wife was now pregnant, and he decided to return to California and plan for their arrival by securing a job and a home. Catherine gave birth in a small hospital in Paris to a beautiful daughter she named Virginie. She was barely recovered when Tim said goodbye, giving her the papers and the instructions for their transit on the gray Liberty ship, the Zebulon Vance, that would take them to New York.

Short weeks later they embarked from Bremerhaven, Germany. The ship took on additional passengers in Southampton, costing her a three-day delay, and then continued her transatlantic voyage. The ship endured good weather and bad during her nearly three-week journey. Mother and child flourished with the help of kind American Army nurses who were specially trained to steward a precious cargo, the family members of nearly five hundred servicemen mixed in with a few charity-sponsored families.

But during the voyage, the disparity of the women’s wartime experiences became evident through daily conversations. Several European countries were represented on the passenger manifest, but the passengers’ religions, family histories, economic status, and survival strategies were not listed or known. The confined quarters and common goal of rebirth in America allowed the women to broaden their understanding and communicate intimately, after years of relative isolation from neighboring countries and sometimes even neighboring towns.

One woman could only gaze with a stoic sadness at Virginie nursing at her mother’s breast. The singular part of her story this woman would tell, was how she sang for the camp officers each evening and remained each night locked in their cellar. Unlike many, she had had food to eat. A tattoo on her arm, yes, but food to eat—that is, until they tired of her and she was sent to help the motherland in other ways.

Another woman told of parents who had never been accounted for. One day, they just didn’t come back to the family’s apartment in Paris. She continued to insist that they just didn’t come back. We aren’t Jewish, after all. After surviving the occupation, she had married a Canadian who had been in the Engineering Corps. And so she had left Paris, leaving messages with the Red Cross and neighbors, just in case they returned, and took her opportunity to resettle away from the dark memories of war-torn Europe.

And then there was a Belgian woman, Marie, who listened to be polite. When the others asked where she came from and how she coped from day to day, she looked away. No one expected tears from her. No one had any left. What she and they did have was the eternal hope, promised to them, of a new beginning in America and a new life.

Finally, one evening, the ship’s captain announced that New York Harbor was only a short distance away, but he was choosing to enter the next morning, as it would be Columbus Day. His war and travel-weary passengers tried to appreciate his enthusiasm, but to the French, Italian, British, Belgian, Dutch, and Polish women and children, each moment was more unnecessary delay. Their husbands, new in-laws, and various sponsors were waiting so painfully close that they just wanted to remove themselves from the giant metal military ship and start their lives in America.

Dawn broke into a remarkably clear day as the vessel neared port, with everyone on deck vying for a position at the railing. The captain’s gamble was justly rewarded by, first, nervous silence, and then cheers as the old gray vessel passed the Statue of Liberty. The French contingent took special pride in seeing their country’s gift so prominently displayed. The deep-seated bond between these two countries had served both equally through generations, enduring all trials.

That dawn also brought one of the worst moments in Catherine’s life, one that she could have never anticipated. Her travel documents had revealed that, like her father, she was a gifted linguist. The captain called her to the bridge to announce that the passengers should now prepare for an orderly disembarkation.

She began with the French passengers in order to become accustomed to the microphone. The following women and children only, she began with a precise translation, will line up on the main deck, behind the yellow line of the forward gangplank. The names were alphabetical, and so she proceeded to read, with hers included, Catherine Powell and daughter Virginie! Now comfortable with the speaker buttons, she took a moment to look at the captain, who nodded approval, and then began the list of new Italian immigrants. Respectively, the various nationalities followed in turn.

Had she not wanted to rush, in her excitement to see families reunited, she might have noticed the captain’s embarrassment, clearly evident on his face for his complicity in her final translation.

When the first list had been read and instructions read in all languages, Catherine was handed a second list: Those whose names I did not read—Charlotte Onez, Marielle Matteux, Anne Kovats—will not disembark at this time. Your sponsor has… declined… the responsibility for your entry requirements. Please return to the main meeting lounge for further information. Catherine added in a whisper, I am so sorry.

Almost a quarter of those women and children were forced back to their native countries on an immediate return voyage, without ever stepping on the precious soil promised them. Their husbands had changed their minds and presumably their hearts. Conversely, not one of the charity sponsors had reneged on his promise.

The Powells moved to the beautiful but very rural Humboldt County, in Northern California. A second daughter, Laure, was born, giving Catherine some added diversion from her decreasing nightmares about the war. Tim adroitly converted his war skills into those desperately needed by the local sheriff’s department. He particularly enjoyed the challenge and reward of search and rescue operations. But those were too few and too far between, and Tim found civilian life a bit tedious. So while Catherine thrived on living life itself, Tim sadly yearned for his perhaps unrealistic, but unfulfilled dreams of adventure to become reality. And in time, their two worlds slowly drifted apart.

Because Catherine was reared, for the most part, in the culture and comforts of Paris, she chose a modest apartment in San Francisco to finish raising the girls. She supplemented their basic needs by tutoring in violin and music composition. Tim was generous and they lived comfortably, even allowing for adequate college funds. The girls married and had children of their own.

It was only a few days before his death that Tim called his family meeting and told them brusquely of his terminal illness. He had one regret, he told them, and that was not remaining in France to rear his family. Though Catherine and the girls had visited France several times due to her father’s generosity, Tim was asking the entire family to spend three months there as his last gesture. Surprisingly, his estate allowed not only for a comfortable trip, but for Catherine’s financial future, as well.

And so, four months later, the odyssey began for Catherine, Virginie, Laure, and the girls’ husbands and children—twelve in all. Catherine had laughed at the girls’ admonitions to be frugal, and then stubbornly booked the most expensive airline, Air France. We must follow your father’s wishes, she cleverly justified in kind.

They all stayed in their Tante, Aunt Jeanine’s boutique hotel, d’Albion, on the Rue de Penthièvre, situated in Paris’s 8th Arrondissement. Each day, Catherine planned an excursion to tour the sights, but, without the constraints of time or finances, spent more time catching up with her extended French family. The favorite communal time was spent with her sister in a garden atrium at the rear of the hotel lobby. After dinner, Catherine and Jeanine would reminisce with family about their lives in France before and after, but interjected only minimal reflections of their time during the war.

Never before had she opened up so completely to her daughters, talking about every detail of her everyday life growing up in France. Her daughters had never pressed her before, because it would have been cruel to make her relive the traumatic intertwined memories of war.

Virginie and Laure, together with their husbands and children, learned a great deal about who their mother was and who she had become, but this information was to come in precious segments. What she had disclosed already was just setting the stage for her vivid retelling of those extraordinary years.

After a month in Paris, the famille Powell was ready to take the TGV high-speed rail to Dax in the south of France, and then another ten kilometres on to Heugas, where the family’s summer home was located. Heugas is nothing more than a collection of Cézanne inspired farm-houses and vineyards, kept vital by its proximity to the Adour River. The French call it Sauvage (savage) because of its unbounded speed and unpredictable currents racing in different directions. Catherine had notified her sister of her desire to stay at the family home and Jeanine was delighted to make all the necessary preparations. By any standards, the house was not only sufficient in size but so well designed, that it would comfortably accommodate all their individual needs.

Catherine had precisely planned the first thing the family would see as they exited the rental car that May—not the home, Nouste Case, but the enormous field of wild, bright red poppies that carried such importance. And indeed when they stopped short of the house entry to gaze at the enormity of the magnificent field, Catherine was well rewarded for her planning. Soon now, but only after they had earned a greater appreciation of their roots, she needed to tell them about the poppies. After all, that is why they made this pilgrimage, fulfilling Tim’s commitment of returning to the heart.

Catherine was the first to enter through the door, and, even with every window open wide, was greeted with the homey, musty scents of a stone home intruding on lush farmland. Though it had been years, she knew the Spanish tiles, accented in beautiful hand-painted scrolls, dark cherrywood banisters, and laboriously hand-carved ceiling beams would all be exactly the same. In the kitchen, the copper kettle would be in the fireplace and the herbs in the cellar. There was no need to confirm these things yet.

She had already formulated that she would claim her old childhood room and allow the rest of her entourage to settle wherever they chose. Her subconscious urged her to challenge the long-ago forced protocol of assigning particular rooms to particular people, and a break from its bondage outbidding her desire for a proper assignment of rooms. She would take a short rest, and then it would be time to begin.

Chapter Two

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire. –Foch

War came to their door in the form of five matched sets of black boots. That was all she could see from her cowering vantage, while shielded by her portly mother’s nightclothes. But she could also smell the war. Not cordite and sulfur, but the rancid smell of goose fat used to polish those boots to an eerie glow. Catherine would be able to detect that smell, no matter how minuscule the trace, for many years to come.

The German SS officer appraised the mother hastily, and then demanded her husband’s immediate presence in courteous but precise terms. The woman responded with equal verbal courtesy, saying that it was regrettable that the soldiers were not aware of the lateness of the hour, and the guests would be received after morning Mass. It was then that he realized his miscalculation, and verified it a split second later. He studied her impenetrable black eyes. She was Basque. There would be no negotiation.

His orders had been made clear: Secure the Vienney estate for German headquarters. Still, even more clear was the admonition for absolute peaceful cooperation. The village of Heugas would follow the lead of the well-respected Monsieur Vienney. The officer would wait until morning.

Madame Vienney calmly shut and barred the door, then quickly ushered her coal-eyed daughters to the artificial safety of their warm kitchen. Only then did the girls, Jeanine, fifteen, and Catherine, seventeen, see the bravado disappear from their mother’s face. Papa was not home. Their only hope was the simple country priest.

Joseph Vienney knew he was out of time. His associates had warned him of the German advance to Dax for the purpose of establishing a stronghold in the southern towns of France. He prayed they would stop there, or at least regroup long enough to give him enough time to return another few kilometres to Heugas and his anxiously waiting family. He had never consciously meant to jeopardize their safety by his involvement with the French Resistance. But as long as German forces occupied France, no one was really safe or free.

His wife, Honora, never hesitated to give her blessing for this precarious mission. She was the eldest daughter of a proud and well respected Basque family and knew of conscience and its price. She had paid that price many times over when she married Joseph. He was French, at least, but not Basque, and therefore an outsider. Shunned by her family for many years, she and her husband had only recently begun the slow restoration of ties. When the war crawled south, the bonds of blood and family were finally resurrected.

It had been Honora’s brother who had required Joseph to stay in Paris instead of accompanying the rest of his family to their home in the deep southwest of France. He needed Joseph’s help. The Resistance needed Joseph’s help, or, more precisely, they needed his knowledge of German. His brother-in-law, Benoît, had been actively involved in the underground since its very inception, but not Joseph. He knew what the enemy could do to his family if he was caught. His hesitation was initially misjudged to be cowardice. Or perhaps it was his age—almost fifty—that added to the speculation. Whatever people thought made little difference to Joseph. He had seen war for the first time over twenty years previously, and knew that its horrors could not be explained to those who were not there to witness them. Having served as a front-line medic, he had come to realize how deeply and irrevocably war scarred the body, but more so, the very souls of men—or at least his soul. The irreversible, unforgivable responsibility for death of one’s own brother, or the enemy’s brother could only be explained as evil.

But for now, he had to put his thoughts and conscience aside. Only his family mattered. Benoît was safe for the moment, and Joseph could not help him, except by not getting caught himself. His plan was already in motion: he had abandoned his car in hopes of a train ride, or a safer bicycle transport, adopting the guise of an old country peasant confused by too much wine. In village after village, the charade had served him well.

His journey was almost complete, with no significant complications until he reached the outskirts of Dax. Wisely, or perhaps simply through exhaustion, he laboriously made his way to an old friend’s house. Dr. Mattieu St. Martin had delivered both of Joseph’s daughters and had been a lifelong friend. But because they were friends, both knew not to share information that could be forced from them. After a revitalizing meal and a few hours of sleep, the good doctor decided that he and his ‘assistant’ needed to check on a poor ailing priest in Heugas. It was the first of two checkpoints that would decide their fate. Joseph could not use his valid identification papers for fear that word of his recent dubious activities in Paris might have reached this rural outpost, putting both St. Martin’s family and his in danger.

They approached the recently constructed checkpoint with a façade of purposeful confidence. Before St. Martin could react to the sentry’s demand for formal identification papers, Joseph brushed against Mattieu’s lower arm as a signal and then leapt from the car. He insisted on examining a soiled bandage he spotted on another soldier. We are doctors, n’est-ce pas? Much to his terror, the soldier turned, displaying the rank of Oberleutnant; his name was Roland Weiss, they were later to learn. He had been cut by flying glass, and his wound, now severely infected, had never been properly treated. Together Joseph and Mattieu feigned sincerity, and exhibited every display of care that could be afforded the enemy. The wound was laboriously cleaned, treated with precious antibiotics, and suitably wrapped. At the conclusion, a grateful enemy and two relieved men parted, each side with its own conflicting agenda.

The second checkpoint was so recently established that its routine had not yet been modified to adequately screen the two humble doctors on their way to see the old curé at St. Anne’s Church. Cursory, stilted pleasantries were extended by each side as the checkpoint’s soldiers waved on the men, having other, more important matters with which to occupy themselves.

St. Anne’s Church was typical of the area. At the entry was a massive stone arch, at least two hundred years old, that had been fabricated with locally available field rocks and the traditional gray mortar. It no longer had a shiny brass nameplate and had lost some of its glory with age and decay, but not its sense of welcome for passing pilgrims or longtime residents. More for aesthetics than security was an ornate gate that showed signs of recent but unfinished painting. No locals had ever remembered the gate being closed, as all were beckoned at any hour to visit either the cemetery in front of the church or the structure itself. The St. Martin family members had been interred here for generations. Their choice of headstones was not altogether common: minimally veined black marble from Africa. Husbands and wives were entombed together, and entire families were guarded by one-meter-high black wrought-iron fencing. Their ancient neighbors, long deceased, surrounded the St. Martins’ last resting place as they had lived alongside each other in life: close, but not presumptuously close. Proper decorum was extended even in death.

A last row of much smaller tombstones, situated near the church doors, seemed unusually close together until, upon closer viewing, revealed the saddest section of the yard. Placed immediately next to each other and extremely diminutive in size were the tombs of babies lost in pregnancy or shortly after birth. On each, a carved angel or flower added serenity to a poignant message imploring peace or a more personal tribute of solace.

Even in his haste, Joseph’s eyes drifted to a small black marble stone he himself had carved many years prior, but before he was allowed a moment of personal reflection, a priest of St. Anne opened the door. Without even a customary greeting, he enjoined them to follow him to a confessional. The priest drew the heavy tapestry curtain, unnecessarily muffling their already hushed voices, and apprised Mattieu and Joseph of the developing situation.

The previous evening, the priest had received a visit from a German advance assessment team. He wisely appeared humble, scared, and most cooperative—he put on whatever demeanor would appease these men. Shortly after their departure, when it seemed safe, he traveled through the various fields until he reached the familiar poppy field at the rear of the Vienney estate.

Since Monsieur Vienney was the unofficial mayor of Heugas, who could question a visit to his home to discuss a forced, but peaceful coexistence with the occupying army? His explanation, if questioned sounded plausible even to himself, but for extra insurance he also brought a medicine bowl.

Unfortunately, he had arrived too late. A detachment of troops was already there. After a brief discussion with Madame Vienney, they had dispersed, taking up positions around the perimeter of the residence. With sentries at the front door and the four corners, the priest had no other option but to boldly walk up to the front door, greeting the men in very broken German. When Madame Vienney answered the door, the priest apologized for the intrusion and proffered a small ceramic covered dish.

He caught her eye intensely