Andrée's War Read Online Free Page A

stripped of his rank and service medals and sent to Devil’s Island to serve out his sentence. Zola, meanwhile, was prosecuted for criminal libel. The Dreyfus Affair ultimately resulted in the resignation of the Home Secretary (the Minister of the Interior) and almost brought down the French government.
    * I still remember to this day the warm smile on the model’s face looking down at me when I stayed at my grandparents’ flat near the Quai d’Orsay as a small child. The colour and texture of the marble stood out against the dark decor, and seemed almost to glow at night.

3
War!
    A s tensions in the run-up to the Second World War began to heighten, day-to-day living in Paris continued relatively unchanged for families such as the Griotterays, living in the centre of the city, but heated political debates and chatter in the cafés, in the bars and on the streets of the capital were ever present among a population keen to discuss French rearmament, the strength of the military, the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the ‘Anschluss’ (occupation) of Austria.
    On 14 January 1939, Andrée describes in her diary attending
le bal du cercle militaire
:
    Papa invited me to join him at the officers’ ball at the Colisée. The President, Monsieur Lebrun, attended as did Monsieur Campinchi, the Naval Minister. The Bigards joined us and some excellent champagne and canapés were served. I wore a pale-blue silk dress which Maman had just had made for me.
    In September 1938, Andrée was back in Paris and working in an antiques shop close to her home in the rue Godot de Mauray near the Place de l’Opéra. The owners, friends of her parents, had an interesting collection of antique French furniture which was exhibited in their ground-floor gallery and Andrée was responsible for helping to run the shop and deal with clients showing an interest in the collection.
    As an attractive, outgoing eighteen-year-old, Andrée soon developed a circle of friends with whom she could easily meet up and have fun. Her brother Alain, despite being two years younger, had always been a soulmate and their group also included Margit Ehrart and Jean Barbier, whom theyhad met in a café on the boulevard des Capucines. Serge Bigard, the Jewish son of two of Andrée and Alain’s parents’ closest friends, was another. Engaging and fun-loving, Serge was as generous as anyone could be and, to everyone’s amusement, every year on his birthday he gave his mother an enormous bouquet of flowers to thank her for giving birth to him. His easygoing personality and great charm led him to forge close friendships with all those he met, but in 1942, after escaping the Nazi persecution in Paris, he moved into the Free Zone and no one heard from him or his parents again.
    Andrée’s glamorous half-sister, Renée, had a huge influence on her early life. She was Edmond’s illegitimate daughter from a previous relationship, and was fifteen years older than Andrée. Edmond had recognised her as his child and she regularly visited the Griotteray family. As a leading actress on the French stage, she was greeted enthusiastically wherever she went and chaperoned her younger half-sister through the artistic society of Paris, inviting her for tea, cocktails and dinner at the capital’s leading hotels, restaurants and bars. Her husband Steve Passeur (whose real name was Étienne Morin; Steve Passeur was his professional name) was one of France’s leading playwrights, and through the couple Andrée and her family attended many of the major plays of the period, often meeting the authors, producers and playwrights as well.
    15 January 1939
Steve and Renée invited us to l’Opéra Comique. Fanny Heldy was playing Louise. She was ‘très chic’.
    Renée was then one of the most stunningly attractive and beautifully dressed women in Paris, renowned for her vivacious personality. In 2012,