A Spy in Our Midst

St. John's was privileged, Sunday afternoon, to play host to a spy.

Marthe Cohn, an agent for the French Army behind German lines during World War II, sat with us for more than an hour to tell the story of her family's sad but courageous experience in the war, and of her own activities which earned her the French government's Medaille Militaire for missions which "facilitated in large measure the success of the last operations of the French Army" in the war.

Marthe narrated her story from a chair in the front of the church, rising only occasionally to point out a detail on the accompanying slide show, or to add emphasis to a part of the story.


Marthe Cohn's story is told in her book, Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany, and of course there was no way it could be condensed into an hour. Instead, she shared a few scenes of her life in wartime France. Quotations given below are from her book.


THE ESCAPE

Truly memorable was her family's escape from Occupied France. Provided with forged documents for the journey by a co-worker, her family arrived in the village of St. Secondin, on the border of the Free Zone.

Marthe had been instructed to contact the local priest for help getting across the border. But when she found him he told her, "Don't you know the story of Judas? I don't trust Jews because they always squeal. If any of you are arrested, I feel sure you'd tell the Germans it was I who helped you." After an argument about the absurdity of the Judas argument, he said, "I told you I'll help you. It's the Christian thing to do." The man's true intentions could not help but be a matter of concern.

Because Marthe's grandmother was unable to walk any distance, the family placed her on a bicycle and pushed her along. But because of the bicycle, slipping into Free France across unobserved farm fields was impossible. The family would have to walk down the road, their destination obvious to everyone who saw them. Posted everywhere were posters offering a bounty equal to a French farmer's annual earnings for turning in Jews, and the road took them past the homes of several farmers whose sympathies were unknown to her.

One by one as we approached, the men stopped smoking and the women stopped talking, and they all turned to stare back at us. There was near silence as we squeaked along with our bicycle, watching them watching us.

An old man in a dark suit and working trousers stood up from his rickety old wooden chair as we passed his house and stared at us intently. I returned his gaze, my hands clammy on the handlebars. Without saying a word, he suddenly dropped onto one knee and, hand on his chest, lowered his head in prayer. Next to him, his wife knelt on both knees in the dirt and made the sign of the cross. At the next house, two men fell similarly to their knees and began praying for us, their soft murmurings carried to us on the summer evening breeze.

A teenage girl, not much younger than I, stopped scratching the neck of her much-loved horse and clasped her hands together in prayer. And so on, along the row, men and women, desperately poor, urgently in need of the money they could so easily have earned from us as a reward, each one saying a prayer to guide us on our way.

I could hardly believe my eyes. It was so beautiful, the humanity of it. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I nodded my head in silent thanks to each and every one we passed.

Sadly, Marthe's sister, Stéphanie, traveling separately, did not make it across the border. No word was heard from her. After the war, Marthe learned that Stéphanie had been deported to Auschwitz.


MARTHE HARI?

With forged documents, Marthe returned to Paris before its liberation. In 1944 she joined the French Army as a nurse, but when it was learned that she spoke German fluently she was asked if she would be willing to do intelligence work. Without thinking, she said she would.


In 1945, now a trained intelligence officer, Marthe crossed again into German territory, this time with documents identifying her as Marthe Ulrich. Her cover story was that she was a nurse from Lorraine, looking for her fiancé, Hans, a German soldier. With her false identity, she crossed back and forth across the German lines. On one crossing she learned the Germans had abandoned the Siegfried Line, or Westwall. On another, a boasting German colonel told her of an artillery ambush the Germans were planning in the Black Forest.

At other times, she did her best to demoralize German troops:

"How brave you are!" I told them admiringly. "I've just come back from the Westwall and found it completely deserted. All the officers and men have fled southeast. You're the only ones left between the French Army and the rest of Germany."

Not what your average infantryman wants to hear!

Too soon, our time with Marthe concluded. Her daughter-in-law Barb, a St. John's parishioner, and son Stephan invited everyone to their home to spend more time with her, and many of us availed ourselves of the opportunity.