Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany

by Marthe Cohn

Our prime minister, Paul Reynaud, resigned, and Pétain, a First World War hero and the man whose name adorned our home street, took over.

“Are you completely crazy?” he shouted into my face, his eyes wide. “Didn’t you see the danger? That was a munitions train. It’s exploding. The whole thing could have blown up right under your feet!” Shaking myself free, I told him: “I have to get home.”

On June 14 we heard that the Nazi troops had taken Paris and were marching up the Champs Elysées.

By the time the Germans arrived in Poitiers in July 1940, we were a defeated people. Our country had been split into an occupied and an unoccupied zone—known as the Zone Libre—under the suspect agreement struck by an obsequious Pétain, who’d set up a government at Vichy.

The changes to our everyday lives came slowly at first, almost imperceptibly. The first, in September 1940, was that the heads of all Jewish households had to register at the town hall, giving the full name and date of birth of every family member. Failure to comply was punishable by imprisonment or death.

Our new identity papers were stamped with a red stamp and the word JUIF or JUIVE in bold type across it. All French people were issued coupons for food called carte de rationnement.

That same month, the Vichy government decreed that all Jews had to declare their interests in businesses. Jewish shops and offices had posters declaring them as MAISON JUIVE plastered all over them. Elby was no exception. We arrived at the store one morning to find the door covered in signs advising all callers that we were Jewish. Our loyal customers couldn’t have cared less.

Before long, Jews were banned from most professions, including teaching. Property began to be confiscated, and foreign Jews were arrested and interned. The Germans were slowly circling us, ensnaring us more and more, hoping we wouldn’t take fright and bolt. New edicts were issued every day, closing Jewish businesses under new “Aryanization” rules. Everything was Verboten and punishable by death.

Shortly afterward we received a visit from a Frenchman who informed us that he’d been assigned by the Germans as a gérant commissaire, a non-Jew to take over our business. Realizing what was likely to happen, Cecile, Arnold, and I, along with Hélène, Rosy, and Stéphanie, completely emptied the store, filling suitcases with the most valuable merchandise and carrying them upstairs to the apartment of Madame Le Touchais, with whom we’d become friendly. A few days later we transferred them to the home of Madame Blondet, a former cleaning woman of my cousins’, whom we knew we could trust.

By the time the gérant commissaire arrived to take over Elby a few days later, the shelves and racks were empty but for a few unsalable items. I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the commissaire drew up an inventory of the stock.

But as one door closed another opened. In December 1940, Fred arrived home. We were delighted to see him, although shocked by his appearance. We sat him down, fed him and listened, open-mouthed, as he told us his story. After the Maginot Line had fallen, he’d been captured and transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in Strasbourg, which was the last we’d heard of him. Overhearing the German guards say that all the prisoners would be transferred to Germany the following day, he brought his escape plans forward and, wearing civilian clothes he’d secretly hidden, somehow fled and crossed the Vosges Mountains in the harshest winter on foot, walking only at night. He traveled to Nancy, contacted all his old customers, held a huge sale and sold the entire contents of his tailor’s shop. Secreting the money in his clothes, he’d journeyed on to Poitiers. This money kept us going throughout the whole of the war. Thanks to Fred, thin and pale after his ordeal, we were able to survive.

Not content with posters plastered all over walls, homes, and on nearby trees, we were now forbidden the use of a radio, a typewriter, or a telephone, although we had all three hidden in my father’s bedroom. We couldn’t go to the shops until four-thirty in the afternoon, and by then everything would have been sold but for the kind shopkeepers who kept things back for us, at grave risk to themselves. We were forbidden from all public places such as squares, restaurants, gardens, cafés, libraries, and sports grounds. We couldn’t take a tram, enter a cinema, or even sit in a private garden. All the restrictions made my blood boil.

was grateful for her kindness, and she gave me good cause to be. As the atmosphere worsened toward the end of 1941, the Gestapo began arriving unannounced at the hospital, searching for what they euphemistically called “undesirables.” The senior officer would march in, brandishing a list, and ask a nun for Jews or communists by name. “I do not recognize that name,” she’d reply frostily. “We have only patients here.” But pushing past her, they’d burst into wards and private rooms, check the names on the charts on the bedstead and drag anyone on their list from their beds, still in their pajamas. The nuns would hide me in a small office near the chapel whenever the Germans came. They could have been arrested and shot for less.

That year, the remaining foreign Jews in Poitiers were rounded up and placed in a nearby camp by the Germans, who used the precisely maintained lists of names that we, as a community, had so obligingly provided.

At home we embarked on our own methods of resistance. As in Metz, we helped Jewish families flee from occupied France. People we’d never met would just turn up on our doorstep, ring the bell, and ask for help.

None of us ever imagined how terrible things would become. We didn’t know anything, even though we listened to the radio every night.

Not long afterward, on June 17, 1942, a gloriously hot afternoon, Noel Degout’s teenage son Yves came hurrying over on his bicycle. “The Germans are at the house,” he told us breathlessly, the sweat glistening on his face. “The Gestapo. They’re interrogating everybody.”

The mood in France worsened daily. Eleven days after Stéphanie’s arrest, all Jews over the age of six in occupied France were ordered to wear the Star of David.

Our agreed meeting point was the village of St. Secondin, about twenty miles southeast of Poitiers, right on the border of the Zone Libre. Hélène and my father took the bus part of the way and were to walk the rest. Rosy and I were to ride our bikes all the way, taking turns to carry Jacquie on the handlebars. My mother and grandmother were due much later, on the last bus from Poitiers. My father was to lead the first of the family across the ligne de demarcation, while I stayed to make the most dangerous, final crossing with my mother and grandmother.

The Germans quickly realized their strategic importance in living on the border and offered the farmers huge sums of money to denounce those trying to flee from occupied France. Most, like Monsieur Degout, were disgusted by the offer. But the posters were everywhere in Poitiers, offering thousands of francs. The Gestapo had been most generous with its rewards, almost a year’s income for an average impecunious farmer. It could afford to be—after all, it had stolen from France.

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.

None of us could work; our papers were only good enough for random checks in the street, not for close scrutiny.

There was little to eat in the port city, apart from root vegetables and sweet potatoes, and people were starving in the streets. Fred gave me money for food but there was little to buy. The Germans and Italians took the best of everything to feed themselves and their own. The streets were full of destitutes, who had no money or coupons, no papers and no means of existence. They lay, literally dying, their eyes closed against the tide of humanity passing them by.

The scenes I’d witnessed that afternoon shook me equally. They were images that were to haunt me for the rest of my life. I realized, for the first time, that although I’d foolishly thought we were much safer in the South of France, the long arm of Adolf Hitler stretched all the way to the Mediterranean Sea and beyond.

“I’m a registered nurse,” I told them. “I’d like to volunteer to help those being wounded on the streets.” “Are you Jewish?” came the cold reply from the young woman on the front desk. “We’re not allowed to enlist Jews.”

curfew, we finally heard on the radio that the troops of Colonel Jacques Leclerc and his Second Armored Division were at the gates of Paris. The Americans, who’d led the way until now, had allowed them the courtesy of entering Paris first. I was just back from work and home with Cecile when we heard the momentous news. Then the bells of Paris, which had been silent for the four years of the occupation, began to ring. “Listen, Cecile!” I said, throwing open the window of our apartment and letting the jubilant peal of bells fill the room. We stood in the window, basking in the early evening sun, and allowed the waves of beautiful music to wash over us.

Now, after four dark years of German occupation, we were singing directly at the enemy soldiers, some of whom lifted their guns and pointed them at us. They didn’t shoot;

Despite the fall of Paris and the loss of so much seized territory, the Nazis were still acting as aggressors, capturing Bucharest, razing Warsaw, and launching their new long-range V-2 bombs. The battle was far from over, and I was determined to play a part in whatever was needed to save France.

Colonel Fabien ran his hands through his hair and looked me up and down. “We’ve been desperately looking for army personnel who speak German,” he said, rubbing his chin with his hand. “We particularly need women because they’re far less likely to attract attention in a country where the men have all been called up.” His expression thoughtful, he added, “Would you be willing to do intelligence work?” Without considering the consequences, I said brightly, “Yes, sir, I would.”

I was taught how to read a map, signal in Morse, and interpret codes. I studied photographs, charts, and diagrams of anything from a panzer tank to an aerial reconnaissance shot of the area, and learned about the entire German military apparatus. Finally, I was taught to shoot all kinds of weapons, from tommy guns, 9mm weapons, and small pistols, to machine guns that were so heavy I couldn’t even lift them.

My work as the most unlikely of spies officially began on January 20, 1945. I was assigned to the Commandos d’Afrique, the first French unit to land on the Mediterranean coast. It was a legendary unit, which had fought the Germans throughout North Africa under General Bethouart and had participated in the liberation battles throughout Tunisia, Italy, and France. I was deeply honored.

I nodded. Deep snow, freezing temperatures, pitch-darkness, surrounded by trigger-happy Germans, female, unarmed, and Jewish: It was going to be a long night.

Then my footing gave way beneath me and I plunged feet first through thin ice into a canal. The ice was covered in snow and was indistinguishable from the rest of the terrain. I went completely under, breaking through before bobbing back up, gasping for air. It was such a shock—both the very fact of the canal and the iciness of it. The water was as cold as death.

Kicking out again, moving along, I found some larger tufts of grass and a slightly deeper ledge. With supreme effort, I managed to lift myself up onto my elbows and fall facedown into the deep powdery snow at the water’s edge. Snow thrust into my mouth and up my nostrils, making me cough and almost lose my grip. Closing my eyes, head down, I gave myself one final push on my arms and collapsed on my side into a drift.

that when the Germans stopped firing, they’d retreated east, which is why I could no longer hear them.

Early one February morning Captain Ligouzat escorted me to the outskirts of a small Alsatian town northeast of Thann and handed me over to a French tank unit. After a succinct briefing about my next mission, I was assigned to ride inside an armored personnel carrier, une voiture blindée. I’d never suffered from claustrophobia before, but it was dark and close inside, the air stale with sweat and fear and fuel. There were two soldiers—the driver and a gunner—and me. I sat next to the driver in the semidarkness, shifting in my seat. In front of us were two Sherman tanks, and behind us were more armored vehicles and some troop carriers. We were wedged in like sardines in a tin. The plan was to enter the heavily occupied town at dawn and engage the enemy. In the heat of the battle, I was expected to slip from the personnel carrier, hide somewhere, and infiltrate the enemy. Simple as that.

In that moment I realized that courage or cowardice depends entirely on circumstance and one’s state of mind.

Deciding to take Reinhart up on his offer a few weeks later, Zimmerman sent me to Switzerland with Lieutenant Talichet, in order to arrange my crossing into Germany via Switzerland. This would be my fifteenth attempt to infiltrate the enemy, but my first directly into German territory. It was April 11, 1945.

Standing firm, despite the proximity of the heavily armed beast approaching me, I held my arm even higher. Holding my breath, my head was filled with the noise of its engine and its tracks as it inched toward me. Finally, the tank was so close I could smell its diesel fumes and feel the heat of its engine. The squeaking finally stopped. It had ground to a halt less than three feet from where I stood. The huge barrel of its 75mm gun loomed out over my head.

I must have ridden for hundreds of miles across southern Germany, garnering information and spreading propaganda wherever I could. In my role as Martha Ulrich, I became accomplished in the art of subterfuge. It felt so normal to me by then—lying to everyone I met about who I was and where I’d come from—I didn’t feel at all guilty, not one little bit. It was as if I had two different personalities, and when I slipped into that of Martha Ulrich, I was so convincing, I almost believed my own stories.

On the way back from the border in his jeep, the major said something that surprised me. “I’m putting you up for a medal,” he told me. “For all you’ve done in Freiburg and here in the south of Germany. The Croix de Guerre. Here’s the citation.” He handed me a copy, and as I read it, my eyes filled with tears. I hadn’t become a spy for the glory. I’d only wanted to follow in Stéphanie’s and Jacques’s footsteps and do what I could to help my country. To be thanked for my efforts so publicly was something I hadn’t expected. “Thank you, sir,” I said, the words on the page blurring. “Thank you.” But the one-armed general had other ideas. He had to endorse the nomination first, and when it came to him from the major’s office, he refused. “Sergent Lenôtre is not with the Second Zouaves” was his terse reply. “Therefore she doesn’t qualify.” So, the only the recognition I got was a copy of a citation that was never enacted. In a strange way, it meant more to me than a medal.

The events of the next few days were the stuff of history. News filtered through of the execution of Mussolini and then, astonishingly, the suicide of Adolf Hitler. On May 8, 1945, I was still with Commandant Petit and his men in the southern part of the French sector when we heard news of the German surrender.

In six long years of war, I’d grown from a naive teenager from a devout Jewish family in Metz to an independently minded intelligence officer who’d taken a vow of spinsterhood in memory of the fiancé she’d lost. I was twenty-five years old but felt very much older. Each year of war had seemed like a decade. Now that it was over, I felt vulnerable and isolated, afraid of what I would find when I looked for my family again, fearful of being alone.

One by one they began to tell me the stories of the camps. I listened in a daze. To begin with, I simply couldn’t believe it. It was unconscionable. I thought they were telling tales, that maybe they were inmates from a liberated lunatic asylum with crazy fantasies. But there were just too many of them for that. As they shuffled pathetically closer, eager to speak of the agonies they’d endured, I became increasingly distraught.

course, I’d been aware that there were camps. I even knew the names—Dachau, Belsen, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald—though the names meant little to me then, or to history. They were camps designed to hold in “protective custody” those the Germans deemed dangerous—communists, Jews, homosexuals, Catholics. I hadn’t exactly expected the Germans to treat them particularly well, but I’d thought that they’d at least treat them as human beings. After all, the Germans were our next-door neighbors. We had so much in common; some of us even spoke the same language. Their inventors, scientists, musicians, doctors, and philosophers had made enormous contributions to the world. Theirs was the land of Beethoven, Mozart, Einstein, Freud, Heine. Their nobility had married into some of the greatest royal households in Europe. They weren’t far-off barbarians, oblivious to culture or knowledge or morality. News had begun to trickle through about some of the appalling conditions the liberating soldiers were discovering, but working undercover right up to the armistice, and without access to a radio, I’d missed much of it. But as I came across more of these unfortunate souls on the roads of Germany, I began to comprehend the true scale of the deportations, and feared for the first time that my Steph might well not have survived. Stopping almost every group I came across, I searched for her among those harrowed faces.

Later, in the name of General de Gaulle, I received a much-prized additional star to my Croix de Guerre.

Fred, now back in de Lattre’s army, wrote to me from his billet: “The rest of the family are well and have survived, but I have some bad news. I’ve discovered that Stéphanie, Uncle Leon, and Pavel were all sent to Auschwitz along with Rabbi Elie Bloch and scores of others we know.”

Walking down rue Gambetta, I pondered how little Poitiers had changed since we’d fled—a period of three years that had changed me beyond recognition. When I’d lived here, I was a young girl, engaged to Jacques. Now I was a decorated member of the armed forces, an experienced intelligence officer who’d been robbed of my happiness and plunged into the world of war and danger in a way I could never possibly have imagined.

double sacrifice.

It was thanks to Fred that the family had survived. He’d organized an entire network of Jewish refugees and resistance groups to outwit the Germans in the mountains, with people watching the only two roads into Vic-sur-Cère night and day. Whenever German cars and trucks were spotted, they’d all flee higher up into the mountains. My little nephew Maurice was just eighteen months old at the time and he didn’t understand much, but knew enough.