Deportation of Rachel de Champlain

The deportation of Rachel de Champlain marks the point at which Vianne Mauriac can no longer pretend that compliance will keep her family safe. Rachel, Vianne's best friend of fifteen years and a Jewish woman born in Romania, had already lost her daughter Sarah to a German bullet at a border checkpoint. Now, on a hot afternoon in the summer of 1942, the French police arrive to take her away.

Background and Warning

Captain Wolfgang Beck, the German officer billeted at Le Jardin, had warned Vianne the day before that Rachel should not be at home. He told Vianne that if Rachel were there the next day, she would not be there the day after. Vianne hid Rachel and her infant son Ari in the cellar beneath the barn, but by afternoon, with no sign of trouble, Vianne believed the danger had passed. She let Rachel emerge. It was a fatal miscalculation: the Gestapo had adjusted the timetable because of a problem with the trains.

The Arrest

When Vianne and Rachel reached Rachel's cottage, a French police car pulled up. Paul Jeauelere, the local gendarme who had grown fat on collaboration, stepped out carrying his rifle. He told Rachel she was being deported. When Rachel tried to keep her son, Paul said the child was not on the list. Vianne grabbed Paul's sleeve, pleading that Rachel was French, but Paul answered only: "She's a Jew." He forced Rachel into the backseat of his automobile. Vianne, acting on an impulse that surprised her, ran alongside the car, banged on the bonnet, and climbed in beside her friend.

The Train Station

At the Carriveau train station, the scale of the roundup became visible. Barricades blocked a dozen streets. Police wagons everywhere disgorged people with yellow stars on their chests, herding them toward cattle cars. Hundreds of Jewish women, children, and old men from all the communes in the area were being forced onto the platform. A train waited, puffing black smoke into the already hot air. Two German soldiers stood on the platform; one of them was Beck, holding a whip. But it was French police who did the work, forcing people into lines and shoving them onto the cattle cars. Up ahead, a woman holding a baby tried to run. A gendarme shot her in the back. She pitched to the ground, dead; the baby rolled to the boots of the gendarme holding a smoking gun.

The Parting

In the chaos, Rachel turned to Vianne and whispered: "Take my son. Save him." Vianne did not hesitate. She reached for the toddler, took him in her arms. A gendarme stabbed Rachel in the shoulder with the butt of his rifle so hard she stumbled. Rachel looked at Vianne, and the universe of their friendship was in her eyes—the secrets they had shared, the promises they had made and kept, the dreams for their children that bound them as neatly as sisters. "Get out of here," Rachel cried hoarsely. "Go." Vianne backed away, then turned and shoved through the crowd, holding Ari. At the end of the platform, she turned around. Rachel stood in the black, yawning entrance of a cattle car, her face and hands still smeared with her daughter's blood. She scanned the crowd, saw Vianne, and raised her bloody hand in the air. Then she was gone, shoved back by the women stumbling in around her. The door to the cattle car clanged shut.

Consequences and Aftermath

Vianne collapsed onto the divan at Le Jardin, holding Ari. Sophie came in and asked where Rachel was. Vianne told her the truth: Rachel had been deported because she was born in Romania and was Jewish. The Vichy government did not care that she had lived in France for twenty-five years, married a Frenchman, and that her husband fought for France. Sophie asked if Rachel would come back after the war. Vianne answered: "I hope so." But Rachel never returned. Vianne later learned from the OSE that Rachel had lived less than a month in Auschwitz. Her husband, Marc, was killed in Stalag 13A. Vianne kept Ari, renaming him Daniel Mauriac and raising him as her own son until the OSE came to take him to relatives in America after the war. The deportation also transformed Vianne: she began forging identity papers and hiding Jewish children at the Abbaye de la Trinité, ultimately saving nineteen children. The sight of Beck on the platform with a whip in his hand also poisoned whatever trust had grown between them, and when he later discovered the hidden airman in her barn, Vianne struck him with a shovel and killed him.