Looking for the mysterious photographer who snapped occupied Paris and mocked the Nazis

It all began quite simply, one morning in August 2020. On that day, at the flea market in Barjac, a town of 1,600 in southern France, a vintage photo enthusiast was browsing from stall to stall, looking for rare finds. Every year, Stéphanie Colaux visits the market to scavenge for albums like the ones they used to make, the ones bound in thick covers, containing black-and-white images with pretty scalloped edges. Weddings, birthdays, holidays at the seaside... these snapshots, rescued from oblivion, sometimes from the dumpster, exude the smell of attics and nostalgia, evoking distant intimacies and anonymous emotions. Colaux, co-founder of an audiovisual production company, enjoys imagining the stories and destinies behind each of them.

         Strolling past one of the stands, she spotted a seemingly unremarkable album in a particularly poor condition. The laminated cover – very 1970s – showed two children playing with a model boat. Out of curiosity, Colaux decided to open it, and, to her astonishment, discovered a treasure trove.

         The pictures are of Paris, between June 1940 and March 1942, at the start of the Occupation of France by Nazi Germany. A time when taking photographs outdoors was prohibited, except for those accredited by the occupier. And yet, in this album, there are hundreds of them, 377 to be precise. Most of them are numbered and dated, offering a glimpse into the subjugated capital, gripped by a form of lethargy. The first photo, dated June 30, 1940, sets the tone by showing a propaganda poster, a drawing of a man in uniform with two toddlers, accompanied by a reassuring message: "Abandoned populations, trust the German soldier."

         What follows is more of the same, with pages and pages of small-format images (8 × 6 centimeters) showing officers strolling on boulevards or the quays of the Seine in the company of young French women, others parading around the Arc de Triomphe or crowding the flea market. None of the people in the photos are posing; they are clearly unaware that they are being photographed. Some of the images have handwritten notes on the back, indicating the date, time and place of the shot, along with short, punchy remarks filled with a saucy, very Parisian sarcasm. All are written in capital letters, which would have been unusual at the time, making it seem like the author didn't want to be identified.

         It's clear from reading these texts that the photographer had little love for the Germans – the "Fritzes" or "our protectors," as they are called. For example, Rue de Rivoli, June 30, 1940, 4:30 pm: "The German flag is flying, the street is deserted. Only our protectors are out and about." 

         In front of the Palais de Chaillot, August 4, 1940, 6:15 pm: "The Fritzes visit Paris while the French troops are doing winter sports in the Pyrénées."

         At Saint-Cloud, on September 29, 1940, 3:20 pm: "Look at the friendly face of the gentleman on the left. Monsieur doesn't want to be photographed."

         Place de la Nation, June 8, 1941, 4 pm: "At the Fête de la Nation, the Fritzes are astonished that the 'vanquished' are enjoying themselves while the 'victors' are bored..."

         After some haggling, Colaux walked away with the prize, aware that she had discovered an exceptional piece. Photographs of occupied Paris do exist, of course, but most of the ones we usually see were taken by either German soldiers or French professionals with ties to the collaborationist press. The photos in this album have a very different, more natural tone. They document a moment in history, day by day, with commentary. The images and words were challenges to the occupier. And they were a mystery: At this stage, it was impossible to identify the photographer.

         Colaux found another surprise on the first page of the album: a general note, a sort of introduction written by the person – also unidentified – who put together the album. The handwriting is clearly different from that of the notes on the backs of the photos.

         This unknown hand wrote: "In June 1940, a Parisian stroller armed himself with his camera to capture many scenes of the occupying army. He took a lot of risks, walked around a lot, and many of the pictures reached London. At the Liberation, I recovered a large batch of these photographs from a Resistance network. They're not of a military nature, they're of everyday life under the Nazi boot. They are often moving testimonies. Have the courage to examine them." The message is signed only with indecipherable initials.

"Have the courage to examine them." Who was behind this intriguing message? And how could we find the photographer, this mysterious "Parisian stroller"? Colaux informed Le Monde of this baffling enigma, and so, in the fall of 2020, the investigation began. It would last four years.

         The first thing to do, of course, was to consult historians to find out if they had ever heard of such a collection and if it might bear the mark of some network in the Resistance. On closer inspection, the chronology of the shots clearly narrows the field of possibilities. The first, as we said, is dated June 30, 1940; dozens of others followed throughout the summer of 1940. At the time, the ranks of the Resistance were very small in Paris. The capital was emptied of a large proportion of its inhabitants and reeling under the shock of the debacle. The June 18 call to resist issued from London by Charles de Gaulle, a general then unknown to the public, was little heeded.

         The only active network, still in its infancy, was the "Musée de l'Homme" group. But according to the historian Julien Blanc, an expert of said group, the photos couldn't be linked to these "pioneers." Another historian, Sébastien Albertelli, said that in the summer of 1940, the only rebellious acts were carried out by individuals. The images in the album, even if they passed at some stage through a network, appear to fit this description, suggesting that they were the work of a single person or a very small group.

         However, one thing is certain: The locations photographed in the first few months were not chosen at random. They bear witness to the stranglehold exerted on the capital by the occupying troops. If these images were placed end to end, they would form a kind of cartography of power. For example, numbers two and nine were photographed in front of the Ministry of the Navy, which was under German control. Number five was taken in front of the Hôtel de Crillon, a luxury hotel that became the headquarters of the military governor. Moving along the Rue de Rivoli, there's a photo of the Nazi flag on another luxury hotel, the Meurice, which was also commandeered. Additionally, there are photos in front of Notre Dame, on the banks of the Seine, at the Neuilly Bridge.

         The variety of locations is all the more astounding considering how the Germans tightened their grip as the fall of 1940 approached. A decree issued on September 16 forbade "photography in the open air, or from the back of an enclosure or from inside a house."

         The Germans didn't have a monopoly on repression. From Vichy, the capital of the collaborationist French regime where the republican motto "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) had been replaced by the martial "Travail, Famille, Patrie" (Work, Family, Homeland), the government orchestrated a hunt for anyone who resisted the new order. In Paris and its suburbs, any act of rebellion became dangerous. By December 30, 1940, there had already been 842 arrests of people caught in the act and 411 administrative internments. The priority targets were communists and Jews.

         Despite the risks, our unknown photographer didn't give up. It seemed like he was always there, observing them at a reasonable distance behind their backs, even when he watched tanks leaving for Germany at the Gare de Sèvres (number 121, October 27, 1940). The album includes one sequence after another, indicating that he spent entire days out and about, with a penchant for Sundays. The captions on the back – at this stage of the investigation, it was still impossible to determine whether they were written by the photographer or someone else – exude a caustic sense of humor. For example, on March 24, 1941, at 10:30 am, in the Tuileries garden: "After 10 months of Occupation, there are still Fritzes who don't know Paris." Or one summer Sunday when he caught an officer with a pair of young women: "Mr. Fritz on the boulevards, will he go to the hotel with the two chicks... Mystery?…"       

         None of the captions mention the photographer's name, not even a pseudonym. To identify the photographer, we figured that the best place to start might be by going back to the source, in other words, to the album's owner, another unknown who claimed, in the introductory note, to have recovered this "important batch" at the time of Liberation, "from a Resistance network." If the owner or their family members are still alive and available, they might be able to provide information about the "Parisian stroller" mentioned in the introductory note.

         The album doesn't have a name or address. We initially tried to question the flea market seller in Barjac, but he was reluctant to give us any information. He suggested that the unusual object came from a house in the south of France that had been emptied after the death of its owner. Pressing the matter further would have been futile, as the world of secondhand sellers and collectors is secretive concerning the origins of their knick-knacks. It seemed we would have to search elsewhere, delving back into the photos.

         What do these photos tell us about their author? Historian Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon, a specialist in the Occupation, examined the photos at the request of Le Monde and attempted to establish the photographer's profile. She began with a common-sense observation: If the time indications are accurate, how could he have moved so easily from one place to another, from the Jardin du Luxembourg to the Place de l'Etoile, from the Concorde to the near western suburbs (Saint-Cloud, Courbevoie...)? Did he ride a motorcycle in the almost deserted, heavily deprived Paris of early summer 1940? "That would mean he had access to fuel, which required vouchers issued by an authority," Vergez-Chaignon observed.

         Likewise, his frequent presence at various sensitive locations such as railway stations, command centers, and arms convoys is intriguing. "How does he manage to get so close to German parades and take photos?" asked the historian. "For a normal citizen, it's impossible."

         The mention of a "stroller" in the note therefore seems hardly credible. Besides, there weren't many "strollers" – especially French ones – in Paris in the summer of 1940. The Germans' rapid victory had driven around two million out of three million residents, especially in the wealthier western districts, to leave the city. There were also very few cars, due to fuel shortages, and bus services had been discontinued, leaving the avenues virtually deserted.

         The photos bear witness to a unique moment, showing us a paralyzed capital trapped in oppression. From the Invalides to the Madeleine, even bicycles are scarce. It would take a few more weeks for the Parisians who had left in the spring to return. There's no doubt about it: These photos are light-years away from the propaganda images portraying an eternal Paris, happy and relieved, where Germans sit outside cafés. Our photographer preserved the truth: a captive, mute city.

         At the time, miniature cameras – at least, small enough to hide under a coat and go unnoticed – already existed, as did easy-to-use shutter release devices. But to take and develop photos, you needed film, paper and a dark room. In those times of scarcity, everything was limited and controlled. "Unless you had a supply, or had some means, legal or otherwise, of obtaining one," pointed one Vergez-Chaignon.

         Could a professional such as a photojournalist, with the approval of the Germans and the necessary equipment, have developed the photos? We proposed this hypothesis to another historian, Françoise Denoyelle. She was also taken aback by this iconographic collection. "It's magnificent, fantastic, truly extraordinary," she said. "But I can't imagine who could have taken these photos, and I've never heard of this story."

         In her expert opinion, the framing is good, worthy of a "pro," but the prints – on paper with scalloped edges, not "straight" – would suggest the work of a skilled amateur. In either case, Denoyelle also wondered how the photographer could have had such massive quantities of film and paper at their disposal. Furthermore, she found many puzzling mysteries: "How could he get so close to the Germans? And why take such risks? For some of the shots you're showing me, it was a guaranteed death penalty. Others, on the other hand, are of little interest. Why take them?"

         Couldn't there be a detail in the album, however small, that would put us on the right track? We needed to classify these images, put them in order, and even display them on the wall like police working on an unsolvable cold case. We needed to try to find some coherence, some connection, some truth.

         Little by little, the outline of a sketch emerged. The photographer was a man, seemingly, because he was referred to twice in the notes with the masculine "le photographe" rather than the feminine "la photographe." He was undoubtedly a Parisian, judging by his perfect knowledge of the neighborhoods. Whether he was a professional or not, he mastered the art of photography and had the necessary equipment.

         There were other clues: He used a motorcycle or bicycle, and often stopped at "strategic" locations (stations, bridges, crossroads...). His preferred areas were western Paris (Opéra, Grands Boulevards, Champs-Elysées), where the Germans reigned supreme, and the present-day Hauts-de-Seine suburbs, from Sèvres to Courbevoie, an industrial sector rich in factories.

         At this stage of the investigation, that was about all we knew about him. He had covered his tracks well. Whether they were written by his hand or not, the comments written on the backs of most of the photos only added to the mystery. Some were written very cleanly in black or red ink, while others had been scratched out and then rewritten, as if all or part of the original message had been removed with a letter opener. Why had some been redacted, and not others, containing only numbers (4, 35, 241, 419...) written in the same handwriting ? We tried to access the erased messages by bringing in a specialist company, Photon Lines, with the type of equipment used on crime scenes. But the scratching was so deep that the texts remained unreadable.

         The investigation continued online, in the hope of finding books or articles in France or elsewhere mentioning the name of a forgotten photographer. Search engines didn't have to dig far from Paris to suggest a lead: the Museum of the National Resistance (MRN), in Champigny-sur-Marne! It holds a collection of photos that are strangely similar to those in our album: same period, same format, same type of caption, with or without words scratched out. On the MRN's website, they are listed as coming from the "Daniel Leduc collection." Could this be our mysterious photographer?

PART 2 : LOOKING FOR “MAJOR LEDUC”

         The photo was made for history, a black-and-white image that conjures up memories of occupied Paris during the Second World War. It depicts three German soldiers standing in front of a map of the metro, at the entrance to the Richelieu-Drouot station. Two have their backs to the camera. The third, an officer, is facing the photographer, casting a surprised glance in his direction. Has he sensed his presence behind them? Is he about to chase him, to stop him before he blends in with the crowd on the Grands Boulevards? 

         This photo, which appears in the album, has neither date nor caption, but a simple number, "7," inscribed on the back. And yet, it was this photo that provided us with an unexpected clue. An internet search revealed that an identical image, also numbered "7," exists at the Museum of the National Resistance (MRN) in Champigny-sur-Marne, just east of Paris. However, there is a key difference with the picture in the museum: The back of it bears a caption − a few lines in capital letters − and a precise date. It reads: "Mr. Fritz doesn't look happy to be photographed. Look at his friendly face... View taken 14 July 1940, 2:15 pm"

         Many other photographs, also preserved at the MRN, appear to be similar in style and content to those in the album. They are well-composed and could be the work of a professional or a knowledgeable amateur. They are also accompanied by sarcastic commentary. It seemed that the two sets complement each other, to create an astonishingly rich collection.

         On its website, the museum lists its images as coming from the "Daniel Leduc fund," without further indication. Could he be the photographer? To find out, in 2021, we contacted the teams at the MRN, which was then headed by historian Thomas Fontaine, a specialist on this period. The idea was to compare the collections and determine the origin of the museum's collection.

         In Champigny-sur-Marne, the MRN occupies a modern, functional building on the banks of the river. Students visit the museum to immerse themselves in the odyssey of the Resistance and its heroes, the well-known and the anonymous. Visitors can explore a wide range of artifacts such as leaflets, false papers, weapons, letters and photos, too. In one room, visitors can view 42 photographs from the "Daniel Leduc fund." A prominently displayed panel is devoted to them.

         The tone of the captions is strongly reminiscent of those in our album: They consist of punchy phrases imbued with biting irony. For example, on Sunday, June 30, 1940, at 4 pm, the photographer walked through the Place de la Concorde, where he spotted a group of Frenchmen huddled around a German vehicle. In his caption, he was mocking: "The green tourists arrive in buses. The Fifth Column is selling chocolate." In other words, the traitors on the inside were eager to cooperate.

         On July 21, he went all the way to the Arc de Triomphe: "The 'Fritzes' pay tribute to the Unknown Soldier killed by them in 1914-1918."

         On August 12, he was back at the Concorde: "Lots of Germans... German newspapers, German salesmen, or talking German."

         On October 20, at 5:30 pm., he headed up to Montmartre, where the crowd packed the steps to the Sacré-Coeur: "There are more Fritzes here than Parisians."

         The next morning, at 11:10 am, back at the Concorde, this vast plaza crossed by the Occupation forces without a care for traffic: "This is the new order... Fritzes aren't interested in the crosswalk, the agent turns a blind eye."

         The museum's "Daniel Leduc fund" contains over 1,000 photos, some of them in multiple copies. Together with the 377 in the album, they form a huge collection that would undoubtedly take months to inventory, classify and analyze. Fortunately, the numbers inscribed on the back – from "1" to "703" – allowed for more precise categorization. There are around 700 different photos, confirming the collection's exceptional scope, despite a few occasional gaps here and there.

         The detailed accuracy of the information – place, date, time – also helped to establish the timeline of the photographs, from June 30, 1940, to July 1942, and not to March 1942, as we had initially thought at the start of the investigation. Twenty-five months, perhaps even a little longer, of surreptitiously photographing passers-by, soldiers, monuments, streets, stations...

         The collection was an unparalleled treasure, MRN director Fontaine agreed. It was completely different from the work of the professional photographers involved in collaboration with the occupier. With our unidentified photographer, there is no dishonesty or deception, and there is nothing comparable between his portrayal of suffering Paris and the peaceful yet deceptive one immortalized by André Zucca for the German propaganda publication Signal. The city is depicted in its unfiltered state, in all its gloom, its fear and its complicities.

         A crucial question now arose: Who was Daniel Leduc? Could he be a police officer, as some websites suggested, based on information obtained from the MRN? Fontaine admitted that he actually didn't know anything about the man who bore that name. According to him, the photos arrived at the museum in 1999, long before he became director, and may not have been cataloged as they should have been. "To determine their origin and identify Daniel Leduc," he explained, "we undertook a search of our archives. Unfortunately, we found only one document, a handwritten letter."

         This letter, dated August 7, 1999, is signed by Albert Giry, a leading figure in the communist Resistance in the suburbs of Paris. On that summer's day, he wrote to the then curator Guy Krivopissko: "Dear Guy, enclosed is a donation from Major Leduc Daniel, 8 rue Romain Rolland, 55 100 Verdun, who, by my intermediary, is sending it to our museum. The photos were taken on the spot during the Second World War in Paris."

         At Fontaine's request, a member of the MRN staff tried in 2020 to locate the donor, "Major Daniel Leduc," but his efforts were unsuccessful. There was no one by that name at the address given in Verdun. "We can only assume that this gentleman is dead," Fontaine said with regret. As Albert Giry, the intermediary in this donation, was also deceased, the door closed as soon as it had opened.

         Nevertheless, Le Monde continued its investigations around "Major Leduc" mentioned in the 1999 letter. Was he a member of the police force who took advantage of his freedom of movement to take photos? The police and gendarmerie historians consulted said they had never heard of him. 

         The phonebook was no help either. The Leducs we called – a few dozen of them – were not related to our stranger. The residents of rue Romain-Rolland in Verdun? There was no point in trying as the house at number 8 changed occupants ages ago. Only one neighbor vaguely remembered seeing "young people" clearing away furniture one morning "a long time ago," "as if an elderly person had died." In short, the investigation stalled, and "Major Leduc" remained a ghost.

         One evening in the spring of 2021, yet another dive into the depths of the web led us to a list of members of an ex-servicemen's organization. Among them was a certain "Major Daniel Leduc" from Lorraine. Another member of the organization offered to connect us with him, but couldn't guarantee that he was the correct person.

         Five days had passed when, one Wednesday afternoon, the phone rang: "Daniel Leduc speaking, have you been trying to reach me?" The voice was not that of an old man, but rather that of a still-vibrant retiree. Did this mean he had something to do with the "Daniel Leduc fund," the hundreds of photos preserved in Champigny-sur-Marne? He replied, "Yes, of course! I gave them to Mr. Giry in 1999 so that they could be passed on to the museum. I didn't know they'd ended up being exhibited, because I never heard from him after that. I got them from my father, Paul Leduc, who had taken part in the liberation of Paris as a soldier in an intelligence service. I recovered them after his death in May 1995. If you're ever in the area, I'll tell you all about it."

         So, Daniel Leduc was not dead, as the museum director thought. The following week, we even found ourselves at his home, in a small town near Nancy, in northeastern France. He was a 75-year-old man, very friendly, who retired from the army with the rank of major. From Lebanon to the former Yugoslavia, his career took him to various theaters of operation in the 1980s and 1990s. In other words, the army was his life's work.

         His father also served France, and in a very commendable manner. His career record was right there in front of us, an armful of sepia-toned documents spread out on the dining room table: Leduc Paul, born in Paris in January, 1921; volunteered at the age of 20; trained in North Africa in parachuting and intelligence; joined the special services in 1943; enlisted in February 1944, for an infiltration mission in occupied France; left Algiers by submarine for Spain, then the French border; assigned in March to the SSMF-TR military network (intelligence and counter-espionage) in eastern France and the Paris region.

         After the liberation of Paris in August 1944, Paul Leduc continued to work for the intelligence services, more specifically for Military Security Bureau (BSM) 407, based on rue de Richelieu in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, then for the General Directorate of Studies and Research, the forerunner of today's DGSE, France's foreign intelligence service. He left the army 28 years later, in 1972, with the rank of colonel and with many medals to his credit, including the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d'Honneur. In his old age, he lived with his wife in Jacou, a quiet town in southern France.

         His son Daniel was the eldest of eight siblings. After his father's death in 1995, as a retired commander and army man, he inherited his archives, particularly a crate containing stacks of photos. "I didn't know he had all that," said Leduc, "and I don't know who the photographer was. My father didn't talk much about the war. He was always discreet about his activities. I may be wrong, but I think these photos were seized from the Gestapo. When I discovered them, I thought it would be stupid to keep them, so I took advantage of the opportunity of Monsieur Giry's visit to Verdun in 1999, to ask him to donate them to the museum. I've never heard of an album with the same sort of photographs. I only know of those sent to the Champigny museum. There, now you know everything. "

         Neither of the Leducs, son or father, was the photographer. A study of Paul's military file, available in part at the Defense Historical Service in Vincennes, provided no further information: there was no mention of seized photos, whether in Gestapo premises or elsewhere. 

         This was in June 2021. We had the satisfaction of having at least determined the origin of the "Daniel Leduc fund" preserved at the MRN but were still unable to identify the photographer.

         In his presentation sheet, the album's owner – also unidentified – left us some clues. Let's recall what he (or she) wrote as a conclusion : "They are often moving testimonies. Please have the courage to examine them." These somewhat solemn lines ended with a simple initial, a scrawl that was impossible to decipher, like those administrative documents or memos signed on the fly by a decision-maker in a hurry.

         It was at this point, the day after the meeting with Leduc, that a kind of miracle occurred, one of those triggers that open new horizons of investigation. While rummaging through his archives, the ex-commander came across a note written once by his father, Paul, an ordinary invitation to come and spend a family vacation in Jacou, in the south of France. It read: "The house is prepared to keep you for at least a fortnight, and at best until the Christmas holidays, when you'll be able to see the whole brood. See you soon." Then followed a signature, or rather initials. And here's the surprise: the initials were the same as those on the album's presentation sheet! In other words, we discovered that the owner of the album, the stranger who invited us to have the "courage" to examine the incredible documentary work of the "Parisian walker" was none other than Paul Leduc himself, the major's father!

         The 377 images in the album and those held by the photographic archive form a single collection, which took different paths from the same source, Paul Leduc. As far as we knew, he was not the photographer, but he did contribute to the transmission of the work. It remained to be seen how he, the young agent of BSM 407, came to be in possession of so many photos in 1944.

         "I recovered a large batch of these photographs from a Resistance network," he wrote in the presentation card. Why did he select 377 in an album and leave hundreds of others in a wooden crate? His widow, who still lived in the south of France, had no idea and no memory of the collection. As for their son Daniel, he wondered how such a precious album, whose existence he too was unaware of, could have ended up on a second-hand goods dealer's stall. Perhaps it was meant to encourage us to persevere by opening it again.

         Embarking on such a quest is not without risk. The more you put into it, the more intoxicating and even obsessive the hunt becomes. What did this unknown man intend by drawing us into his frenzy of pictures? Why had some captions been scratched out and others not? How do we explain these multiple prints? And what sense could we make of his incessant marauding? He was everywhere: at the Arc de Triomphe, the Invalides, in front of the Eiffel Tower, in Neuilly, Sèvres or Courbevoie.

         The Paris he explored was that of the Germans − their places of power and leisure. The French, on the other hand, were barely present: there were no cafés, few stores, a few waiting lines, but little activity like crowded metros or closed stores. The Parisians displayed on the sidewalks seemed to be secretive figures, quickly passing by in the shadow of the occupier.

         This significant absence of resources revealed everything about the period. It indicated the withdrawal of the capital's inhabitants during this pivotal period as if the end of the "phoney war" had relegated them to the background, making them mere extras in their own history. For the vast majority of the population, the priority was not to resist, but to survive and adapt. Shortages of milk, butter, flour, sugar and meat were so severe that rationing was introduced in September 1940. Finding enough to eat became a daily obsession. This was a period marked by unemployment, resourcefulness and economic activity in the service of the Germans. Additionally, the upcoming winter was anticipated to be harsh, with shortages of wood and coal.

         The photographer did not really show this reality, he suggested it in his own way. From dawn to curfew, he served as our eye amidst the darkness. One day he was stationed in front of the entrance to Galeries Lafayette department store, another he was in the Tuileries gardens. He focused his lens on the Germans: they had their restaurants and cinemas. 

         One of the photos, lost among the many, was particularly noteworthy: Number "75." Dated September 1, 1940, 6:50 pm, its setting was once again the Place de la Concorde. In the foreground, a German officer and a woman. Shoulder to shoulder, they seemed to be bent over a book or a map of the capital. In the background, a shadow appeared on the ground: that of the photographer. As his arms are not raised, we can conclude that he's holding his camera at stomach or chest level; he's probably even hiding part of it under a loose-fitting garment. This is the only photo in which he appears, as if to encourage us to follow him, on and on.

PART 3/ THE DEPARTMENT STORE EMPLOYEE WHO HATED THE GERMANS

         This man is like a shadow, able to walk through walls. Just when you think you're getting close, he disappears. As you think you've identified him, he slips away. Occupied Paris in the early 1940s was his jungle and he has encouraged us to follow him without ever revealing himself, leaving behind disconcerting clues: at least 700 photos taken on the fly, accompanied by bitter-sweet comments on the back so Parisian that you'd swear you could hear Jean Gabin in Julien Duvivier's 1936 masterpiece La Belle Equipe (They Were Five). For this person, Germans were "the Fritzes," French women deemed too friendly to the occupiers were "chicks," or even "prostitutes," and Paris was a permanent theater. Only someone who knew and loved this city could plunge into it in this way, in defiance of the danger, and then capture it in its unrefined state, displaying all the ugliness of that time. A single arrest would have meant imprisonment or even death or deportation.

         These texts contribute to the uniqueness of the collection. In the iconography of the Occupation, there is no other example where words give such a tone, unity, and even a political coloration to the images and guide their interpretation. They convey determination, courage and a form of resistance. Without them, many of the photos could appear "neutral," perhaps even ambivalent, given how physically close they were taken to the Germans. Captioned in this way, they gain in character and evocative power, while drawing us ever more into the pursuit of their author.

         Tracking down such a risk-taker is dizzying. It quickly becomes an obsession, a frantic search for unnoticed clues. Constantly scrutinizing the images, questioning the comments and envisaging a hidden meaning, even a coded language. Noting dates, times and places, deducing that he probably traveled by bike or motorcycle and that he had the right and the means to do so in these times of bans and fuel shortages. Wondering if he had a miniature camera hidden under his clothes equipped with an ingenious trigger system. Drawing up a map of his travels and concluding that he lived in the west of the capital, or its very close suburbs, and often went out on Sundays. Detecting behind every shot, every more or less scratched caption, a challenge to the enemy.

         In the course of the investigation, an unexpected lead opened up, this time unconnected with Leduc. We learned that an 82-page booklet entitled Paris Humilié, 1940-1941. Chronique Photographique Inédite en 101 Clichés, ("Paris Humiliated, 1940-1941. An Unedited Photographic Chronicle in 101 Snapshots") was published in September 2020 by a small publisher from western France, Les Editions du Petit Pavé. The author, an amateur historian by the name of Albert Hude, had reproduced images clearly taken by the same unknown photographer! In other words, there were not two sets of photos, as we thought, but three. Even if there were duplicates, the mine seemed bottomless, and the intrigue more intoxicating than ever.

         We contacted Hude, a septuagenarian who lived for many years in the Paris region before retiring to Eure-et-Loir in central France, where he devoted himself to his passion: the history of the local Resistance. In fact, it was while chatting with an "old-timer" from the surrounding area that he became aware, in early 2018, of the existence of some astonishing photos. "This gentleman told me that a certain Jean Baillon, aged 88, had some photos taken in Paris at the start of the Occupation," said Hude. "I wanted to know more." 

         Jean Baillon couldn't have been the photographer, as he was only 9 years old in 1939, but his testimony provided new information, particularly about his mother, Renée Damien, a former perfume saleswoman at the Printemps department store in Paris. The woman of that story.

         To understand her importance, we need to go back to 1990. That year, the old lady died at the age of 81 in Le Pradet, southeastern France. When her son Jean was clearing out her apartment, he found a purple cloth case in a cabinet containing 117 photos dated from June 1940 to June 1941. He remembered that his mother had once told him she had obtained them from a friend, a man who was both curious and courageous, willing to do anything to photograph occupied Paris. 

         Baillon didn't know the name of this friend, but he told us that he was eventually arrested by the Gestapo and after being deported. According to him, it was his mother, Renée, who wrote the comments on the back of the photos. Reading them, the old man said he recognized the grating irony of this characterful woman, a true Parisian, resolutely hostile to "the Fritzes." 

         Hude was eager to find out more about the photographer. Where did he buy film and paper? Did he have a laboratory? How did he approach the Germans? Did he belong to a network? Unfortunately, by the time the amateur historian befriended Baillon, the latter was already very old. His memory shaky, he believed he remembered that this photo enthusiast had devised a clever device for concealing his camera in an ordinary shopping bag and operating it by means of a control. It was hard to say whether all this was true, or whether the octogenarian was, in good faith, passing on a slightly over-romantic family legend. In any case, he entrusted his collection to Hude, and authorized him to publish it.

         Baillon passed away in September 2022 in a retirement home near the city of Chartres. However, thanks to him we have bits and pieces of information about the photographer, who was apparently arrested in Paris by the Gestapo and then deported. But none of the research carried out in the archives or with specialists on the Occupation has turned up any mention of a Frenchman accused of having taken around 700 photos, and who met the same fate. All that remained was to investigate the woman through whom this third batch came to us – Renée Damien – in the hope that this would lead us to her photographer "friend."

         Could she really be the one, as her son claimed, who wrote the comments in cursive on the photos and the texts in capital letters on the other items? And could she also be the author of the texts, this time in capital letters, on the other two lots, the album and those at the MRN? Le Monde consulted a renowned graphologist Christine Navarro, who works with courts. Her analysis concluded that all the texts were the work of a single person, and that person couldn't possibly be Damien! "I'm positive," said Navarro, after comparing the comments with various personal documents signed by the Printemps saleswoman.

         This is not the only mystery concerning Damien. Like her photographer friend, she remains partly in the shadows, beyond the reach of investigative tools. Her name appears neither in the files of resistance fighters, nor in the files of the Paris Police Prefecture, nor in "Mémoire des Hommes," the extensive enlistment database of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. It took us several months, with the help of the Printemps archivists, to piece together her background.

         Born in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, southeast of Paris, in January 1909, Damien married Maurice Baillon, a fishmonger, at an early age. The couple's son, Jean, was born on July 16, 1930. But the couple soon separated. Damien, who had a reputation for independence, placed her son in various schools, first in Paris, then near Chartres, close to his father's family. In 1932 and 1933, she worked in a hosiery store on Rue Saint-Azare. The following year, she worked in the beauty department of Printemps. 

         During her lunch breaks, Damien browsed the boutiques of the Passage du Havre, a shopping mall next to Printemps. She went there so often that, in the following years, she ended up falling in love with a stockings and lingerie salesman, Jacques Ben David, a thirty-something from a Jewish family in Salonika, Greece. A widower since the death of his young wife, he lived in the Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret with several of his relatives. He too had a child, Jacqueline, born in 1935.

         In 1939, when France still believed it was in a position to defeat Hitler's Germany, Ben David enlisted in the Foreign Legion, but the "phoney war" soon swept away his illusions. In June 1940, Pétain announced the armistice, and the Germans seized Paris, which was deserted by part of the population. Damien and Ben David, however, were still there. She was at Printemps, he was at Passage du Havre. Only little Jacqueline had been able to find shelter with her godmother in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, southwestern France.

         In June 1941, after a year of occupation, the couple's situation became untenable, especially for Ben David, who was aware of the threats to Jews. Damien found him false papers to travel to Lyon, in the so-called "free" zone to the south. Damien, for her part, wanted to leave Printemps as quickly as possible. The personnel director, Edmond Rachinel, was going to help her. He knew that her partner was Jewish and that she had to join him without delay. He supported her move to the southern, unoccupied zone and her express transfer to Lyon, where he had arranged for her to work at Prisunic, another of the company's brand names. As for Ben David, he was to work under an assumed name in a Citroën parts factory.

         In October 1941, the couple married in Avignon, southern France. Why Avignon? This is a mystery. The same applies to Damien's non-professional activities from 1941 to 1944. Was she involved with the Resistance? At this stage of the investigation, it's impossible to know. 

         At the end of the war, the couple stayed in Lyon, with Jacqueline, who had joined them from the Basque country. They opened a fabric store in town, beautifully named Renée-Jacques. Much later, they moved further south, to Le Pradet, first in a house, then in an apartment. They died six years apart: she in 1990, he in 1996. There's no trace of acts of resistance or a network name in these life stories, just an anonymous couple, unknown to historians.

         Were they both linked to the photographer or was he only a friend of Damien's? To find out, only one potential witness remains: Jacqueline, Ben David's daughter. If she was still alive, she was probably 88 years old. When asked about her, Baillon had fond memories, but no contact details. "I think she was married to a lawyer from the Lyon region," he said, without providing any further details. 

         Finding her was all the more crucial as many of the photos were set in the Paris neighborhood where her father and Damien once worked. From Printemps to Galeries Lafayette, from Gare Saint-Lazare to the Grands Boulevards, there are a good 30 of them, and many more if you go as far as Madeleine or Place de la Concorde.

         Ben David is a very common surname. Facebook and Google offered a multitude of them in the United States, Israel and France alike, but not a single Jacqueline was likely to correspond to the silk merchant's daughter, probably better known by her married name. After six months of investigation, Le Monde was able to locate her in Villefranche-sur-Saône, just north of Lyon, where her husband was indeed a renowned lawyer.

         When we met her one afternoon in December 2021, the lady with a vivid memory was happy to answer questions about Renée Damien, her late mother-in-law, but she had never heard of any photos. "I'm just discovering this story," she admitted, before spreading out a few personal images on the living room coffee table: Damien on a seaside rock, posing like a Hollywood star; Damien in a garden, all smiles, in a one-piece swimsuit; Damien and Ben David at a café terrace... "She was an intelligent woman, with a strong personality," said Jacqueline.

         Between them, the war was never a subject of confidence. The death in the deportation of part of the Ben David family remained a deep wound that had to be avoided. "Renée didn't talk much about that period, but she hated the Germans, 'the Fritzes' as she called them."

         At this stage of the investigation, at the end of December 2021, a surprising female character – Renée Damien, the Printemps shop assistant – emerged at the forefront of our story. However, the photographer remained elusive. He was akin to his photographs, initially close in the summer of 1940, but more distant after September of the same year when the occupying authorities imposed stricter restrictions. The Occupation weighed heavily on him and he was repulsed by the prevailing passivity. On the back of photo 210 (Place de la Concorde, April 14, 1941, 5:45 pm), we can read : "Betrayal, cowardice, desperate flight – these four words explain why Hitler's flags have been flying in Paris for the past 11 months".

PART 4. THE TRAIL LEADING TO A WESTERN SUBURB

         After months and months of research, a few surprises and many dead ends, the enigma remained: Who was the author of hundreds of photos – around 700, not counting different prints, most of them numbered, dated and annotated – taken in Paris and its suburbs between 1940 and 1942, under the Occupation by Nazi Germany? 

         "Are you sure he wasn't German?" asked several slightly skeptical historians. After all, we had to consider such an option, however disturbing it might be. Imagine a soldier of the Third Reich with a passion for photography, capturing, day by day, and more or less secretly, the daily lives of his compatriots in a subjugated capital. Little snapshots of history, in short. But such a scenario just wouldn't fit, couldn't fit: There were those comments written on the back, by the man himself or someone else, full of words too French to have been born of a foreign hand, like "fritz" (a derogatory term for Germans), "fridolins" (similar to fritz), "poulettes" (chicks) and "salopards" (bastards). 

         We sorted through these images a dozen times, a hundred times, organizing them by date, location, time slot, type of print, and paper. Eventually, we realized something that had eluded us: Only one photo was not taken outdoors. For once, the author was not strolling the Place de la Concorde, he was not on the Grands Boulevards or at the flea market, but in a building or a house. Before his eyes lay only the most banal of things: a section of wall, a tree with dense foliage – it must have been spring or summer – and the windows of neighboring buildings. On the back were noted these black-inked details, worthy of a spy novel: "Bécon, observation post, courtyard view."

         Bécon is a neighborhood of Courbevoie, a town in the nearby western suburbs that is omnipresent in the collection of photographs. No other town, apart from Paris, appears more prominently. The Wehrmacht soldiers at a children's merry-go-round? That was at Courbevoie. The posters mocking de Gaulle and Churchill? Courbevoie. The graffiti reading "Down with Hitler?" Courbevoie. And here was this annotation, "observation post, courtyard view," again in Courbevoie. 

         In 1940, Courbevoie had a population of 46,000. It was a dynamic, working-class city, just 10 minutes by train from Paris - Saint-Lazare station. The area was nothing like the business district of La Défense we know today, with its giant towers. Workers and technicians toiled at ground level in a myriad of factories and workshops. 

         On the heights of Courbevoie, following the railroad tracks, lies the peaceful Bécon district, with its millstone houses and residential buildings. The building where the photo was taken still exists – we eventually found it, at 36 Rue du 22-Septembre. It is a building like so many others, with six floors and an access code, a stone's throw from the Bécon-les-Bruyères train station.

         There we were, on a winter's morning. It was a moving sensation to join such a ghost, 80 years later. Like walking in his footsteps, pushing open the metal door with him, climbing the stairs beside him, almost feeling his breath, then imagining him in an apartment or stairwell, opening a window, camera in hand, eyes alert. Facing him, the foliage of a tree, and all around, several buildings, a bit like in Alfred Hitchcock's film Rear Window (1955), where James Stewart, a photojournalist stuck at home with a leg in plaster, spies on the neighborhood with a telephoto lens. Ours may not have been a professional, but he loved spotting, tracking and spying too.

         One afternoon in January 2023, we slipped a letter into the building's letterboxes, introducing ourselves and explaining our goal: To identify the apartment from which the image was taken, in the hope of tracing it back to its author and paying tribute to him by reconstructing his story. Three days later, a homeowner replied. The photo had been taken from her window. The young woman promised to delve into the property deeds, to see if there was any mention of owners or tenants in the 1940s. But these checks, like those carried out at the mortgage office, came to nothing. The only usable source was the 1936 census. Street by street, address by address, all inhabitants of Courbevoie were recorded: name, age, profession.

         That year, the year the left-wing Front Populaire came to power, 12 apartments were inhabited at 36 Rue du 22-Septembre. There were families like the Mellots and the Molinas, childless couples like the Labarre couple, and three single older women. The gentlemen were fitters, launderers and polishers; the ladies, shorthand typists or office workers. No photographer.

         At first glance, none of these names were associated with resistance activities. Their descendants, identified and interviewed one by one, claimed never to have heard of a photographer in their families. Was this building really an "observation post" for him? If so, to observe what or whom? There had been no attacks or events of note at this address, and no one could say whether he was watching any of the 25 windows visible in the image.

          While clues were accumulating, evidence was lacking. As soon as we thought we had something, the photographer vanished into thin air, an eternal fugitive, covering his tracks before reappearing weeks later...

         The next stop was the Museum of the National Resistance (MRN) in Champigny-sur-Marne, where an unexpected clue caught our attention. We knew that MRN teams had been in possession of a significant part of the collection since 1999, but that they knew nothing of its origins. During a visit to the museum in the summer of 2023, we learned that images from the same iconographic collection, but not all relating to the Occupation period, had been left in envelopes without having being exhibited or studied. In all, there were around 100 of these, mostly of no interest. Nevertheless, a dozen were intriguing. Dated from the 1930s, they were captioned in the same way, with the same handwriting and the same spelling mistakes as those in our possession. In other words, the photographer was already active before the war, and this could help us.

         On June 17, 1934, he attended the inauguration of a monument at Verdun in eastern France, more precisely at the Côte 304, a battlefield of the Great War. In one of the photos taken on this occasion, six men pose proudly, wearing berets and medals on their lapels. On the reverse, the caption, reads: "Verdun Cote 304 - the Courbevoie U.N.C. delegation at the monument inauguration."

         Here again, Courbevoie. But this time with a lead: the Union Nationale des Combattants, a powerful veterans' association with over 8,600 local and regional branches. With some 850,000 members, it published monthly newsletters and a weekly magazine. Resolutely anti-communist, some UNC members took part in the riots of February 6, 1934, in Paris, alongside the far-right leagues. Subsequently, the UNC evolved, and many of the soldiers from 1914-1918 joined the Resistance, but in the eruptive context of the 1930s, the organization was turning sharply to the right.

         Let's face it: At this stage of the investigation, that discovery was enough to cast a shadow of doubt. We'd been tracking a presumed hero for almost three years now, gleaning bits and pieces of information, consulting yellowed registers, logs and memorial sites, believing him to be young, daring and humorous, thinking that he must have died in a camp, brave to the last breath; three years telling ourselves that his friend was Renée Damien, a courageous, rebellious woman, married to a Jew... It was the perfect scenario, the ideal film, tragic but ideal. And then, suddenly, the brown shadow of 1934 fell – and the specter of the opposite profile.

         What if our hero were a collaborator, a scoundrel whose photos, some taken so close to the Germans as to be suspect, had been recovered and annotated by another person or group of resistance fighters? After all, it was the captions that constantly encouraged us to interpret this documentation as an act of rebellion, the mark of mad heroism. Perhaps this was a lesson from history, a science that encourages nuance by reminding us that no matter how brightly they burn in our imagination, every character still has his or her dark side.

         On that famous day in June 1934, near Verdun, the photographer was with the Courbevoie delegation of the UNC. We could even assume that he was a member, or that he was accompanying one of the six soldiers lined up in front of the camera. They looked at him, they smiled at him, they knew each other. Alternatively, he could be one of them, and have entrusted his camera to someone else for a moment, just long enough to pose with his friends. Never had the goal of our investigation seemed so close.

         In the Verdun city council's archives, there was no record of participants in the inauguration of the monument at the Côte 304. So we returned to Courbevoie, hoping that the UNC chapter's files had survived the decades. But it was to no avail: everything had disappeared. 

         The doors might have been closing one by one, but a profile was emerging: that of a former or serving soldier, or at any rate someone with an insider's knowledge in this field. Clearly, he had a thorough knowledge of armored vehicles, as he often showed them, accompanied by bitter comments. On September 22, 1940, at 2:45 pm, he stood on a platform at the Saint-Cloud railway station, behind a German soldier watching over a convoy. On the back was this text: "Monsieur Fritz admires the French tanks going to Germany. Whole trains pass through this station every day."

         A dozen other photos were taken at the Arc de Triomphe, a location close to the hearts of Great War veterans. On several occasions, the photographer attended the daily flame ceremony in the late afternoon. Cautious, he positioned himself at a distance from the curious Germans, but he had the courage to be there. It remained to be seen in what capacity: as a spectator or on behalf of an organization, such as the Courbevoie section of the UNC? In those days, veterans' associations took turns to ensure the continuity of the ritual. We checked with the people in charge of the flame today: Internal archives make no mention of the Courbevoie section of the UNC visiting.

         The presence of the photographer near the tomb of the Unknown Soldier does, however, point to another hypothesis: he could have been a policeman or gendarme, on a bicycle or motorcycle, or even in a sidecar, determined to take advantage of his missions to use his camera without the Germans' knowledge. After all, if he was in public places (monuments, squares, bridges, stations, etc...), in front of museums or at the roadblocks set up at the gates of the capital, it was because he had the right and the means to be there. This is all the more likely given that, in 1940, the headquarters of the Paris Nord-Ouest gendarmerie force, whose area of jurisdiction was very extensive, was located in... Courbevoie.

         We therefore submitted the collection to a gendarmerie specialist, Major Benoît Haberbusch, who has a PhD in history. Indeed, he said, gendarmes had resisted, in the western suburbs and elsewhere, but not by taking photographs, at least not to his knowledge.

         At his recommendation, we nevertheless plunged into the archives. These were thick files, with thousands of yellowing pages, teeming with details of the Courbevoie staff during the period 1940-1942. It was all there: staff reviews, supplies, disciplinary measures... But there wasn't a single line about a photographer. Wasn’t it for us the moment to give up ?  

PART 5 : THE TRAGIC FATE OF A FORGOTTEN HERO, RAOUL MINOT

         We might as well say it from the outset : his name was Minot, Raoul Minot, and such a life deserves the spotlight. It took us almost four years to identify him, four years of exploring various avenues, considering everything, including giving up. But it's now a certainty: This man, born on September 28, 1893, in Montluçon, central France, was indeed the mysterious photographer of 700 photos – most of them dated, numbered, with commentary – taken in Paris and its suburbs, at the risk of his life, between 1940 and 1942. It's an exceptional collection, perhaps the richest on the French side – excluding propaganda – on the first two years of the Occupation.

         Minot, then. An amateur, not a professional photographer. The enormity of his output – almost 1,300 prints, including multiples – makes it unique, totally different from the work of professionals like Roger Schall or Robert Doisneau, duly accredited by the authorities. Minot, on the other hand, had no employer in the press, and escaped all control. A ghost in the shadow of the Germans.

         The story of how his name emerged from anonymity is worth telling. It was April 12, 2024, a Friday. On that day, the investigation launched nearly four years earlier, based on a strange photo album, seemed to be bogged down. Of course, some progress had been made, and there had been some pleasant surprises, but the central enigma – the photographer's identity – remained unsolved.

         Before giving up, we wanted to take one last look at the information we'd gleaned about the only woman in the story: Renée Damien (1909-1990), a saleswoman in the perfume section of a Paris department store, Le Printemps, at the dawn of the 1940s. It was thanks to her that a small number of pictures (117) were preserved before being rescued from oblivion in 2018, in the Chartres region, thanks to the tenacity of a history enthusiast, Albert Hude. He gathered from Renée Damien's son – an elderly man with a shaky memory – some initial biographical information on the Printemps saleswoman, as well as an intriguing but incomplete lead: according to the old man, now deceased, the author of these 117 photos was a friend of his mother's whose name he did not know; arrested by the Germans, this unknown person has died in deportation, leaving no trace. Did he also work at Printemps? This theory, already envisaged during the investigation, merited a final check in the store's archives, in search of information on the 1940-1942 period.

         At the beginning of April, these last-chance investigations led us, without too many illusions, to a handful of employees of the time, in particular the personnel manager, Edmond Rachinel (1890-1966), known for having helped Resistance fighters by enabling them to hide in the store's basements or by facilitating their passage to the southern zone.

         At our request, Alessia Rizzo and Elise Butet, the current heads of the Printemps' "heritage" department, exhumed various documents mentioning the Occupation. It was at this precise moment that a major discovery changed everything.

         On that Friday in April, the two young women unearthed a booklet published in 1965 to mark the store's centenary. On the face of it, it looked like nothing more than a publication for internal use, celebrating the company, except that, in the four pages devoted to the Second World War, a photo caught the eye: It showed Germans on horseback marching down the Rue de Rome, opposite Saint-Lazare station, 200 meters from the Printemps store. A brief text introduced the author as a certain "Monsieur Minot," an employee who had the "habit of photographing Germans at various sites in the capital," in order to build up a "collection," and who had paid for it with his life.

         We'd already seen this image: It was one of those we'd had since 2020, no. 55, taken on the Rue de Rome on August 27, 1940, at 7:25 pm. This "Monsieur Minot" was our unknown photographer!

         Of course, further proof and absolute certainty were needed, but they weren't long in coming, as if having an identity suddenly unlocked all doors. In a sudden release of the truth, leads explored in previous months were confirmed, and more archives poured in from all over: from the Printemps, and also from the Historical Defense Service (SHD) and the Paris Police headquarters. Piece by piece, they joined together an old jigsaw puzzle: the life of Raoul Minot.

         As far as we know, his youth was that of a boy of modest origins hired by the store in March 1911, as a handkerchief salesman. In 1914, the year he turned 21, the Great War broke out, and Minot distinguished himself in various artillery regiments. Promoted to quartermaster, he was even awarded a bronze Croix de Guerre medal. His military file contained a few physical details: He was 1.76 meters tall, with black hair and eyes, a "bony" face, "rounded" forehead and "broad" nose. His superiors had praised his courage under shelling.

         Back in civilian life, Minot returned to the Printemps, where a young cashier named Marthe, originally from the south of France, had just started working. Both lived in Paris at first, before moving to the western suburb of Courbevoie with their daughter Jacqueline in the mid-1920s. They began by renting an apartment at 48, Rue du 22-Septembre, in the heart of the Bécon district. It was an ideal location: The station was just a stone's throw away, and Saint-Lazare station was only a 10-minute journey by train.

         In April 1936, the family moved to another building, no. 36, on the same street. We knew this six-storey building well; we'd been there, and it was extensively mentioned in the previous part of this series. It was there, from a window, that the only photo from within a building, looking out, was taken, accompanied by a comment worthy of a spy novel: "Bécon, observation post, view of the courtyard." 

We were right on target when we searched for months for descendants of former owners or tenants. If the Minot family didn't appear in the list of residents at this address in early 1936, it's because Raoul and his wife were in the process of moving, between two addresses.

         Working at the Printemps on Boulevard Haussmann in the 1930s was a privilege. This famed Paris department store employed several hundred people, both in sales and behind the scenes. Visitors from all over the world came to browse the shelves and admire the window displays. The Printemps was Paris, the epitome of French chic. Beyond the thousands of square meters accessible to customers, the various buildings housed numerous offices, as well as basements riddled with corridors, passageways and other passageways, a labyrinth in the bowels of the district. Raoul, the former handkerchief salesman promoted to under-manager in the stock rooms, where merchandise was stored didn't get lost.

         In the tense labor context of 1936-1937, the venerable store saw strikes among its workers, but the Minot couple went about their careers without attracting too much attention. An ordinary couple in an extraordinary place, a flourishing company, attentive to the well-being of its staff: trips abroad, an annual country party, an in-house newsletter (Printania), sports club, not forgetting a fully-equipped photo studio. Customers could drop off their films or have their photos taken there.

         Photography was Raoul's passion, and he was gifted at it: near Verdun in June 1934, with veterans from Courbevoie; on the Champs-Elysées on July 14, 1938; on vacation in Italy, England and the Côte d'Azur.

         The year 1939 arrived. Minot, the 1914-1918 volunteer still steeped in military culture, was not mobilized to fight the Germans again. It's impossible to say today whether he had suffered or not, but he was exempted from the war. He lived through these dark years in the shadows. His only weapon was a camera.

         As early as Sunday, June 30, 1940, 16 days after the Reich's troops entered Paris, he photographed a propaganda poster, and then a little of everything: two soldiers at the Place de la Concorde, a Nazi flag on Rue de Rivoli, requisitioned hotels, the deserted capital, etc. In July, he did it again, only during the day, because of the curfew, and most often on Sundays, his day off. His hunting grounds extended from the Printemps area (Saint-Lazare, Opéra, the Grands Boulevards) to the inner suburbs, his stronghold.

         Where did he hide his camera? Had he tinkered with a device to trigger it without attracting attention? Did he travel by bike or motorcycle? And with what authorization? On these logistical points, the mystery remained complete. For the time being, the only certainties came once again from the photos. It has to be said that Minot had a gift for tracking down the intimate, for slipping into the footsteps of adversaries, on the lookout for signs of being compromised. The captions on the back of the photos – probably written by himself or his wife – betray his indignation: "Mr Fritz doesn't want to be photographed with the two chicks, and yet they're together"; or, on seeing Parisian women in the arms of Germans: "You didn't think 'French' women had sunk so low! Place de la Nation, June 8, 1941. 4:20 p.m."

         These words alone could have sent him to prison, but he persisted. How did he develop his pictures? Products were in short supply, and many laboratories were at a standstill, making it difficult to print hundreds of photos, some in two or three copies. But Minot had paper, and lots of it. To find out how he got his hands on it, we had to consult other documents, this time in the archives of the Police Prefecture in Le Pré-Saint-Gervais.

         Two old files, probably unopened for almost 80 years, bore the name of Minot Raoul. One of them, reference 207 702, was stamped by the police intelligence service, the Renseignements Généraux (RG). Inside were handwritten notes, index cards and reports dating back to 1942 and 1943. This was the police side of the case. And the shadow of betrayal...

         We started with a white envelope, crossed out with an address in capital letters: "MISTER DIRECTOR OF THE POLICE PREFECTURE INTELLIGENCE SERVICE QUAI DES ORFEVRES PARIS." An anonymous text followed, dated November 20, 1942. Written in black ink by what appeared to be a feverish hand, it was riddled with errors and convoluted wording, but the tone was one of denunciation:

         "Sir, could you ask the Minot household, both of whom work at the Printemps – the wife as a cashier, the husband as a warehouse manager – whether their jobs qualify them to take photographs of propaganda posters and air raid damage to our poor country?

"We don't think it would be very useful to inform you about the troubled times France is going through, thanks to many workers in troubled waters.

"I did my duty to warn you and the occupying authorities, as I didn't believe that this gentleman was specialized in this kind of work by virtue of his job.

"We salute you most respectfully.

"PS: Printing work will take place in the Printemps. For your information."

         The postmark indicated the date of November 28, 1942, as well as the place where the mail was deposited: Saint-Lazare station. Could the anonymous author have been an employee of the nearby Printemps store? We'll come back to that later.

         As soon as it became aware of the letter, in early December 1942, the PP initiated a rapid investigation into the Minot couple. A policeman inquired about them at the store, then summarized the situation in writing:

"They've never made themselves noticed from a political point of view. Nevertheless, management's attention has recently been drawn to Minot's outside activity. In fact, since August 9, 1940, Minot has had numerous films developed at this store's photography department, and each film shows hundreds of photos taken, using an ordinary camera.

"These photos only show highlights of the occupation of the capital, such as military parades, groups of German soldiers visiting the capital, propaganda posters, road signs, occupied hotels flying the swastika flag, etc.

"Faced with these unusual events, the department concerned has notified the management, who do not feel it necessary to intervene, and has not stopped the work.

"Among his entourage, Minot claims to be working on behalf of the occupying authorities. However, no proof of this can be obtained.

"These shots were certainly intended for propaganda purposes, and have obliged Minot to spend considerable sums of money, the source of which we have not been able to ascertain.

"At home, the Minot family is not the object of any particular remark or attention. Unknown to court records, and their names are not noted in court records."

         So it was at the Printemps itself, in the photo studio, that the films were developed and the photos printed. The author of the report dismissed the hypothesis of a job for the Germans, preferring instead a clandestine propaganda activity. He was intrigued by the passivity of the store's management, as well as by the financial means at the disposal of this Minot, who had all the qualities of an ordinary citizen.

         The case was serious, so further investigations were entrusted to the RG's special brigade number 1 (BS1), which specialized in tracking down communists – or presumed communists – and the authors of leaflets and other newspapers distributed secretly. 

         Commissioner Fernand David, then head of BS1, was a civil servant of the zealous type. On reading the initial report, he ordered two of his men, Inspectors Blondin and Payen, to further investigate. Over the next few days, they gathered a wealth of information, both at the Printemps and in Courbevoie. On February 4, 1943, Blondin wrote a more complete report than the previous one. Everything was there: civil status, the couple's successive addresses, Raoul's military CV, Marthe's professional career, etc.

         Regarding the husband, the inspector explained: "Although he had no authorization from the occupying authorities to take photographs, Minot had been using a small Brownie Kodak 6/9 amateur camera since August 1940 to photograph groups or parades of German servicemen, propaganda posters or notices given to the population, and houses destroyed by aerial bombardment. Since then, he has had over a thousand photos printed by Printemps' photography department. He has kept several hundred of them for himself as souvenirs. On the back of some of these photos, he wrote captions relating to the events photographed. He is said to have given some of these photographs to Printemps employees as souvenirs. In addition, he sold several hundred to a man named Juven, also employed at the Printemps (this is the subject of a separate report).

"A visit to Minot's home led to the discovery and seizure of photos with the above-mentioned inscriptions and others that had been scratched off the back, but did not uncover any documents or leaflets relating to anti-national propaganda. (…) He is unknown to the various departments of our management. He has no criminal record."

         And there it is, in black and white, a series of mysteries suddenly cleared up. The camera? A small, cube-shaped "Brownie Kodak 6/9," easy to hold to one's chest. The number of photos? "Over a thousand." The captions? Written by Minot himself, and sometimes "scratched" out. His motivations? To keep "souvenirs," to build up a "collection." Whether this was the truth remained to be seen. One man undoubtedly knew: Louis Juven, to whom he was said to have "sold several hundred" photos.

         A file bearing the name Juven, reference 207 704, was kept in the PP archives. In it, we learned that, at the time of the Occupation, Juven, born in Grenoble in 1900, lived with his wife and their two children on Boulevard Lefebvre, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. Blondin was convinced that he had quickly identified his a priori harmless profile. In a note dated February 8, 1943, the policeman wrote:

         "Juven has been employed at the Printemps store as a salesman for 25 years. Very good information has been gathered about him both at his place of work and in his entourage. He does not appear to have engaged in any political activity. (...) He has in his possession several hundred photographs depicting German soldiers in groups, military parades, buildings destroyed by aerial bombardment, posters, sold to him by Minot for 1.40 each, which he keeps as souvenirs. He is unknown to the various services of our department. He has no criminal record. A visit to his home did not turn up any leaflets or documents of an anti-national political nature. We are seizing the photographs."

         Thus, according to Blondin, Minot sold a very large number of photos – around 500, numbered but without captions, according to another document – to Juven, who also kept them as "souvenirs" and did not engage in any "political activity."

         The policeman was mistaken. In reality, Juven was indeed politically active, and a little more than that. A document found at the Defense Historical Service (SHD) in Vincennes, proved it: In February 1943, this salesman in the blankets department at the Printemps was an occasional agent of the Resistance. His involvement dated back to October 1, 1942, four months before his home was raided. Major networks, known as "Alexandre," sometimes used his services as part of their "Pierre-Jacques" sub-network. Was it for this network that he bought photos from Minot? 

         Interviewed by Le Monde, Juven's two granddaughters, Véronique and Françoise Cordier, recalled hearing about a family affair involving photos. "They said that our grandfather, who died in 1990, had helped to smuggle some to London, but he himself didn't talk much about that period. The name Minot doesn't ring a bell."

         The police were unaware of all this when they turned their attention to the two department store employees. The report in which Blondin and his sidekick Payen listed the exhibits placed under seal – the "little Brownie Kodak 6/9 camera," films, hundreds of photos – did not conclude that they were politically motivated, nor, astonishingly, did they dwell on the hostile nature of the comments. The Germans, however, considered the matter serious enough to take it up. A PP executive hurriedly passed on their instructions to BS1: "Arrest the two guys, seize all the photos and put them at the disposal of Service IV E, 11, Rue des Saussaies. Execution."

         In the Nazis' repressive system, this unit of the Sipo-SD security police was responsible for tracking down "terrorists," especially communists. One of the officers, SS Captain Ludwig Heinson, retrieved the Minot-Juven file. Did he interrogate them himself? What did they say to the accusations? German archives were missing, but not French ones. A note from the prefect's office told us that Minot and Juven were arrested as part of the "repression of communist activities." There was nothing to suggest that they had any contact with communists, but it was as "political" activists that Service IV E dealt with their case.

         On Captain Heinson's orders, both men were incarcerated: Minot at the Fresnes prsion, near Paris. Later, they were both sent to the Royallieu camp in Compiègne. They would spend little time together in these facilities, through which thousands of people awaited deportation. Juven spent almost two months there, but escaped the worst at the end of April 1943. "I think he was helped by a businessman brother-in-law who knew some Germans," said Véronique Cordier, one of his granddaughters.

         Minot was deported. On April 20, 1943, he boarded a convoy of 997 men bound for the Mauthausen concentration camp along the Danube in Austria. Arriving there 48 hours later, he was detained for six months, under number 28343, until his departure for Buchenwald on October 17, 1943.

         His time in this hellhole left a few traces: Another registration number, 22626, and also index cards full of dates, figures and biographical details – the Nazi system in all its paperwork rigor. Handwritten or typewritten, the jailers noted everything: That he was born in Montluçon; that his wife's name was Marthe; that the family lived at "36, Rue du 22-Septembre in Bécon, Seine"; that he owned three shirts and a coat; that he was arrested for "political" reasons.

         Many French deportees were sent to Buchenwald. The man from Courbevoie was one of them, a suffering body among thousands of others. Initially quarantined in block 61 – the infirmary of what was internally known as the "Little Camp" – he was later transferred to block 14 of the "Big Camp." 

         According to information gathered by the Association Française Buchenwald Dora et Kommandos, he was assigned all kinds of exhausting tasks over the months: collecting firewood, working at the Weimar-Nord railway station, earthworks, and finally, in the depths of winter 1944-1945, days on end toiling in a quarry. The days when he roamed Paris and the western suburbs with his Brownie Kodak 6/9 must have seemed far awar. 

         From June 1944 onwards, the Allied landings in Normandy changed the military situation of the war, but did not put an end to the deportees' ordeal. In April 1945, when the Germans partially evacuated Buchenwald to escape the Allied advance, Minot and thousands of others were sent further east, to the Flossenbürg camp. 

         Their journey began by train and ended on foot, in appalling conditions. When they finally arrived, they were crammed into a building of the Messerschmitt aircraft factory. Not for long: Ten days later, the Germans again ordered evacuation, or rather, flight. Some 15,000 to 20,000 exhausted deportees were forced to head south on foot, in columns. Nearly half of them perished on this death march, along roads soon littered with corpses.  

         When the Americans intervened on April 23, it was too late for Minot. The few documents available date his death to April 28, 1945, in the small Bavarian town of Cham. In all likelihood, he died in the local hospital, a free man, but sick and broken.

         What we have left of him is a treasure of 700 photos, and many unanswered questions, not least about possible accomplices. We know at least one man: Juven. In a post-war document, he himself stated that he had taken photographs of "German activities" for the Resistance. We also know a woman: Damien, the perfume saleswoman whose name was not mentioned in the police reports, but who was undoubtedly in the know.

         A second look at the collection, in particular the photos of specific locations (bridges, crossroads, monuments), revealed that Minot and Juven could not have acted without accomplices from outside the Printemps, or even without suppliers of images. The possibility of a mobile guard based at the Satory barracks, near Versailles, and assigned to law enforcement missions on a motorcycle or sidecar seemed the most plausible, but we lacked the evidence – and the names – to back it up.

         Other hypotheses pointed again and again to the Printemps store. What exactly did Minot and Juven's colleagues know? Did the photo studio develop films other than his own? These questions forced us to take a final look behind the scenes at the store during the Occupation.

         A peculiar game of shadows and pretense was played out in these immense but partly deserted premises, with a third of the sales area (12,000 square meters) cut back due to the scarcity of customers and products. A minority of employees showed their admiration for the German model. Conversely, other members of staff refused to bow to the Germans and the collaborationists.

         One manager knew the pitfalls of this closed-door situation better than anyone: Edmond Rachinel, head of personnel. A courageous man, appreciated by all. Internally, he was known to favor express transfers, and even to falsify the attendance register if this facilitated the escape of resistance fighters or draft dodgers in the event of a police or Gestapo raid.

         Rachinel arrived at the Printemps in 1926, and knew the inner workings of the company. He knew that at least two networks had contacts within the workforce. In the autumn of 1940, he also knowingly hired a French agent named Madeline, a member of an intelligence network (Samson) serving the Resistance. With Rachinel's agreement and full support, Madeline used his cover as an employee to discreetly meet the heads of the sub-networks, and manage his clandestine actions. It was here, in this inextricable knot of alliances and secrets, that the story of Minot's photos was partly played out.

         Did the anonymous letter posted at Saint-Lazare station in the autumn of 1942 also come from the Printemps? The documents to which  we have had access do not allow us to certify this, nor to unmask its author, but someone had to be informed from the best sources to know that the "Minot household" – the wife, "a cashier," the husband, "head in a storeroom," according to the anonymous letter – engaged in such activities and that the films were developed in the store.

         There were collaborationists at the Printemps. When Paris was liberated at the end of August 1944, names were circulated. But we could not find out who was the traitor. 

         During this tormented post-war period, the only person who really cared about the memory of the man with the 700 photos seemed to be his wife, Marthe. In Paris, she struggled to know wether he was alive or dead.  On January 6, 1945, she filed a "search request for a deportee" form. In the "description and particulars" section, it stated that her husband was "1.77 meters tall, quite strong," with the touchingly intimate detail of "a small port-wine stain on his back." Further down, on the right-hand side of the sheet, the only photo we have : a handsome man, with white hair and a black suit, his gaze at once confident and gentle.

         In 1947, Marthe began administrative proceedings to obtain a pension as a civilian victim of the conflict. A police investigation carried out on this occasion concluded that his husband had been arrested in 1943 "owing to his anti-German activity (possession of leaflets, political brochures, photographs of military targets, buildings requisitioned by the occupying authorities, etc.)." 

         The terms are clear: « anti-German activity ». Yet Marthe Minot was not to be successful. On May 30, 1949, at the end of an interminable administrative process, she received a terribly cold letter from the Secretary of State for the Armed Forces. The verdict on Raoul was: "No resistance activity has been identified in the person concerned following the study of his file."

         Decades later, these words still ring out like an injustice. Wasn't taking hundreds of photos without the Nazis' knowledge a "resistance activity" as early as June 1940? Didn't the "person concerned" put himself in danger every time he took a photo, or when he wrote "Fritz" or "Fridolin" on the back of an image? In the space of three lines, he was removed from the roll of honor, condemned to oblivion. Traces of his family have also been lost over time. His daughter Jacqueline died of chronic nephritis in 1951, without having had children. Marthe died nine years later. Both are buried in the Minot family vault in Montluçon.

         Once you've passed the entrance porch, you have to walk up the central aisle, past the calvary, and walk a little further. It's there, on the left, at the edge of square 5: an austere, massive tomb, without flowers or mortuary objects, but with a view of the hills. On the upper part of the stele are the names of Marthe and Jacqueline, but not Raoul, whose body, in the chaos of the post-war period, was never recovered. At the bottom of the stele, their relatives have nevertheless had the epitaph he deserved engraved in marble: "In memory of Minot Raoul, who died for France in Germany, 1893-1945."