The Singing Résistant

This is a “brief” excerpt from an interview conducted by Mike Russert and Wayne Clark for the New York State Military Museum. They interviewed Sonia Malkine (1923−2014) on 18 January 2002. Sonia was a résistant in France during the German Occupation and these are some of her recollections as a teenager fighting the Nazis. At the end of this lengthy, albeit abbreviated interview, I will recap Sonia’s life story including, her career as a folk singer⏤so, hang in here with me. I will provide you with a link to the full interview⏤it is well worth your time to read the full interview.

Q: Today we are interviewing Sonia Malkine. It is January 18th, 2002. We’re in Shady, New York. Ms. Malkine, where were you born?

A: I was born in Paris.

Q: In Paris. You grew up in Paris?

A: Until I was three. Then my mother took me down to the south. She remarried a fisherman and we lived in St. Tropez for about 12 years. Then, they divorced and we came back to Paris just a year before the war started.

Q: What was France like just at the beginning of World War II?

A: When the war started you mean?

Q: Just before that. What was life like for you?

A: I was a youngster. I got my first job in 1938. I was 14. It was in the summer and my mother was working as a secretary for the administrator of a big hotel in St. Tropez. So, she got me a summer job there. It turned out to be really an adult job. I was the telephone operator.

I was having a wonderful time except at that time that hotel belonged to a Mr. Kragen (sp?). Mr. Kragen was one of the heirs of Zaharoff. Are you familiar with that name?

Q: No.

A: Zaharoff was a Russian who during the First World War made millions by selling weapons to both sides. He was not particular. He sold his cannons, his munitions to everybody. He made a lot of money. In 1917 he came to France because there was a revolution so his heirs were also very wealthy.

Mr. Kragen bought that hotel. It was a huge hotel for his wife as a birthday present. There was a lot of Russians working there. Colonels of this and Prince of that and Count of something else. It was summer and I was having a good time but what he did he had hired all the help for the hotel in Nice and he told them it was a second rate hotel.  When the people came for the kitchen, for the maids and so forth, the realized that it was not a second rate hotel that it was a palace. The rates were very high. It was very expensive. Marlene Dietrich was there and a lot of people in diamond sales. There was a lot of very wealthy people there.

So, they asked for their salaries to be raised according to the rate of the hotel. Mr. Kragen refused. That was in the middle of the season. It was the middle of August. So, they decided to go on strike. They all went on strike. We were on strike for about three weeks. The people didn’t want to leave the hotel. Where would they go in the middle of the season on the Riviera? There was no place to be had.

So, they would go and eat in town. They made their own beds. They carried their own luggage but they didn’t want to leave. In fact, at one point they even offered to make up the difference in salary. Of course, he refused. Then, he finally decided to close the hotel. So, we were all out of work. So, my first job was not very lucky.

Q: What did you do after that?

A: After that we went back to Paris. That’s fall. I went back to school. I was 15. I went back to high school. I took my exam for high school a couple of days before the Germans came into Paris which was a very bad taste I thought.

Everybody left when the Germans came. Everybody left. The government left for the south. In fact, you know something very interesting. When the government was gone to the south of France, there was nobody to receive the Germans. The town was practically empty except for the Ambassador of the United States – Mr. Bullitt. He loved Paris and didn’t want to leave. He’s the one who delivered Paris to the Germans.

Q: Oh really?

A: How do you like that? I don’t know what gave him the right to do this but I thought it was very interesting.

Q: How did you feel as a young lady with the Germans? What was the feeling in Paris when the Germans came in?

A: When the Germans came in, there was nobody there. The town was practically empty. People started coming back little by little. I came back six months later. I went back to my school to find out if I had my diploma but they said I’m sorry but when everybody left the papers were lost so you’ll have to come back and take your exams again. I said thank you very much but there’s no question of this, I have to go to work now so I went to work.

When the Germans came into Paris, Hitler came and he loved the city. He told his people to be correct, to pay for everything, to be gentlemen. That lasted for a little while but not very long.

In the first place, they were paying us with German Army money which wasn’t worth anything so it was (unclear) the place. Little by little, the French really resented the presence in the city because it was really felt everywhere. Signs everywhere in German. You couldn’t do this and couldn’t do that and couldn’t go there. You couldn’t do this, you couldn’t do that, verboten, verboten, verboten. You know the hell with this. The French were not used to this kind of thing.

So, the resistance started in Paris in 1940 in a museum, in a basement of a museum. Musee de l’Homme, the Trocadero. I don’t know if you know it.

Q: I’ve heard of it.

A: It was a huge museum. People started making fires, listening to the BBC and propaganda against the Nazis. So, that’s where it started. The resistance started in 1940.

Q: How did the Germans react to the early part of the resistance?

A: At the beginning, they didn’t take it very seriously until they realized it was growing in every direction. Then little by little they started turning the screw on and on. They started taking hostages. You couldn’t have a car. They confiscated all of the cars. They confiscated all the weapons. If you were found with a weapon – any kind of weapon – you were shot. There was no trial or anything. They didn’t bother with this kind of thing.

Then they started with the Jews. First they have to wear the yellow star. They couldn’t go to the Champs-Elysees. They couldn’t go to the Opera. They couldn’t go into theaters. They couldn’t go into movies. They had to ride the last car in the subway. It was getting….I mean there has been Jews in France since the Middle Ages. (unclear)

Q: Did you have Jewish friends.

A: Oh yes. Sure. My mother has a boyfriend who was Jewish. When I left for the south, I left my apartment to two Jewish women, the mother and aunt of my best friend who was also Jewish. She still is after 60 years.

Life became very difficult and then, of course, the first thing that they did was to take everything they could put their hands on. The start, of course, with the gold, the coal and the iron because they needed that for the war. Then the food. France is a very rich country. Food is plentiful. They took everything that they could and sent everything to Germany.

The rationing became so bad. People were starving. If you had families or friends in the country where you could go and get a pound of butter once and awhile or two pounds of beans, you were lucky but I wasn’t and I was starving! I was starving.

We were never rich my family. My mother was always working but I was never hungry. This was something else again.

Q: You were working at that time?

A: I took a job. I went to…I found an ad in a paper and took a job as a typist in an office. In fact, I was the only one there except for the boss. Now, the boss was very interesting – Monsieur Asher. Monsieur Asher was a young punk. I think he was 22 and I was about 17 at that point. He was the only son of a very wealthy bourgeois family. They put him in this office to get him out of trouble.

He was selling, buying and repairing typewriters. That was the “business”. Actually, he was doing “black market” but he was for the collaboration. Every day we had terrible fights because I was absolutely against it. We should collaborate they are the Germans, they are the strongest this and that. I was against it and every day we would have an argument.

One day he came to the office and he wanted me to type leaflets you know these things to stick all over the town against the British, against the Allies. I said, “No. I’m not going to type that. I am not here to do political work after your job for the office. This kind of stuff I don’t want to do. He said, “You’re going to do it or you’re going to lose your job.” I said. “Fine!”

He left slamming the door. He came back that night just before I was leaving. Not only was he drunk but he was also in a Nazi uniform. There was a French Nazi party. I don’t remember the name of it. Marcel Bucard was the big boss of that. He was a big Nazi from way back.

He had a blue shirt, a blue tie, black pants and boots and a belt with a holster and pistol. I thought oh my god. I thought about all the arguments that we had. Then I started to realize that I had been followed in my neighborhood – some guy I had been asking about with my concierge. I was seventeen. I never thought it was something political. Then I thought my god that is so (unclear). He is having me followed.

I went to see a friend of mine. She gave me some papers so I could get out of the city. I left. I never went back.

Q: You had to have papers to leave the city?

A: To leave the city, to leave Paris. The county was in two pieces. It was the occupied zone and the non-occupied zone. That was Vichy with Petain and Laval and those bums.

In order to go to the south zone, you had to have papers. You had to go through German police and show “ausweis”. You know, pass.

My friend gave me a pass. She was wonderful. She was working in the German office for the agent, the Todt Agency (Organisation Todt). They were building the Atlantic Wall the bunkers and all those things. So, when people came there for work, she would send the bad guys all the Fascists and the collaborationists, she would send them all to the wrong place. They were going to be bombed by the Allies. The French, she would send them to the Alps or someplace where it was pretty safe. Anyway, she gave me some papers so I could cross someplace safe.

Q: Where were you going by yourself or with your mother?

A: I was going south. My mother came back to Paris so she was in the city but I went to Dordogne which is in the southwest of France. Do you know the country at all? I should show you a map. It’s very hilly pretty much like here but very dense forest of chestnut forest. There, there was a “Maquis.”

Q: What were you going down there to do?

A: I was going to a farm. My boyfriend’s uncle had a farm down there. He had gone there because he did not want to work for Germany. He was 20 years old. He was going to be sent to Germany to work. He escaped and was working in his uncle’s farm.

They had forest and they were cutting wood. They had a saw mill right there at the farm. I was there. I really didn’t know what to do. I was brought up in boats. What did I know about farming? I couldn’t tell the carrots from the weeds.

Anyway, at the saw mill, there was a Jewish man Illias who was a refugee from Paris. His whole family had moved down south. He was the foreman of the saw mill. He knew that I was lost in this place and he said, “You know if I paid your trip back to Paris would you go back and bring a letter to my family? They don’t know where I am. I am sure that they’re worried.”

I said, “Well my pass is still good. Sure, I’ll go back.” So, he gave me this paper and I went to see his family. I don’t think this was his family. It wasn’t. It was the Jewish underground. So, they said to me, if we pay your trip back would you go back to Illias and bring some papers from us to Illias.

Yeah. I can do that. There I was. I went back and Illias said, “You are very curious aren’t you?” I said, “Yes but I don’t want to know. The less I know the better. You know it was your family. They’re fine. I don’t really want to know.” He said, “I know some people who could use somebody like you. You’re French. You’re not Jewish. You’re papers are in order. You can travel. You don’t mind moving around. You could be very useful.” I

said, “Well, to whom? Who is there around here?” He said, “In La Bessede which is a huge forest nearby, there are a lot of Spanish people who came over the mountain in ’39 making charcoal. That’s their livelihood and they are cutting wood for the saw mill.” That was the connection.

“But, their officers are reorganizing these men into a group of guerrilla to work with the French Resistance.” The French Resistance was pretty active in that part of the country.

Q: This is your first introduction into the…

A: That was my first introduction. That’s how I fell into the underground so to speak. I didn’t chose to get up one morning and say I think I am going into the resistance today. It was not that.

I said that I would like to meet these people. My mother had a lot of Spanish friends. She used to work for the Quakers in Paris and she was working for the Spanish refugees bringing food and clothes and medicine to the refugee camps in the south. It was absolutely miserable because there were so many people the French didn’t know what to do with them.

She had made a lot of Spanish friends so I was familiar with the Spanish. I loved Flamenco. So, I said, “Ok Spanish it is. Let’s meet them first.” There was a meeting with Carlos who was one of the leaders of the group in that area. With Carlos there was Mr. Tovar (Colonel Vicente Lopez Tovar). We called him Alberto at the time. Alberto took over at this meeting. I said, “I thought I was going to work for Carlos” but he said that Carlos works for me so you’re going to talk to me now. I didn’t really like his attitude!

He said to me, “Are you afraid of the Germans?” I said, “What a stupid question of course I am afraid of the Germans. Everybody is. I saw them beating a man in front of me in Paris in a street because be crossed the street in front of a convoy that practically killed the man. Excuse me if I am afraid of them. Everybody is terrified of them. You have to be totally stupid not to be.”

He said “Well, if had told me you were not afraid, I wouldn’t’ have trusted you.” “So, fine, so now you trust me right?” He said, “Well not quite because I don’t know if you can work with fear.” I said, “That I can’t tell you. I don’t know. I’ll have to try and see what happens.” He said, “Ok. Tomorrow morning at seven, you’ll be at the station and there will be a tall blond girl there. She will tell you what to do and where to go.”

The next day there was Blondie and she was waiting for me. She was from Lorraine. She had been working with them for a while but she was from another part of the country and it was very difficult for her to do everything. So, they needed somebody else. I started with her. She showed me the ropes.

Q: At this point you’re what? Seventeen? Eighteen?

A: Eighteen.

Q: Eighteen? That’s a lot of responsibility for an eighteen year old.

A: It was but it was also a big adventure you know. I was free. I was healthy. I had no responsibilities. I loved to travel. It was a big adventure. If I could do something to the Germans I would you know.

Q: What exactly was your job?

A: I was a courier. I transported papers, reports, money. Once in a while weapons but very rarely because that scared me to death. Every time I did something would happen to scare me. Really. The least possible. The papers were bad enough. If I had been caught with them, I would have been shot or worse.

There was a girl who had been working for the Spanish for a while and she was arrested. She was tortured. She was gang raped. They cut her breasts off. What they did to this kid, you wouldn’t believe it. She never talked. She was eighteen. They told me later that I took her place which at the time had I known, I would have thought twice about it.

It was a very dangerous thing but I was very shy for one thing, I was very reserved, very shy so I would have never attracted attention. I was not beautiful. I was not anything. I could go through the crowd and nobody would pay attention to me at all.

I was on bicycle most of the time. When it was too far, I would take a bus or the train. Sometimes I would have to take three of them. Even then, sometime, this thing really happened. I was so lucky. I can’t tell you how lucky I was those years. I think I had a very busy guardian angel who would fall asleep once and a while and then wake up just in time to get me out of trouble.

Q: You had some close calls?

A: Very close calls. Once I was carrying this little suitcase full of pistols. I had wrapped them up and wrapped them up in newspapers and I had to go by bus quite a big distance. So, I take this bus. I’m waiting in line to get into the bus and behind me I suddenly I see this big shadow on the ground.

It was a German SS. Very tall SS. What he was doing on that bus, I will never know. He sees me carrying this little suitcase which was very heavy. I don’t’ know if you ever carried a suitcase full of pistols but it is very heavy but he was going to be a gentleman. He said “Let me carry this suitcase for you it’s too heavy for such a little girl.” “Oh no really I’m very strong, I can do it myself. Thank you” “No, no, no” and he took the suitcase away from me gets into the bus and puts it on the rack on top.

He sits right in front of me and says “What’s in the suitcase? It’s so heavy.” I said “its books. I am a student.” It’s the middle of July and I’m on vacation and that’s my book but he heard something metallic in it. He was looking at me and I said, “I had my ice skates also.” Then I thought what a stupid thing to say. What I am I doing in July with ice skates in a part of the country that never sees ice or snow. This guy is going to think I am nuts or worse so I start talking to him very fast that I was a skater here and a skater there.

Oh, he said, “I am a skater too. I’m from Hamburg.” He started telling me about all the champions from Germany. I kept him talking until the next stop and he carried my suitcase down. I said, “Goodbye!” Oh god, I’ve never been so scared. Things like that happened to me three of four times more.

Another time I was with Blondie, she saved the day. That was at the very beginning that I was working with her. We had plastic you know this famous explosive plastic in our saddle bags on both of our bicycles. The saddle bag was full of plastic. It was a beautiful day. We were going down a hill and right at the bottom of the hill there was some Gendarme. French troopers. You never knew with them. Some of them were with the resistance and some were not. You really took a chance with them.

They stopped us. “Girls, what are you carrying in those saddle bags?” My friend, she had a little handbag on her handle bars and she had a piece of bread in it and a knitting or something and she put it right under the Gendarmes nose and said, “What do you think we’re carrying bombs or something?” They just said “Alright girls go ahead.” They probably thought we were doing some black market of something with food because that was the most essential thing for where we were. They let us go.

Q: You had to be pretty quick witted to survive.

A: Oh, yes. Another time, I don’t know how that happened. It was almost at the time of the liberation of Toulouse. That was ’44. I was given some papers to bring to a general. Here I am with my little suitcase that has a false bottom. You put the papers, of course, in the false bottom and put my clothes on top.

Then, Tovar said here’s a pistol. Those papers had to get there even if you to shoot your way through any kind of situation those papers have to get there. I said, “I don’t want a pistol. I really don’t” He said, “No take it you may need it. Take it.”

If you are going to use a pistol where would you put it? In your pocket? In your belt? In your back? I put it in my hand bag. I was not going to use the damn thing. I put it in my hand bag. I remember I had a brand new navy suit. I was so happy about this. It was the first time I bought some new clothes in about three years. I had a handbag which was the same color. You know, the Parisian girls. Everything had to coordinate. My bag was navy blue also. Then I had my pistol in there.

I get to the station in Toulouse which is a pretty big city. The last big city before the border. We get out of the train and open the door and right outside the gate there were Germans all over the square. All the streets were barred with tanks and with cars. Some French police but mainly the German police and some SS and they were searching everybody and I thought well girl this time you’ve had it. That damn pistol is going to do you in.

I never panicked. This I can say for myself. I panicked later like three months later I started crying for an hour without any reason. I thought I can’t shoot my way through this one. No way. So, I go to the gate. They open my suitcase. They look into there. They didn’t see the papers. They close it back. They search me. They couldn’t find anything and they let me go. They didn’t look in my pocket book. They didn’t look and I am petrified just waiting for them to do it. They push me and say come on get out of here.

By that time, my knees are shaking. I can’t believe my luck. This is not possible. I go through all that square with all those Germans all over the place. This is the kind of luck I had all through the war.

**This is not the end of the interview. Please click here for the link to the full interview.**

Note: I did not edit this interview for punctuation, spelling, grammar, or content.

Sonia was a courier for the Maquis in the Dordogne region in southwest France. She served in the 4th Regiment of the Franc tireurs et partisans français. Between 1942 and 1945, Sonia was a liaison agent in the 15th Division of the Guerrilleros of Spain where she participated in arms smuggling, sabotage, and courier duties. Sonia and her husband, a former French résistant and later, a Surrealist artist, came to America in 1948 where they lived for several years in Brooklyn, New York before moving upstate to Woodstock. In the 1960s, Sonia began a lifelong career as a folksinger. She traveled around the world singing American and French folksongs. Here is Sonia singing Joni Mitchell’s song, “Clouds” , click here to listen. She was a guest on Pete Seeger’s television show and performed at Carnegie Hall. Unfortunately, Sonia never wrote a book about her life as a French résistant during World War II. I suppose the interview is the closest we’ll come.

✭  ✭  ★  Learn More About Sonia Malkine   ✭  ★  ★

Video interview with Sonia Malkine:  Click here to watch.

Full transcript of Russert and Clark interview with Sonia Malkine:  Click here to read.

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