Just imagine!
It is a freezing night in December 1939. You are a refugee from the Spanish Civil War living in squalor on the beach at Argelès, where your home for the last several months has been a makeshift shack with minimum protection from the elements. It is within a barbed-wire compound guarded by sadistic colonial soldiers.

You are plagued with lice, scabies, dysentery and acute bronchitis – and you are also tormented by rats that even try to nibble off the ears of young babies around you. Some of these babies are suffering from enterocolitis (a severe intestinal condition of the colon and small intestine), acute diarrhoea, and other serious conditions. Many of their lives, and those of their mothers, will be brutally short.

The Tramontane wind is raging and the only sewage outlet is a ditch outside dug into the sand – or the sea. There is only brackish water to drink and your daily food ration is 50 grammes of bread and a glass of milk.

On top of all this imagine, if you are a woman, that you are seven months pregnant, and that your man has been conscripted by the French authorities onto a labouring project. You’re not even sure where he is.

 Spanish refugees crossing the French border

“Such stuff as dreams are made on…”
Suddenly the next day you are whisked away from this Hell-by-the Sea in a brown Opel through the vines and plane trees on the Roussillon plain, and through the town of Elne to a beautiful château. It is set in its own grounds at the end of a long drive lined with cypresses. You have arrived at La Maternité d’Elne, the Swiss Red Cross maternity hospital.

You are warmly welcomed by an exceptionally loving and competent directrice or matron. She is Elisabeth Eidenbenz, only 25 years old, otherwise known as Señorita Isabel. You are soon in a daze as you bask in a hot bath and then rest for a while between clean sheets in a spotless room with a white-tiled flush loo. Dumbfounded, you have suddenly experienced, “warmth, cleanliness and intimacy” after the traumas you have endured at Argelès.

You then go to the dining room and join a group of women for a meal you cannot really do justice to, such is your extreme fatigue and wretched health: perhaps freshly made vegetable soup, followed by cooked meat, cheese, fresh fruit and café au lait à volonté…

Two months later, after recovering your health and good spirits, your baby is born. Although in a few weeks you will have to return to Hell-by-the-Sea at Argelès, or move to another equally horrific internment camp, you will never forget your experience of loving support at La Maternité d’Elne.

Spanish refugees, Jews and Tziganes (gypsies)
Altogether 597 pregnant women of 22 different nationalities passed through La Maternité d’Elne between November 1939 and April 1944, when it was requisitioned on three days’ notice by the Germans. The majority of the women were refugees from Franco’s Spain during La Retirada (The Retreat).

In addition some 200 expectant mothers were Jewish. From the summer of 1940 they were fleeing areas occupied by or under threat from the Germans: Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, the north of France, Alsace, the Paris region and elsewhere. By the end of 1940 six Jewish children had already seen the light of day at La Maternité.

At this time southern France was technically a Zone Libre (Free Zone) run by Maréchal Pétain’s Vichy government. In fact it was no more than a “satellite rump state” run by yes-men, and would later be invaded by the Germans in November 1942. It must not be forgotten that Pétain’s government were sending refugees, Jews and gypsies to the gas chambers well before the Germans occupied the Zone Libre.

Elisabeth and her Maternité
Born on 12 June 1913, Elisabeth, the daughter of a Zurich pastor, first taught in Switzerland and Denmark before she decided to join the Asociación de Ayuda a los Niños en Guerra (Association to Aid Children in War).

“Le Nil”
Elisabeth arrived in Madrid on 24 April 1937 as a volunteer in an aid team but soon relocated to the south of France. Appalled by the situation of mothers and children amongst the Spanish refugees, Elizabeth decided to convert an abandoned château into a maternity home. Situated on the road to Montescot just outside Elne it was known as the Château d’En Bardou because it had belonged to the Bardou-Job dynasty, creators of the famed “Le Nil” brand of cigarette paper.

“All was clean, clear and bright”
The château was in a lamentable state and Elisabeth, ever visionary, obtained CHF 30,000 from the Swiss Red Cross (Aide Suisse aux enfants) for the repairs and renovations. A lovely touch in her creation of the hospital, completed in November 1939, was to name each different room after a city in Spain to remind the young mothers-to-be of their roots. The only exception was the salle d’accouchement (the delivery room) which (writes Hélène Legrais) the mothers christened Morocco on account of the agonies they experienced in labour.

The finished building was beautiful. It was constructed in the form of a Greek cross on four levels, with light penetrating from a cupola and glass roof through three glass floors. At the lower garden level were communal rooms, the laundry, kitchen and storeroom. At ground level (at the top of the flight of steps leading to the entrance) was the grand octagonal room on one side where the women sat during the day, whilst on the other side was the dining room.

 The restored Mothers of Elne

On the first floor was the octagonal nursery facing south, the delivery room and another room for those who had just given birth. The second floor housed bedrooms, each with three or four beds apart from Elisabeth’s room which also served as an office. The stairs continued upwards through a wrought-ironed lantern, with magnificent views of the Roussillon plain and Canigou.

“A light in the hearth”
As regards all that happened there, I can obviously only scratch the surface here. Some highlights for me from Hélène Legrais’s beautifully written “true story” include:

•    The Christmas celebrations, including imaginative presents and magnificent roast chickens glazed to perfection with delicious aromas.

•    A visit of support and encouragement by Pablo Casals (“plump, small and balding, with a soft hat”), to this day one of the world’s finest-ever cellists. He had left his home in Spain after Franco’s coup d’état in 1936 to live in nearby Prades. During his visit Casals made a substantial donation and promised to bring more money when he returned.

•    The celebration of Elizabeth's 30th birthday on 12 June 1943 when everyone was “no longer in Elne but somewhere in the mountains of Switzerland”. They sang the Hymn of the Swiss Red Cross and messages arrived from many former mothers of the château. One moving tribute declared: “You are a light in the hearth, always your usual self with a warm and peaceful radiance. Your face never reveals your own feelings because you think only of others.”

•    The circumcision of Guy or Guitou Eckstein, son of Maurice and Hénya, for which a rabbi risked his life travelling some distance. Thanks to the humanity of the Capdet family in Thuir, Maurice Eckstein was given refuge in their hayloft and thus escaped La Rafle (Roundup). Guy Eckstein, now living in Geneva, has written a tribute to Elisabeth in his foreword to Hélène Legrais’s book.

 Children of the hospital

Gestapo
The roundup of the Jews began in brutal earnest after the Germans occupied the so-called Free Zone in November 1942. However, the notoriously sordid and inhumane camp at Rivesaltes had become an “accommodation centre” for Tziganes, Spanish refugees and Jews since January 1941.

When the Gestapo in their black leather coats and grey-green soft hats came the first time to La Maternité looking for Jews, Elisabeth sent them packing. The second time, however, she was not so lucky. They came demanding to take away Lucie, a Jewish mother. (Her baby had not survived but she had stayed on to give her milk to other mothers.)

Ultimate sacrifices
The Kommandatur threatened that if Lucie was not produced they would take Elisabeth instead. So she asked for a few moments to pack her bags and re-emerged – but with Lucie also. Lucie had flatly refused to accept Elisabeth’s sacrifice and gave herself up.

She was soon on the train in a cattle wagon from Elne to Rivesaltes, whence she was transferred via Drancy to the gas chambers at Mauthausen - where some 20,000 others followed the same route, including at least one other protégée of Elisabeth named Esther.

“Strict neutrality”
For me the most harrowing though understandable revelation of this book was the “strict neutrality” imposed by the Swiss Red Cross. Elisabeth received a circular from the executive committee ordering her “to give up Jews, Tziganes and Spanish refugees if you are requested and do nothing to shield them from the roundups.”

Not cut out for marriage
Elizabeth once told her closest confidente at Elne, Teresa, that she had no romantic interest in men – “I don’t believe I have the qualities of a good wife.”

As for having children? “I already have them”, she said.

 Elisabeth Eidenbenz in a recent interview

Footnotes
At the time of writing, Elisabeth Eidenbenz is 97 and lives at Rekawinkel, some 50 kilometres west of Vienna. On 22 March 2002 she made the journey for a moving ceremony, organised by Elne’s mayor Nicolas Garcia and Guy Eckstein, at La Maternité. (It was then owned by Monsieur François Charpentier.) As well as meeting some 30 mothers from her former “family”, Elisabeth received the Medal of the Just among Nations from Israel’s Consul General based in Marseille. Later, in 2006, she would receive the Légion d’Honneur and la médaille de l’Ordre Civil et de la Solidarité, as well as the Croix de Saint Jordi.

Future plans
On 1 July 2005 le château d’En Bardou was bought by the village of Elne, with funding by private subscriptions. The aim is to continue the work of Elisabeth Eidenbenz by creating an “auberge humanitaire” which will welcome women and children caught up in some of the world’s blood-drenched conflict zones.

Among them were many who helped Hélène Legrais with her book: Remei, Ruben, Vladimir, Celia, Pepita, Juliette, Consuelo, Sergio, Andrea, Incarnació, Pedro, Narcisse (saved from the brink of death by a lick of mashed sweet potato), Pedro, Sylvie …

© 2010 Basil Howitt