how the dark past of a nonagenarian resurfaced after his death

Sunday 24th November 2024 10:57 AM

Frankly, it would have been enough for “Popaul” to disappear two or three days in a row for the town of Herbiers to worry. In all weathers, the valiant retiree took his walk. A stop at Anita, press house, for its “Figaro” and its “Current Values”. A quick word to the owner, a chat with the customers before heading off to Chez Colette, a bar-restaurant now closed, where “the nicest customer” sometimes had lunch.

M. Paul or, with his 1.60 meters, Petit Paul? An energetic, jovial grandpa, with a heart on his sleeve and a smile full of kindness: we would have given him the good Lord without confession. He had blended into the countryside. Every afternoon in the summer, invariably dressed in shorts and a white cap, he sunbathed sitting on his bench. If he missed the meeting and everyone would have started looking for him, starting with his closest friends, the Albert couple: Marcel, mayor of Les Herbiers for eighteen years and a major textile entrepreneur, and Régine, author of short stories and poems.

Paul Pradier met Marcel Albert in Paris, early 1980, during a ready-to-wear show. With a briefcase in hand, he walks the aisles for his association, Les Galapiats, which allows young people to drive mini-Formula 1 cars. He is looking for sponsors. Marcel finds the idea generous and the man, like him, full of energy. Her gravelly South-West accent and her mischievous look seduce him. Thus, he will finance a race to Les Herbiers.

In the south of France, during the grape harvest season, in the 1990s. Inset, in 1951, four years before his release. He only served ten years in prison.

In 2006, Popaul, 82, wondered where to retire. The Alberts praise the Vendée to him. They take him in while they find accommodation. At home, it's a bit like a Spanish inn, where backpackers, industrialists or artists parade, such as Claude Nedjar, producer of “Lacombe Lucien”, by Louis Malle (1974), or the story of a young man from Lot attracted by collaboration. Such as Pierre Barouh, actor but also composer of the cult Chabadabada of “A Man and a Woman”, by Claude Lelouch (1966). In 1941, he was hidden not far from the Herbiers, like other Jewish children. Popaul will sometimes find himself seated next to these two resistant spirits.

The Occupation? : ” Oh ! It's far! »

We adore him to the point of respecting his silences. His childhood? He dodges. The Occupation? : ” Oh ! It's far! » We imagine that, perhaps, he or those close to him suffered from it. We talk very little about the subject. Marie-Françoise, home help: “He was interested in you, but avoided all personal questions. » We barely know that he was born in Montagrier, in Dordogne, that he was a deliveryman then a chauffeur. In addition to Les Galapiats, he worked for twenty-five years at the cult youth hostel of Regain, in the Luberon, with François and Claude Morenas. An institution created at the time of paid leave, where a joyful and down-class clientele flocks.

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François, anti-Pétainist, resistance fighter, hid Jewish families there. Including Myriam, grandmother of the writers Claire and Anne Berest, who brings this period to life in “The Postcard”. At Regain, Pradier welcomes customers and prepares breakfasts. He is also an outstanding handyman. He feels like he's part of the family, he's the only one who knows how to calm Morenas, who is a bit temperamental.

At the beach, late 1980s. He is in his sixties, single and without children.

In 2009, he inherited a nephew from Montagrier. A notary is waiting for him there. Régine Albert and her daughter Dominique accompany him. He is grumpy, nervous, reluctant to show them around his village, which they will cross on foot at a brisk pace: “Oh! It's been a long time, all that. » The bequeathed hovel is sold the same day. Phew! Back in Vendée, his stomach pains reawakened. It's cancer. It is then shared between a care home in Montaigu and the hospital in La Roche-sur-Yon. Two places where, again, the staff love it. We visited him assiduously until his death in June 2018, at the age of 94, from a lung infection. At his request, he was cremated.

“Cruel, cynical, formidable scoundrel, sadist”

Régine Albert then telephones another nephew of Montagrier. “With Paul,” he told him, “it was complicated during the war. » She insists. Hesitantly, he adds: “Prison…what he did.” » Words that strike the mind of Frédéric, son of the Albert couple, 50 years old at the time. Paul is like a great-uncle to him. From Barcelona, where he is assistant manager of a hotel near the Ramblas, Frédéric broods. “In 2020, in the middle of Covid, I wanted to know more,” he says. I turned into a detective! »

Long searches on Google until this link: “The militiaman Paul Pradier, originally from Montagrier. » The dates match. He is stunned. “I told myself I wasn’t going to let go of him!” » Direction Bordeaux, departmental archives, with his uncle Hervé. Militiaman… Hervé remembers on the way Paul's outburst, while he was speaking to him, on May 8, about the Occupation: “He said to me: 'What do you know about the communists? Were all great resistance fighters? !” I thought I hit something. »

At the Regain inn, in the Luberon, where he worked for twenty-five years.

In the archives, they discover the file of… agent no. 302 of the Sipo-SD, the security police of the SS. A terrifying machine, of which Paul Pradier, 19, wears a leather uniform. There will be twelve in Dordogne, 2,500 elsewhere in France. “It is the most total and accomplished commitment to collaboration,” explains Patrice Rolli, historian of the Second World War, specialist in the Resistance in Dordogne. He found the trace of Pradier in 2014 and will guide Frédéric Albert in his research. He specifies: “They were fanatics, opportunists, greedy, vengeful or disappointed. »

The apprentice blacksmith in Montagrier dreams of a place in the railway workshops. But he was assigned as a Company roadman. Coincidence? He joined Jacques Doriot's French Popular Party (PPF). And, like Lucien Lacombe, in the blink of an eye he gave himself body and soul to the Nazi cause. In his file, the same words recur over and over again, those of witnesses who describe him as “cruel, cynical, formidable scoundrel, sadist”.

With François Morenas, the boss of Regain, a former resistance fighter.

In just one year, it is estimated that he denounced, executed or had a few dozen of his compatriots deported, including a teenager of his age on the “reason” that he wanted his girlfriend. He will die in deportation. So many others, young people and terrified adults, Jewish or not, had to beg this 19 year old kid! His new friends? The sinister Paul Lapuyade, boss of the local PPF. The brutal Hambrecht, head of the Dordogne Gestapo, angry winebag. His partner and accomplice of the same age: François Collin, small hit from Périgueux.

Finally, we no longer make fun of his 1.60 meters!

Pistol in his belt and machine gun on his shoulder, Pradier struts around town, entering and leaving the militia premises as he pleases, without hiding. He happily climbs into covered trucks which speed off towards their exactions. In “The Last Gestapo”, the book that Frédéric Albert drew from his research, we discover that Pradier likes to join the maquis: “I am resistant, help me”, he gasps, the better to then denounce all the partisans .

His friend Régine Albert visited him at the Montaigu hospital, in Vendée, while he was being treated for cancer in 2006.

In 1943, after the attack on the Feldgendarmerie, he had Jewish families arrested: “Quickly, there are others to go see,” he said to his German friends. Finally, we no longer make fun of his 1.60 meters! He has the build and strength of a wrestler. In civilian clothes this time, he distributed pro-Red Army leaflets in Périgueux with a smile on his face, then, suddenly brutally, handcuffed those who took the risk of accepting them.

Rewarded “for his activity against the resistance and his courage”

March 1944. With the support of the North African Brigade (BNA) – fifty little thugs from Goutte-d'Or led by football star Alexandre Villaplane, who was shot at the end of 1944 (a book by Patrice Rolli, published by l 'Shared History, looks back on this little-known episode) -, comes the time of the pillaging of Jewish property, the burning of farms, the bodies thrown into the flames or the executions in the ditches. A document attests that agent 302, an employee of the Sipo-SD – of course, he led a great lifestyle – received in June 1944, 60,000 francs from the Gestapo, accompanied by congratulations from the PPF, all “for his activity against resistance and its courage.

Below, alongside Frédéric Albert, who has not yet discovered his past. At the Herbiers, in 2017.

August 1944. Pradier, wearing a leather jacket and cap, fled Périgueux with the Germans. Arrested by the FTP, he miraculously managed to escape, abandoning his sidekick Collin, who was shot. He is probably in Germany, from where he probably returns hidden among the STOs. In the meantime, Périgueux sentenced him to death in absentia. Recognized at Strasbourg station, he was apprehended. He was again sentenced to death in Bordeaux.

In 1946, his sentence was commuted to forced labor for life. He saved his head, and his good behavior in detention as well as his minority of age at the time of the events allowed him to be released in 1955. Only his mother would agree to see him again. She was sometimes the victim of harassment after the Occupation (broken windows and shutters at home). When his self-published book was published, a friend of Pradier confided to Frédéric Albert: “I asked him if he had told your parents about his past. He told me he didn't dare. »

At the Jean-Graton Foundation (Belgium), author of the comic book series “Michel Vaillant”, of which Pradier was a big fan. With his friend Hervé Rautureau, in 2013.

Proof that he had his memory intact and the remorse counter at zero. Despite living in the open, he was never recognized, except once, by an old woman from Montagrier, on the notary's day: “A ghost emerging from the past. This vision made my blood run cold,” she confided to historian Patrice Rolli.

At Herbiers, we feel betrayed. Anita, press house: “It’s astonishing. To have controlled himself like that… what a bastard. » Marie-Françoise, the home help: “Being everything and its opposite in the same life leaves me speechless. » A young person, listening to us: “Keeping all that to yourself must have been heavy. » Frédéric Albert wrote in tribute to the victims of agent 302, who at Les Herbiers we will never again call “Popaul”