The lifeline

"In my great distress and immense despair, I write to you in the name of nearly 400 Germans and Austrians interned at Camp de Catus," begins a December 1939 letter to Salomon Grumbach, Deputy of Castres and known refugee advocate. "We are poorly housed, like cattle. We live in stables and sleep on rocks and sand barely covered with filthy straw. The rats roam around night and day. In these conditions, not even the least hygiene is possible." The author, like thousands of other men, women, and children since 1933, fled the Third Reich for safe haven in France. France, however, was no longer the land of asylum that they had hoped to find. Its legacy of universal republicanism, generous immigration policies, and human rights had eroded in the face of economic depression, fear of war, and restricted visions of nationhood."