Re: [CR] French Constructeurs During WWII

(Example: Production Builders:Pogliaghi)

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Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 09:33:04 -0800
To: Edward Albert <ealbert01@gmail.com>
From: "Jan Heine" <heine94@earthlink.net>
Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR] French Constructeurs During WWII


Eddie,

I was just about to clarify that I am not trying to downplay the atrocities committed by the Germans and French collaborators during the occupation. The record on this issue is well-documented, and probably off-topic. There is no doubt that the German occupation of France was terrible, and that almost everybody suffered, and many were killed.

"Keeping the record straight" is only about on-topic INDIVIDUAL builders, about whom we care as cycling historians... and who either were deported or not, arrested or not, etc.

Alex Singer was not arrested, he was a prisoner-of-war. As far as we know, he was not on any "Wanted" lists, he only lacked ID papers, thus had to be concerned about going out and running into a checkpoint. He may have been Jewish, but apart from his name, there is nothing to suggest this.

Ernest Csuka, his nephew, was not Jewish, as far as we can tell.

Both continued to work at Cycles Alex Singer during the war.

Rene Herse started building bikes in 1940. He had made components before, but expanded his shop and hired his first employees during the war.

Andre Reiss, the maker of Reyhand bikes, was killed in battle against the invading German armies.

Paul Charrel continued to make bicycles until his shop was bombed by the Allies. He then moved his shop to his mother's kitchen.

Nicola Barra worked with Garin to make series-produced aluminum bicycles during the war. It appears that Barra could not keep his shop open during the war. He recommended that Barra customers have their bikes serviced by Rene Herse.

Narcisse was Jewish, and fled to the "free zone" during the war. I am told that he made bicycles somewhere in the south of France before returning to Paris after the liberation.

Lionel Brans claims to have been active in the resistance, in his book about his ride from Paris to Saigon.

Many cyclotouring competitions went on during the war. There are photos even of small bike shows during the war, where Herse and others exhibited their latest creations.

Those are the facts, to the best of my knowledge. How was it in Britain and Italy? I know from Mark Lawrence's interviews with Jack and Ken Taylor that Jack was in a reserved occupation as a pattern maker, and thus exempt from the draft. I assume Ken and Norman were too young to be drafted.

Again, this is not to imply that life was easy in occupied France (or Britain or Italy) - it wasn't. If you read the interview with Paulette Porthault in Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 3, No. 1, you'll see that it was very, very hard, and many people didn't even have enough food. But cycling, and competition, provided an outlet from the hardship, a way to be with friends and forget the misery for a while.

Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly 2116 Western Ave. Seattle WA 98121 http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com

At 11:51 AM -0500 1/1/10, Edward Albert wrote:
>I know that this will only inflame things but I cannot stay out of
>it any longer. All this talk about "doing as well as they could,"
>and 'keeping the record straight" makes me uneasy to say the very
>least. The French had, for years rewritten the history concerning
>the relationship between the so-called man in the street and the
>Nazis occupation. I recent years that "cover-up" has been somewhat
>abandoned and some light has been let in. Of course there were
>heroes and saviors but, in large part, the French tradition of
>benign and not so benign antisemitism was alive and well in
>occupied France. The Dreyfus affair did not stem from nowhere after
>all. As I did off list yesterday, I refer any one interested in
>this topic to watch Max Ophul's spine chilling chronicle of "doing
>the best that they could" as their neighbors boarded the boxcars in
>his film "The Sorrow and the Pity" which, BTW, has a very disturbing
>sequence with the "great" bike racer Rafael Geminiani. I also refer
>anyone interested in this period of history to read the relatively
>recent "Bad Faith" by Carmen Callil and equally chilling account of
>the individual responsible for the deportation of the Jews. It is
>not the individual that is of importance in the present context but
>the help he received in his vigorous endeavors not only from the
>most elevated levels of French society but from those very
>individuals where were "doing the best that they could.
>Sorry for the disruption, we now resume your regular programming.
>
>Edward Albert
>Chappaqua, New York, U.S.A.
>
>On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 11:30 AM, Jan Heine
><<mailto:heine94@earthlink.net>heine94@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>At 10:43 PM +0000 12/31/09, Norris Lockley wrote:
>
>I read in an article recently that Andre Reiss, the builder of the renowned
>REYHAND frames, was arrested by the German army in the early 1940s, possibly
>in 1940 itself, deported and shot.
>
>
>Reiss was not arrested and deported, but he died in battle during
>the German invasion. The sources for this are the first post-war
>edition of Le Cycliste, which lists the "disparus," as well as
>Raymond Henry's article on Reyhand in Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 5, No.
>1. Raymond Henry did a lot of research on Reiss, including talking
>to many of his friends when they still were alive.
>
>Since you apparently read something different, please give us the
>source. There are a lot of myths, half-truths and fabrications out
>there, and we should try to keep the record straight.
>
>
>While it appears that some of the Paris-based cycleframe builders were able
>to carry on much as usual, the same could not be said of others in other
>parts of France.
>
>
>The assumption that all life stopped in France with the invasion
>simply isn't true. During the war in France, there was no draft, and
>few people were interested in working for the Germans, so most
>simply carried on what they had been doing... as well as they could.
>
>Even in Lyon, builders continued to work during the war, for
>example, Paul Charrel continued to make bicycles, as you can read in
>the profile of this builder in the last Bicycle Quarterly (Winter
>09).
>
>Charrel's shop was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid on Lyon,
>so he moved his shop into his mother's kitchen. Clearly, he can't
>have made too many bikes there, but that is all he did to earn a
>living. What else could he do? It's not like anybody was hiring in
>those days...
>
>Jan Heine
>Editor
>Bicycle Quarterly
>2116 Western Ave.
>Seattle WA 98121
><http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com>http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com
>
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