On August 16, 1944, Robert Capa took a landmark photo, that of a woman, shorn, a baby in her arms, in front of Chartres Cathedral. The historians Philippe Frétigné and Gérard Leray investigated this 23-year-old “collaborator”, Simone Touseau, punished by the FFI and thrown out to pasture for popular vindictiveness. The Chartraine Julie Héraclès has in turn seized it. As a novelist. Slipping into the skin of Simone “the emboche”, she grants her in her first novel, You don’t know anything about me (Lattès), a new name, Grivise, and a new face. No longer that of the convinced anti-Semite, but that, in half-tone, of a young and brilliant German-speaking woman who was not at all exalted by the image of a strong Germany and who would have gone astray for essentially financial, opportunistic and romantic reasons. .
It is this Simone represented with a “welcoming complacency”, in the words of Arnaud Hée, that is contested today in The world this one, grandson of one of the Touseau family’s neighbors, denounced by Simone to the German authorities for having listened to the BBC and deported to Germany. For Arnaud Hée, You don’t know anything about me rehabilitates the figure of the collaborator Simone and falsifies reality. Since then, the controversy has grown. Meeting with Julie Héraclès.
L’Express: Why did you choose to set your first novel in this period of the Occupation? Is the character of “the mower” really strong in the imagination of the inhabitants of Chartres?
Julie Héraclès: This era has always interested me enormously, it is a troubled period where the worst rubbed shoulders with the best and where human passions were exacerbated. I watched a lot of films, I read novels… In Chartres, yes, everyone knows it, and this photo of Capa has questioned me since adolescence, it is already an interpretation of reality. When you don’t know the story, you can have a certain feeling about this woman. For a long time, moreover, we believed that it was the symbol of wild purification, but when the historical investigation by Philippe Frétigné and Gérard Leray appeared in 2011, the people of Chartrain and everyone became aware that it was a woman who had collaborated and who was guilty.
So you have read the book of historians, The Mower 1944-1947 (Editions Vendémiaire), then you moved away from it. What did you keep and leave out?
Indeed, I read and reread and reread and annotated it, it was my main source of inspiration. I have kept all the biographical elements, in particular all the criminal acts committed by Simone, her membership in the PPF, the fact that she was suspected of having denounced her neighbors, her admiration for Nazism and her collaboration, all of this I I was keen to preserve it. What I invented was everything that the story didn’t allow me to understand, for example his childhood, his adolescence, his psychology, his emotions, his relationships with his family, that’s where the fiction intervened. And I tried to be as plausible as possible with the time, the context of this city of Chartres.
Did you immediately decide that Simone would be the narrator of the novel? And doesn’t putting yourself in the shoes of this woman inherently create a certain empathy towards the character?
In fact, I only adopted the “I” during the course of rewriting the novel. It seemed to me that speaking in the first person gave more energy to the text, with the “she” it was less incisive. I wouldn’t talk about empathy, because I don’t have any for this protagonist. As for the reader, he is free to form his own opinion. I really tried to never judge, to always be in the narrative and to describe what she might have been thinking.
You show that everything is not black and white and you attribute to Simone extenuating circumstances, in the sense that we have the impression that her excesses are due more to her youth, to her exaltation, to her careerism than to a fundamentally anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi temperament.
What I believe is that you don’t become pro-Nazi overnight. I tried to explore the tangle of reasons, motivations and motives which made it possible, at one point, for her to swing and make these disastrous decisions and commit these criminal acts. I’m just trying to explore a destiny, a human condition. Indeed, she is arriviste, opportunist, selfish, driven solely by her desire and her blindness. And then, there is the family atmosphere, this hatred of the Popular Front, this anti-Semitism assumed by her family which makes her adopt these convictions. They are anchored in her, she doesn’t even question them. There are also the humiliating events that occurred during her childhood and adolescence, and when the Occupation arrives, she has within her a kind of violence, hatred, due in particular to her feeling of social downgrading and that of her parents.
Interviewed by The world, Arnaud Hée, the grandson of one of the neighbors denounced by Simone Touseau, accuses you of falsifying History. In your novel, you say in particular that it was not Simone who denounced them but her mother.
We don’t know what exactly happened. Far be it from me to want to clear it. There were legal investigations at the time and the courts closed the case without further action due to lack of evidence. Today, we think that she indeed played a role, but what role exactly, we do not know. I chose to make sure that she ran. In my novel, Simone lets it happen, she knows that her mother denounced the neighbors and what will probably happen to them. She has no courage and is guilty indirectly. In fact, she hates her neighbors and wants somewhere they pay for. So she is eminently guilty.
Arnaud Hée accuses you of rehabilitating Simone, speaks of “welcoming complacency” on your part.
I do not at all question the tragedy that was experienced by this family, by this grandson, and the horror of the Nazi crimes, all of this revolts me to the highest degree. Saying that I am rehabilitating it affects my deepest values. Writing about this woman is not at all exonerating her, on the contrary it is trying to face the motivations that may have been hers, why at one point she chose to commit these acts. I also had the idea in my head that we must be vigilant, this must not happen again. I draw a parallel with today’s generations: why do some young people fall into extremist ideologies? Isn’t it also because there is this feeling of being left aside, of being humiliated, of being despised? So we have to face the motivations, so that it doesn’t start again.
You are also accused of being mainly interested in Simone and of talking very little about the victims…
I’m speaking from Simone’s point of view, who is eminently guilty, I repeat. She hates her neighbors, she is aware that denunciation will undoubtedly lead to deportation and death. So, she blinds herself, she no longer wants to think about it, she puts this event aside so as not to take it head-on.
Isn’t that the risk of attacking a historical character? Fiction implies variations and freedoms that can offend…
Yes, it remains fiction. I invented elements, but I really tried to be as plausible as possible in relation to what I imagined of the psychology of this woman. Moreover, the historian Gérard Leray wrote to me to tell me that I had well transcribed what could be the character of this woman, selfish, opportunistic, proud, blinded in these decisions. When I started writing this novel, I didn’t think for a second that I could be accused of rehabilitating Simone; her character is a hundred thousand miles from all my values.