Talking Location with Robin Scott-Elliott, author of HIDE AND SEEK

29th August 2021

To celebrate the publication of Robin Scott-Elliott’s latest children’s book, Hide and Seek, we’re thrilled to welcome Robin to the Tiny TripFiction blog to find out about the location that inspired his powerful wartime adventure.›

On the first morning of July 1944 a group of women gathered on the Rue Faubourg Saint-Denis. Holding hands, they turned on to Rue du Chateau d’Eau, their destination the Place de la Republique, chanting as they went.

“We want bread.”

“Milk for our babies.”

“Bread… bread… bread…”

Paris was entering a fifth year under Nazi occupation and the city’s women, struggling to feed their families, had had enough. By the time they reached Rue Lancry their numbers had swelled. German soldiers, clutching machine guns, looked on.

In the crowd, hidden from the soldiers, members of the Resistance handed out leaflets. It was among their number that I placed Amelie Dreyfus, the teenager we follow in Hide and Seek through the first days of occupation to these last ones.

Paris is one of my favourite cities, fascinating, magnificent, sometimes haughty, sometimes flirty. It’s a city that shows off without caring whether you’re impressed. But the Paris of Hide and Seek is often a dark place; divided, desperate, hungry, scared and given backbone by a handful of brave women and men, and young people.

Head south from Place de la Republique, passing Notre Dame where Amelie has a key rendezvous, and make for the Avenue Col Rol-Tanguy. There we find a new museum which commemorates the Resistance and records the occupation. It’s housed in the bunker where Henri Rol-Tanguy planned the uprising of August 1944. Among the displays are a pair of children’s shoes with wooden soles, a boy’s wallet filled with ration cards and a yellow star.

Go west from the museum, reach the Seine and by the river, overlooked by the Eiffel Tower, is a monument; a group of men, women and children, clutching each other, sitting on a curved slope representing the wooden track of a velodrome. This is the Square of the Jewish Martyrs of the Winter Velodrome and marks one of the most shameful events in French history. In July 1942 French policemen helped round up 13,000 French Jews and imprison them in the Velodrome d’Hiver. They were held for several days without food or water before being taken to Drancy, a camp in the north of Paris, and from there to Auschwitz. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum puts at 50,000 the number of Parisian Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

Now cross the river, turn north and it’s not far to the Trocadero Gardens, where Virginia d’Albert-Lake, the American wife of a Frenchman, walked arm-in-arm with Allied airmen, calming them before they began their journey down the Comet escape line.

Above the gardens rise the columns of the Musee de l’Homme and it’s here Amelie begins her journey from schoolgirl to Resister. The museum was home to the first significant resistance group. When the Germans marched into Paris, Paul Rivet, the museum’s founder and a well-known anti-fascist, pinned a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ to the door. Behind the scenes three of his staff, Yvonne Oddon, a librarian, and Boris Vilde and Anatole Lewitsky, ethnologists, began to resist. Vilde was the leader and in brisk time had spun a web stretching across the country. In the basement they set up a printing press – the press Amelie discovers. Oddon is said to have come up with the name for their newspaper: ‘Resistance’.

But like a spider’s web it did not need much to break it. There was a traitor, Albert Gaveau, who betrayed his colleagues. Vilde and Lewitsky were executed, Oddon sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. Oddon, on whom my character Cecile is based (her name is borrowed from Cecile Rol-Tanguy, a resister alongside her husband), survived and the library in today’s museum carries her name. In the lobby an exhibition records the heroics of Vilde, Lewitsky and Oddon. But much of Resistance history in Paris remains hidden. That, after all, was the point.

Wonder down the Boulevard Raspail into Montparnasse and look above the shops. One of those apartments was a safe house. It’s not far from there to Rue de St Peres; find No10 and look up to the third-floor windows. Another safe house.

Cross the river again, dodge the queues for the Louvre – its vaults a Resistance hiding place – cross the Rue de Rivoli and find L’Oratoire du Louvre. Here in the closing weeks of the occupation Pastor Vergara sheltered 63 Jewish children. I won’t say more because it features in Amelie’s story.

There is one more thing… but you must promise to destroy this message in case it falls into the wrong hands. If you find yourself in trouble head for the Café Biarritz near Gare Montparnasse. Ask for Monsieur Labarthe, the proprietor – Georges to his friends. He will get you out of Paris. Just make sure you’re not followed.

Robin Scott-Elliott

Robin Scott-Elliot has been a sports journalist for 25 years with the BBC, ITV, Sunday Times, Independent and the ‘i’, covering every sport you can think of and a few you probably can’t. In 2012 he covered the London Paralympics as the Independent’s Paralympic Correspondent. He threw that all away to move home to Scotland and write, where his daughters persuaded him to write a story for them. He lives on the west coast with his wife and two children. His first book for children The Tzar’s Curious Runaway was long listed for the Branford Boase and picked the Telegraph as one of the best books of the year. His second book, The Acrobats of Agra was picked by the Observer as one of the best books of 2020.

robinscottelliot.com | @RobinScottEllio

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