CHAPTER 14When Frenchmen old enough to have been involved in it speak of the World War II, it is often with a disturbing mixture of embarrassment and anger. France lost far more men in World War I. But the later war divided the French people against one another in a moral civil war whose emotional scars have still not completely healed.
In those days, they told me, the head of the Lemaire family and its business was Emile Lemaire, Christine-Marie’s husband, grandfather to both Henri and Gabrielle. And a prominent collaborator with the Nazi authorities during the war.
“For which they rewarded him handsomely,” Patrick Bertrand said. “Emile Lemaire’s company was helped to keep up full production, while all the others had to cut down drastically. He got the first choice of the best from ever
