At the end of 1935 Morris was approached by the Nazis and invited at the personal request of Hitler to visit Germany for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where she was treated to much fanfare. She retained her links with the Nazis in disgust at her treatment by the French. Then, in 1937, she killed a man but escaped a murder charge on grounds of self-defence. For Cocteau, an artist who claimed to be apolitical, to be seen in the same car with such a person was risky indeed, just as it was for Morris to drive him there since neither of them had a pass for the front.
Clearly, French society of the 1930s could not accommodate Violette Morris, who, unable to perform in the international sporting competitions in which she excelled, soon found a place for herself among the seedy petty criminals and German admirers of the extreme right. Exactly what Morris subsequently did to help the Germans and whether her life of collaboration turned to treason is the subject of academic debate. But, as the phoney war came to an end, Violette Morris was one of those on the fringes who found a home as she edged closer to the Gestapo.
There were thousands of others in Paris that year, guests neither at the circus ball nor at any of the many other summer extravaganzas, neither concert-nor opera-goers, participants neither in the Bastille Day celebrations nor in outings to Deauville, the fashionable resort favoured by so many Parisians – just ordinary men and women for whom the insecurity of 1939 had turned into a nightmare long before 3 September. Some Parisiennes – those who had already had their lives turned upside down for the past few years – were not heedless of the current dangers. Miriam Sandzer, aged sixteen when she arrived in Paris in 1930 with her family from Poland, had been visiting the Préfecture de Police in Paris almost daily since 1936, trying to help refugees regularize their situation as they flooded in from Poland, Germany and other countries threatened by Hitler. Her father owned a lingerie factory in the 19th arrondissement and, above it, had founded a small synagogue. Miriam’s job, in addition to working long hours in the factory, was to try and arrange papers for the refugees, some of whom arrived with little more than a change of clothes, while others had jewellery to sell, but all were suffering from having nowhere to stay. Refugees could neither register in a hotel nor sleep rough because they risked interrogation from passing policemen asking randomly, ‘Vos papiers, s’il vous pla?t.’ If a passport with a valid entry visa could not be produced, or if anything looked questionable, the individual would be detained in a police station until deported. The Sandzer family, deeply involved in helping foreign Jews to settle and find accommodation, could be under no illusions about the gloom ahead. Sometimes they welcomed a refugee family sleeping on mattresses in their own spare room, or persuaded friends to do likewise, until temporary permits could be arranged and the exiles could legitimately stay in a hotel. When more accommodation was needed, M. Sandzer paid the next-door brothel-keeper to vacate his premises for a year so they could use his twenty-three rooms to house refugees. Miriam had got to know the Chef de Police rather well over recent months and was learning fast ‘how corrupt these people were, how money talks in every language … with a bribe it was possible to extend their temporary permits until such time as they were able to secure an entry visa to an overseas destination’.
Miriam Sandzer in 1936, aged twenty-two, looking exotic and strong-willed