Illustrating the danger often faced in getting these manuscripts to the brothers is the experience of Brother Stanis Sikora, who was in charge of a group of Polish-speaking brothers in Saint-Denis, a suburb north of Paris. He relates:

“One morning I was taking a handwritten copy of ‘The Watchtower’ to another group when I saw a group of German soldiers ahead who were stopping everybody and searching them. I kept on my bicycle and decided to continue riding slowly on. I drew parallel with the first group of soldiers and they did nothing to stop me. I kept going very slowly and the soldiers at the barrier let me go through. I cycled on at the same slow speed until I could turn into another street, and then I speeded up considerably! Jehovah protects his work.”

But how was this English magazine smuggled to Brothers Geiger and Delannoy in Paris?

The instrument Jehovah used for this was a humble, unpretentious brother, Henri Germouty. He relates:

“The town of Moulins was on the demarcation line between the occupied and unoccupied zone. This demarcation line was guarded by German sentries who would fire on any unauthorized person who tried to pass. But the demarcation line at this point went through the middle of town, where a Polish sister lived who spoke German. I would call at her house, and then she would leave the house before me and divert the attention of the sentry while I passed over the line.

“Then I would catch a train, but before it arrived in Paris all the passengers were searched, the men by men and the women by women. But I knew at what point they began making this inspection, so before we arrived there I would jump from the train at a place where it slowed down. I used to travel at night and after I had jumped from the train I would hide until daybreak and then finish the journey on foot.”

Once in Paris, The Watchtower was translated, and then Sister Gendreau would type stencils so that the manuscript could be mimeographed. Then copies were taken to the brothers in the provinces. Brother Samuel Nongaillard tells how the magazine was smuggled into northern France:

“Whenever possible, a brother from Paris would take a train as far as the town of Péronne, through which the demarcation line between two German military zones passed. Another brother would travel down to this town from the north and the magazines would be passed from one to the other on the platform of the Péronne station.”

Brother Frédéric Hartstang was in charge of the work in Belgium during the war years and he organized a system of getting spiritual food delivered between Belgium and France. The borders were closed, but brothers who worked for the railway and whose work required them to travel between the two countries delivered these precious publications. Thus spiritual food circulated in this way throughout the entire war.

IN TO AND OUT OF ALSACE-LORRAINE

After Pétain signed the armistice with Germany in June 1940, Alsace-Lorraine was annexed to Germany. It was not considered “occupied territory,” but, rather, an integral part of the German state. This meant that a real frontier, or border, was established between Alsace-Lorraine and the rest of France. So the brothers in Alsace-Lorraine were completely cut off from the underground office operating in Paris. How were they provided spiritual food during the war?

When the Nazis occupied Alsace, the brothers there would obtain copies of The Watchtower in the Vosges mountains that separated France from Alsace-Lorraine. How would they get the magazines in the mountains? Well, Brother Zinglé from Mulhouse, who was an excellent mountaineer, went to live at Saint-Maurice in German-occupied France. He would receive the French Watchtower, which, on the first Sunday of each month, he would take up to a mountain pass. He took a very steep and rocky route so as not to meet any border guards. On the Alsace side, brothers dressed up like hikers would go up into the mountains to pick up The Watchtower. The magazine would then be translated from French into German by the local brothers, who did this work in the greatest secrecy. Copies afterward were mimeographed by Brother Marcel Graft for the brothers in Alsace, some copies eventually reaching even the German concentration camps.

Although this mountain pass delivery route was a means of getting The Watchtower into Alsace from France, later in the war publications that the French brothers did not have were delivered by this same route from Germany into France. However, things did not always go as expected. Brother Marcel Graft tells:

“One day we left at dawn with our wives to go up into the mountains. The weather was marvelous. But when we got to the top, not far from the border, we suddenly heard, ‘Hell Hitler!’ It was a German border guard, who asked: ‘Where are you heading?’

“I replied: ‘We are just hiking in the mountains.’

“He looked at us suspiciously and said: ‘Don’t you know you are very near the border?’

“‘Are we really?’ we answered, acting innocently.

“He added quickly: ‘If you intend to go across to the French side, I am warning you that our guns are loaded with real bullets!’

“We walked on in the direction of the chosen spot. Just as we got out of sight of the border guard, we found Brother Zinglé and his wife waiting for us. We greeted each other joyfully, exchanging a few words and also the publications we were carrying. Then, after a prayer, we parted company.”

When she was only 13 years old, Sister Simone Arnold was used to carry precious manuscripts, which she hid inside her girdle. Once, while she was accompanying Brother Adolphe Koehl, they experienced a close call, as Simone relates:

“A customs guard intercepted us and ordered us to follow him to the nearest farm. I was so scared that I literally had an attack of colic. Thanks to this, I was given a hot drink at the farm and allowed to go and lie down in the hay, still with my ‘Watchtower’ hidden. Brother Koehl and my mother were searched, but they had nothing on them, so we were simply accompanied to the nearest railway station.”