Monday, Sep. 10, 1951

The Face Was Familiar

Businessman Richard Deconnink, on a visit in Paris, was having lunch at his favorite bistro in the Rue de Mazagran on the Right Bank when he noticed something familiar about the man sitting at the next table. From the hors d'oeuvre through cheese and coffee Deconnink ransacked his memory. Suddenly he thought he remembered that in Lille, in 1943, he had seen the same man in a grey-green German uniform. Deconnink went to the nearest policeman, who checked the stranger's identity papers. They showed him to be Frederic Georges Branquez, traveling salesman from Lille. Said Branquez: "Evidently I am the victim of a resemblance."

The cop was about to return the identity papers with an apology when he noticed that Branquez's birth date, Aug. 2, 1909, made him out to be much older than he looked. At the station house, Branquez's fingerprints were taken. Within two hours the French criminal police identified them as belonging to one Germain Lantier, a Frenchman who had deserted to the Germans in World War II, had risen to be a lieutenant in the Gestapo. Arrested at war's end, Lantier had escaped from a military hospital, been condemned to death in absentia as a traitor.

As church bells rang out to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the liberation of Paris, ex-Gestapo Agent Lantier, under military guard, was sent back to Lille to face justice.

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