The Finely Affair

On the night of St. Valentine's Day, 1944, Gestapo agents marched into the village of La Tronche, near Grenoble, France, and arrested two Jewish refugees from Austria, Dr. Fritz Finaly and his wife Annie. The Finalys were never seen again. They left two children behind them, Robert, 3, and Gerald, 2.

Last week the Finaly children, now lively, well-mannered schoolboys, had become objects of debate in the French Assembly, and their pictures were on Page One of most French newspapers. Because of them, for one reason or another, 17 Frenchmen were in jail or out on bail, including six Roman Catholic priests and two nuns. And Frenchmen not involved in the case were arguing about I'affaire. Finaly with an intensity usually reserved for major cabinet crises.

Maman v. the Aunts. The problem was a curious mixture of religion and nationality. The orphaned Finaly boys were taken in by Mile. Antoinette Brun, a goodhearted woman, active in Catholic church circles, who ran the Grenoble foundling home. She grew to love them as the "most abandoned" of all her charges. In 1945, she took the first legal steps toward adopting them. Three years later, she had them baptized as Catholics.

The boys' Jewish parents, however, had relatives, and they wanted Robert and Gerald as badly as Mile. Brun did. First, a sister of Dr. Finaly's wrote from New Zealand, asking that the children be sent to her. Then, in 1949, a mandate from the Finaly kin was presented in a French court. It asked that the boys be sent to another aunt, Mme. Hedwige Ressner, now living in Israel.

For almost four years a court battle dragged on. Pertinent evidence was conflicting. The late Dr. Finaly had told friends he wanted his boys to stay in France. He had them circumcised, but no one knew whether on religious or medical grounds. Nothing was said about their being raised as Jews or Christians. Robert and Gerald, in their turn, said they wanted to stay with "maman"--Mile. Brun. Ultimately, however, the court decided fo Mme. Rossner.

Police v. Basques. Antoinette Brun refused to give the boys up. She was put in jail on Jan. 29 for kidnaping, but Rober and Gerald were not to be found in Grenoble. They had disappeared, shepherded by some of their "maman's" Catholic friends, who thought it scandalous that children, baptized in the church, should be raised as Jews in Israel.

Their trail led first to Bayonne, near the Spanish border. There they had been enrolled in another Catholic school under false names. When the priest in charge--who did not know their real identity--read the newspaper stories about two missing boys, he became suspicious of his new students. But, on Feb. 3, just after he had tipped off the police, the boys disappeared again. The next afternoon, while newspapers raised a hue & cry throughout France, arrests began. Handsome Mere Antonine, 44, the superior of a Grenoble convent, was the first to be jailed, charged with complicity in the escape.

Abbe Laxague, a theology professor at the local seminary, was accused of hiding the boys in Bayonne for the week. Then other French priests, all of them from the Basque country around Bayonne, arranged for the boys to be smuggled into Spain. On the morning of Feb. 13, in a heavy snowstorm, Robert and Gerald trudged over the hills into Spain, led by two veteran Basque border dodgers. A few days later, back in France, the Basque guides and four Basque priests were arrested.

Socialists v. Catholics. French anticlericals were furious. Last week Socialist Deputies introduced a motion in the Assembly calling for a full-dress hearing. Editorialized the Socialist Le Populaire: "The church assumes the right to appropriate infants, as soon as she sprinkles their heads with a few drops of dirty water."

French Catholics, for their part, grew indignant at the number of those arrested. A church protest meeting in Marseille denounced the arrests as "anti-Catholic maneuvers." But church leaders, who have had their troubles with anticlerical politics in the past, were anxious to give no offense this time. Bishop Alexandre Caillot of Grenoble demanded in a radio broadcast that anyone with information about the Finaly boys get in touch with the police. The Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Feltin, asked that clemency be shown those arrested, but added that the law is the law and must be obeyed.

In government circles also, cooler counsel won out, and the Socialist motion was quietly deferred. This week Minister of Justice Leon Martinaud-Deplat is negotiating with Spanish authorities for the return of the boys. Robert and Gerald, after a tough border crossing, are apparently enjoying their holiday in Spain.

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