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An old story about Edith Piaf got a new lease of life in October 2017, when a web site devoted to positive and meaningful content produced a short video recounting the iconic French singer's purported heroism during World War Two. On 17 October, Fabiosa Australia posted an animated video to its Facebook page, telling the following story: Neither the video nor the accompanying Facebook post provides any source, but this is an old tale that has been modified and embellished over the decades. According to one source, Piaf saved thousands of Jews (not 120) from the Nazi camps, and in another iteration it was the prisoners themselves who made their own fake IDs. According to Carolyn Burke's 2011 biography of Piaf, she used a seven-week tour of prisoner-of-war camps in Germany as a way to help carry out a mission for her secretary Andrée Dédée Bigard, who was part of the anti-Nazi Resistance movement: Shortly after her return home from Germany, according to Burke, Piaf was already planning her next trip there: According to later interviews given by Bigard, Piaf visited 11 stalags on that trip to Germany and— in Burke's words — distributed identity cards, maps and compasses. Sometimes the escaped prisoners caught up with her tour and were passed off as musicians. The mission was ended when officials at one of the camps became suspicious. In French journalist Robert Belleret's biography Piaf, un Mythe Français, Andrée Bigard is quoted as saying that the singer had been part of a Resistance network: After the liberation of France by the Allies, and the end of World War Two, France underwent what was known as the Épuration Sauvage (the Wild Purge) — essentially a period of informal and often brutal revenge against those who had aided the Nazis in their annexation of France. According to the political scientist Michael Curtis, between 9,000 and 10,000 suspected collaborationists were killed. After this, official tribunals were set up and a period known as the Épuration Legale (the Legal Purge) ensued. Tens of thousands of people were jailed, 6,763 were sentenced to death, and 768 of these were executed. Edith Piaf was believed by some to have been a collaborator, due to her tours of prisoner-of-war camps and participation in Nazi propaganda efforts, and she was called to testify before a tribunal with a focus on French artists. According to Carolyn Burke, the tribunal had included her name in a list of musicians whose voice was to be banned from French radio, something that would have been a significant blow to her career. However, she testified that her first trip to Germany was made under coercion, and the second one was undertaken for the true purpose of giving prisoners money and helping them escape. Andrée Bigard backed up Piaf's account, and the singer was cleared. Shortly after her testimony in October 1944, she gave an interview to the Ce Soir newspaper, in which she provided the now famous number of 118 soldiers having been saved by her actions, and remarked: However, Robert Belleret casts doubt on this version of events, pointing out implausibilities and inconsistencies in the account and suggesting that the story might have been concocted so as to justify Piaf's visits to Germany (which were intended and used by the Nazis as propaganda in Vichy France), and to save herself from the wrath of the tribunals: Belleret lists some of the purported details of Piaf's efforts to help Jewish people (sending them money and housing them) during the Nazi occupation, but notes that these names and numbers were provided by Piaf herself and her loyal secretary Andrée Bigard, and that they could not be verified. Carolyn Burke's biography, which casts a less skeptical and more positive light on Edith Piaf, also does not contain corroborating evidence (that is, evidence provided by someone other than Piaf or Bigard). It is possible that such evidence exists, or once existed but has been lost, or that the individuals who could prove that Edith Piaf helped them escape are no longer alive. But without such testimony, establishing the veracity of this famous old story remains elusive.
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