Published: 26 April 2018
Last updated: 5 March 2024
She was a young woman, very passionate in temperament and impulsive. I think that must have played a part in her decision to do these things.“There was this feeling in the air,” says Moldovan. “She got swept up in these ideas of socialism and communism and wanting to build a better future for the world, and the sort of propaganda which the Soviet regime peddled.” France, so powerful before WWII, was a major focus for the Soviets. As a spy, Chana met with factory workers who smuggled her documents relating to national security. She carried these documents around France, to Germany, Morocco and Tunisia, for a courier to eventually take to Moscow. [gallery columns="1" size="large" ids="19181"] Though Chana’s zeal and commitment to the cause were genuine, Moldovan believes the Soviet authorities treated this French spy ring as more of an amateur exercise and toyed with it. “Generally, in Moscow, they thought, if they get something, great, but if not, we’ll let them run along. They didn’t take them that seriously and didn’t get such sensitive information,” says Moldovan. Nevertheless, when the ring was uncovered in 1933, the punishment was severe. Chana and her cohort were sent to jail as traitors. The trial received international coverage because the spy ring was large and consisted of many foreigners. Chana was pregnant with her first child when she entered solitary confinement and spent the next eight months of her pregnancy behind bars, giving birth to daughter Colette in prison. During the remainder of Chana’s two-and-a-half-year sentence, Colette was brought periodically during the day to be breastfed and the rest of the time she was cared for by Catholic nuns. Part of Chana’s punishment was expulsion from France at the end of her incarceration, a terrible fate for the family because Chana and Moisey adored the country and wanted to remain there forever, both working as doctors. In fact, while Chana was spying, Moisey was sitting his exams to become a naturalised French citizen. How then did Chana, the Francophile, reconcile her espionage work against her new home? “She was a young woman, very passionate in temperament and impulsive. I think that must have played a part in her decision to do these things,” says Moldovan, who believes that being labelled a traitor caused Chana great shame later in her life. Realising they had no future in Paris, Moisey moved to Moscow in 1938 to start a new life, and Chana joined him on her release, along with Colette. And that’s where they remained over the following five decades. When Colette, their only child, married, her husband moved in with them. In turn, Colette had one child: Ludmila. Chana and Moisey died in the 1980s, both (of natural causes) while they were visiting Ludmila after she migrated to Australia. [gallery columns="1" size="large" ids="19182"] Ludmila grew up in “pretty hard circumstances living in a two-room apartment . . . not two bedrooms, a two-room apartment with her grandparents, her parents and her, so that’s five people, one room for sleeping and one room for eating, cooking and leisure,” says Moldovan. Moisey was never able to fulfil his professional potential and served time in prison after being arrested on trumped-up charges under Stalin’s increasingly paranoid regime. (As Moldovan says, the story gets even wilder, but you’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear all the details.) She says Chana felt the weight of responsibility for her family ending up in such reduced circumstances but in spite of Chana’s sense of guilt over the impact of her actions, her daughter Colette and granddaughter Ludmila feel no bitterness or resentment. Both can be heard in the program, which includes an archival recording of Madeleine, Chana’s friend and fellow spy in France. “There’s something about an oral testimony that’s still quite powerful. I think as a form of documentation, it lets people be themselves and tell their story in the most evocative way. It’s also very, very intimate when you here someone’s voice telling a story like this,” says Moldovan. “I’ve always felt a strong responsibility to document and remember. I’m a third-generation (Holocaust) survivor but I always understood when I was very small the importance of documenting and remembering and keeping track. I know how significant it is and what it can give us. It does feel like an imperative to me as a Jewish person to do that.” Main photo: Chana in Paris before her arrest (undated) All photos Courtesy Ludmila Stern LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
