It did strike me, in the recent obituaries for Ernest Csuka, that he actually started building in the midst of WWII. It is indeed amazing that some constructeurs seemed to thrive during the war, when one might have expected they would have been forced to close their doors. Evidently, the French economy was not as devastated by defeat and partial occupation as we tend to assume. Perhaps this was because France's relatively rapid capitulation to the Nazis spared much of France from extensive combat until the Allied invasion near the end of the war. So evidently the educated classes were mostly still employed and had cash and, as Jan says, limited goods available to spend it on. What is still surprising is that the constructeurs were able to obtain tubesets and components, since one would think seamless alloy steel tubing and aluminum alloy would be strategic materials largely reserved for military production.
Maybe the most amazing thing is that Alex Singer, evidently a Hungarian-born Jew, was able to conduct a brisk business in Nazi-occupied Paris, even after having been arrested and escaped. This would seem to suggest that the local French authorities weren't looking very hard for him, and may indeed have ignored information about him or withheld it from the Nazis. In general, the French attitude to Nazi persecution of Jews, if not one of open resistance, seems at least to have been one of noncooperation. I believe that in unoccupied Vichy France, the top official in charge of arresting and deporting Jews was for much of the war a Huguenot, whose own ancestors had suffered bitter religious persecution. He was supposedly anything but zealous in pursuing the program dictated by the Nazis. So I suspect Alex Singer had a lot of help from his friends and probably the benefit of the local authorities rather pointedly looking the other way in regard to his fugitive status. And evidently the occupying Germans themselves had much higher priority fugitives than a Jewish bicycle builder.
There have been a number of interviews published with Ernest Csuka, but I'm not sure I've seen one which dealt primarily with how the constructeurs conducted business and obtained materials during the war, or how Alex Singer directed the business while evading arrest. Hopefully there are some unpublished interviews on this subject or some I just haven't seen. I fear that with the passing of Csuka, there may be few if any persons still alive who witnessed these matters firsthand.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA
> From: Jan Heine <heine94@earthlink.net>
\r?\n> Subject: [CR] Parisian cyclocross footage from 1945
\r?\n> To: loudeeter@aol.com, classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Thursday, December 31, 2009, 1:56 PM
\r?\n> > Although over a year after Paris
\r?\n> was liberated, less than 8 months after the end of
\r?\n> WWII. I'm sure, even in the cold of Paris in December
\r?\n> 1945, anything to remind people of the fun they had pre-war
\r?\n> was a blessing. Happy New Year.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> The cyclists of Paris had fun even during the occupation.
\r?\n> Cycling was all they had, during those terribly difficult
\r?\n> times. So cycling clubs got together for many urban races
\r?\n> and events. Long-distance riding was difficult due to
\r?\n> curfews and military checkpoints, but you could do a tandem
\r?\n> cross race in the Bois de Bologne, or the famous "Tour de
\r?\n> Longchamp," a tandem sprint race for one lap on the road
\r?\n> around the hippodrome that still is the meeting place of
\r?\n> cyclists today (the road, not the hippodrome).
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Check out the race of the tandem taxis (posted here before)
\r?\n> in 1943 (at about 3:35 minutes)
\r?\n>
\r?\n> http://www.youtube.com/
\r?\n>
\r?\n> The winning team of that race was on the cover of the
\r?\n> Spring 09 Bicycle Quarterly, see
\r?\n>
\r?\n> http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com/
\r?\n>
\r?\n> In fact, with little else to buy, custom builders
\r?\n> experienced a boom. Some things, like tires, were hard to
\r?\n> find, but the number of bikes built by people like Herse and
\r?\n> Singer during the war is astonishing. I have seen a photo of
\r?\n> a line-up of Herse bikes in 1942 in the Bois de Bologne that
\r?\n> would make anybody's mouth water. And remember, Herse
\r?\n> started making bikes in 1940, during the war. Singer had so
\r?\n> much work that he had his two nephews, Roland and Ernest
\r?\n> Csuka, work for him, plus one employee, this despite the
\r?\n> fact that Singer was in hiding with no papers. (He had been
\r?\n> a prisoner of war and had escaped.)
\r?\n>
\r?\n> I would be very surprised if the cyclocross wasn't held
\r?\n> during the war as well. So people had bikes, but they might
\r?\n> not have enough food. It was not a good time, but everybody
\r?\n> banded together. Cyclists had an advantage that they could
\r?\n> cover long distances in search of food in the countryside.
\r?\n> They often rode hundreds of miles over a weekend to trade
\r?\n> goods from the city for food with farmers.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Jan Heine
\r?\n> Editor
\r?\n> Bicycle Quarterly
\r?\n> 2116 Western Ave.
\r?\n> Seattle WA 98121
\r?\n> http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com