La Fontaine – Former Home of Louisa Gould

Fyodor, who became known as ‘Bill’, had escaped from the Organisation Todt camp Lager Brinkforth, which was located nearby on the Five Mile Road. Louisa and Ivy were eventually betrayed by neighbours and traces of Bill’s presence, plus a forbidden camera and radio, were discovered. 

Louisa, Ivy and their brother Harold Le Druillenec and friends Dora Hacquoil and Berthe Pitolet were arrested. Louisa, Harold and Berthe were deported, whilst the others were imprisoned locally. Berthe later escaped from prison in France, but Louisa died in the gas chamber at Ravensbrück in February 1945. Harold became the only known British man to survive the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, and later testified at the Nuremberg trials.

 Michael Ginns wrote in ‘Jersey Occupied: The Armed Forces in Jersey 1940-1945’ (2009): 

‘Mrs. Gould made the mistake of becoming over-confident. Bill learned English, and Mrs. Gould used to take him out and about with her; that was not a wise move, particularly in a rural district where a stranger would soon be noticed, and people gossip. 

Eventually, she was given away by that most despicable of all creatures, an anonymous informer. Thanks to an anti-Nazi sergeant in the Feldgendarmerie who tipped off Norman Le Brocq’s small resistance group, Bill was smuggled away by Bob Le Sueur who…arranged for him to be taken in by conscientious objectors, Michael Frowd and Renée Franoux, living in Gloucester Street, St. Helier. Here he remained for 11 months, until the end of the War… 

Mrs Gould and her family were not so fortunate. In her haste to eliminate all traces of Bill at her home, she overlooked an English/Russian dictionary. On the basis of this book alone, the Geheimefeldpolizei (Secret Military Police) were able to convict her of harbouring an escaped Russian. Her relatives were also swept into the net…Mrs. Gould and her brother should have normally served their sentences in a French prison (which would have been bad enough), but they were unfortunate enough to have been in the military wing of the Newgate Street Prison at the precise time that SS Baubrigade I was in transit from Alderney to St. Malo…the SS cleared out the inmates from the military section whether they were due to go to France or not.’ 

This story has since been immortalised in the 2017 film ‘Another Mother’s Son’.