Avenue Foch is a wide residential boulevard in the 16th arrondissement that connects the Arc de Triomphe with the Porte Dauphine on the border with the Bois de Boulogne. During the German occupation of Northern France, the buildings at numbers 82 and 86, either side of 84, were also commandeered by the German occupation forces.
Number 84 was used for the interrogation of allied SOE agents captured in France. Prisoners were regularly brought to the building from Fresnes prison on the outskirts of the city.
The second floor was used by the SD's wireless unit known as Section IV. It was under the control of Dr. Josef Goetz.[1] The SD used captured allied wireless sets to transmit bogus coded messages in attempts to flush out resistance groups. The operation was colloquially known as Funkspiel (the 'radio game').[2]
The third floor was used by SS-StandartenführerHelmut Knochen, who was appointed as senior commander of security in Paris in 1940. In 1942, Knochen's jurisdiction stretched from northern France to Belgium. He was involved in the deportation of French Jews to concentration camps.
The fourth floor was used by SS-SturmbannführerJosef Kieffer, the commander of number 84, as an office and private quarters. His assistants, SS officer's Ernst Misselwitz and Heinrich Meiners, also had an office on this floor.
On the fifth (top) floor contained a guardroom, an interpreter's office, and cells for prisoners under interrogation.
A senior interrogator at number 84 was Ernest Vogt, a Swiss-German civilian who since 1940 had been attached to the SD as a civil auxiliary in the capacity of translator and interpreter.
^Martin Mace; John Grehan (2012). Unearthing Churchill's Secret Army: The Official List of SOE Casualties and Their Stories. Casemate Publishers. p. 21. ISBN978-1-78337-664-3.
