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HIJACKED a French development |
N E X T J O U R N E Y . O R G
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HIJACKED a French development |
When you talk to a French person who lived through the German occupation, it doesn't take very long for him or for her to utter the bewildering statement that the Germans were "très corrects."What does it mean when they say that the Germans were "very correct?"
Does it mean "at least they were polite - while terrorizing us and pilfering our resources?"
Or does it mean "on top of terrorizing us and pilfering our resources, they had the gall to be polite?"
As it happens, the holocaust in France was also très correct. The savagery went through excruciatingly prescribed channels. The foreign-born Jews (of whom there was a great influx from the East) were targeted first, and the French assimilated Jews were rounded up later. There was no mass shooting near ravines. Remember, it was très correct. Some of the French police cooperated with great zeal (while some others closed their eyes and let families escape). The familiar green Paris buses that had carried children to school or to music lessons now carried them away. The temporary concentration camps were located in scenic countryside (Rivesaltes and Gurs), or in modern apartment buildings, so modern that the plumbing was not yet installed (Drancy).
 Women in the Gurs concentration camp |
Men in the Beaune La Rolande concentration camp |
 Bus transporting Parisians to Drancy |
Drancy, the last stop before Auschwitz-Birkenau |
In the end, of the 350,000 Jews who were on French soil when the Germans invaded, 77,000 were murdered. Out of the victims, 8,000 were children younger than 13. The Vichy government (in charge of the "free" zone in the South) was shamefully willing to help the Germans in their mortal pursuit. But by and large the populace behaved decently. Many French people didn't like Jews too much, except the ones they knew, and those they usually helped. 78% of Jews in France survived, the highest survival rate in all the occupied countries.After the war, very strict laws were created to prevent hateful movements from gaining excessive momentum. For instance, it is illegal in France to write holocaust-denying material, or to sell Nazi memorabilia (such activities are protected in America by the First Amendment).
In the 1970s, young people started being curious about life under the German occupation. Books and movies such as "The Sorrow and the Pity" started to dig deeper in France's darkest years. As France analyzed itself painfully, it had the most positive feeling ever about Jews. Israel was widely admired at the time, and France supplied the Jewish state with arms and unquestioned support.
Today, things are very different.We Americans are repeatedly told of a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in France. Such occurrences are abominable, to be sure. But it is important that we regard them within their context. In France, the disdain for and the violence against Jews is significantly milder than the disdain for and the violence against black Africans and Muslims from North Africa. Most Americans would shudder if they could hear how some educated French people talk about "Arabs" (or Germans about "Turks" and so on). The truth is that some Europeans are not as ready as we are to accept a diverse population, without a clear racial "majority." There would have to be quite an increase in the so-called European anti-Semitism before I felt less safe and less respected as a Jew anywhere in Europe than a Bengali in Manchester, a Roma in Zürich, or a Malian in Marseille.
All the same, Jews don't have the image today in France that they had thirty years ago. It is patently absurd, yet true that for Jews in France, the holocaust "credit" is all spent out, and replaced by negative Israel "debt." Of course the "credit" was never theirs to spend (and they did not abuse it either), and the "debt" is a case of identity theft. There are many more Muslims than Jews in France, and naturally the Muslims are sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians in the occupied territories. The French public opinion of Israel is tarnished and it extends to all Jews by association.
(The recent French distaste for America is parallel to this phenomenon, and that turnaround happened over mere months: on September 12, 2001, France would have done anything for us. Now, we are the loutish cowboys who bomb babies.)
Such reversals in public opinion are more likely to happen in France than here because the French are fond of generalizations. Not because they are prejudiced, but because they like clear cut explanations about complex events. Those clear cut explanations do lead to cookie-cutter ready-made ideas. Here, we spend time trying to make sense or a murder or a celebrity scandal. In France, they do the same thing about world events. You might think it is wholly positive to have the common man take an interest in the grander affairs of the world instead of in its salacious trivia. But it leads to caricature: the man in the street in Toulouse or Lyon, has an opinion (pretty or not) about everything and everyone, which he has finely whittled by talking with people who agree with him. In Des Moines or Denver, the man in the street will tell you why (or why not) that guy on TV killed his wife, but he is unlikely to have thought much about Taiwan independence or the West Bank Wall. The average French man's "knowledge" of world events is, at this time, pronoucedly slanted against America and Israel. It remains unclear whether this translates into authentic acts of anti-Semitism.
Another aspect of the situation in France is more disturbing. The current Israeli government, through some of its powerful French supporters, resorts to labeling opposition to current Israeli policies as anti-Semitic. This puts outspoken "doves" in France in an untenable position: when they protest the actions of Israel, they are harassed by the "hawks" as anti-Semites or holocaust revisionists. Prominent Jewish writers and publishers (some of them holocaust survivors) who are critical of Israel's occupation policies, have been sued for "incitement to racial hatred" and "holocaust revisionism."
The speech restrictions that were supposed to prevent hatred have been turned upside-down.
We are lucky, here in the U.S., that the memory of the holocaust is not dependent on what happens in the Middle East. Children visit the Holocaust Memorial Museum every day who don't know Israel from Egypt, and that is as it should be. The lessons of the holocaust belong to everyone.
Find out more about the holocaust in France:
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