Trudy Gold
The Shoah in France, Part 1
Trudy Gold - The Shoah in France, Part 1
- I’m now coming to a part of the course on France, which is perhaps the most difficult to give, and certainly a very, very difficult one to receive. But if we’re going to look at France in its entirety, there’s absolutely no way that we can omit this particular period of history. And there’s a few things I want to say about this, because there’s a huge controversy about what happened in France in the war years, and I’m going to begin with that controversy. But before that, I want to start with a little on Jewish life in France. Can we see the first slide? Yeah, here you have a wonderful shot of the Marais. I’m sure those of you who’ve visited Paris have been to the Marais, the wonderful Jewish Quarter. And don’t forget that in 1939, there were nearly two, there were 180,000 Jews living in Paris. About a third were from the old community. The rest were Eastern European, and some, Jews who had fled, first of all, from Eastern Europe, and then of course in the ‘30s, they had fled from Germany, then Austria, and then latterly, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland. So you have a large Eastern European community. You also have refugees who have just fled to escape Nazism. Now, the landsmannschaften had been united in 1923. The old French Jewry lived under the consistory system. They saw themselves very much as Frenchmen. And now you have these Eastern Europeans who created their own federation. They called it the society, the Jewish Society of France. They weren’t taken very seriously by old Jewry, and it has to be said there was a certain distancing.
But unfortunately, that does seem to be the case with any Jewish community. They come, they think they’re part of society, and when the new ones come who are foreign, then there are problems. Now, many of the new immigrants, remember they’re Yiddish speaking, something like 80% of them went into the rag trade. They were very ethnocentric. The Bund, the socialist labour organisation was very powerful in France. There was Yiddish theatre, there was Yiddish cinema. But also don’t forget that all those immigrants who’d fled from Belgium and from Holland and from, latterly and before that, from Eastern Europe, many of them were also enriching French culture. And again, we come to that incredible divide in France. What is France? Is it the country of the enlightenment? How many of us have sat in the cafes on the Left Bank or in Montmartre talking ideas and feasting on French culture? And yet today, I’m going to look at the shadow. Now, the problem was that anti-Semitism didn’t distinguish between the groups. Obviously, as we’ve already discovered, it very seriously resurfaces in the '30s, particularly under the government of Leon Blum, the Jewish prime minister, and that again, should give you the dilemma of the Jews of France, Jewish prime ministers, Jewish ministers, but at the same time, vicious anti-Semitism. Now, can we see the quote of Baron de Rothschild who was head of the Consistory?
Yeah, I quoted this to you last time, but I wanted to reiterate, “The immigrants who arrive amongst us with their memories and habits of Poland, Romania, and elsewhere, retard the assimilation process and help create xenophobic feelings amongst Frenchmen.” You know, this is the notion of the old establishment. Those who are coming over, they’re the ones who are creating anti-Semitism. And in the winter of 1938, '39, the Daladier government did begin to deport Eastern European Jews and invoked a new law, this is before the war, to invoke, to strip citizenship from people, quote, unquote, “unworthy of French citizens.” Now, can we go on to the next slide, please, Emily? Thank you, now, what I propose to do, I’m going to be running three sessions dealing with the Shoah, and in the middle of it all, because on the 29th, I really felt we have to have lightness in our lives, there’s the dark, but there’s also the light, I’m going to do a presentation on “Casablanca,” the quintessential immigrant movie. But what I’m doing today is I’m going to look at the various dilemmas, and I’m going to concentrate on the French collaborators. Next week, on Thursday, I’m going to concentrate on the Nazis and also begin to look at some of the heroes because there were magnificent heroes.
And the third session, I’m going to look at those who resisted, both Jewish and non-Jewish, because it’s important to remember that in the darkness, and when Wendy and I were discussing how we’re going to programme, we’ve talked a lot about leadership. We’ve talked a lot about the whole nature of what creates the human condition. And basically we’re going to today look at a lot of darkness. But please don’t forget, against it, there were some extraordinary individuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish. There actually was a Jewish resistance organisation all of its own, and something like 20% of those who fought in the general resistance were of Jewish birth. Even though Jews made up such a tiny pinprick of the French population, remember, originally by 1900, there are about 100,000 Jews in France out of 38 million, so they’re a tiny population, they make up a huge percentage out of all proportion of the French resistance. And they also have their own resistance group, which by the way includes characters like Marcel Marceau. And of apart from that, there were many, many non-Jews who helped, some religious. I mean, the Archbishop of Toulouse is going to be incredibly important in saving Jews and asking other colleagues to save Jews. He was the man who later on was very helpful at the time of the Vatican council, the one that forgave the Jews for the crime of deicide for all time, too little, too late, although they did say that the Jews of Jesus’s time were still guilty. But that’s me being cynical. The point was he was a great man, and he was really responsible for opening up so many convents and monasteries to Jews and encouraging other Frenchmen, and also the Huguenots. There was an incredible group of Huguenots.
There was a whole village in France, a Huguenot village, the Huguenots, who of course were so used to persecution themselves. The whole village came together, Le Chambon. It’s a wonderful, wonderful story, and they saved their Jews. Of course, there’s been films made about it, Pierre Sauvage. There was another film, there was another village on the Swiss border. There were incredible people that, but there were also Jewish resistors. Many of the French non-Jews, of course, were honoured by Yad Vashem. But what I’m also going to concentrate on is Jewish resistance, and the other point to make is a lot of those in the resistance were women, very important that, particularly when it came to saving children and looking after children. Many of them were women, including a Russian Orthodox woman, the daughter of Scriabin, the very famous musician, Scriabin’s daughter. She came after the Russian Revolution to Paris, fell in love with the Jew. She was part of the Russian emigre society, so you can imagine her views on Jews at the time, or certainly her colleagues. She fell in love with a Jew. She married him. She converted to orthodoxy and became a member of the Revisionist Zionist resistance. So there are many, many stories. So, but of course today I’m going to be concentrating, having tried to outline the dilemmas, and I’m not going to come down on one side or the other.
I’m going to leave it to you, frankly. I’m going to try and present the case in as coherent and clear way as possible because France is complex. But at the same time, it is really down to you as to where you think the horror lies. Look, in the end, when you look at the whole scenario of the Shoah, the tragedy is that basically the world stood by and let it happen apart from a few thousand extraordinary people who saved. And today with all the talk about anti-Semitism, and in fact in Britain, Lord Mann, who is the czar for anti-Semitism, he’s the chap representing the British government on the whole issue of anti-Semitism, he’s not Jewish. He says that now the history of anti-Semitism has to be taught in schools. My view is not exactly that. I think it’s too deep to eradicate. I think what, all we can do is ameliorate it. And I believe it’s so deep in Western civilization that we’re sort of chipping around the edges. I would think it’s much more useful to teach Jewish history to our own children, our own grandchildren. But that’s my view, and I’m sure we’re going to have a big debate on that. So going back to this, and the other thing I wanted to mention, one of the biggest problems in Holocaust education is nobody touches 1945 to 1948. There is a disconnect between the Shoah and the establishment of the State of Israel, and that, I believe, is one of the biggest problems that’s in at the moment in the course of modern anti-Semitism, but more about that at another time. So we’ve already talked about France as a divided society. And despite the Dreyfus Affair, you could make the case that the Dreyfusards won. The church was disestablished.
And of course Jews had such a deep attachment to French culture. There was a large migration, of course, in the 1870s from Alsace. They would rather be French than be German. And of course, you now have a France with a lot of foreign Jews, but many of those, particularly those who came from Germany and Austria, they themselves were acculturated, and they flooded into the arts, the culture. It must have been an extraordinary, it must have been an extraordinary time to be in France in the '30s. And of course, characters like Hemingway and so many Americans came to Paris because they saw it as the centre of culture. You know, when society is under terrible threat, you could make the same case about Weimar Germany before Hitler, and certainly interwar Paris was a very, very exciting place. But you have these dark forces underneath. And of course, in '38, as I’ve already said, France reassesses its immigrant policy. Increasingly, there are calls for a hold on Jewish immigration. And there are also even those who say we must revoke Jewish emancipation, why? Because France was becoming economically, politically unstable and culturally unstable. And frankly, these are the lessons of history. You know, obviously history does not repeat itself exactly, but I’ve said this to you many times. I know that when there’s economic, social, and political unrest, Jews are the number one target. I know there are many, many other victims at the moment, but the group that holds it all together, tragically, are the Jews.
So in the summer of 1940, there are about 350,000 Jews in France. More than half were not French citizens. This is very important. Now, what is the most extraordinary thing about France in the Second World War is that after the defeat of France, the Vichy government, this is after the armistice, the Vichy government is established and has a huge amount of autonomy, both in the South of France, and I’m going to show you a map in a minute, and also in the north, which is under German control. France had a French government based in Vichy, a French head of state, Marshal Petain, more about him soon, and an administration at least nominally responsible for the whole of the country with a powerful police force. We’re going to see that it’s going to be the French police who are going to round up the Jews. And even after the Nazis moved into Vichy France, mainly because of what was happening in North Africa, what happens is, this is in November 1942, much further on, and I’m going to fill all the details in as we go, the French government still remains formally in charge of the nation and retained an awful lot of autonomy. And this is so different from other countries that the Germans had conquered. The Germans needed and they received much help from the French to carry out their plans. After the war, defenders of Vichy claimed that the French government limited the deluge and prevented the deportations becoming too high. Now, German documents do, because as I’ve mentioned in my description of today’s presentation, 77,000 Jews were murdered, 77,000. I probably know a thousand people. It’s beyond imagination.
And yet that figure is much lower as a percentage than any of the other occupied countries. So the French later on were going to say that it was the French government that actually stopped more deportations. And the German documents do lend a certain plausibility to this because if you look at the German documents, and remember, the Nazis did keep incredible records. There’s a brilliant book of documents created by Yad Vashem. It’s called “Documents of the Holocaust.” Those of you who want to go further, because everything was documented. The man in charge of the Jewish issue for the Germans in France reported back to Eichmann. All the people working for him reported back. So everything is written down. Now, what is true is that they didn’t, the Nazis failed to meet the quota in Vichy after they decide in the euphemistic Final Solution after the invasion of Russia in 1941. But this is important, the deportations, which happened between 1942 and 1944, the last deportation was actually in August 1944. Think about June the 6th. Think about the liberation of Paris. Towards the end of the war, you can even make the case that for the rabid, killing Jews becomes more important than winning the war. That is an unbelievably complicated statement I’ve just made to you, but I can actually back that statement. There are two wars going on, remember. There’s a world war, and there’s a war against the Jews, and if they can’t win one, they’re going to win the other.
Now, the dispatching of the Jews to the East was the culmination of two years of aggressive legislation and persecution, including laws, and these laws were enacted by Vichy, by Petain’s government. They actually defined who was a Jew. They isolated Jews from French society. They took away the livelihood of many Jews. They did have a special protected group of Jews. There were certain Jews who were allowed to remain at the universities to teach, but a small number of French Jews who they saw as ours were protected. But so many were, in fact, taken. Their livelihood was taken away. Many of them were interned. They had to register with the French police. And in the German controlled, in the German-controlled zone, the apparatus of horror was actually set in place by the French. It was a German plan, the Shoah was a German plan, but it was the French police in the south, in Vichy, and in the north that after 1942, after the decision to murder all the Jews of Europe, the decision is made, let me reiterate, with Operation Barbarossa, the pulling together, of course, the first murders, those tragic stories in the East, but then the Wannsee plan, and we’re going to kill, quote, unquote, “by more humane means.” That’s Hitler’s phrase, by the way. The setting up of the gas chambers and the deportations from France in the main are to Auschwitz with some, a small number, going to Sobibor.
But the bulk of French Jewry who were murdered, the 77,000, they actually go to Auschwitz. Now, so the first law, the first anti-Jewish law that Vichy established was October 1940, and not only that, the Vichy government established a central agency for coordinating for the anti-Jewish legislation. And not only that, in November 1941, they established the General Union of the Jews of France. They wanted, very much like the Judenrat in Eastern Europe. They wanted to be able to control all the Jews. So under the French and under the Nazis, the Jews themselves are to run their own affairs. It’s deliberately, so what we see in Vichy is deliberately incorporated anti-Semitism. Now, why did the French in Vichy go along with it? Well, some of them were rabid anti-Semites, and many of them were left over from the anti-Dreyfusard and Action Francaise of the '30s. But the French governments, believe it or not, and we have all sorts of documents on this, they considered it important that its laws should apply throughout the whole country, in the occupied zone as well as Vichy. So consequently, believe it or not, that they thought the Germans would be grateful for them pursuing an anti-Jewish policy and help that this would, and believed this would help them give Vichy more control. The other point, of course, is that Vichy controlled the French colonies. Vichy was in Syria. Why do you think the British went against Syria? Because it was controlled by the Vichy France.
And that is, of course, where Moshe Dayan lost his eye fighting for the British. And also the French were very anxious that confiscated Jewish property didn’t fall into German hands but fell into French hands. And I don’t have to tell you just how much art, just so many treasures, not just the ordinary families, and of course every family with their treasure, but also the great works of art that were looted by the French as well as the Germans. July 1941, the Aryanization of property involved some 42,000 Jewish businesses, buildings. They all have to be transferred over to Frenchmen. This is important. Now, of course, the majority of Jews are going to suffer terribly between 1940 and 1942, as I said, but don’t forget, there’s a small group that are protected. What it meant was, the suffering was that thousands of them, particularly the Eastern Europeans and the new immigrants, they become penniless. They’re particularly vulnerable both in Vichy France and in the north, and thousands of them are transferred into labour camps. In fact, you can make the case that the first victims of the Shoah in France died in these camps because some of them died of starvation, some of them died of just completely insanitary and terrible conditions. So basically you can make that case, and but of course it’s Wannsee. That’s when the Germans, remember, January the 17th, 1942, that’s when the Germans begin to prepare for the deportation of French Jews from France and from the other Western countries. And they do their best to make sure they have total cooperation from the Vichy government and all administrative cooperation.
They only had three battalions in the north. They needed the French to do the work for them. Now, spring and summer of 1942 is a turning point. It’s a turning point because the Germans also demand more and more French labour. So Xavier Vallat, who I’m going to talk about later, he was replaced by a far stronger collaborator, a man called Pellepoix, who extended full support to the French police, and another character called Rene Bousquet. I’m going to talk more about all of them later. He worked out an arrangement with the SS where he had as much autonomy as he needed, and he agreed to work with anyone who was against the Reich. So there was a disagreement. Too many French were being deported for labour. They wanted more autonomy. In the German zone, the Germans cleared the way for deportations by imposing the wearing of the yellow star on June the 7th, 1942, and this is when you begin to see the roundup in large numbers. June the 11th, there’s a meeting in Berlin, and the deportations are arranged from France, Belgium, and Holland. And after deliberations, Pierre Laval, on behalf of Petain, agreed to help with the roundups and all over France. And as I keep on saying to you, it’s so important, and most of this is actually done by the French police. And the original roundups in 1942, believe it or not, were going to be around Bastille Day.
And the Vichy French, they explained to the Germans that that would cause riots because there was already the beginnings of a resistance, mainly because of the deportations of Frenchmen for labour battalions in France. And so they delay the deportations to the 16th and 17th of July, and that was when nearly 13,000 Jews in Paris, some 7,000 families with small children, were crowded into the Velodrome d'Hiver. It’s a sports arena. There was no food, no water, no sanitation. They were, Jewish doctors were allowed in, but it was the most appalling situation. And elsewhere, they begin the transportations to the camp at Drancy just outside Paris. 42,500 Jews are sent east in 1942. That’s about the third from Vichy. Now, there was a cover-up, and this is another issue that’s become very, very complicated. The cover-up, they are sent to the East to work. Nobody really knew what Auschwitz was at this time. We have to be very careful. Look by, there was a minute’s silence in the House of Commons last week. December the 7th, 1942, the nine governments in exile in London, which included the French government, there was so much coming through, mainly from the Russians and the Poles that there was a minute’s silence for the murdered Jews of Europe. That was December the 17th, 1942. They knew about the shootings. They didn’t yet know about Auschwitz. And members of the Vichy government always maintained that they didn’t know what deportation at this stage to the East actually meant. But certainly it does begin to split people.
Also, brave Frenchmen are now beginning to speak out. It’s an early January 1943 when the massive deportations begin. That’s when the Germans are worried. In November 1942, the Germans moved into Vichy, mainly because of what’s going on in North Africa, and they report that they can’t really trust the French police anymore. They’re prepared to deport foreign Jews. This is records from the Germans. But then, but will they deport French Jews? And even Pierre Laval drags his feet and refused in August '43 to strip French Jews of their citizenship. So there’s a bit of a pushback, but it has to be said right until the end, Vichy did enforce all the anti-Jewish laws. Now, so sum summing up, what was the culpability of Vichy? The waters were muddied. Why? Because at the end of the war, please think about de Gaulle in London, when the armistice was signed, 80 members of the French assembly actually fled to London, and of course de Gaulle comes to London, he sets up, he sees himself as head of the government in exile. It was very important to the Allies that France should be seen as part of the liberation, so much so that, yes, there were a number of French who did fight with the British, but believe me, when de Gaulle in 1940 called on the French, and there were 100,000 of them in England, why, because of Dunkirk, only 7,000 actually volunteered.
So it’s very, very interesting. De Gaulle, very, very complex character. At the end of the war, remember, he is the man who walks down the Champs-Elysees. He is the symbol of the resistance. And what is created is really the great myth of the French resistance, and that bubble was not pricked for a long, long period. There were a few steps on the way, “Le Chagrin et la Pitie” films and also the work of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld But for a long time, France held itself out to be this incredible beacon of light, and it had a lot to do with post-war politics, the fact that the Allies wanted France completely on side. The irony was that if you actually examine the real French resistance, it really begins, as I said, in '42, but who do you think the first were to resist? After the invasion of Russia, Stalin enables the Communist Party in France, which was such a very powerful, remember, polarisation of politics, it was very powerful. So consequently, it is actually the Communists who resist. They are the first to really resist against the Nazis. So how do I sum it up? As I said, less than other countries, about a fifth of those French Jews were deported, including of course, the foreign Jews. The majority of those deported were foreign Jews, but the majority were rounded up by Frenchmen. There was, as I said, and this is terribly important, there wasn’t a huge German presence in France, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that Vichy ever attempted to stop the deportations. So can we go on, please, and let’s have a look at, if you don’t mind, can we have a look at a map?
Here you see France on July the 12th. 12 days after Petain assumes the role of head of state, the government instituted a commission to strip Germans, to strip French citizenship from all undesirables. So that’s important. But let’s now have a look at how it was all sorted. The government moved to Vichy in the south. That is the Free Zone. Lyon, where you have the appalling Klaus Barbie who murders one of the great heroes of the French resistance, Jean Moulin. You see Lyon? Ironically, many Jews, when the Germans took the Free Zone, November the 11th, 1942, many Jews fled into the Italian zone where they were safe, until, of course, Italy collapsed, and the Germans moved in. So there you see the area of German occupation. Obviously they need the whole of the coast. And there you see Vichy. Okay. Let’s go on with this. So the National Assembly voted under Petain to suspend all the laws of the Third Republic. Petain is granted full power as head of state, and a new regime established in the spa town of Vichy. Now, the reason they chose Vichy, it was a spa town with lots of hotels. And it was actually the Spanish ambassador who’d been a, he’d been previously been a pupil of Petain. He said, “Look, this is going to make a very, very good government for you.” Now, Vichy government policy, it’s to return to the values of a pre-revolutionary France, disenchantment with the republic and the xenophobia of the '30s, the new slogan, work, family, and country, no longer liberty, equality, fraternity, travail, famille, patrie, work, family, country.
And it’s a completely reactionary regime now in Vichy under Henri Philippe Petain. And let’s have a look at the man who was once one of the great heroes of the French. Can we see his face? The way I’m going to conduct these sessions, today, and I hope we can get through it, I’m going to look at the various French major collaborators, and then on Thursday, I’m going to look at the Nazi collaborators, the ones who were really responsible, including an extraordinary individual called Alois Brunner, one of the worst monsters in the annals of those monsters, who finished up working for Assad in intelligence in Syria and didn’t die until 2010. So a lot of them get away with it, both the Germans and the French. Now, why the French get away with it is also because we are the free French. We are the country that you need to be with us in the creation of a new Europe. So it’s post-war politics that you have to take into account as well when you try and evaluate actually what happened in France. So who was Marshal Petain, and what a long life he did. As I said, he was one of the great heroes of France. He’d been born into a peasant family. He was actually, one of his great uncles was a Catholic priest. So he came from a Catholic peasant family, and his mother died when he was 18. He was brought up by relatives. He always wanted a military career. He is enrolled in a military academy. He started, before that, he was in the Dominican college, so he is tutored by the Dominicans, the hounds of God, Domini canes. He becomes a young lieutenant. He is in the First World War.
In fact, he had a young man under him who said, “He taught me everything I needed to know about the art of war.” And tragically, that figure was de Gaulle, who later on was going to become so disillusioned with him. Petain was a brilliant military strategist. He’s a brigade commander in 1914. He’s promoted to brigadier general, but what is the most important is he is the hero of the Verdun, and from the end of 1917, he is the army chief of staff. He becomes a marshal of France. So he is one of France’s great war heroes. He’s a serious, he’s a very serious, much-loved character. So he was also present at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which of course was in the railway carriage. Remember, where, of course, Germany was so terribly humiliated. That is why Hitler had the armistice signed in exactly the same railway carriage in 1940. Hitler made a flying visit to France. He went to look at the sites. He looked at the Eiffel Tower, he went to Napoleon’s tomb, and he went to the French Opera House. I’m digressing, but it’s a fascinating story because he goes to the French Opera House, Hitler, and the door is opened by the concierge. Can you imagine? He sees Hitler and Albert Speer. Hitler had such a knowledge of the building, there was a door that had been bricked up, and he wanted to know why. The poor chap died a couple of days later. But for Hitler, the signing in that carriage was so very, very important. But going back to Petain, he’s vice president of the Supreme War Council, a post he held until 1931. He was in charge of the army manuals. He was furious. He was mainly based in France. He did have one foreign escapade in Morocco. Remember the size of the French Empire? He supervised the Maginot Line, but he had terrible reservations against it. He was inspector general of the air defences. And the same year he becomes one of the 40 immortals in the Academie Francaise.
So he is one of the great heroes of France and a member of the academy. But he was so worried. He said, “The French army is no longer a serious fighting force.” He wasn’t at this stage a terrible anti-Semite, which he later turned out to be because he assisted Andre Maurois becoming a member of the Academie Francaise. He actually nominated him, though, and there was a lot of problems. Remember, it’s 1938, and there were a lot of people saying that “This man’s got Jewish blood. We don’t want him.” So he was quite a reactionary type. He loathed the anarchy of the '30s. He also, but he was, and he hated the fact that in order to try and stabilise the economy, there were cuts to the army defences. He met Goring, by the way, when he went to the funeral of Marshal Pilsudski, the leader of Poland. Fascinating, 1935, Petain was there. All the leaders of Europe were there. Goring referred to Petain as a man of honour. Now, there was a survey in an important journal called “The Little Journal,” and it was a survey, who would you like to lead France? There were 200,000 readers, and the majority wanted a dictatorial leader, and they chose Petain with Laval coming second. So there was a huge body of opinion in the '30s in France, personified by Action Francaise, but also a lot of French bourgeois who hated the instability of what was, look on one level, it’s terribly exciting, but on the other level, it’s very frightening. They wanted the strong man. And this is of course, a fascination. You can see it so clearly if you look at the characters in the Second World War, but it doesn’t go away. When times are bad, you usually have the rise of populous leaders because people want solutions, easy solutions, and tragically, we live in a world where there are no easy solutions.
So even Leon Blum, the Jewish prime minister of France, the very left wing Leon Blum, he said, “He was the most human of our military commanders.” He didn’t get involved in those days in non-military matters. Even though he’s very correct, had loads of mistresses, but that’s another story. He doesn’t marry until he’s quite an old man. And don’t forget also the division of France. By 1936, 5.5 million to the left, 4.5 million to the right, so totally divided. Now, March 1939, he becomes the French ambassador to Franco’s government in Spain. And Franco, as I’ve already told you, had been a student of Petain and really, really admired him, And when World War II broke out, Daladier, who was the prime minister at the time, offered him a position. Petain turned it down, but after the German invasion, he joined the new government of Paul Reynaud on 18th of May, 1940, as deputy prime minister. The hope was that the hero of Verdun would really rally the French, inspire them. Reportedly, Franco said, “Don’t go back. Stay in Spain. You’re going to be safer.” May the 26th, the Allied lines have been shattered. British forces were evacuating Dunkirk. The French were absolutely furious with the British, and because the British had promised them air cover. It didn’t happen. Churchill’s man in Paris, Spears, he urged the French, he urged the French not to sign an armistice, and he said if the French ports were occupied, Britain would have to bomb them, and of course they did later on. Petain said, “Your ally now threatens you.” So Petain was furious by what he saw as British betrayal.
So the fall of Dunkirk and Paris is threatened, the government prepares to depart, and that’s where so many of them came to England to form the government in, to form a government, but Petain is against it. He says, “The interests of France come before those of Britain. Britain got us into this position. Let us try now to get out of it.” And on the 10th of June, he left for Tours. Churchill flew over for a meeting, told them to consider guerilla warfare. Petain said it would lead to total French destruction. He repeated Clemenceau’s words, “I will fight in front of Paris, in Paris, behind Paris.” And then, of course, he’s in support of the armistice. And this is what he said. “The need to stay in France, to prepare a national revival and to share the suffering of our people, it’s impossible for the government to abandon French soil without immigrating, without deserting. The duty of the government is come what may to remain in the country as it could no longer be regarded as the government, as it could no longer be regarded as the government in exile.” So basically you, if you’re going to have a French government, it has to be in France. He flees to Bordeaux. In fact, de Gaulle and Petain dined at the same restaurant. They shook hands, but they never spoke. They never spoke, they never met again, because de Gaulle, of course, Petain has decided on the armistice, and he was in a cleft stick. Now, this is where it gets problematic. The Americans couldn’t help. The British agreed finally to the French armistice provided the French fleet move to British ports. And as I said before, because it didn’t, it was bombed. Over a thousand French sailors died as a result of British bombing.
So Reynaud resigns as prime minister and recommended that Petain be appointed in his place. He already had his team ready, Pierre Laval, foreign affairs. So it’s the Spanish ambassador that agrees, and he, Petain makes his first broadcast to the people, welcomed by the people who see him as their saviour. We still have a French government. De Gaulle’s in London, and the whole thing was, should the government retreat to North Africa, Petain would not go. As I said, many of the deputies did go and finish up in London, but Petain would not leave. So now, as a response to the armistice, he is now head of the government. He draws up a new constitution, and he has agreed to work with the Germans. And of course, as I’ve already told you, in order to curry favour with the Germans, he does agree to all the anti-Semitic laws. Now, after the war, he was tried, and I’m going to deal with that later on. It was only in 2010 because a lot of people never wanted to accept the fact that Petain was such a renegade in terms of the Jews. But a memo by Petain was made public in 2010, and it was authenticated. In fact, the anti-Semitic legislation of 1940 was actually made harsher by Petain and that we know the Statute of the Jews was actually adopted without any pressure from the Germans at all. So there was a clause, quote, “protecting descendants of Jews born French or naturalised before 1860.” He crossed it out, and the scribblings in his handwriting, absolutely authenticated by experts, insisted that he himself was the one who pushed for more anti-Semitic legislation. So he remains in Vichy, the leader of France, right up until the end when he is then taken to a special enclave and then finally returns to France where he is put on trial.
Now, can we turn to Pierre Laval? His dates are 1883 to 1945. He is going to be executed. Although Petain was tried for treason, he was not executed. He was a socialist. He was a lawyer. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, and after the defeat of France, he’d had a career in the French government. By 1934, he was part of a conservative government, and he served as minister for the colonies, then foreign minister. He becomes very important in Petain’s government. He’s firstly vice president of the Council of Ministers. Then he is the head of state. So he is the one who is instituting many of the laws. And the question on Laval, he always said he didn’t know, when it was finally, when it finally came to the deportations, he said he didn’t know about the deportations to the East. He didn’t know it. He thought it was labour camps. He didn’t know it meant Auschwitz. And one of the other issues, at one stage, the Germans wanted the parents to be deported without the children. He said, “No, families should stay together.” There was a lot of controversy over his execution. He was, of course, tried by the French. There was extraordinary, there was a lot of bloodletting at the end of the war, who was a collaborator, who wasn’t one, and I know Patrick is going to deal with that when he looks at the cultural life of France in the occupation. His book the “Music Wars” is very much about this particular theme. Now, he actually, towards the beginning of 19, sorry, by the end of 1942, particularly as so many French are being deported for labour service, he tries to pull away from the government, and although he’s the nominal leader of Milice, which is the police, the real leader is Joseph Darnand.
And can we move on to Darnand? Now, this man was a seriously appalling individual, leader, a great “leader,” in inverted commas, an evil man. He was a decorated soldier in World War I, and after the war, he enlisted. He was part of the army of occupation in Germany. In the interwar period, he was part of the far right. He was part of Action Francaise. He was part of Croix-de-Feu. Remember that organisation? That was a terrorist organisation. He was part of La Cagoule. He formed his own fascist group, and in 1939, he rejoined the army in the Phoney War. He becomes an important figure in Vichy. He was a huge supporter of Petain, offered his help. And against the French resistance, he created Milice. This is the far right organisation that is going to be so important to the roundup of the Jews. Now, he was made an officer of the SS, which mean he himself took a personal oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. By 1944, Milice, by the way, had 35,000 members, and it had not just a role in rounding out Jews, it was also an important role in fighting the French resistance. The quote from Wistrich, “They enthusiastically rounded up the Jews.” Early '44, even though the Germans have taken over the territory, France is still in control. Vichy’s still in control of home policy and creates a new law empowering Darnand to create special court marshals to try people immediately. So no more, you know, all the dream of the French republic are taken away. Trial and execution, immediate, no habeas corpus. In September '44, he flees to Germany. He’s promoted in the SS in 1940. November '44, he flees, but he’s captured by the British.
He’s sent back to France, and he is executed. Now, I thought this would happen that I won’t have enough time. So what I want to do, if you don’t mind, Emily, I want to run through some of the pictures, and I will go back when we return on Thursday. Can we go on, please? Pierre Laval I’m going to talk about, obviously. Vallat, yeah, very, very important. These are the leaders. We’re going to talk about evil leadership. Go on, please. An absolute monster. You see how long he lived as well? Yeah, go on. I’ll talk about his biography later. Yes, and see how long they get away with it. Can we go on, please? Touvier, 1996, he was hidden by a very strict Catholic order, protected by them. There was a faction film starring Michael Caine about him. Another real monster. See how long they lived, most of them? Can we go on, please? Yes, this is the Drancy internment camp, absolutely ghastly, in the northern suburbs of France. And there you see the Velodrome. It’s a sports centre. Can you imagine what it must have been like? To stop people escaping, it was July, the roundup, so many young children, they sealed up the glass, so it was boiling hot. I now want you, I’m going to leave you with some anti-Semitic posters from Vichy, just so that you understand how, there you go. These are Vichy posters. There’s an exhibition on Jewish France. And let’s have a look at the questions.
Q&A and Comments:
I hope I haven’t rushed too much.
Jacqueline, “This is a difficult subject. My maternal grandparents, they’d been round the corner from the Gestapo headquarters, when they got picked up and deported to Auschwitz in February '44 by the Weimar. My mom’s sisters were in hiding in the south. My mom was married in the UK by 1939. My grandparents had the dubious privilege of being the few Aleppo Jews caught up in the Holocaust.” Oh, Jacqueline.
Q: Oh, this is from Alan. “Well remember the landsman societies in South Africa.” “How many Jews of both the old and new were there?”
A: There were about 350,000, Shelly.
Yes, Marilyn, “Many of the Frenchmen were taken to Germany to be slave labourers or fled to the mountains, leaving the women to cope on their own.” Yes, that’s very important. Yes, I said to you, the world of women was terribly important in this. You know, nearly two million Frenchmen. That’s when Vichy, many people in Vichy became very, very angry. Films about the Chambon, I will have that for you next week.
Arlene, “I think Jews must learn their history, and non-Jews as we talk about anti-Semitism, warts and all, it’s not an either/or. Education is the best source of reducing prejudices.” Arlene, I wish I was not so cynical. I think it’s more than that. We haven’t, look, I’m saying this because I was involved in Holocaust education for 40 years. So I’m saying that we all failed. I failed. It’s a big discussion. Now, how was it in France, the country of the republic, of the rights of man, so beloved of many Jews that I’m telling you this horror story? Is it so deep in European civilization? If it is, does education really help? You have to make people more empathetic. Look, today, Israel is one of the main targets. And as I said to you before, I think it’s terribly important that there is no connection made between the Shoah and the establishment of the state in schools in Britain, which is extraordinary. But I also remember, and I’m going to say this publicly now, that many of my colleagues, many of them were Jewish, did not want this told. They said, “The Shoah must stand on its own.” You cannot understand the State of Israel without the knowledge of the Shoah.
This is Esther, “As a teacher in the schools in Canada, I’m sorry to report our children have very little knowledge of our history.”
This is Jeffrey, “I read a book which stated that 90% of all Jews born in France survived the war, and 75% of Jews survived because France had no ghettos, and Jews had freedom of movement. Also, 80% of all children in France survived.” Now, your figures are a bit off, but it’s about a fifth. About a fifth were murdered, and two-thirds of them were foreign Jews. There were no ghettos per se, but there were internment camps. So but 80% of all Jewish children in France, that’s not the figure, I’ll get the figure for you. Yes, you see, France is different, and it did. And there’s a lot of history books, particularly French history books, look, France did not come to terms with its past for a long, long time. It was in 1995 that the president of France actually admitted, and today, Patrick, who lives in France much of the year, tells me that most schools now in France have those have little notaries telling about the Jewish students in France. There has been an attempt now at reconciliation, but for years, France did not accept its role. It’s very important this, and the Allies didn’t want them to either. France was one of the great powers of the Western alliance against communism, remember. Cynical old world.
Jacqueline, “Two of my uncles died as a result of detention in Drancy.” Yes, and as I said before, these are the first French victims of the Shoah.
Rose Rahami, “The story of,” hi, Rose, darling, “The story of Varian Fry.” Yes, yes, Patrick’s already done a session on Varian Fry, so I’m only going to mention him en passant. Look, you’ve got to remember that there are so many stories. Varian Fry, of course, the American who saved 2,000 leading intellectuals. What decisions were made? Who do you decide to save? But he was a great man.
Q: “Did many of the super rich, important French Jews like the Rothschilds or Blum die in the gas chambers? Did they escape France?”
A: Leon Blum was imprisoned in Buchenwald. His wife was allowed to join him. He was deported to Dachau with the orders to kill him, but it didn’t happen. And his brother was murdered, and his brother, who was a great choreographer, he was murdered in Auschwitz, terribly murdered, tortured. That was reported by Rudy Vrba, who in '44 escaped, and he actually reported that story. Now, one of the Rothschilds was caught, and don’t forget the case of the Camondos. The Camondos, one of the richest families in France who gave so much, so much of the art in the Louvre and in the Quai d'Orsay is from that family. Nobody protected them. Some of the important Jews were protected by Vichy, yes, true, true, but not the Camondos. They got one, I think they got one of the Rothschild women.
Yes, “From Le Chambon, the teenage boys’ hostel Les Roches led by Daniel Trocme, Father Trocme’s nephew. one day, I think in 1943, they sung the resistance song as gendarme psychopaths, not like their leader, and the boys were rounded up and murdered.” Yes, I’m going to spend quite a bit of time on the Chambon because this is a very, very important, ‘cause you’ve got to remember, what makes people rescue? What makes people resist? What makes some people brave? What makes other people collaborate? If we can go under the skin of this, that’s one of the reasons that Wendy and I have kind of run this sub-theme on leadership, because there were great leaders as well, great leaders for good and evil leaders for bad.
Monty, “Lady Irene Hatter made a documentary about her father, Sally Noach, a Dutch Jew, who rescued hundreds in Vichy France. He is known as the Dutch Schindler. The documentary is called 'Forgotten Soldier.’ It’s been shown around the world, produced by my son Paul.” Right, that’s interesting, Monty. Can you send us details, and we can put it out on the website?
This is important. Yes, yes, Francois Mitterrand. Oh, yes, I’m going to be talking about that.
Yes, Alan Warmer, “French priest Father Patrick Desbois worked tirelessly uncovering atrocities of the death quads in the Lviv, perhaps you confirm.” Not only can I confirm, Alan, I interviewed him, oh, quite awhile back. Yes, his whole story is about what he calls murders by bullets in the East, oh, yes. Look, there’s good everywhere. There’s evil everywhere, but there’s good everywhere, and Father Desbois is doing an awful lot. He’s also, he believed that that begat death by bullets, which of course is the way the Einsatzgruppen and their collaborators murdered so many of the Eastern European Jews before they established the chambers. He also has been looking at the killing squads in other genocides post war. He’s a fascinating man.
“Mitterrand kept refusing to apologise for the Velodrome affair.” Yes, Tommy, this is the problem. It’s lovely to hear from you, Tommy. Yes, this is the problem because France is the country of the “resistance,” in inverted commas. This is the, France created a myth, and it managed to pull an awful lot of people along with it.
Oh, hello, Susan. How are you? “My grandmother and young Aunt Berta and Sonya Smetana and other members of the family fled from Vienna to Paris early ‘39 and then to Nice following the occupation of Paris. They were picked up by the Vichy police on the 26th of August, '42, along with 7,000 Jews in the area, deported in cattle trucks to Drancy then to Auschwitz on 2nd of September, '42, Transport 27. Even now, I cannot wrap my head around the sheer horror of my family’s fate along with the millions of other Jews. Thank you, Trudy, for making sure the French role in this horror is not forgotten.” Oh, Susan, this is so painful for so many of you. Why do we do it? Why do we remember? Because we are the people of memory. My friend Felix Schaff, whose grandfather was the rabbi of , he said that’s the only comfort he can ever bring, that we are the people of memory, and it will never, ever be forgotten. That’s why I think groups minimise it. They can’t forget it, but they try and minimise it. And that’s why you have these obscene equations of what happened to the Jews with how Jews are now perpetrators. It’s an absolute obscenity. And that takes me back to the line of the great Howard Jacobson. “They cannot forgive us the Holocaust.” There’s so much work still to be done. It’s like we need to reappraise. That’s my view.
Clara, I did talk about Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany. You might have missed the session. I spent a lot of time on Ukraine. You see, what we decided to do, because there’s so much in French Jewish history, we decided to devote three months to it. And then we’re going to have a short session on Albania, then a short session on Romania. Then we’re going to turn to Germany. Now, once the website is up, you’ll be able to get all my lectures and other people’s lectures. And yes, I spent a lot of time on Ukrainian history. And tragically don’t forget nine, don’t forget 1648 and 1920, '21. There’s a brilliant book by Geoffrey Wigoder on the massacres at the end of the First World War.
This is from Issa, “I was a child in France, 1938 to '42, refugee from Germany. My mother was interned by the Milice but managed to come out of the Velodrome because my father was in the French army. I was evacuated with the French Jewish Scouts after the fall of Paris.” Yes, I’m going to be talking about the Scouts. It’s very important. “In the Free Zone at Beaulieu sur Dordogne, an asylum home for Jewish Scouts. It’s a long story, but eventually my mother, sister, and I escaped over the Pyrenees through Spain, Portugal, and by plane to England where my father was in the Pioneer Corps having escaped Dunkirk.” Oh, it’s so good to hear a story that had a good ending. Thank you very much for telling us that story, Issa. Yeah, yes, the French Jewish Scouts were a great part of the resistance along with the Jewish army. More on that, I’m going to have to find another session. It’s too important to not to go.
Francois Simone, “From June '40 until November '42, France was divided into two zones and the Free Zone. In November '42, the Germans occupied the whole country. And of course the war ended in the liberation by us.” Yes, Francois, I said that. Yeah, but Vichy still had a lot of autonomy in the whole of the country. The reason the French occupied the whole country was because of what was going on in North Africa.
Yes, “Trudy, you kept stressing it was the French police who rounded up the Jews. But my parents, having fled in '38 to the Netherlands, were arrested by the Dutch police. 102,000 Jews were killed in the Shoah, and about 80% of the Jews in the Netherlands, both Dutch citizens and refugees.” Fannie, you’ve brought up an incredibly important point. Now, of course, the Dutch also have this extraordinary reputation, where in fact, there was a huge SS contingent. Having said that, and of course the Dutch police were instrumental in roundups. But the point was France is a much, much bigger country than Holland, and it was very difficult. It was harder to hide people in Holland. It’s a very important point you’ve made. And you see, we do go from country to country. We have looked at the Jews of Holland, but we haven’t looked at the Shoah in detail. And one of the reasons we don’t is there are so many books, and I know it’s pain, and it’s so painful, and as most of you are a Jewish audience, do we have to keep on, we remember. But to dwell on the pain all the time, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s psychically the right thing to do. I don’t know, but yes, you are totally correct, Fannie.
Q: “What happened in the Channel Islands?”
A: Well, that’s an interesting story, isn’t it? Deportations, betrayals, and hiding, and some, and heroes, okay? It was very similar to France.
Vicky, “About 7,000 Jews, men only, were arrested by the Belgians and sent to Cyprien in the South of France in '40. My father managed to escape this dreadful internment camp with my mother across the Swiss border. The Swiss accepted Jewish women if they were pregnant. I was conceived for that purpose, in a way, saved my parents’ life. My two cousins were hidden for three years by a salvation officer, a Protestant. She saved, and other children.” Yes, Vicky, these are the stories that we must tell. There were incredible people who risked their lives to save Jewish children and to save Jews, and also to save other people, too, and some of them died for it. That’s what we need to know how to bottle. If only we knew what creates greatness.
“And could you mention,” I don’t know what you mean, Tony, “Could you please mention today’s court finding guilt?” I don’t know what you mean.
Ah, Francois, “‘Lacombe, Lucien’ is a great film by Louis Malle that deals with this period, the resistance and the Milice.” Yes, it is a great film. There’s a lot of good films on this period.
“Read ‘Sarah’s Key’ and learn,” Paula, I read “Sarah’s Key” and learned about Velodrome d'Hiver. That is such a heartbreaking book and film. There’s a film as well.
“Excellent French TV series called ‘A French Village’ on Netflix,” that’s from Barbara.
This is from Gloria. She visited the Holocaust Museum in Paris.
Q: Do I have an opinion about the TV series “French Village”?
A: I haven’t seen it, Helen. I should have a look. I will have a look at it.
“Very interesting and frightening book by Baddiel, ‘Jews Don’t Count,’” yes, Hilton.
Q: “If Hitler could have not devoted so many resources to the extermination of the Jews, could the Germans have won the war?”
A: Barbara, there’s something even more complicated than that. 90% of the physicists at Los Alamos were of Jewish birth. If Hitler hadn’t expelled his Jews, would he have achieved the bomb earlier? It’s the, you know, the ifs and buts of history.
Alain, “A late friend of mine lived in the Marais and looked after orphaned children. She worked for the French resistance. By chance she was out with the children when they came for them. They were able to flee. She eventually moved to the Boston area.” You see, there are these wonderful people.
“‘Weapons of the Spirit,’” oh, thank you, Sheila, “by Pierre Sauvage,” yes, this is a very important film. “Weapons of the Spirit,” it’s about Le Chambon, where he went there and he interviewed people. It’s very important. Thank you for that, Sheila.
This is from Eve, “My maternal grandparents and aunts and uncles lived in Paris during the war. They were stateless, having fled from Stalin’s Russia. The men in the family were taken to Drancy but miraculously survived as they were Bukharan Jews, and they concocted this story they weren’t really Jewish. Germans bought the story, and so 150 Bukharan Jews were saved. My own parents have managed to come to Britain. In addition, in the early 2000s, our family received some compensation.” That is an extraordinary story, Eve. I didn’t know that. Again, thank you, Lockdown. I’d like more information if you could send it in. I’d be very grateful.
‘“The Sorrow and the Pity,’” Dennis, thank you for recommending that. Yes, it’s time I think for, to put together a very comprehensive film list. We put together for fun our favourite hundred films, myself and my colleagues. There are so many films of Jewish interest. What you can do, put in Jewish film into Netflix or into Prime, and you’d be surprised how many come up.
“I don’t understand why it was called free France.” Because it wasn’t under German, it was not occupied by the Germans. The French ran it themselves, and they also ran the colonies.
Q: “Thinking,” this is from Tony, “Thinking about teaching of anti-Semitism. What about your thoughts of teaching about Semitism?”
A: Oh, Tony, we’re going to have to have this debate, aren’t we? “Was Provence under Vichy?
Yes. Carol, "Trudy, you talk about the years between World War II and the establishment of Israel, these years when there were so many survivors from the Shoah were not allowed into Palestine because of Britain. This also belongs to the killing fields of Europe.” Yes, I agree with you, and when I lectured on it, I put it, I said that. There’s such a case to answer. I totally agree.
Judy, “When I visited the Camondo Museum, there was a comment book. One entry stated, ‘Why don’t the French admit that this family was betrayed by the French, not initiated by the Germans?’” Very interesting.
This is from Carolyn, “Erna Paris, a Canadian author, wrote an award-winning book called ‘Long Shadows.’ It analysed how different European countries, including France and Germany, came to terms or failed to do so with their behaviour and treatment of Jews in World War II.”
What is the name of the book, Jeffrey?
Q: “Any comments on the conviction of 97-year-old Irmgard Furchner’s actions to assist in mass murder?”
A: It’s very interesting because, this is Stutthof, and a very close friend of mine, one of his best friend’s fathers was murdered there, and I think this man, who is a survivor, he believes that justice should always be done. Just because you’re old, does it mean you should get away with it? I don’t know, I personally, having known the individual and very much respect the individual whose father was murdered in that camp, I think why not? Why not? He’s lived a long life. Am I going to talk about the Shoah and the Netherlands? I haven’t planned to. I will discuss it with my colleagues because we try, and look, this is the darkest chapter. You all know so much of it, and I know so many of you have come from so many different countries. What I try and do, look, I teach it within the context. I will discuss this with my colleagues.
This is Peter. Hi, Peter. “My friend Marietta was in hiding in Vichy throughout the war. They all survived and came to England but do not want to talk about it given the bitter memories.”
Q: Could I talk about Colette?
A: I think Patrick is going to.
“Some Jews went to hide Vichy, which was more lax to denunciate Jews.” Arguably George. “The court finding was a secretary in one of the death camps who received a suspended prison.” I haven’t, Danny, I’ve got to look all this up. I’ve got to look this up. I haven’t had a chance to read up on it.
Susan, “My great-uncle, Otto Smettin, fled from Vienna to France with his family and the family of his sister-in-law. They spent two years on the outskirts of Paris making and selling soap. They managed to escape via Spain and made their way to the USA where they lived long lives. By an extraordinary coincidence, my uncle’s brother-in-law was the great uncle of a colleague of mine who I worked with in the 1980s.”
Carol, “Avignon has a wall on which are listed all the Jews from there that were rounded up and deported. A very few have a star by their names. They were children, the survivors, and one lived to a grand old age going into schools and teaching their story.” Look, I’m skimming the surface, aren’t I. So many of you have such important and deep memories. Anyway, I’m going back to it on Thursday. Emily, you’re going to have to have both sets of slides.
[Emily] No problem.
And we’re going to put in an extra session because I do want to spend a bit more time on the heroes, particularly the Armee Juive, which I find absolutely fascinating. So I wish you all goodnight, and it is Hanukkah, and we do go on. That’s the point about Jewish history. How many people have said we are the eternal people.
Please all take care of yourselves. Lots of love, bye.