The Ever Relevant Moral: History Repeats Itself

One wrong, not righted, leads to the same mistake again. History repeats itself, and from my studies in the course, The Holocaust in France through Film and Literature, and the trip I took to further explore the issues we dealt with in class, I see more vividly how this saying is true.

“When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt." (Leviticus 19:33-34)(1) This ancient Israelite commandment was applicable in Mesopotamia, in ancient Greece, in Medieval Europe, in Mid-Twentieth Century Germany, and in France today. History has always had group of the “other,” but in no way, has the creation of a group the “others,” lead to anything but conflict.

The Holocaust wasn’t in France! That was my reaction when I first saw the title for this course “The Holocaust in France through Film and Literature.” Growing up, the Holocaust, to my mind, was a “German-thing.” The Holocaust touched many countries, states in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, but certainly did not occur in an allied country such as France. Curious as to what “The Holocaust in France” meant, I enrolled in the class. Was there really a body of artistic work—literature and film—about this Holocaust I had never heard mentioned?

When I bought my books before the class began, I started reading Susan Zuccotti’s work The Holocaust, The French, and The Jews(2). Zuccotti’s text provided answers to many of my initial questions, leading me to more questions about French activities during World War II. She historically contextualized France before World War II, and provided details of how France participated in the genocide. As we discussed Zuccotti in class, the parallels between facts and artistic representation emerged. After France was defeated in 1941, Jews were required to register with the Police and wear Jewish Stars on their clothing, like fellow Jews in Germany. The French police closely observed the Jewish Community. The film “Monsieur Klein,” by Joseph Losey, shows Jews undergoing physical examinations, registering with the police, and outwardly marked by the Jewish stars on their clothing. The extent of police surveillance is furthered in the film by the revelation that membership lists from Jewish newspapers and institutions were in the possession of the Police. M. Klein, a non-Jew, is “discovered” by the Police when he mistakenly receives another M. Klein’s Jewish newspaper.

The French police conducted round-ups in Paris and throughout France. Jews were sent to interment camps in the countryside, or directly to the Deportation Camp, Drancy, located just outside Paris. The film “A Concentration Camp in Paris- Drancy” by Stephen Tromphey, describes how it was not the Germans who orchestrated the round-ups and who ran the deportation camp, but the French (3). Survivors interviewed in the film reported their horror when they heard French, not German, being spoken by the Drancy officials (4). It was not only a “German-thing.” Antisemitism was alive in France too.

Zuccotti’s text also introduced the class to the divisions evident within the French population. Individuals were identified by categories like “the French,” the immigrants, the bourgeois, and the proletariat. But the French were not the only ones to divide themselves by nationality and economic status. The Immigrant class of Jews (called the méteques) and the Israelites (assimilated, middle class Jews) separated one group of Jews from the other. Other classifications during the war were more complicated because they involved questions of action vs. inaction, and complicity in inaction. These classifications included collaborator, resistance worker, and bystander. These finely drawn characterizations led to complex relationships among Jews in France - some Israelites looked down on méteques, some bystanders stood by while people were killed, etc. I struggled with these categories. How could someone with the ability to help, not? How could one Jew look down on a fellow Jew because he had not assimilated to French culture? The classification of a group as “others” carries strong implications. What I learned of French involvement and resistance during World War II was shocking. However, I did not internalize most of what I learned until I saw what happened during the war to individual Jews while spending time in France.

Everything started coming together when on May 11th, we visited the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris and spoke to Shimon Samuels, the Director for International Affairs. Many of my ideas stem from the conversation our group had with him. I think that from his position, he is able to see implications of words and actions throughout Europe, which are not obvious to the mainstream population, particularly the American population. He said, “Europe is obsessed with its two greatest crimes, Colonization and the Holocaust.” European governments have repeatedly apologized for the harm they caused. They hold events, erect monuments, and in general exhibit remorse for what they, or their ancestors caused. However, it is my opinion that European governments often spill many words, but do not back up their language with actions. For example, before World War II, Europe stood aside as Hitler militarized the Rhineland. Europe turned a blind eye to the Treaty of Versailles that specifically stated the Rhineland was to stay demilitarized, a Treaty inclusion meant to keep Europe safe from another World War. In the early 1960’s, France gradually pulled out of their colony—Vietnam— leaving their allies, the United States, in the middle of a brutal civil war. European governments have promised to lead in the fight against AIDS, but their contributions of financial assistance are not substantial enough to make a future-changing effect. In recent years, France has expressed regret for both the effects of colonization and the Holocaust, but has not implemented measures to keep hatred and disdain from spawning disaster again. In fact, through passivity, France (and other European nations) will perpetuate grave circumstances in Europe and around the world. It has been said that History repeats itself. Without aggressive action I fear that it is doomed to do so again.

In class, we began with a brief study of France’s long history of Antisemitism. A Catholic nation during the Middle Ages, the French were not particularly welcoming to the Jews. Jews had occupational, residential and religious restraints placed upon, to varying degrees over many centuries. While it is true that after the Revolution of 1789, under Napoleon Bonaparte, the Jews were given citizenship, the “Jewish Stigma” lingered. The Dreyfus Affair in 1896 laid bare the depth of hatred many French bore the Jews. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army, was wrongly accused and convicted of treason. The proceedings of his court-martial underscored the sentiments in French Society during a particularly volatile period for Jews in France’s history. At that time, Edouard Drumont had published his work "La France Juive", a book that systematically attacked individual Jews and also the whole Jewish population in France as the source of the nation’s problems. Dr. Silverman remarked in her course French 332–French Culture and Civilization, that Hitler did not have to come up with anything new to write his book some 25 years later. As if Drumont had written Hitler’s guidebook, "Mein Kampf" and "La France Juive" are strikingly similar. Drumont’s newspaper, “La Libre Parole,” repeatedly published anti-Semitic images. Cartoons portrayed Jewish men with greasy hair and larges noses, hording money, or participating in other “undesirable” activities. As the Dreyfus Affair unfolded, and his innocence revealed, overt, hostile public opinion towards the Jews waned. However Antisemitism never died.

By1930, France was beset by a massive economic depression. In response, there was a resurgence of Antisemitism in France leading up to the war. In 1941, France was controlled in part by Germany and in part by the Vichy regime. France’s active participation in the Holocaust against the “other” began.

The full extent of events during the Holocaust is still the subject of research by scholars the world over. The Klarsfeld family has played a prominent role in this effort, assuming a personal responsibility for preserving the memory of what happened. The events of the French Holocaust are events of the past. When the class was over, I was left wondering what the French did after the war. Did they mimic the Germans? Is calling someone a Nazi in France illegal too? Does the younger French generation feel some residual guilt? I discovered that what the French have done to compensate and ‘correct’ their part in that history, though improved in the last few years, is not the adequate testimony that the Holocaust deserves. All the survivors we talked to miraculously still believe in the importance and the beauty of life. The memory of that event should include a real end to the hatred that triggered it.

Following the war, the French did not immediately reveal their collaboration with the Nazis. It has taken years to expose the part the French played in the Holocaust, and many archives are yet to be studied. France has apologized for the role it played in handing people over to the Nazis. Behind Notre Dame, France built a park and memorial to those deported in the Shoah. Until recently, the information plaque next to the memorial did not even mention the Jews that were deported during the war.

The guide from the Shoah Memorial, Phillipe Boukara, explained that those who were deported for participation in the resistance were held in more esteem following the war than those who “passively” died because of their religion. Maybe worse, sitting inside the park, there were only several people moved or even interested in the monument. Instead, at the edge of the park as we left, sat a man, his lap draped with a coat, engaged in plucking his armpit hair out with tweezers.

The Shoah Museum, conversely, is a beautiful, recently renovated building about the Holocaust. Two walls at the entrance contain the names of all the known deportees from France during the war and a room in the museum contains the registration cards of people with the word “Juif” stamped on them. The museum is both informative and emotionally powerful, a stark contrast to the Deportation Memorial. The security, like that at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaisme, is alarming. People walk in, out and around the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. There are members of the military patrolling, but there are no metal detectors, and no gates. However, the Shoah Museum has extensive security. Barbed wire surrounds the building. Only four people are allowed to clear security at a time. When exiting the museum, one has to go through one door and fully close that door, trapped in a space like a holding cell, before being able to open another door to the street. It is supremely ironic, and immensely sad, that a Jewish memorial and its visitors are unsafe in present day France.

France now incorporates the Holocaust into its national school curriculum. Our tour guide mentioned that Shoah education only comprises about three hours of the official instruction. On the other hand, all over Paris, plaques displaying the names of people arrested in buildings during the war and sent to Drancy have been around the city. Elementary schools now hold ceremonies when those plaques are mounted outside their schools, and programs are administered for the children of those schools to teach them about what happened and to perpetuate the memory of the children who were taken.

Despite some advances, in the end, France refuses to address the real problem made so evident by the security at the Museums— Anti-Semitism. France apologized for sending so many Jews to their deaths, but not for the hatred that sent them there. Mr. Samuels at the Wiesenthal center emphasized the importance of words and symbols. When one uses words and symbols from one period, like the term Nazi or the image of a Swastika, as descriptors of current situations, one devalues the original. Since the election of Sarkozy, graffiti artists have displayed their unhappiness by displaying Sarkozy with the ‘z’ in the form of a swastika, and displaying posters with Sarkozy’s name and the phrase “Work Makes Free,” linking him with the despicable slogan that surmounted the gate into Auschwitz.

This act diminishes the importance of what happened during the Holocaust and places it farther back in our minds. Mr. Samuels also mentioned that there is a positive correlation between events in the Middle East and the number of attacks on Jews reported in France. If, for instance, the Israeli Military fires on Palestinians gunmen, and one of them dies, the number of reported attacks on Jews increases. Clearly, the anti-Semitism has not ended.

One night on the trip, I had the opportunity to talk with the partner of Dr. Silverman’s friend, Viviane. Viviane, a German professor at a high school in the suburbs of Paris, supported and voted for Sarkozy. When I asked why, she said her vote stems largely from her fear of the immigrants. Sarkozy has been criticized as a xenophobe, both inside and outside of France, for his tough stance on immigration. Sarkozy does not want to let immigration continue in France as it has. Immigrants often bring radical Islam, or join radical groups upon arriving in France for a variety of economic and social reasons. Still, the growing trend towards radicalism effectively creates even more Jew-hatred in the country. Viviane works in a school were she faces Muslims and Christians every day. Because of the ban on religious symbols in France, none of her students see the Jewish Star she wore around her neck that evening during dinner, nor do they know she is Jewish. She fears the vulnerability of the immigrant children to succumb to Jew hatred when faced with the radical Islam alive in the suburbs. This radicalism, coupled with the general sentiments in France, make Viviane scared at times to be a Jew. She hopes that a vote for Sarkozy will bring her some peace. The immigrants bring Anti-Semitism into France, but they are not the sole source of the hatred.

Most French Jews we talked to said that Antisemitism exists only among a few members of their population. I do not believe this to be the case. As Jews in mainstream French society, it does not serve them to believe that everyone around them harbors negative feelings against them. Latent hatred that precipitated the Holocaust was reportedly unfelt by many Jews. It is why Jews, who could flee, did not flee France, even after the occupation began. Anti-Semitism was just beneath the surface of social civility before, and I believe what they are describing is the same circumstance today. The French Government is critical of Israel. However, many Jews we talked to for example, M. Szapio, a successful art gallery owner, Mme. Savingon, a child survivor, and Viviane, identify strongly with the state of Israel. Jews learn Hebrew and take many trips to Israel to visit family and go on holiday. The French Government, ideologically opposed to Israeli actions in regard to the Palestinians, they stand at a distance, and with the European-Union, condemning Israeli actions rather than attempting to work with the Israelis in an effective manner. It is fine to criticize specific policies and counsel against certain actions, but the disregard and inaction of the French to violent actions and negative images against Jews today is creating anew, if not perpetuating, the Jew as ‘other’. France is not addressing the root reason for one of their greatest mistakes.

This is much like the situation with colonization. France does not tackle the root cause of the immigration to France and the radicalism among former colonials—the economic turmoil France (and other European states) left in the colonies. The former colonies need economic, medical, and political support. Radicals need to be rooted out of these colonies if France hopes to keep them outside of their borders. Rather than sending them back, immigrants should be trained to work high skilled jobs, on the assumption that they will return to countries with more infrastructures, and help develop the countries with what they have learned. The French government sends small amounts of support to their former colonies, and while they have apologized for what they did, they do not try to rectify the problems. Colonies were the ‘other,’ and during colonization, the Europeans went abroad to “tame” indigenous peoples, while exploiting them for raw materials and cheap labor. By continuing to vilify those former colonies, and treating them as a group apart, France breeds another generation of French hatred towards former colonials and the latter’s hatred of the colonizers.

History is a cycle. The specifics might not be the same from event to event, but history will be repeated. Hatred, left untamed, festers, breeding more hatred, a never ending well. From this trip, I see similarities to the actions taken during the Holocaust with the present, and these frighten me. I do not see France actively addressing why they were complicit in mass genocide, which gravely impacts future French culture. Instead, it is not enough for the French to symbolically say they are sorry to those who are already gone. What of those yet to come?

1 “The Ethics of Reciprocity. www.wikipedia.org. 17 June 2007.

2 Zuccotti, Susan. The Holocaust, The French, and the Jews. Lincoln and London:

University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

3 Only after 1943, when Germany completely controlled France did the Germans officially run the camps.

4 The survivor we met at Drancy, M. Jules Fainzang, expressed this shock as well.

5 This is not to say the United States does an adequate job either.