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 Germans arrested Jewish children in France during WWII much as they did in this classic Warsaw Ghetto roundup (above). |
The French recall the
German gassing of kids
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
France is grappling again with one of its worst demons--the nation’s behavior during the German occupation in the 1940s. After 60-plus years, the wounds are far from healed.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has set off a major debate on one of the most sensitive issues: How best to remember the roundup of French Jewish children--11,400 of whom went to the death camps, never to return.
In a seemingly impulsive initiative typical of his controversial style, Sarkozy decreed last week that as of next September he wants all 10-year-olds in the French school system to receive a card with the name, last known address, date and place of arrest, and final destination of a Jewish child gassed or starved to death by the Germans. Each 10-year-old is expected to carry this card as a way of personalizing what once happened to a French child of similar age.
The French are up in arms, some unable to confront this page in their history, others fearful of unintended consequences such as psychological damage to youngsters.
Sarkozy’s project has prompted a flurry of objections, among them:
-- Is it right to burden a happy child in this era with atrocities committed by past generations?
-- Is a modern French child desensitized
to such violence by movies and video games?
-- Has Sarkozy realized the effect on vulnerable children who
might visualize the cattle-car evacuation, the tattooing and
finally the gassing to death of an innocent child?
-- Is this the best way to carry the memory
of German genocide into future generations?
French media were dominated last week with discussion of the
plan. One Jewish leader, speaking on the new France 24 global
TV news channel, asked, “What’s the point of giving
a child a dead pen-pal?” Others believe it will bring the
Holocaust out of the shadows of history books and help prevent
a recurrence.
It is a complex question for France, which has Europe’s largest Jewish population and a very Catholic majority that is known to harbor a layer of anti-Semitism barely submerged. It seems to surface dramatically every few decades.
The first major case was the false accusation in 1894 that Army officer Alfred Dreyfus spied for Germany. He was arrested and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor. The case was finally resolved with his exoneration in 1906 but the French still write and talk about it.
In the 1940s the French police and several high officials helped the Gestapo identify and ship off 76,000 men, women and children, about a quarter of the French Jewish population, to German death camps. Guilty participants are still being hunted down and prosecuted.
And in 1969 in the city of Orleans, near Paris, outlandish rumors spread that Jews were drugging and kidnapping French women from the changing rooms in dress shops, then subjecting them to ritual murder. It was months before sanity returned to Orleans. Several books have been written about the collective hysteria that gripped the city.
As recently as 20 years ago, some French authorities were refusing to allow bronze memorial plaques to single out Jews as victims. Pressure from Jewish groups has prevailed, however, and today hundreds of plaques are posted in public places to recall arrests and summary executions of Jews by German soldiers.
Some objections to the Sarkozy plan call for attention to be shared with the courageous French who sheltered some 60,000 Jewish children from the Germans by changing their names or hiding them in their homes.
Most important, French elementary teachers
have raised objections, demanding that the idea be rethought
and better integrated with history lessons that already cover
the Holocaust. Education Minister Xavier Darcos has been meeting
with school officials to find a way forward. One newspaper noted
that he has the task of modifying Sarkozy’s “disastrous”
proposal in a way that teachers can accept but without disavowing
the president.
Serge Klarsfeld, president of The Association of Jewish Sons
and Daughters Deported from France, backs the Sarkozy proposal.
“Children who will remember another child whose life was
cut short by intolerance and racial hatred will be morally better
armed against extreme ideologies and violence; they will probably
understand better why our values of freedom and human dignity
must be defended.”
©2008 by Michael
Johnson. This column first posted Feb. 25, 2008.
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