BOOKS
French Collaboration
Again An Issue
ARNOLD AGES
Special to The Jewish News
H
Remember the
1 lth Commandment:
"And Thou
Shalt be
Informe
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Friday, September 26, 1986 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
You've read the
five books of
Moses. Isn't it
time to try the
Fifty-Two Issues
of the Detroit
Jewish News? It
may not be
holy, but it's
weekly! And
such a bargain.
To order your
own subscription
call 354-6060.
erbert Lottman, , a
Paris-based journalist
and writer for
Publisher's Weekly, records in
a new book that more than
100,000 Frenchmen were
investigated from 1944 on as
collaborators of the Nazi
occupiers.
Writing in The Purge: The
Purification of French Col-
laborators After World War II
(Morrow), author Lottman
indicates that not all suspects
come to trial but that more
than 50,000 did appear before
different tribunals in the days
and months after France was
liberated by the Allies.
Executions of col-
laborationists began even be-
fore the Nazis left France. Re-
sistance movements exacted
harsh justice on the battlefield
while German troops were
evacuating the country. Sum-
mary courts martial were hold
frequently, especially in the
south of the country. Lottman's
reconstruction of these purges
required him to stitch together
a tremendous amount of frag-
mentary information because
the purge courts did not keep
copious records.
In all, and depending on the
statistical source, France is
said to have executed almost
3,000 Frenchmen who were in-
volved in collaboration with
the Nazis. In the provinces,
sentences were carried out
immediately: death by firing
squad. Thousands of other
Frenchmen were given sen-
tences ranging from life to as
little as one year. A small
number were acquitted.
The Lottman survey shows
that collaborators belonged to
virtually every segment of
French society and included
people like Robert Brassilach,
a noted literary critic; Sacha
Guitry, a well-known actor and
film personality; Charles
Maurras, a right-wing anti-
Semitic activist, and even
Louis Renault, of automobile
fame.
A kind of poetic justice oc-
curred in 1944, says Lottman,
when thousands of suspected
collaborators were rounded up
by the Free French authorities
and sent to the Velodrome d'-
Hiver, a suburban sports
stadium where thousands of
Jews had been sequestered be-
fore being sent to their deaths
in concentration camps.
Lottman notes that in some
of the memoirs left by the col-
laborators, complaints are
found about the ill treatment
they as Frenchmen received —
worse even than that received
by Jews!
Many of the collaborators
who received death sentences
were involved with the hated
Militia, the French equivalent
of the Gestapo which was in-
volved in rounding up Jews.
One couple that was executed
had received a per capita fee for
each Jew identified.
Two of the Jewish victims
were young children who had
been playing on a street. One
group of Militia soldiers was
sentenced to death for its c om-
plicity in the murder of
Georges. Mandel, a Jewish
minister in the Popular Front
government.
Among the most sordid
events recorded by Lottman
are the trials of a number of
collaborationist newspaper
people, novelists and writers.
In the Paris tril:iinals where
they were tried, their anti-
Semitic venom, their fascist
proclivities and anti-
democratic values doomed
them once their articles and
essays were read into the court
record. Many of the defendants
in this professional category
were tried in absentia and re-
ceived harsh sentences.
Collaborators
belonged to
virtually every
segment of French
society.
The purge of Frenchmen had
its embarrassing aspects.
Under de Gaulle's tutelage,
France after 1944 wanted to
settle accounts with the Vichy
regime. The principal actors in
that collaborationist govern-
ment, Laval, Petain and a host
of other civil servants, military
personnel and hangers-on
were brought to trial.
The most important among
these people received death
sentences. Some of the defen-
dants, such as Louis Darquier
de Pellepoix, the
commissioner-general for
Jewish affairs, fled France,
and spent his remaining years
in Spain untouched by French
justice.
In an important epilogue to
his book, Lottman compares
the treatment meted out to
French collaborators with that
meted out to Belgian, Danish
and other collaborators, and
finds that, on a relative scale,
France's record of pursuit was
not exemplary. This is due in
part to the perception which
leaders like de Gaulle had that
the past had to be buried and a
new life for the nation begun.
De Gaulle himself was in-
volved in the pardoning of
hundreds, if not thousands, of
collaborators.
The wounds inflicted on the
French body politic between
1944 and 1946 were very deep,
as the evidence of massive col-
laboration with the Nazis sur-
faced. By 1947, a kind of na-
tional compact had been ef-
fected in which this sordid as-
pect of French history was to be
submerged. Its disinterment
with the Barbie capture has
ignited many of the passions
which have lain dormant for
more than 40 years.
Copyright 1986, Jewish Telegraph
Agency