BACKGROUND

Is French Anti-Semitism Joining
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?

HELEN DAVIS

Foreign Correspondent

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34

FRIDAY, MAY 18, 1990

or the first time since
the Holocaust, Jewish
leaders from around
the world gathered in Berlin
last week. They came not
just to remember the past,
but also to address the
future; to express their ap-
prehension about the for-
thcoming reunification of
Germany and their fears of a
renewed wave of anti-
Semitism in the recently
emancipated states of East-
ern Europe.
Despite manifold
assurances from the new
leaders of Eastern Europe
that they will not tolerate
anti-Semitic tendencies,
World Jewish Congress
President Edgar Bronfman
remained skeptical: There is
no question, he said, but that
Jews will once again take
their place as "the age-old
scapegoat."
As if on cue came news
from East Berlin, just a few
miles away, that the graves
of German playwright Ber-
tolt Brecht and his wife,
Helene Weigel, had been
desecrated. In white paint
across their headstones were
daubed the slogans, "Sau
Jud" (Jew pig) and "Juden
Raus" (Jews out). Never
mind that Bertolt Brecht
was not Jewish; it was
enough, apparently, that his
wife was.
In predicting a revival of
anti-Semitism in Eastern
Europe, Bronfman was
wrong in one important
respect: the emergence of the
old hatred is not confined to
the economically, politically
and socially devastated
countries of Eastern Europe;
it is also striking new roots
in cultured, affluent
Western Europe. By week's
end, the most horrifying sin-
gle piece of news came from
France, the country which
claims to have given the
world liberty, equality and
fraternity 200 years ago.
Former French Prime
Minister Laurent Fabius,
now Speaker of the French
National Assembly and
himself a Jew, was visibly
distressed when he appeared
on television to provide his
countrymen with the grisly
details of the attack on the
Jewish cemetery in the town
of Carpentras.
"We have to tell things the
way they are," said Fabius,

Paris police inspectors measure a swastika.

who then proceeded to de-
scribe how vandals had
smashed and desecrated 34
tombs before digging up a
coffin, removing the body of
an 81-year-old Frenchmen,
Felix Germon, who had been
buried two weeks earlier,
and leaving it impaled on a
beach umbrella, a Star of
David affixed to its stomach.
French President Francois
Mitterrand said he was filled
with horror, while the Jew-
ish-born Cardinal of France,
Jean-Marie Lustiger, warn-
ed that such hatred begins
with the desecrations of the
dead but ends with the
destruction of the living.
Carpentras, a quaint town
of medieval streets in the
Vaucluse region of Provence,
about 20 miles from
Avignon, is home to one of
Europe's oldest Jewish
communities and there are
fears that the town itself will
now become branded with
the stigma of anti-Semitism.
So where to place the blame?
The ample figure who
quickly became the target of
accusing fingers was Jean-
Marie Le Pen, leader of the
racist National Front Party,
the fastest growing political
organization in France to-
day, who is himself current-
ly facing two charges arising
from anti-Semitic remarks.
Le Pen, who has described
the Holocaust as "a detail of
history," dismissed concern
over rising anti-Semitism as
"artificial" and rejected

charges that he or his
followers were even morally
responsible for the Carpen-
tras outrage.
On the contrary, he said,
the perpetrators were agents
provocateurs seeking to
besmirch his movement, he
asserted.
Le Pen, whose party has
consistently increased its
following in every election
since 1983 and is now
estimated to enjoy the sup-
port of up to 30 percent of
French voters, does indeed
present a serious electoral
challenge to the mainstream
political parties of France.
"Those who utter words of
hate, racism, xenophobia
and anti-Semitism,"
declared Laurent Fabius in a
thinly disguised attack on
Le Pen, "are unleashing a
terrible kind of violence."
In fact, however, the Le
Pen phenomenon provides
only part of the reason for
the inflamed racial tensions
which led to last week's at-
tack. At least some of the
blame must reside with the
French establishment itself,
which has long regarded an-
ti- Semitism with a quiet
complacency and which has
drawn a discreet veil over
the collaboration of many of
its citizens in the Vichy
government of Marshal
Philippe Petain with the
Nazi occupiers during World
War II.
"The resurgence of anti-
Jewish feeling, particularly