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The Sorrow and the Pity Page #17
- PG
- Year:
- 1969
- 251 min
- 231 Views
which nobody is denying,
concerning French Jews,
only 5%%% did not survive.
Just take, for example, the army.
Sir, excuse me for interrupting you,
but the statistic you quote,
and which I know well
refers only to
non-denaturalized French Jews.
However, there is another statistic
which is fatefully similar to yours,
which says
that of the non-naturalized Jews,
the foreign Jews
and the denaturalized Jews,
only 5%%% survived,
the same average as in other countries.
So I am asking you
if a statesman has the right,
even if he is a Frenchman
and a great patriot,
to make such decisions
concerning other human beings?
It was a tragic and dramatic situation,
in which one had to make the choice
which would save
the most human lives possible.
I was brought up in a middle-class family.
I went to Pasteur High School,
but for me, being Jewish wasn't an issue,
as we weren't religious.
And when I found out through others
that I was Jewish,
at first, I felt extremely sad
to be rejected by my community
and this country I loved,
not because I was born here,
but because I loved the history.
Then I took an interest in Jews.
I think that discussing statistics
in such a situation is impossible.
The fact that the French government
agreed to turn in French nationals,
and even people to whom France
had traditionally granted asylum,
proves that the government
wasn't worthy of its country,
and of all that we loved
and respected about France.
France is the only country in all Europe
whose government collaborated.
Others signed an armistice or surrendered,
but France was the only country
to have collaborated and voted laws
which were even more racist
than the Nuremberg Laws,
as the French racist criteria
were even more demanding
than the German racist criteria.
It's not something to be proud of.
I understand that history books
only present the positive side,
but historically speaking, that's wrong.
I was arrested for belonging to F.T.P.
I was arrested during an armed campaign.
-When you were 16 years old?
-I was 16, going on 17.
I was arrested by the French police,
and though I wasn't tortured,
I was interrogated for 18 days
in a rather physical manner.
I spent one year in a French prison.
In prison, I saw seven
of my fellow group members gunned down,
by squads of French policemen.
And I was given over to the S.S.,
with the other prison inmates,
on July 2, 1944,
by the French penitentiary administration,
the only one in Europe that stooped so low
as to give the Germans every inmate,
bound hand and foot.
I was deported on the "train of death,"
thus named because it sat for two months
being shot at by the English
who didn't know who was in it.
The train arrived in Dachau on the 27th.
That's when I found out
that my parents were there.
I hadn't seen my parents in four years,
and I was told they'd been deported.
France was full of concentration camps:
Lurs, Argles, Rivesaltes,
Fortbarreau, Drancy,
and many others.
Along with the Jews,
there were Spanish Republicans,
Freemasons and Gypsies.
And all these people were delivered
to the Germans upon their request.
The people who had participated in
these persecutions were large in number,
not to mention
those who participated indirectly,
for their own personal reasons,
to be rid of their competitors, etc.
Out of 130 letters of denunciation
at the Jewish Questions Committee,
at least half were written by doctors
who were informing the Gestapo
or the Jewish Questions Committee
against such and so
who was in direct competition with them.
One fine summer day, the Paris police,
under the supervision of the S.S.
and the Gestapo in occupied lands,
organized a day of Jewish arrests
in the capital.
This day was henceforth known
as the Rafle du Vel d'Hiv.
At that time,
the Germans had only planned on arresting
people over 16 years of age.
They weren't going to arrest children.
Yet the Paris police,
which organized July 16
with such enthusiasm that they earned
the praise of the Germans,
began arresting children.
So there were these 4,051 children
sitting in the Vlodrome d'Hiver,
crying and wetting their pants.
They caused the social workers,
mostly Quakers or Protestant women,
very serious problems.
As the Germans hadn't planned
they first deported the parents
to camps in France,
hence separating the children
from their parents,
while waiting for a decision.
Eventually, Eichmann...
No, it was Rthke,
Eichmann's representative,
who sent a telegram to Berlin
to ask what should be done
with these children.
While they were waiting,
Laval is reported to have said,
"The children must be deported, too."
This appears in a telegram from Danneker,
who was based in France.
This telegram can be
consulted in the C.D.J.C. archives.
In my opinion, there are two things
that prove it's authentic:
firstly, Pastor Beugner's attempt
to convince Laval to protect the children.
According to Beugner,
when he suggested evacuating
the children, possibly to America,
Laval replied, "It doesn't matter.
I'm preventing the disease."
I'm sorry for interrupting
when it's not my turn, sir.
But if these children had seen what I saw,
if they'd seen these poor people,
men and women,
young and old, people of every age,
piled up in these trucks,
shoved in like human cattle,
one on top of the other.
And I knew where they were going.
I knew. There was only one thing to do.
Had they seen this,
they'd have done what I did.
They'd have taken their handkerchiefs,
said to their employees,
"Excuse me. I'll be back in a minute."
And they'd have gone and cried.
Does anti-Semitism still exist in Auvergne?
-What makes you say that?
For example, it's common
to refer to someone as a "Yid" or a "Jew."
-In student circles in Clermont?
-Yes.
Do you think the reason behind this
may be the fact
that the Occupation
isn't discussed enough?
In a big family like mine,
I have seven and a half children,
since the advent of modern times,
a father only has one main concern:
earning money.
There's no family conversation,
no family life,
because it takes time and we need money.
How many of these children survived?
-What was the percentage?
-None of the children made it.
I wasn't the first
to lead an inquiry on the subject
of what happened
to the children in the camps.
And I discovered that they were
immediately gassed to death.
My father-in-law was against repression.
Everyone knows that.
Even after his last meeting,
Pierre Laval's day isn't over.
As the Hytel Matignon falls silent,
the president knows
that tomorrow is a new day to start again
and has clearly defined his objectives:
In my opinion, this work is necessary,
and I will not quit
until France's salvation is assured.
So I ask you to understand
and try to support my work.
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