The Sorrow and the Pity Page #9

the government was practicing a policy,

which they themselves called

collaboration with the enemy.

Slowly but surely,

people began to open their eyes,

and change their minds.

But this propaganda

still won over many new converts.

You know as well as I do

that anti-Semitism and Anglophobia

are never hard to stir up in France.

Even if reactions to such things

are dormant or stifled,

all it takes is one event, one incident,

one international crisis

or one Dreyfus affair,

for feelings we thought long gone

to suddenly re-emerge in full force,

for beliefs we thought dead

to be simply dormant.

Edouard Drumont was the first in France

to examine the Jewish question.

The institute of Jewish Questions

celebrates his memory today.

Mr. Laville has agreed to say a few words.

Out of 100 Frenchmen of old stock,

at least 90 are pure white,

free of any other racial mixture.

This isn't true of the Jews.

The Jews are born of a mixture

which dates back thousands of years,

between aryans, Mongols and Negroes.

Therefore, Jews have unique faces,

bodies, attitudes and gestures.

It is reassuring to see

that the public is interested

in studying the characteristics presented

in the morphological section

of "Jews and France."

In October '40,

when I came home on leave,

I heard that a good friend of mine,

a teacher,

wasn't allowed to keep teaching that fall,

because his mother was Jewish,

making him half-Jewish.

I'd met Jews before,

but I treated them

the same as Catholics, Protestants,

or people with no religion in particular.

It wasn't a revolution yet,

but it did give me food for thought.

-Did you have any Jewish teachers?

-Let me see...

We did have one.

Yes, he was fired.

The same old story.

No one ever told us anything.

Listen, I think we should

make a little nuance here.

I think that when you take cases

like this teacher we mentioned,

I think that we tried,

to the best of our ability,

to get these people some work

tutoring and so forth.

We did that for another colleague, too.

Like you say, it wasn't much,

but we did have sympathy for them.

Did you really try?

Did every single teacher in Clermont

give in their resignation?

No way. You've no idea

what the mentality was like back then.

collective resignation? Come on!

In 1940, Vichy came out

with the Jewish decrees.

In the small ads of Le Moniteur,

a local merchant announced

that he was 100%%% pure French.

Sir, are you Marius?

Yes, I'm Marius.

You're weighed down with medals.

I fought in World War l.

-They're all medals from WW l?

-That's right.

You must be a very brave man.

I followed the others. I did my duty.

When France was demobilized,

when France was defeated in the 2nd war,

how did you react?

We certainly weren't very happy.

s veterans of World War l,

the defeat affected us deeply.

Were there many Jewish stores?

Yes, there were.

So you must have seen a lot?

You could say that.

They all packed up their bags and left.

They went into exile.

and there weren't any arrests?

There were arrests everywhere.

and you saw them?

Yes, unfortunately.

Tell me, when what were called

"the Jewish decrees" came out,

apparently you took out an ad.

That's correct.

It was an ad in Le Moniteur.

You're certainly well-informed.

You see, sir, we were four brothers.

It was the solution I found,

as people thought we were Jews.

My name, Klein, sounds quite Jewish.

But I'm a Catholic.

and this was a real source of concern.

I had some problems because of that.

Four of my brothers fought in the war.

It was important that I tell people

that I am really French.

In other words, you wanted

your clients to know you weren't Jewish.

That is correct.

Why?

Because some said I was Jewish.

Jews were being arrested,

and they said we were Jewish.

Do you see?

I couldn't very well allow myself

to be labeled as a Jew since I'm a Catholic.

So that's why, as you said,

I took out an ad.

Four of my brothers fought in the war.

One was killed.

-The other three were imprisoned.

-But Jews fought in World War l, too.

That's true. I realize that.

I've never been a racist.

Jewish or Mahometan,

all that mattered to me

was that the man did his duty,

in which case,

he was as French as the rest of us.

You understand?

You weren't high on the priority list

of those persecuted by Hitler's regime.

But did you know any Jews,

Communists, or Freemasons who were?

I met more Jews than I'll ever meet again.

I had two girls working at the pharmacy,

who were considered to be evil

just because they were Jewish.

One was the daughter of an amazing man,

a Parisian polytechnician.

She was a pretty amazing girl herself.

The other was the daughter of Hirsch,

a colleague in Strasbourg.

Nobody wanted anything

to do with these girls.

He had warned every pharmacy

in Clermont not to hire these girls.

-Who is "he?"

-The pharmacy inspector.

The movie industry gave them a chance

to steal billions of francs.

Tannenzaft, better known as Nathan,

who in the eyes of the world,

was the ultimate symbol of French cinema,

has cost the public

nearly 700,000,000 francs.

Mr. Pierre Mends-France, did you enjoy

going to the movies back then?

I went to the movies because I enjoyed it,

but I had yet another reason,

as I had quickly discovered

that movie houses provided a refuge

which was both fun and comfortable,

you could sit down in a movie theater

at 3:
00 in the afternoon,

and stay there in the darkness

for hours on end,

without anyone ever seeing you.

It was a great hiding place.

In many pre-war French movies,

there were Jewish actors

or Jewish directors.

and in the credits of these movies,

the Jewish names had been erased.

Today World News was able to film

a part of the trial

of the Jew Tannenzaft, Bernard Nathan.

Our presence clearly disturbed the accused

who wanted his privacy.

He raises an objection,

but is overruled by the court.

Go away. Leave me alone.

This is a tragedy, not a comedy!

The Germans were discreet about it,

but they wanted to see their movies.

There were operettas.

There were the first movies in color.

Some, like La Ville Dore,

weren't propaganda, others were.

Films like Le Juif Suss

were pure propaganda.

and the thing that I found most revolting

was that they weren't

only German productions,

which would have been understandable

since they had occupied us,

but that they were made with the blessing

of the French authorities,

on behalf of French organizations,

dubbed by French actors.

The events in this film

are based on historical fact.

t first, movie-goers probably thought

these movies were

just like any other German movie.

But people very quickly began to realize

that it was just typical propaganda,

in the worst sense of the word.

This led to a kind of strike among viewers.

Even those who weren't

especially interested in the Free French,

who had gotten into the habit

of seeing normal German movies,

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