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The French Connection
Jerusalem Post Magazine June 8, 1979 by Henry H. Weinberg The role played by the French authorities in the deportation or over 80,000 Jews has recently come under renewed scrutiny. Last November, the Paris weekly, L'Express, published a lengthy interview with Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, the "French Eichmann," in which the High Commissioner for Jewish Affairs in Vichy France, now living in Madrid, expressed little regret for his actions and claimed that in Auschwitz "only fleas were gassed." The unusually stormy debate which followed the interview apparently marked the beginning of a long delayed self-examination in a country where collaboration with the Germans in World War II was far from exceptional. The Darquier affair has also revealed that such high Vichy officials as a deputy police commissioner, who outdid the Germans in his eagerness to round up Jews for deportation, has never been punished and continues to sit on the boards of several major corporations. Serge Klarsfeld, the husband of Beate Klarsfeld, the German woman who has dedicated her life to tracking down Nazis, has written and published a book which will no doubt stimulate the soul-searching process now under way in France. It consists primarily of lists of Jews deported from French soil in the years 1942 to 1944, in over 80 transports. The lists were preserved because, surprisingly, a Jewish communal organization, the ''Union Generale des Israelites de France," was given one of the four copies meticulously typed for each transport that left the transit camp of Drancy. Klarsfeld provides an explanatory note for each list, as well as occasional eye-witness accounts and documents. The correspondence from the German files shows that even before the infamous mass round-up of Paris Jewry—with the help of the French police— on July 16-17, 1942, Eichmann's deputy in Paris, Dannecker, who is still alive and free in Germany, was active in speeding up the pace of deportations. THE LIST for transport no. 20 (August, 1942) is one of the most heart-rending documents in the book. Like the others, it gives the dates of birth of the deportees; however, this was the first transport deporting hundreds of children under the age of 12, who were separated from their parents. The eye-witness account that accompanies the list describes the suffering of the children at Drancy, prior to the departure of the trains. Hungry, unwashed, and suffering from diarrhoea, they cried incessantly, calling for their parents. Strangely, however, it is the cold bureaucratic list, with its stark statistical data, that spells out the extent of the horrible crime. The first transports in 1942 were composed of foreign-born Jews, mostly Ost-Juden, who emigrated to France in the '20s and '30s. It is noteworthy that the "Consistoire central," representing mainly i well-established French-born Jews, issued a statement in August, 1942, protesting the mistreatment of their foreign-born coreligionists. However, in their protest addressed to Petain, the leaders of the Consistoire were careful to stress that their letter was motivated by the fact that they were "conscious of the duty of religious solidarity which is incumbent" upon them. A few months later, the trains to Auschwitz were carrying French-born Jews as well. Some of the statistics compiled by Klarsfeld reveal that among the foreign-born Jews deported from France were several thousand Sephardim from Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, over 50 Palestinian Jews, 10 Americans and hundreds from over 70 other countries — attracted no doubt, by the glitter of Paris. The appendix contains a list of officials, some of them French, who remain unpunished. To this indirect accusation against a country which has yet to come to grips with an ugly chapter in its recent past, Serge Klarsfeld adds the comment that whereas the Dutch and Belgian governments undertook the publication of similar lists, he was forced to finance publication of the French Jists himself. This and other signs of reticence are consistent with the fact that, unlike other European television networks, all three government-controlled channels in France found various pretexts for not showing the Holocaust TV series. Only strong public pressure generated by the Dar-quier affair persuaded the authorities to show it. One wonders how long the French television viewer will have to wait for the screening of the world-acclaimed film on occupied France, The Sorrow and the Pity. EDITED BY Serge Klarsfeld, The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania contains two studies, hastily translated from French, aimed at countering "the propagandists who seek to rehabilitate Nazism" by claiming that the gas chambers never existed and that the number of Jewish victims has been greatly exaggerated. The first study, by Dr. Joseph Billig, concentrates on evidence showing the stages which led up to the "final solution." The author traces the steps in the development of the SD, SS, Sipo, Gestapo and Eichmann's infamous IV B4 section. Among others, he details the important roles played in the creation of the SD, SS infrastructure by men like Kurt Lischka and Herbert Hagen, who, after their transfer to Paris in 1940, directed the deportations from France. (Tracked down by Beate Klarsfeld, Lischka and Hagen were recently indicted in a West German court.) Most of the information in the Billig study is not new, but his succinct, scholarly examination of German documents usefully focuses on the attempts of top German leaders to erase the evidence of their crimes. Thus, in a letter acknowledging the receipt of the Korherr statistical report on the "Solution of the European Jewish Question," which gave the number of Jews killed in early 1943, Himmler demanded that the euphemistic reference to the "special treatment of the Jews" be replaced by the more innocent "transportation of Jews out of...." Similarly, a directive originating in Hitler's office indicates great concern over the spreading of rumours by soldiers returning on home leave from the Eastern front, concerning, the mass killing of Jews. In spite of Hitler's boast, the extermination of Jews was considered a state secret. WHEN questioned in Jerusalem on this subject, Eichmann declared that from the end of 1943, the German population knew of the mass murders because "the birds were singing it on the rooftops." The reportedly stunned, and at times anguished, reactions in Germany during the showing of Holocaust provides a commentary on Billig's observation on the war-time attitude of the average German citizen: "It is natural that these macabre and unclear indications were not assimilated by public opinion... It was preferable not to believe in the possibility of the horror." IN THE SECOND half of the book, George Welters, a noted scientist, addresses himself specifically to the attempts to deny the existence of gas chambers and to reduce the number of victims. In response to the growing number of "revisionist" books on the behaviour of the Nazis, the author examines the voluminous evidence, including that of high-ranking SS officers, concerning the construction and operation of the gas chambers. It is bewildering that only 35 years after the crimes were perpetrated, and with many eyewitnesses still alive, there should be a need for proof, when ample evidence is so readily available. The neo-Nazis who dispute these facts will no doubt find a way to brand even the recently recessed aerial photographs of the Auschwitz crematoria as fakes. Both books provide vivid testimony to the remarkable activity of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. Alone, with meagre financial resources, this courageous couple continues to represent the conscience of Europe, where Nazism is again beginning to raise its head. Prof. Weinberg teaches French at Toronto University and is currently spending a sabbatical year in Jerusalem. |
