generalspeaking

Historical Footnotes

Amazing, but perhaps not entirely, what time and the discovery of new evidence reveals about historical figures. Post-conflict of a world order that embroiled countries in a wide-ranging and brutal conflict that consumed the international community, there are always avowals of innocence of intent. Of people in power who claim to have been powerless to prevent or to mitigate events that destroyed peoples' lives. And where even a hint of exculpation from guilt ensued, the benefit of the doubt was extended.

Like those who believe Pope Pius XII failed in his moral and spiritual duty to do everything in his power to denounce Nazi Germany in its determination to destroy Europe's Jews, while others, far more forgiving, claim him to have done what he could, under the circumstances. Like country after country that refused to admit Jewish orphans to save them from the death camps, and who turned away desperate shiploads of Jewish refugees fleeing death, claiming it was the temper of the times that infected them.

Now a newly-uncovered document has put the lie to the myth that Marshall Petain, chief-in-state of Vichy France during the German occupation, did his compassionate utmost to succor the Jews of France and keep them from deportation to death camps. He it was who struck down a forgiving detail that would have exempted descendants of Jews born in France or naturalized before 1800 to be spared internment.

All French Jews were to be incarcerated in internment camps like Drancy and deported for the death camps and the crematoria. Marshal Petain's virulent anti-Semitism was not widely enough shared by the French, many of whom undertook on their own initiative to ensure the survival of French Jews. Reminding us that history itself is not static, but lives and thrives on the messages it continues to deliver.

In February 2009, France's top judicial authority recognized and deplored the French government's responsibility for the deportation of French Jews during World War II. It took a half-century before the country felt it could and would acknowledge its dreadful failure to protect its own under its vaunted banner of freedom and equality.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Human Fallibility, Societal Failures

posted by Pieface @ Monday, October 04, 2010