generalspeaking

The Banality Of Evil

Poor France, it is under attack by dint of its 20th Century history during the Second World War as a Third Reich-collaborationist government by the Petainist government whom most French citizens detested, and it is embattled by claims levelled by the grandson of one of the Petain government's chief functionaries who aided in the removal of French Jews.

France has always had an unfortunate relationship with its Jewish population. In that respect, however, little different from most other European countries, and far better than east European nations.

Still it does rankle, like prickly burrs somehow stuck under one's underclothing, never permitting one to sit comfortably and look dignified through the process of attempting, in public, to discreetly extract those burrs while carrying on a civil conversation. The conversation is anything but civil at the moment, with denials from every corner of the allegations levelled by Alexandre Jardin through his legacy accounting of his grandfather Jean Jardin, chief of staff to Pierre Laval, prime minister of Vichy France.

France has never been comfortable in contemplation of its war-time compliance thanks to Marshal Petain, with Nazi Germany's occupation of the country.

"France is a curious country. You can talk about anything here: about pedophilia, about the most shameful passions, but not about our families' dishonour during the Second World War - because that particular past just won't pass. Especially if you argue that to have taken part in the worst atrocities of the Nazi occupation one didn't necessarily have to be a monster." Author, Alexandre Jardin

Aiding in the mass extermination of a signal portion of Franc's population who just happened to be Jews is not a nice topic of conversation in polite company. Best to simply ignore it. The past, after all, is the past.

And France currently feels it has a special obligation to its Jews. It took great moral umbrage when, on a visit to France, former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and later Ehud Olmert and Benyamin Netanyahu, issued pointed invitations to French Jews to remove themselves to Israel, where they would be protected from the growing incidence of anti-Semitic attacks in France. And just incidentally help to increase the Jewish presence in the State of Israel.

Even Mr. Jardin's own family has condemned him for writing his revelatory book claiming his grandfather to have been quite involved in the arrest and deportation of Jews. "It took me a while to realize that nothing is signed by a chairman of the board that didn't pass through his chief of staff", he wrote. Historians have their doubts about Mr. Jardin's nomination of his grandfather as chief enabler of the transport of French Jews to death camps and the chimneys of the crematoria.

But Mr. Jardin is adamant. He will not be swayed. He knows of a certainty what is obvious to him. Despite the social and familial pressures he is under he remains unswayed and will not renounce what he has written. His book has given him notoriety, but he regrets nothing other than to state his regret at the "blindness of my family and our whole nation", responding to the contents of his book which "evokes the guilt of the upright, morally endowed people who collaborated with Nazism and who, definitely, allowed the extermination of the Jews."

"I have wondered how a perfectly decent man like him, belonging to a society of perfectly decent people, could aid the horror.
"To burn down a synagogue and liquidate a few Jews, all you need is a handful of violent sadists. But to perpetrate this on a large scale, a moral discourse must be used of a sort that mobilizes a great many decent people, who will be even more efficient.
"My grandfather, a man steeped in Christianity, was one of those people."

And France still does not recognize nor does it admit its portion in the history relating to the Holocaust. Only in 1962 did school curriculum address the Second World War, and the related textbooks barely make mention of the Holocaust; too depressing, distressing, embarrassing for young Frenchmen. And certainly with the preponderance of immigrants from Muslim backgrounds, far too socially inconvenient.

No French leader had given public acknowledgement of the country's role in deporting Jews to the Nazi death camps stationed around Europe. Until Jacques Chirac as president in 1995 succumbed to the issuance of a public apology. Now, can we all set this aside for good?
Not, it seems, if Alexandre Jardin has anything to say and write about it.

Public discourse anyone?

Labels: Human Fallibility, Political Realities, Societal Failures

posted by Pieface @ Monday, January 24, 2011