Few people are aware of the involvement of the French Vichy State in the Holocaust during WW II. Yet, as the excerpt below from an excellent article by Michael Curtis shows, they were tainted to say the very least:
The recent french film, "Sarah's Key," released in 2010, and based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, portrayed accurately the willing participation during World War II of the French Vichy State, its authorities and police in facilitating the Holocaust. The book and the film presented a harrowing picture of the single darkest chapter in the infamous treatment of Jews in France during the World War II: La Rafle (The Raid), the round up euphemistically code-named.
Operation Spring Breeze (Opération Vent Printanier), which took place on July 16-17, 1942. During those two days the French police, acting on the basis of lists they themselves had drawn up, arrested 13,152 Jewish men, women, and children living in Paris. Childless couples and single people were interned in Drancy, a suburb of Paris, which was equipped with watchtowers and barbed wire fences, and which served during the war as a transit point for the deportation of more than 67,000 Jews to their death.
In view of a recent poll that revealed that 42% of French people today did not know of Vel d'Hiv event, nor did 60% of the youth between the ages of 18 to 24, his words should be heeded. In view of the availability of the novel Sarah's Key, and the film based on it, the forthright speeches of two French presidents, and several TV documentaries on the France during World War II, it is surprising that such a large proportion of the French population confessed to be unaware of the Vel d'hiv atrocity.
It is disconcerting to read the results of a survey by the IPO in March 2012 of the degree of antisemitism in ten European countries. In response to the question if "Jews still talk too much of about happened to them in the Holocaust," the positive answer ranged from 63% in Hungary and 53% in Poland to 24% in Britain.
The uniqueness of the Holocaust and the evils associated with it cannot be forgotten. One should reject the argument that "too much attention to the Holocaust would cause political problems." One should expose and refute those such as Pat Buchanan, who in his article spoke of the "so-called Holocaust survivor syndrome, group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics."
François Hollande has shown the right way to deal with revisionism of this kind. This involves two things. One is to highlight the singularity of the Holocaust, the attempt to eliminate all the Jews on the European continent. The other is to seek to control the virus of antisemitism, regrettably still active in France as elsewhere, and to unmask and discredit those who manifest the intolerance and fanaticism induced by it. No future political leader fifty years from now will then have to apologize, as President Hollande has nobly done, for past acts of "blindness, stupidity, lies, and hatred."
Corrie Ten Boom knew first hand how one’s own government could turn against the Jews. In fact, statistics show that while there were no extermination camps in the Netherlands, the percentage of Jews from the Netherlands murdered by the Germans during WW II was higher than any other Western European Country. To learn about Corrie’s story, read her book, THE HIDING PLACE, or take a virtual tour of her home, which is now a museum in Ha’arlem,
Holland, by going to www.tenboom.com www.tenboom.com. We, like Corrie, can be heroes in our way by, like her family, praying for the peace of Jerusalem as we are advised in Ps. 122:6. The Ten Booms did just that for 100 years prior to WW II, and when the time came they took the next step and directly helped the Jews. They were, truly, WW II heroes!
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