La Rafle is more than a film, it is a statement that France is finally coming to terms with its wartime past A still from La Rafle. Photograph: Legende Films France is coming to terms with its own role in the Holocaust. In his positive review of the newly released film La Rafle, former president Jacques Chirac, who 15 years ago was the first president to recognise French responsibility in the Shoah, wrote this week: "There is no great nation, no national cohesion, no ability to meet the challenges of the world without memory." The film depicts the Vel d'Hiv roundup which occurred on 16-17 July 1942, a massive action by the Nazis involving over 9,000 police in Paris alone. Over 13,000 French Jews, including more than 4,000 children, were arrested over the two-day period and eventually deported to Auschwitz. Those children included 165 from the little school close to my home in rue des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais, in the heart of Jewish Paris. When the summer holidays came to an end, only two pupils on the school roll turned up when term commenced in October. All the schools in my area have memorials to Jewish victims. The slow process of coming to terms with the deportations of the 76,000 French Jews has a long and complex history. Whether it was the Republic's official policy of laïcité (secularism), a state of denial by a proud occupied country who wanted to portray that all France suffered equally or something more sinister, early memorials to the victims rarely, if ever, mention the Jewishness of the victims. Charles de Gaulle's 1960s memorial on Ile de la Cité to all 200,000 French nationals deported to concentration camps has no mention of the word "Jews" though both citings from Jean-Paul Sartre and a list of camps features. A recent explanatory board has been erected at the entrance explaining the different people deported by the Nazis during the war, including nearly 50% who were Jewish. This is a ministry of defence memorial and the guard at the memorial proudly told me that the new information board "explained all the badges", a reference to the badges used on the prisoners' uniforms in the camps to denote whether someone was Jewish, homosexual, Roma or socialist – a belated acceptance by L'Etat Laïque (secular state) that people were persecuted on the basis of their ethnic, ideological or sexual orientation and not simply as victims of the occupation. So it is no surprise with the lack of references at the ministry of defence site that a separate Shoah museum has been developed 500 metres from the original memorial. The centre is part monument and part museum with western Europe's largest Holocaust documentation and research facility. Inside the courtyard of the centre are the names of the 76,000 victims on walls, restoring some semblance of their individual identity, which starkly contrasts to the De Gaulle memorial. Airport-style security into the memorial and centre is a sad and poignant reminder that antisemitism still exists. The street next to the museum has been in recent years renamed Allées des Justes (naming the recognised Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews); it is important to remember that there were people in France who saved Jews, who did not carry out orders. Since 1995, much has been done by the state to explain and educate about the Shoah and memorialise the victims. France is a proud country and the Occupation and the role of French state institutions including the police and SNCF has been kept quiet until the last decade. In the end, La Rafle is more than a film, it is a statement that France can face her past. • Comments on this article will remain open for 24 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
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