CFD: Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 09:09:21 -0400
From: charles zelden
Subject: CFD: Weisberg, _Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France_
[ed. note: The following is a CFD, a 'call for discussion', which is
intended to promote awareness of this book and its subject matter.
It is not meant to substitute for a forthcoming H-Law review which
will make a more formal presentation. My thanks to Mr. Wiesenbach
for his willingness to take on this task. CZ]
________________________________________________________________________
"Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France" 'reviewed' by Roger Wiesenbach,
moderator of the Law-France discussion list, for H-LAW
Richard H. Weisberg, _Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France_, New York
University Press, New York, 1996 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH 1996
447 pp. Cloth $45.00: ISBN 0-8147-9302-9
Professor Weisberg tosses us a real hot potato which he dubs the
"French Catholic hermeneutic", or alternatively the "Vichy hermeneutic",
to explain why the French legal establishment acted as it did toward
the Jews on its territory during the Vichy years. This posits
that the magistrates, lawyers, academics and commentators
applied a particular fuzzy-think to distort reality in order to justify
the view that 'talmudic law' made Jews unassimilable, that they obeyed
a tradition incompatible with French republican legal principles. Thus
followed the denial of legal equality and due process of law, the
statutes being applied in a very rigorous but myopic manner to define,
exclude and martyrize the maximum of an entire class of humanity.
You'll have to read the book to properly appreciate his explanations.
He portrays this hermeneutic as specifically French - the Italian
'catholicism' deserves a separate, comparitive study. And it was a
general attitude among jurists - not just the catholic right, but also
pre-war liberals, anti-papists and atheists.
Countering this is the 'positivist' approach. Simply stated, the blame
is assigned to the institution and not to individuals. These jurists
were supposedly left with no choice but to confine themselves to a
narrow interpretation of statutes decreed from above. Daniele Lochak
presents a nuanced version of this notion, explaining it as tradition
but questioning its validity. You may read it in French at:
http://mediatheque.ircam.fr/~mf/anti-rev/textes/Lochak89a/
The counter-argument of Weisberg is that in many instances these
jurists could and did resist encroachments on their independence and
that they actually had wide latitude in resisting these statutes.
The myth that the French were forced by the Germans to pursue an
antisemitic policy has already been properly buried by Paxton, et al.
The assertion that they weren't informed of what was really happening
to the Jews has yet to be debated, though enough evidence exists to
demonstrate the contrary.
At the same time we shouldn't forget the 40,000 who instinctively took
up the resistance, and those of the protestant village of Chambon sur
Lignon who provided shelter to the Jews, not agonising over theology or
whether this might bring earthly rewards or passage to heaven. And
there were the mullahs of North Africa who ordered their faithful not
to take part with the French in the 'braderie' of Jewish property, that
being beneath the dignity of a good Moslem.
The Weisberg exposition is no doubt hard for Frenchmen to consider -
there has been no real discussion in the French media of the
responsibility of jurists under Vichy, though there was a symposium
held in 1994 on "Juger sous Vichy" and another in 1996 on "Le Droit
antisemite de Vichy" - see URLs at http://www.amgot.org/weisberg.htm.
It can be too easily dismissed as so much more frog-bashing by the
Anglo-Saxons. Publications such as the 'Revue du droit public' from
the Vichy years are missing from the depository libraries. And now
the Front National is pushing for equal exposure in the libraries of
the jurisdictions where they gain control. The negationist line
becomes the fashion.
The time is ripe for a definitive study of this phenomenon, and events
in the French press may inadvertently help to keep the question alive.
The 24th of January 1997 edition of Liberation headlined "Vichy aux
assises!" on the decision to try Maurice Papon for war crimes. This
former government minister has spoken of a plot, including "foreigners
trying to implicate France in genocide".
The statement of President Jacques Chirac on 16 July 1995 recognising
the responsibility of "l'Etat francais" [which?] in the antisemitic
persecutions was hailed by the press as the definitive gesture,
presumably nothing more need be said on the matter. Is France
absolved, just like after a visit to the confessional? But there are
nagging loose ends, such as the spoliation of Jewish property,
revelations of which can poison the climate for some time. How can
this matter of 'memoire' be finally resolved? Can a people recall for
all eternity their time of shame and yet develop a new sense of dignity?
To really understand how this 'hermeneutic' (or whatever it is) works,
it's necessary to get inside the skin of these jurists. Weisberg
relates how Paris Bar Association head Jacques Charpentier wrote after
the war about the climate of 'bazaar' that these immigrant lawyers
brought to the profession. No doubt there were those who stood out
with their annoying manners, who undertook frivolous cases with overly-
clever arguments. Being of a people who have the right to talk back
to their Maker, to tell Him how to run things, imagine how they might
treat a mere judge!
But how can the "dessicated cartesianism", as Weisberg puts it, pass
from the stated reasons for these statutes - eliminate unpatriotic
influence from public policy, restrain blackmarketeers, etc. - to the
destitution of physicians and bagel makers? Any civil rights advocate
can tell you how measures of exception, justified to combat
'undesireables', are then turned against envied rivals and bothersome
reformers, and so this served as an excuse to exclude and destroy the
most august of Jewish attorneys.
This is mission-creep gone mad: one's legal philosophy or proclivity to
stock-market manipulation is determined by his grandparents' roots or
whether he has been circumcised.
Much can and should be assembled for a true presentation of the Talmud
(the original hypertext document!) before the bigots saturate the Web's
search-engines. In France for example, there was the great Sanhedrin
of 1806 which was to bring Talmudic law into line with republican law;
from 1860 the Alliance Israelite Universelle has been preaching the
French republican spirit as being compatible with Jewish beliefs.
http://www.col.fr/aiu/. To see a bigot's compendium of "What world
famous men said about the Jews", statements attributed to, among
others, the sainted Benjamin Franklin as well as Napoleon and de
Gaulle, refer to http://www.amgot.org/talmguid.htm.
It is amazing to see how highly-educated people can discuss with
clarity matters of high technicity one moment, then when a moral
dilemma presents itself, their brain cells no longer register, or they
transform the issue into something innocuous. It's like trying to
convince them of the existence of gas chambers - they come away with
the idea that you're complaining about the showers, logical to their
mind "since the Jews expect a higher level of comfort".
Another manifestation of this 'cecite' is how a people or individuals
can become 'invisible' to the press and their fellow man when they
become the object of injustice from on high. It is no longer hypocrisy
but a natural working of the mind. The scam works because it's not
challenged by the moral authorities (Church, State, Sorbonne).
Joseph Barthelemy, prewar liberal and minister of justice during a
critical period of Vichy rule, gets ample treatment by Weisberg. Maybe
enough for you to decide what made him tick. One historian proposes as
explanation the "River Kwai syndrome", where the official becomes so
taken up with his project that he loses sight of right and wrong.
Weisberg concentrates on the judicial aspect of Vichy law, but other
organs of this repressive system also deserve attention - and give
insight into the general attitude. It was the norm for guards at
detention centers to take advantage of their wards, the appalling
conditions of nutrition and hygiene couldn't be excused by lack of
resources. A forensic examiner in the non-occupied zone could state
that a group of 100 men, women and children died of a "collective
heart attack", and the Parquet didn't question this.
But we should also be aware of surprising contradictions in the image
of life under Vichy - which negationists will certainly exploit: there
were 40,000 Jews living openly in Paris at the time of the Liberation,
wearing the yellow Star of David. Tribunals could be generous to
Jewish tenants in granting rent-reductions due to their loss of
livelihood. The Paris bar did in fact refuse to take an oath to Petain.
To offer an overall view of Weisberg's book, his very descriptive
'table of contents' is provided at http://www.amgot.org/weis_toc.htm.
More material of benefit to students, lay readers, and even
professionals of history will be added as time goes by, accessible from
http://www.amgot.org/weisberg.htm.
Hopefully Weisberg's 14 years of toil will have some utilitarian value,
particularly to identify, understand and deal with this malady of
justice, wherever it may occur now or in the future. In any case it
shows the fragility of justice, especially in a country which considers
itself the finest flower of civilisation. It was not simply another
wrong committed in wartime.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Charles Zelden Book Review Editor
Legal Studies Program H-Law
Liberal Arts Department
Nova Southeastern University zelden@polaris.acast.nova.edu
3301 College Ave Phone: (800) 338-4723 x8218
Ft Lauderdale FL, 33314 Fax: (954) 262-3931
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Addendum:
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 09:13:52 -0400
From: charles zelden
Subject: Re: CFD: _Vichy law and the Holocaust in France_
On April 14: Roger Wiesenbach writes:
France's Antenne 2 featured on "Bouillon de Culture" (the leading
bibliophile program on TV) Friday evening, the 11th of April, the
former justice minister (1981-1986), Robert Badinter, on his just-
released book "Une Antisemisme ordinaire, Vichy et les avocats juifs,
1940-1944", Fayard, 110 FRF soft-cover.
Mr. Badinter had previously participated in the symposium " Le Droit
antisemite de Vichy" in 1996 with his paper "Peut-on etre avocat
lorsqu'on est juif en 1940-1944 ?", a document which we may be able to
put on-line.
On the TV program he succeeded in saying that there had been a discrete
"antisemitism traditionnelle" in the legal community, that law books
treated the Jewish statutes as any other and therefore 'validated'
them, that there was no real sign of protest in the many documents
which he studied, that de Gaulle and his aids avoided mention of the
Jews so as not to risk his legitimacy with the French people...
The host, Bernard Pivot, had no probing or knowledgeable questions on
this subject, just exclaiming in the manner of Larry King. He broke
off the talk on Vichy after 15 minutes (of the one-hour program) to go
on to other aspects of Badinter's distinguished career: defending
murderers, abolishing the death penalty, setting the tone for the
Conseil Constitutionnel (of which he was president from 1986), his
friendship with Mitterrand...
This program will probably be repeated during the week on TV5, which is
available in North America by satellite and cable.
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