--- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Not that I don't take Gautam at his word, but Nick > has posted an article > that contradicts his contention that the French > didn't protect French > Jews. Why do you continue to favor Gautam's > statements? > > Also, France today has one of the highest Jewish > populations in Europe, > if not the highest. Wouldn't this suggest that, at > least to some > degree, France is more hospitable to Jews than many > European nations? > > Doug
Actually, I don't think it did. France's record was better than I thought it was, without question. _But_, the article certainly didn't say that France protected its Jews. As Erik pointed out, most of the 80,000 Jews handed in were handed over by the French police. That is a pretty damning statistic, to put it mildly. The articles also seem to argue that aiding the escape of Jews wasn't pursured very harshly. Finally, they also mention the (considerable) freedom of action given the Vichy regime from 1940 to 1942. I'm not saying that France would have done the killing without the defeat - of course not. Eliminationist anti-semitism is a fairly unique German creation that stretches back to Martin Luther. I'm saying that they looked the other way, and I think the articles support that pretty well. With the exception of Denmark, I don't think there was a _single_ country in Western Europe that has much to be proud of in terms of how it handled this situation. Poland, as Nick correctly points out, the saddest case, had _one-third_ of its population killed by the Nazis. France did not exactly have to deal with that sort of oppression. I will freely admit that, based on Nick's sources, France's record was better than I thought - I think that any honest reading of those same sources would also say that the kindest thing you could say about that record is abysmal. Gautam __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
