Les Justes

Question. Compare and contrast life in a monarchy and a republic. Well no I’m not a PPE student so you won’t get an authoritative answer. But I would put one thing on the list. The treatment of dead national heroes.

Yeah I mean if you’re in a monarchy it’s simple. Edward 1 and keep counting, Edward 2, Edward 3……. switch to George 1, George 2, George 3, throw in a brace of Charlies and you have your national heroes. The hyper productive French kept things simple: Louis 1, Louis 2, Louis 3…….. What’s the name of the new prince?….. Louis. What a surprise. I bet they got exited for lack of imagination over first names rather than problems with fruit cake. How could an imaginative nation like France be asked to bow and scrape to a Louis from now to eternity.

But in a republic it is not so simple. The national heroes are no longer chosen by divine right but by mere mortals here below. It’s not so easy to decide who is great and who isn’t. Nobody is perfect and nobody is all bad. Whenever France gives somebody recognition as a national hero there is considerable discussion as to whether it is merited. The individual’s ashes get transferred to the Pantheon in Paris. The last guy to go in was Alexandre Dumas in 2002.

I have to say that my connexion with le Pantheon is not exactly what les citoyens de brumaire planned. It’s a great place to find a parking spot near to the Latin Quarter. Leading from la place du Pantheon there is a wonderful little street called Rue de la Montagne saint Généviève. It winds down the hill, has some fine old buildings and lots of fun restaurants. Hence my visits to the area.

But Chirac had neither restaurants nor parking spots on his mind as he strolled over to le Pantheon yesterday. No citizen Jacques was looking to celebrate the contribution to the French nation of great citizens, les ‘Justes’.

However much time you spend in France you will find discussions about World War 2 heavy going. I only ever broach it with people I know intimately and even so the subject gets changed quickly. You can spend a year in Vichy and never see anything in relation to the event that has made it world renowned. The last time I looked, the guide Michelin didn’t even mention that it had been the capital of France . Nobody talks about the war but in the subconscious its present all the time. Barely a week goes by without one of the shameful events of history, Vel d’hiver, Auschwitz, Petain, Laval, Pithiviers cropping up in the media. No it’s a bleak part of our history and everybody knows it. France was the only occupied country that sent Jews to the concentration camps of its own volition.

Until Chirac the official line was that Vichy wasn’t France. Of course it’s an understandable point of view. The millions of refugees fleeing on the roads of France in front of the advancing Nazi armies hardly made a carefully considered choice to put Pétain and Laval in power. Nevertheless they didn’t resist it too much either and it was splitting hairs not to stand up to the issue. To his credit Chirac was the first president to accept that France was fully responsible for its shameful deeds.

So what was Jacques up to in the Pantheon yesterday? Well he was there to celebrate all the 2,725 admirable citizens, that helped the Jews during the Second World War, ‘Les Justes’ and who have collectively entered le Pantheon. They did it by hiding people, counterfeiting documents, smuggling people over the border, all at extreme personal danger. If France was the only country to volunteer up its Jews for the concentration camps it was also the occupied country that preserved the highest percentage (75%) of its Jewish population.

So I’m not proud of my adopted country for what it did in WW2. But thank you Jacques for pointing out that there was good mixed in with the bad. Given the opportunity would I be a Juste, or would I turn my back? How about you?