Denunciation during the Occupation

[NormanH]

A programme this week dealt with this sombre topic.

It rather reminded me of Arthur Miller's play 'The Crucible', with people reporting others for trivial or non-existent reasons.

For example a woman reported her husband for having a revolver, then after he was taken away she went off to a Hotel room with her lover who was in fact the real person who

had reported him

http://www.pluzz.fr/denoncer-sous-l-occupation.html

[Clair]

The mind-boggling thing is that rumours of real or imagined denunciations are still being talked about by bitter and spiteful village elders to this day.

It was one of the first things my elderly neighbour told me when we moved here... Who had denounced this one and that one for gain and who had collaborated out of spite for some real or imagined -and long-forgotten- slur.

[Alan Zoff]

It's all to easy to judge people from a different era. Who can say how any of us would have acted if faced with similar circumstances?

[Patf]

Looks interesting Norman - I'll watch it when I've got a bit more time.

I believe it's a subject that the french have only recently started to come to terms with. I once asked an elderly neighbour if the nazis had been in this area and she said a few, and a woman up the road "liked the nazis." She wouldn't enlarge on this.

But I agree with Alan - how would we have behaved if put in the same situation?

[NormanH]

I wouldn't judge them. As I said it is a bit like the behaviour analysed in a play or film (Lacombe Lucien, for example if we stay with WW11) Excep that this was about real cases.

I think it is important to know about it though, since as Clair points out it has thrown such a long shadow over France since.

[pachapapa]

The historically based "Un Village Francais" gives a representative flavour of the period.

For your agenda march 27th the 4th Season commences on France 3 with 12 episodes covering the year 1942.

http://programmes.france3.fr/un-village-francais/?page=accueil

[Hoddy]

I wouldn't presume to judge them; I'm thankful that I have never been in that situation.

I was privileged to meet a man called Ralph Winkler who was the only survivor of an incident at Veyrines de Domme and who had campaigned to have a proper memorial made for his companions who died. This had not been done before because they were Spanish and since then the role of Spanish republicans in the resistance has been more widely acknowledged.

A memorial plaque was unveiled on the bridge at Cenac et St Julien in 2009 to two Spaniards who had been shot there. Remarkably they had found the widow of one of them and she attended the ceremony.

I fear that there are many stories which will never be recorded.

Hoddy

[EmilyA]

Surely the best record of this is still Marcel Ophuls wonderful film Le chagrin et la pitié. We still watch it from time to time and squirm at the guilt, shame and bravado of the testimony. The German officer at the wedding is just unbelievable.

[Balham]

[quote user="NormanH"]( . . . . .  if we stay with WW11)

[/quote]

World War Eleven?

I saw the programe, interesting but a bit creepy. The more I learn the more I change my views. I suppose learning history does that to one though.