The State Versus The Jews By Laurent Joly Grasset, 368 pages, 20,90 € In 1994, the French historians Henry Rousso and Éric Conan published “Vichy, un Passé Qui ne Passe pas.” While titled “Vichy: The Ever-Present Past” in the excellent American translation, the phrase nevertheless has a slightly different resonance in the original French. The…
(JTA) — Robert Faurisson, a former French academic whose denial of the Holocaust has inspired many claims that the genocide did not happen, died in his hometown of Vichy. He was 89. British-born Faurisson was a staunch defender of Marshal Philippe Petain, the French leader who collaborated with Nazi occupiers of the country during World…
They met in the Vichy-run Gurs concentration camp, in southwestern France. It was the winter of 1940. She was 16, he was 19. “There were many artists imprisoned in Gurs,” Hanne Liebmann reflects today, in her Queens home. “We had a cultural life there, despite the circumstances. They would organize concerts.” Hanne Hirsch had been…
Visiting the new Louis Vuitton exhibit “Volez, Voguez, Voyagez”, I was struck by the way the exhibit valorizes Mr. Louis Vuitton, positioning his progress as parallel to many great technological innovations like the car and airplane. Louis Vuitton’s personal history is mythologized at the exhibit in service of the brand, with the story of the…
Leftist French leader Jean Luc Mélenchon has said France bears no responsibility for the actions of the pro-Nazi Vichy government during the Holocaust, according to Haaretz — echoing the remarks of far right wing leader Marine le Pen. Mélenchon rejected President Emmanuel Macron’s assertion on Sunday that France bore responsibility for helping the Nazis roundi up…
In 1931, New York City honored a French war hero with a ticker-tape parade up Broadway. In 1940, that French war hero became leader of the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis. In 2017, there’s still a plaque commemorating his parade in the middle of New York City. Now, New York State Assemblyman Dov…
I was reading the hard news, aka the Zara website. Something caught my eye in the “trend” section: Vichy. Specifically, #vichy. Um. Why, I wondered, is Vichy trending? Does this have anything to do with Marine le Pen and the resurgence of the French far-right? If you go to the “vichy” trend page, what appears…
It is widely known that James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” was not autobiographical. For one thing, the book’s protagonist Leopold Bloom was Jewish, and Joyce was raised as an Irish Catholic. However, in 1940, when Joyce attempted to flee Vichy France to Switzerland during World War II, the Swiss government thought that he was Jewish. More…
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