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…
A glance at the current best-seller list in France reminds us that not only will we always have Paris, we will also always have Vichy. Eric Zemmour’s “Le France Suicide” has just elbowed aside Valérie Trierweiler’s memoir of her (short) time as the partner of President François Hollande, “Merci Pour Ce Moment,” as the country’s…
The 1940, Nazi invasion of France turned that country’s musical scene into a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. “Music in Paris During the Occupation,”) a book recently released in France, allows readers to draw conclusions about how music world celebrities behaved in difficult times. Edited by Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon,…
After a long battle with cancer, the French Jewish novelist and essayist Viviane Forrester died in April at the age of 87. Not everyone mourned her death: Neither the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, more commonly known under the acronym CRIF, or the Tribune Juive marked her passing. But most everyone, including her…
Confronted by what it considers the existential threat of communism, convinced that Christianity and nationalism are one and the same, and compelled by self-interest to place social order above political liberty: Welcome to the world of the Catholic Church in Argentina during the “dirty war.” But most French Catholics during the “dark years” of 1940–1944…
Hunting Down the Jews: Vichy, the Nazis and Mafia Collaborators in Provence 1942–1944 By Isaac Levendel and Bernard Weisz Enigma Books, 340 pages, $24 In the wine region of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in Provence, Château de la Gardine is an esteemed name, as is that of the proprietor who brought it to prominence, Gaston Brunel. Even today,…
The last great résistant standing in France, Raymond Aubrac, died on April 10. He was 97. With his passing, France has lost a political and moral figure who helped redeem the nation’s past and stood witness to its present. At the same time, France’s Jews have lost one of their own who courageously, though not…
It can take 70 years for some French trains to run on time. And even then, you can’t rely on them. In February, French author Alain Lipietz reacted with scorn to the announcement that the SNCF, the French national railroad, intends to open its archives for the period of 1939–1945. He declared that the SNCF…
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