French Chirac's Nazi Jew Killer & m

[cd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: French Chirac's Nazi Jew Killer & more of the same

This 1997 AP story we publish as a new trial overtakes France over
French WWII Nazi collaboration, re Maurice Papon. As I write this,
sitting in a region a few kilometers from Pithiviers, where some 100 000
men women and children of Jewish descent were sent by trains from around
the country side and local regions (Chartres, Orleans, etc)  as France
dealt with the final solution in their way. It also may help to explain
the dumb-headedness and indifference or lack of compassion the French
young and old have for the struggle in Burma - and their explicit
collaboration, once again, with fascist aggressors, Slorc, who Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi, compared to Nazi fascists. History needs more than a
correction or witch-hunt ("it is said that Papon is just another
scape-goat, how many more thousands Papon's are still living out their
lives without legal prosecution. There is something very peculiar and
distinctive about the French, and it seemed to come to light again when
Thierry Desmarest, the CEO of TOTAL, at last May's TOTAL annual
shareholder general assembly meeting, flatly denied that TOTAL was
partner to Slorc, or that they had done anything wrong in Burma, on the
contrary, he cited their model social programs which are meant to
whitewash their pipeline project and placate international criticism. If
that was not bad enough, it was even more shocking to hear half the room
of shareholders cheer in roaring applause for Desmarest's contemptuous
rebuke of a litany of charges, including the current trial against
Unocal and TOTAL in Los Angeles. I really felt as though I was part of a
nightmarish parody of a Nazi propaganda rally. It still remains a
haunting reminder that evil and fascism-and racism -  are still very
much alive in France, despite much of the high-sounding obscene
'rhetoric' from Chirac's Presidential office about France as a historic
land of the rights of man. (His May defeat at the hands of the
socialists in part a rejection of that tiresome lofty 'rhetoric', but
most alarmingly also a victory in part for the extreme right of Le Pen's
rival anti-semite faction.) That is to say, today more than ever, there
is something very rotten in France.

As Free Burma activists, we know the truth of the cliche that you can
fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all the
time.

Suu Kyi has labelled Slorc as modern-day Nazi's, and that likens their
collaborators - and those who gave Desmarest a round of thundering
applause last May,  as Nazi-like collaborators. 

Its a shame that France has still not learned its lesson of history but
seems instead tiresomely bent to mock it as if the world did not know
better. They just can't seem to get it right. But as my american friends
say, "Hey, what do you expect, they're French".

Dawn Star
A few miles from Pithiviers, France
Euro-Burmanet    
Worldwide Total Boycott
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/total/

Report: former Chirac deputy oversaw shipment of Jews in 1942

By JOSEPH SCHUMAN
Associated Press Writer

PARIS (AP) - A former deputy of President Jacques Chirac oversaw the
deportation of 1,000 Jews from occupied France to a Nazi death camp in
1942, a magazine reported Saturday.

The Le Point report comes during renewed debate in France over the
pro-German Vichy regime's treatment of Jews during World War II. Last
week,
a French court ordered the trial of a former Vichy official.

German forces deported 75,000 Jews from France to Nazi death camps
during
the Vichy regime. Only 2,500 survived.

Le Point said Michel Junot, a deputy to then-Paris Mayor Chirac from
1977
to 1995, was a Vichy administrator whose responsibility included the
Pithiviers internment camp, 40 miles south of Paris.

In an interview with the magazine, Junot, now 80, admitted to being the
region's deputy prefect under the Vichy regime, but said he ''had no
authority over the camp.''

Citing Vichy documents, including some written by Junot, Le Point said
he
was in charge of ''maintaining order'' over the Sept. 20, 1942, shipment
of
1,000 French and foreign Jews, including 163 children.

''I have the honor of letting you know that I have just been advised
that a
shipment of 1,000 Israelites ... will take place tomorrow,'' Junot wrote
in
a request for additional police to oversee the departure.

Two days later, Junot wrote, ''I had certain fears regarding the
possibility of incidents that could have had repercussions during the
departure. There was nothing, and the greatest calm never ceased to
reign
over the city.''

The Jews were sent to Drancy, north of Paris, and then to Auschwitz, Le
Point said.

''The rumors said they were sending them to work in the salt mines in
Poland,'' Junot told Le Point. ''We imagined they were not going on an
agreeable vacation. But I never learned about the existence of the
extermination camps until 1945.''

Junot defended members of the Vichy regime as ''conscientious,'' and
said
it held few who collaborated with the Germans. He indicated he thought
the
current re-examination of Vichy France's role in the war unwarranted.

''If there were French who made errors, or sometimes committed crimes
during this era, I think there is a discreet veil of history,'' he said.