Wartime Detention in : and Les Milles

Tessa Bouwman Thesis supervisor: dr. K.C. Berkhoff 10156011 Second reader: Dr. N. Immler MA Holocaust and Genocide Studies University of Amsterdam June 2015

Index

Acknowledgments…………………………………………….……………….. …i

Introduction………………………………………………………………………..ii

Thesis statement and objectives…………………………..………………ii

Historiography……………………………………………..……………..iii

I Drancy and Les Milles, 1930s-1944…………………………….………………1

Drancy……………………………………………………...……………..1

Les Milles……………………………………………………...………….9

II Politics of memory in France…………………………………………………..16

Vichy Syndrome…………………………………………………………..16

From to Nicolas Sarkozy…………………………………21

III Drancy 1944-1987……………………………………………………….…….24

IV Drancy 1988-2012……………………………………………………….…….31

V Les Milles 1944- 2012……………………………………………………..….. 36

VI Drancy and in traditional and social media since 2012……..42

Conclusion…………………………………………………………..……….……47

Literature and sources……………………………………………………..………50

ii

Acknowledgements This master’s thesis would not have been possible without the support of my supervisor dr. Karel Berkhoff, who has given me useful advice and who has encouraged me to challenge myself in finding the information I needed. I would also like to thank the rest of NIOD staff for the often thought-provoking courses and lectures, which have further enriched my knowledge and sparked my interest.

I also need to thank Noémie Tajszeydler, head of the documentation center in the Drancy memorial. When I first visited Drancy, she welcomed me with great enthusiasm and she has been very eager to help me find literature and answer my questions. Due to my difficulties in contacting other French institutions, it was great to have someone helping me and giving me advice. I am also grateful for the people working at the Memorial de la Shoah in , who have helped me obtaining some interesting documents and who have given me advice on the topics of my research.

I also want to thank my classmates for the discussions, serious talks but above all the fun we have had. It is great to be able to talk to people who are indulging themselves in the same material and to be able to speak freely about subjects others rather want to skip. This is why I am also very grateful to my family and to my girlfriend Sarah. Even when my rants about , France then, and France now must have been hard to endure, they gave me their support and distracted me when I needed it.

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Introduction The role of France in World War II has been much discussed and disputed. While the country ‘collaborated’ with the German oppressor in the Vichy regime, there was also resistance by the famous . This resistance was emphasized in the early postwar years, when De Gaulle became France’s new president and the French perceived themselves as heroes who freed themselves from the German yoke. However, when one looks in detail at the events during the war years, one could conclude that the degree of collaboration with the Germans and the indifference towards the fate of the was more remarkable than most French are willing to admit. Many anti-Semitic measures were taken and often even proposed by the French government. France also housed a large number of camps that were used to incarcerate Jews before their deportation eastwards. The fact that these camps were often under French command with only minor interventions by the Germans, sparked my interest. The French played a big role within their own country in arresting, interning, and deporting Jews and this is most likely a factor that causes difficulties. In this thesis I want to look at this remembrance of the Nazi past in France, by looking at two case studies: Drancy (just outside of Paris) and Les Milles (just outside of ), which both housed internment camps for Jews, and political prisoners. .

Thesis statement and objectives

I want to focus on the history of the two locations, during wartime but most importantly after the war. I will do this by using secondary literature on the history of the camps, but also by using primary sources such as testimonies by Jews that were incarcerated and are therefore able to describe the inner workings of the camps in more detail. The first chapter, which will deal with the wartime history of the camps will be written in a describing fashion: I will not provide a detailed comparison between the two. In the second chapter I will explore the “Vichy syndrome”, a term coined by the historian Henry Rousso. I also want to examine to what extent we can see the general French developments in politics of memory at work in Drancy and Les Milles. In chapters three up to five, I will discuss the postwar history of the sites by focusing on the presence or absence of memorialization efforts and I will reflect upon the state of the memorialization process. In the sixth chapter I will elaborate on how the two sites have been featured in the media since 2012, looking both at traditional media and social media. In the conclusion I hope to be able to

ii formulate an answer to my most important research question: why has it taken so long at both sites for a memorial center or museum to be established?

Historiography

Various works have been published on the internment of the Jews, starting directly after the war in the late forties. They were mostly autobiographical and written by people who had been incarcerated in one of the camps. Later on, more research was done using these testimonies and supplementing them with other sources. In this historiographical overview I would like to discuss some of the works that have been published on the war-time history of Drancy and Les Milles and I will briefly discuss available eyewitness accounts and works on memory studies in France that could help to successfully conduct this research.

Drancy during World War II

One of the first works that was published on war-time Drancy was George Wellers’ De Drancy à Auschwitz. In this book that first appeared in 1946, Wellers describes the camp throughout the years. The first part is dedicated to the history of the camp and its different commanders (Donnecker, Röthke and Brunner), while the second part contains stories of people who were incarcerated in the camp. Because the book is based upon Wellers’ personal experiences and those of others, the information is presumably very accurate and can help to successfully reconstruct the camp’s functions during the war. The book was edited and republished in the 1970s under the title L’Étoile jaune à l’heure de Vichy: de Drancy à Auschwitz. It might be useful to compare the two editions to see what was changed. Another work that was written by a former Drancy internee is Drancy 1941: camp de represailles. In this book Noël Calef describes his time in the transit camp in the second half of 1941, when it had just been opened. He was one of the 4223 Jewish men that were arrested in August 1941 and brought to Drancy. After a few months he was released, thanks to the work of Italian diplomats, and went to where soon he was incarcerated again in some Italian camps. He started working on a manuscript about his time in Drancy that was first published in Italian in 1945 and was later edited and translated into French. Although the book is written novel-style, it contains useful information about the first months of the camp and the circumstances the men had to live in.

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The French edition of Calef’s book contains a preface by . This French-Jewish author, historian and lawyer has spent his live hunting down Nazi criminals together with his wife Beate. He has also been actively involved in keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive and making sure the French state would acknowledge her role in the deportation and murder of the Jews. He published le Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France in which he lists the victims of . Furthermore he has delivered a detailed four-volume account on the deportations between September 1942 and August 1944 in France. His work is very useful as it contains a lot of factual information such as names and numbers of victims but also documents that illustrate the decision-making processes at work during the war years in France. Maurice Rajsfus has provided the academic world with another work on the history of Drancy. His book starts with a description of the first months of the Drancy camp. It shows how those first months were characterized by famine and disease and it contains statistics on the illnesses that proliferated in the camp. Furthermore, it contains of a list that shows how many internees of a certain nationality were incarcerated in the camp: it shows that in December 1941, the biggest group was that of Polish Jews, followed by Turks and Russians. 1 Then the book focuses on the camp’s administration that was in the hands of the French in the first years. It describes the attitude of the gendarmes and their views towards the Jewish question. The next few chapters deal with Drancy as a transit camp describe the circumstances in the camp, the Jewish administration that was set up, and the constitution of the deportations. The fourth part of the book describes the camp under the command of and the SS. This part also deals with people who escaped and the final months and the liberation of Drancy. Another relevant study is Annette Wieviorka’s A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy. This work is divided in four parts which successively deal with Drancy as a camp de represailles; Drancy as a transit camp; Drancy as a concentration camp; and Drancy after the in 1944. The book does not only provide detailed information, but also contains some interesting photographs that give us a better insight in camp life. The fact that some of the pictures were taken for German propaganda efforts, shows that here the Nazis also tried to cover up a cruel reality.

1 Maurice Rajsfus, Drancy: un camp de concentration très ordinaire 1941-1944, Paris: La Cherche midi éditeur 1996 pp. 76-77

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When looking in detail at wartime photographs of Drancy, one can find both pictures taken illegally and photos within a program of propaganda by the Germans. Most pictures are available in the archives of the CDJC and some can also be found when searching the internet. It is not always clear who took the pictures, but they can help to imagine the circumstances in the camp by visualizing it.

Les Milles during World War II

The history of Camp des Milles is an interesting one, but unfortunately hardly any works have been published yet that thoroughly discuss the camp’s history. André Fontaine has written the most complete work on the history of the camp and the identity of the internees. Fontaine was a French historian who has received acclaim through his work on the Cold War, in which he claims that it already started in 1917. He worked as a journalist and editor for various written sources such as Le Monde and Le Temps Present. He died in March 2013. His book, however a bit unstructured at times, provides some interesting insights and gives an impression of life in the camp. Another work, which discusses the history of the internment camps in the southern zone more generally, also includes an account by Fontaine in which he gives a short overview of the history that focuses more extensively on the cultural life in the camp. These works will provide the basis for my historical research on the camp, accompanied by smaller accounts in books about the internment of Jews in France and the collaboration of French police officials more generally. Another source that could be useful are the memoires of , French lawyer and politician and former president of the European Parliament. During the war she was incarcerated in both Les Milles and Drancy before being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated. Since Veil is such an important persona in French political and social life, she might have felt the need to share her story with as many people as possible to prevent other crimes against humanity from happening. When searching for wartime photos of Camp des Milles it becomes clear that there are remarkably less pictures available. There are a few snapshots of internees assembled on the court in front of the factory building, but there are hardly any photos that show the insides of the camp. This might be because the French were trying to hide the existence of the camp and propaganda pictures were not taken since the Germans had nothing to do with the camp’s administration.

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Politics of memory in France

The main work I will use to provide an insight into the French politics of memory after the war is Henry Rousso’s The Vichy Syndrome: History and memory in France since 1944. In this work, Rousso gives an overview of the memorialization of the Holocaust in France after 1944, focusing on political decisions and commemoration ceremonies. He distinguishes four phases in the dealing with the past. In the second chapter, I will elaborate on his theory and further describe the phases he uses in his work. I feel his ideas can be used to contextualize the memorialization processes in Drancy and Les Milles. Another book by Henry Rousso and Eric Conan namely Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas (1994), will also be used to further clarify some of the statements made in The Vichy syndrome and for more specific information on lieux de mémoire. It will also be helpful in explaining and understanding why research has sometimes not been as extensive and it is sometimes difficult to access archives as an outsider. One of the works that will prove to be useful in the reconstruction of the postwar politics of memory is Joan Wolf’s Harnessing the Holocaust, which shows how the Holocaust has continuously been a source for controversy in French politics. Her main argument is that the Holocaust developed from a Jewish trauma into a metaphor for other forms of discrimination, oppression and victimization. Wolf also seems to suggest that just like other issues concerning Jews, the debate on the Holocaust provided of a prism to discuss the meaning and definition of French citizenship.

Post-war history and memorialization of Drancy

The memorialization of Drancy has received some attention in journals and books on memory studies in general. Wieviorka’s work contains a part dedicated to what she calls ‘Drancy after Drancy’, thus the history of the place after the liberation. This will be helpful to reconstruct some of the phases in the memorialization process. Another work that deals with the memorialization of Drancy is The Claims of Memory (1999) by Caroline Wiedmer. She discusses German monuments, but also Drancy and the Vélodrome d’Hiver and discusses the development of the memorial in Paris and explains its meaning. I will take further information from documents I have encountered during my research in the CDJC archives and the documentation center in the Drancy memorial center.

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Both the wartime history and the years after the war in Drancy have been discussed in documentaries and films. The first one is Drancy: A Concentration Camp in Paris 1941-1944, created by Stephen Trombley. This documentary that was released in 1994 informs on the time the Cité de la Muette was used a camp and it also includes footage of interviews held with inhabitants of the Cité de la Muette in the 1980s and 1990s. It was positively received and was reviewed by and the Boston Globe. The film is praised for its eye- opening qualities on showing how the French took it upon themselves to help the Germans with the . ‘Even in France, the story of Drancy and its crimes is little known, or perhaps, deliberately forgotten’, mentions The Guardian. This film has definitely tried to do something about this ignorance and amnesia, but to what extent remains to be researched. Another film that focuses on the ‘aftermath’ of the Drancy camp is Drancy Avenir, created by Arnaud des Pallières in 1996. This film is built around a history student investigating the Cité de la Muette and discovering that the camp is still used as a low-rent housing complex. She then goes on to conjugate the story of the Holocaust in the present. According to reviews in Le Monde, the movie can be seen as emblematic for the third generation, since it takes place entirely in the present. It is even compared to Resnais’s Nuit et brouillard and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.. This film could be very useful in reconstructing some of the more recent developments in Drancy and the extent to which the people living in the Cité de la Muette still feel a certain burden of the past in their daily lives. A third movie that I want to mention here is Cité la Muette by Sabrina Van Tassel. It was released in May 2015 and it is made with the questions in mind that did also encourage me to further research this place: why are there still people living in those buildings and who are they? And why did it take so long for a museum to be established at the site? It is already quite telling that Van Tassel only just heard of the existence of the camp in 2010, when she was doing research for another movie she was producing at the time. Apparently, the camp’s history does not belong to French common knowledge, not even for people belonging to the third generation. Since the movie was praised and it was selected for a few foreign film festivals, I expect it to contain some thought-provoking imagery and discussions.

Post-war history and memorialization of Les Milles

Because Les Milles was ‘forgotten’ for many years and the memorialization process started fairly late, it is difficult to find information on this subject. One book, Mémoire du Camp des Milles, gives some insight in the process but is definitely not sufficient. A book which

vii appeared in 2007 directed by Philippe Mioche, will be useful to construct the post-war years of Les Milles and the reopening of the factory in the late 1940s is De la terre et des hommes. This book discusses the history of the tile factory from its opening in the late 19th century until its closure in 2006. It traces the factory’s highs and lows and discusses its workers, products and projects. It will be an interesting book to get an insight in the events taking place on the former camp grounds after the war and the way the war years were still visible, being thought about or mentioned when the factory was up and running again. Hopefully these works will provide sufficient information for reconstructing the camp’s post-war history. In 1995, a movie titled Les Milles was released. Featuring well-known American actress Kristin Scott Thomas, the movie was dealing with the month of May 1940, when the invasion of the Germans was near and commandant Perrochon was preparing to evacuate the internees to Bayonne. YouTube futures a short clip of the film and various reviews are available for reading online. Unfortunately, I was not able to find the movie in full, but the fact the movie was produced is in itself an interesting fact.

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I Drancy and Les Milles, 1930s – 1944

Drancy and Les Milles are both smaller communities situated near a big city: Drancy in les banlieues of Paris and Les Milles in the region around Marseille. During the war, the two places would have something else in common, namely their important role in the detention and deportation of Jews. In this chapter I will allude on the camps’ war-time history and their function in the Holocaust.

Drancy

In the 1920s the municipality of Drancy, just outside Paris, was a small city with about 25.000 inhabitants. Due to World War I, there was a housing crisis and Paris was trying to find a solution for this problem that was becoming increasingly urgent. In 1928, a law was adopted that had to regulate the creation of housing that would be affordable for everyone (HBM, habitations à bon marché). The HBM committee planned the creation of twelve housing blocks spread throughout the Parisian banlieues. The Cité de La Muette was one of them and is now considered to be the first ‘grand ensemble’ (mass housing development) in France. The cité was designed by Eugène Beaudouin and Marcel Lods who were famous modernist architects, often using technically bold and socially progressive schemes in their work. 2 In the initial plans, the Cité de la Muette would consist of five sixteen-story towers with ten smaller buildings around them, one being the U-shaped grande cour which would later house the internment camp. These buildings would together comprise 1250 apartment units. The fact that the French city projects were planned in the banlieues is no coincidence. Its creators believed that a living environment could influence and shape people’s behavior, instill certain values and produce a new kind of working class. This was exactly what they were hoping for when creating their cite-jardins. 3 The housing project was obstructed by an economic crisis and workers’ strikes in 1934 and it became clear that the social utopia might not be reachable after all. People considered the apartments to be too small and they felt like they were trapped in some kind of enclave, since the buildings were not easily accessible by public transport. Furthermore, the

2 Pieter Uyttenhove, ‘From ‘grand ensemble’ to architectural heritage, from concentration camp to memorial: the mass housing project of the Cité de la Muette in Drancy’, in: Architektúra & Urbanizmus (2012) vol. 2-4 pp. 160-179 p. 163 3 Alise Hansen, ‘A Lieu d’Histoire, a Lieu de Mémoire, and a Lieu de Vie: The Multidirectional Potential of the Cité de la Muette’, in: French Historical Studies (2014) vol. 37 no. 1 pp. 117-150 p. 125 1 committee had not thought about creating new schooling opportunities for the children of the new families. These problems caused delay in the utilization of the complex as housing. They did however create a place where people could be imprisoned and that is what the Cité de la Muette was assigned to as of 1939. 4 In October 1939, the Cité de la Muette was transformed into a camp that housed communist militants that were suspected of being agents of the Fifth Column. At that time, the French managed the premises up until the moment when the Germans took over the camp and turned it into Frontstalag III. Up until the autumn of 1940, the camp was used for the imprisonment of French POWs and civil British internees. The latter were seen by the German authorities as actors of the enemy’s power. The camp worked in close proximity with the nearby fort at Romainville aux Lilas, which had the same administration, and another Frontstalag in Saint-Denis that also housed British internees. 5 In the spring of 1941, the Nazis were thinking about turning Drancy into a camp where Jews from within the occupied zone would be assembled before being deported to the East. This wish was quickly turned into reality when Drancy was given its new function by the : Abwanderungslager, meaning transit camp. 6 The U-shaped building or horseshoe was seen as a very practical location for the camp, since for its closure one only needed to put up a fence at the open side of the U. So it happened. Furthermore, four watchtowers were built in the corners and double barbed wire was erected around the building.7 The young SS officer was entrusted with the running of the camp, but it remained to be guarded by the French police.

Internment of Jewish men and women, August 1941 – June 1942

The 20th of August 1941 is an important date in the history of the camp. On that day, a big round-up was started in Paris which lasted for several days. It was decided upon by the German authorities as a means of prevention for communist revolts that could happen caused by the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Germans issued a decree to the prefectural police of the 11th arrondissement to close off every road leading to that specific part of the city and to arrest 5784 Jewish men from 15 to 50 years old. 8 This would have to be executed by the

4 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, Paris: Perrin 2012 pp. 12-17 5 Thomas Fontaine, Benoit Pouvreau, ‘La camp de la cité de la Muette à Drancy, 1941-1944’, in: Lieux d’histoire et de mémoire de la déportation en Seine-Saint-Denis (2004) no. 37 pp. 1-11 pp. 2-3 6 Maurice Rajsfus, Drancy: un camp de concentration très ordinaire 1941-1944, Paris: Le Cherche Midi 2012 pp. 33-34 7 Uyttenhove, ‘From ‘grand ensemble’ to architectural heritage, from concentration camp to memorial’ p. 170 8 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, p. 21 2

Parisian police, assisted by Feldgendarmes. In total, a sum of 2400 men were cooperating in the arrests. Since the prefectural police had established precise data on the whereabouts of Jewish citizens, the policemen were given a list of names and addresses and knocked on the doors. They made men on the street identify themselves as well and when their identity card stated they were Jews, they would be arrested too. The men were assembled at the police stations with a few items they had been allowed to pack. 9 Afterwards, they were taken to Drancy. In the late afternoon of the 20th, it became clear that the Nazis were not content with the amount of Jews arrested on this first occasion. In the following days, more Jews were assembled in other Parisian quarters. This time, men from 14 to 72 years old were targeted and the round-up would take place all over Paris. The fact that French Jews as well as veterans were arrested, can be seen in the light of the development of the war. In June, Germany had invaded Russia and since then communist groups had been spreading pamphlets and planning manifestations. The assassination of German Marine Corps Moser by Pierre Georges (who would become Colonel Fabien) showed the strategy that the communist (youth) groups were planning to follow from then on: armed resistance. The shooting of this marine official and fear for upheaval caused the Nazis to arrest this great amount of Jewish men as a reprisal on the one hand, and a presumable deterrent on the other. Since Jews were seen as being part of a ‘Judeobolshevist’ complot, they were the first group to be targeted. Between the 20th and the 25th of August, 4200 men were arrested and deported to Drancy in buses provided by the public transport organization STCRP and cars owned by individuals. 10 In his account on the round-up of August 1941, Serge Klarsfeld includes some interesting comments on the reactions of the Parisian population on the events. It becomes clear that while many people were indifferent, people were mainly opposing the fact that Jews who were First World War veterans or Jews with the French nationality were also arrested. The deportation of foreign Jews was less worrisome to them. This shows how the French were perhaps not as much anti-Semitist as they were xenophobic and nationalistic. 11 The internees were immediately informed on the fact that the camp would be under military commandment and therefore they would have to act accordingly. Every attempt at escaping or

9 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, p. 21 10 Ibidem, pp. 23-26 11 Serge Klarsfeld, ‘La Rafle du 20 Aout 1941 et la création du camp de Drancy’ (extract from Vichy-Auschwitz (1942) no. 1 published in 1983) Read in: Noel Calef, Drancy 1941: Camp de represailles, Drancy la faim, Paris: FFDJF 1991 pp. XV-XIX

3 any other act would be punished severely. It was forbidden for the internees to communicate with people outside the camp walls and they would have to obey the camp personnel. The first attempt of the internees to organize themselves was already taken in the first weeks. The camp was divided in five blocks, consisting altogether of twenty-two staircases. Every staircase would pick its own leader and among these leaders, five block leaders would be picked. 12 This immediately caused a hierarchy and organization, even though the Nazis and the French authorities were still mostly improvising. Those first months can be characterized as overall misery. The internees were confined to their rooms. The only time were they would get out, was when they had to stand outside for the hour-long appeals or when they had to use the bathroom. Because electricity had not been installed yet in the rooms or anywhere else, people were mostly living in the dark. Natural light was blocked by the blinding of the windows. Another poignant matter was that of food rations. The internees had not been receiving sufficient food from the start, but the situation started to be alarming by the end of the month. It has been stated that the famine that was obviously developing, was an attempt by the Nazis and French collaborators to exterminate the Jews. According to Wieviorka, we cannot judge this without being biased by hindsight. While she thinks that the decision to kill the Jews (if it is even possible to pinpoint this moment in time) was presumably taken in 1942, this was probably not an attempt at killing, but more an inability or unwillingness to take care of 5000 people with little means. 13 As of November 1941, Drancy was used as a place where the authorities would take hostages who they would execute or deport as forms of reprisal answering to the attacks and other actions of the resistance. Since the Jews and communists were perceived to be the masterminds behind the resistance, they were to be held responsible. The first deportations were planned in December 1941, when the first convoy consisting of 1000 men would be deported from Drancy. Unfortunately for the French planning these deportations, there were no means for transportation available, since these were all being used for the deportation of German Jews into the East.14 The first deportation of Jews ‘only’ happened in March 1942 and was prepared in the camp without the internees knowing. It consisted of 1112 French Jews taken from Drancy and the Compiègne-Royallieu camp who were perceived to be fit to work and it was not a part of the Final Solution. It was a measure of reprisal against the

12 Rajsfus, Drancy: un camp de concentration très ordinaire 1941-1944 p. 44 13 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy pp. 34-37 14 Ibidem, pp. 106-109 4 attacks perpetrated by the (communist) resistance. From that moment on, the internees knew that they could be selected for deportation any time.15

Transit camp, July 1942 – July 1943

The Vél d’Hiv round-up that took place on the 16th and 17th of July 1942 marked a new phase in the existence of the Drancy camp. Early in the morning of Thursday the 16th of July, police officers, assisted by young Frenchmen part of the Parti populaire français, arrived in different Parisian quarters with police cars and accompanied by autobuses. They started violently knocking on Jewish families’ doors, ordering them to pack some of their belongings and follow them. Some people did not open the door, which led the policemen to forcibly opening them. A few others committed suicide before the police could arrest them, often by jumping out of their house’s windows. 16 From that moment on, Drancy would be used as a transit camp and it would house females and children as well. 17 In this phase, the camp’s keys were in the hands of the Nazis, but the camp’s administration was entirely French.18 Weeks before the planned round-up, preparations began to make the camp suitable as a transit camp and to make sure the round-up and the deportations afterwards would happen rapidly and in an orderly fashion. 19 During the round-up, men and women that were alone or couples without children would be interned in Drancy; the families would be housed in the Vélodrome, from where they would be deported to camps in the Loiret. There the children would be separated from their parents: the French wanted to deport them as well, but there was no green light from yet to do this. The children were thus left behind waiting for the unknown. On the 30th of July, they were deported from the Loiret camps to Drancy after their parents had already left on convoys to the East. Many of them were suffering from diseases such as dysentery due to the bad hygienic circumstances. The doctors incarcerated in the camp tried to take care of these fragile beings, but this proved to be very difficult. 20 On the 14th of August 1941, the first convoy consisting of children departed from Drancy. About 80 children between the ages of 4

15 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy,, pp. 116-118 16 Claude Levy, Paul Tillard eds., La grande rafle du Vel d’Hiv, Paris: Robert Laffont 1967 pp. 37-39 17 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, p. 131 18 Ibidem, p. 147 19 Ibidem, p. 141 20 Ibidem, pp. 160-165 5 and 15 were deported together with adults from the free zone that had also been transferred to Drancy in the weeks before. After these chaotic weeks and months, it seemed like the camp became calmer. Georges Wellers, internee and author of De Drancy à Auschwitz, an interesting account on his years in Drancy, has called it ‘délassement géneral’ which can be translated as relaxation. Internees would talk about their post-war lives and fantasize about what they would do. Something that was also new was the organization of recreational activities such as conferences and musical and comedic performances. People were hoping that deportations would not happen anymore and they adjusted to life in the camp.21 Their hope for survival was increased due to the transfer and release of internees organized by the UGIF (Union générale des israélites de France). These releases were not completely random. It were often people with a certain status or profession that was perceived as useful and important to the French. As of July 1942 for example, some artists and their families were released. Other groups that were released or at least transferred were old people and children. They would often be housed in the Rothschild hospital and some of its extensions.22 The situation seemed to be rather safe for people in the winter of 1942 and hope for the end of the war and no more deportations was rather strong. Unfortunately, the internees had been deceived. In February 1943, a second cycle of deportations was started. At the end of January, the German ministry of Transportation gave its permission to arrest all ‘deportable’ Jews and transport them to Drancy. On the 9th of February a convoy consisting of mainly foreign women and children was deported to Auschwitz, where most people were killed upon arrival. 23 At this time, the deportations did happen in the context of the Final Solution and they were encouraged by the Nazis, while before the French organized them themselves. In this second cycle, it was much more difficult to evade deportation or to get liberated. One of the only ways to save yourself was to pay Georges Montandon, doctor and ethnologist, to examine you and to let him decide whether you really had the ‘typical’ Jewish features or whether you were ‘accidentally’ arrested. While not many people had the financial means to consult Montandon, this option was only available to the wealthier amongst the internees. 24

21 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy,, p. 183 22 Ibidem, pp. 195-203 23 Ibidem, p. 209 24 Ibidem, pp. 212-213 6

Concentration camp, July 1943 – August 1944

On the 9th of May 1943, Alois Brunner was installed by Eichmann to accelerate the deportation of the French Jews to the East and he can therefore be seen as the one responsible for the solution to the ‘Jewish question’ in France. 25 In his efforts to accelerate the deportation, Drancy was an essential factor and thus he wanted to reorganize the camp. Firstly, he made some changes to the administration. The representatives of the prefectural French police were from that moment on exclusively responsible for the guarding of the outside. The SS would take up the tasks inside the camp. The group of guards was minimized to 150, led by three officers. Secondly, Brunner took some measures that concerned the camp space. He made some changes to the square and the buildings. 26 Thirdly, Brunner did not speak about deportations, but about evacuations: this made it sound less mortal and would lead people to take their belongings and depart in a calm and orderly fashion. He also abolished the searching of people’s luggage and from July onwards people would be deported from the Bobigny train station instead of the Bourget station. Fontaine and Pouvreau attribute this to the fact this station was more functional and above all more discrete.27 The main reason however must have been the fact that the Bourget train station had been damaged by allied bombings. 28 The changes by Brunner were accompanied by a new regime of terror. When the internees would see a German official, they would have to stand still. Even the smallest misstep was severely punished. Brunner also came up with a categorization of internees. They would be divided into groups with a letter from A to F, with category C further being divided into C1 to C5.29 The organization of the camp was however around three important categories: the youpins, the Jews and the Israelites. The first group was concentrated in the right wing of the camp: they were the foreign Jews categorized as deportable. They were closest to the entrance of the camp, which made their deportation easier. The left wing of the camp was meant for the Jews, meaning people who were still waiting to be identified as Jews or people that were protected in some way. The third group, the Israelites, was housed in the central part of the camp. These people had assimilated in French society and had not seen

25 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de, p. 217 26 Ibidem, p. 219 27 Fontaine, Pouvreau, ‘La camp de la cité de la Muette à Drancy, 1941-1944’ p. 8 28 Martin Winstone, De Holocaustmonumenten van Europa, Amersfoort: BBNC 2014 p. 42 29 Annette Wieviorka, Dans l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, p. 219 7 themselves as Jews until Vichy categorized them as such.30 Before someone’s status was rather fixed, but under Brunner someone could become ‘deportable’ within the blink of an eye.31 It was thus possible for people to move between different parts of the camp. Although the camp’s command became rather strict and even terror-like, internees still tried to escape. The most well-known and interesting example in the case of Drancy is that of the tunnel. On the 15th of September a group of internees started digging a tunnel, beginning with a cave right under the office of lieutenant-colonel Blum who knew about the efforts. About 70 people participated in the digging, but there was a core group of fourteen men. 32 They would work in teams of three men and during the , helped by camp functionaries who had the keys to the catacombs of the camp buildings. They were planning on digging a tunnel with a height of about 1.20 meters and a width of about 70 centimeters and two kilometers in length. It is not entirely clear whether the people who started the attempt at evasion were planning to only save themselves or bigger groups of internees. 33 Unfortunately for them, the entrance of the tunnel was discovered by the Germans.

Liberation

As of the 11th of August 1944, tension arose in the camp. The allies were approaching and some of the other Parisian camps had been emptied already. Brunner wanted to constitute a last convoy and planned it but due to the sabotage of railways he could not execute his wishes. Feeling trapped and not being able to deport the Jews, the camp’s administration files were burned and Brunner fled, accompanied by the SS men present in the camp and 51 hostages, of whom 40 were political delinquents.34 Although some people believe the camp was liberated by Jewish armed resistance, as is mentioned by Rajsfus, the true story is thus not as heroic. In fact, Alois Brunner and his SS men left by themselves. They ordered the French to take over the commandment of the camp, which they would take up again after they would return. They never did. 35 After the departure of Brunner, the internees in the Drancy camp and people that were incarcerated in prisons and hospitals around Paris fell under the responsibility of Raoul

30 Annette Wieviorka, Dans l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, pp. 275-276 31 Fontaine, Pouvreau, ‘La camp de la cité de la Muette à Drancy, 1941-1944’ p. 9 32 Rajsfus, Drancy: un camp de concentration très ordinaire 1941-1944 p. 324 33 Annette Wieviorka, Dans l’intérieur du camp de Drancy p. 284 34 Ibidem, pp. 303-304 35 Rajsfus, Drancy: un camp de concentration très ordinaire 1941-1944 pp. 356-362 8

Nordling, the general consul of Sweden. As he first visited the camp, the internees could not believe they had been liberated. The Red Cross and the UGIF worked together to house the internees, often at locations that had been used for the assembling of Jews and Jewish orphans. Upon departure from Drancy, every internee be in the possession of luggage, some money, a new alimentation card and a certificate signed by the Red Cross and representatives of the prefectural police, which proved they had been liberated from the camp. The last internees left the camp in the 20th of August 1944. After the , a great amount of people was arrested on suspicion of acts of collaboration. They were housed in places where the Jews had used to be incarcerated. Drancy was also used as a place where collaborators would be held captive. The prefectural police again became responsible for the commanding and guarding of the camp. Quickly after the camp became the Drancy des collabos, protest arose since these ‘traitors’ were living in far better circumstances than had the internees under the Vichy regime. The Drancy municipality issued their complaints on the 21st of October of 1944. They proposed to have all the guards removed and only hire guards who had been former internees of prisons and camps of Vichy. They aimed to adjust treatment of collaborators which was not nearly as inhumane as had been the treatment of the Jewish internees during the war. 36

Les Milles

In the 1930s Les Milles was a typical small French village in the Provence. It was situated near Marseille and a part of the Aix-en-Provence municipality. If one would have asked the inhabitants whether their community would be able to house an internment camp during the war, they most likely could not have imagined this. But this village indeed turned out to be the place where Jewish internees were housed for the length of three years, often in miserable conditions. One of the reasons for choosing this village could be the fact that it is situated near Marseille and it is also not too far away from the Italian border, from which people would flee into France being anti-fascist, seeking refuge and wanting to emigrate.

The camp was situated in an old brick and tile factory called La tuilerie des Milles (tile factory of Les Milles) covering about three hectares of land. The factory had been established in 1882 by Édouard Rastoin and was led by his son Albert. Later on the leadership of the factory was transferred to Albert’s godson. After a fire in 1911 the factory was renovated and

36 Annette Wieviorka, Dans l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, pp. 310-316 9 in the late twenties it was enlarged. Its estimated production in the interbellum was about 30.000 tons of material every year. The walls were made out of brick and kept together by a ‘skeleton’ of concrete and the building had a vast amount of windows. The ground floor housed three ovens and a room with machinery. On the first floor, one could find the boilers that provided the warmth for the ovens and place was reserved for the selection of the tiles. On the second and third floors one could find the drying machines. Electricity was used economically. 37

According to the literature, the factory closed due to technical difficulties (the mold that was used to produce the tiles broke and another one was nowhere to be found in France) and the war that was at hand. The latter might not be the main reason since the factory closed its doors in 1938 and the first German invasions of European countries only happened in 1939. This proved to be disastrous for the village that thrived because of the industrial activities. 38 The fact that the village was chosen as a location for an internment camp was therefore probably not even perceived that negatively, since it would probably change the economic situation again. This is however purely speculative.

The first months, September 1939 – June 1940

On the sixth of September 1939 the 4th Battalion of the 156th regional Regiment arrived at the train station of Aix-en-Provence. The train cars would lead the men to Les Milles. 39 They had been ordered to come there by the French authorities. The German and Austrian emigrates that had not appeared voluntarily, were discovered and arrested by the French police and led to the camp. They were assembled in buildings in and around Marseille, such as the Château des Fleurs. This location would be used as a place from where people would be transferred to Les Milles as of October 1939. The men and women and children were separated immediately. While the men were taken to Les Milles, the women and children were brought to Aubagne, a camp in a small village with the same name. This was another camp close to Marseille, housed in a factory and guarded by French police officers. This camp was used until February 1940. From that moment, women were transferred and interned in Hôtel Le Terminus du Port, Hôtel Bompard and Hôtel du Levant.40 The first internees were

37 André Fontaine, Le camp d’étrangers des Milles 1939-1943, Aix-en-Provence: Édisud 1989, pp. 14-15 38 Ibidem, p. 14 39 Ibidem, p. 18 40 Author unknown, ‘Camp d’Aubagne durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale’, online encyclopedia Anonymes, Justes et Persécutés durant la période Nazie dans les communes de France, accessible online: http://www.ajpn.org/internement-Hotel-Le-Terminus-du-Port-91.html 10 citizens of countries at war with France and thus ‘enemy subjects’ and this group consisted of a lot of German and Eastern-European intelligentsia. They were intellectuals, writers, politicians, musicians and artists41, all assembled together in this factory building: interesting, as they most likely never had visited such a place before due to their status.

The days in Les Milles were organized in a strict and monotone fashion. In a letter written by Heinz Lunau on the 8th of November 1939, we can find a description of a day in the camp within a group of 24 men. They had to wake up around 6:30 and would have breakfast. Around 8 am the internees had to appear for a roll call where they would stay in lines of three and they would be assigned certain tasks. Until 10 am they would have to perform these and afterwards they would have an hour of free time. Then they would have to assemble again for a second roll call and they would wait for their afternoon meal. Then they would have free time again until 2 pm, followed by another roll call where the internees would hear news about the life in the camp. After that, they would have free time again. In other accounts we can read that the internees were woken every morning by a claxon that would imitate animal cries.

Undoubtedly partly due to the concentration of creative minds such as Lion Feuchtwanger and Max Ernst, artistic and intellectual activities were organized to keep up the spirit. The internees held literary and philosophical discussions and they would invest in painting and musical activities. The catacombs, which were in fact the old pipes of the ovens were transformed into a cabaret where the internees would perform remakes of famous plays such as Nibelungen and Faust. 42 The place where they would gather to watch the shows was named Die Katakombe, after a famous cabaret in Berlin. With some old wooden material the internees had created a bar, tables and chairs. A patron would take care of the desired beverages such as beer, wine and champagne. He would try to sneak those in by arranging something with guards or people who were allowed to leave the camp now and then. 43

Camp des Milles had some annexes where internees were put to work. Already in the first month of the camp’s existence, a group of 200 men were sent out to work in the mines of La Grande Combe. Other camps were that of Forcalquier, Les Mées, Manosque, Volx, Carpiagne , Garrigues and Loriol. In some cases, the internees would have relative freedom.

41 Jacques Fredj ed., L’internement des Juifs sous Vichy, Paris: CDJC 1996 p. 30 42 Robert Mencherini, Angelika Gaussman, Olivier Lalieu eds., Memoire du Camp des Milles 1939-1942, Marseille: Métamorphoses/Le Bec en l’air 2013 p. 20 43 André Fontaine, ‘Internement au Camp des Milles et dans ses annexes. Septembre 1939 – Mars 1943’, in: Les camps en Provence. Exil, internement, deportation. 1933-1942 p. 141 11

In Forcalquier for example, they befriended the village’s inhabitants and some prominent internees were even invited over for Christmas dinner.44 Emigration was also still a possibility for people from countries not within the Mediterranean. For that, they would need a list of documents of which the affidavit was the most important one. This was a document which was set up by a notary and which would state that the costs of the person’s emigration were taken care of. At that moment, most people tried to arrange emigration to the US. If their requests were accepted, they would be taken to Marseille from which they would have to start their journey throughout France to eventually embark the ship that would take them to the ‘land of freedom’. 45

As mentioned, the catacombs under the factory became a place where the internees could relax, as far as this was possible in their situation. Cultural activities began to flourish and some internees even came up with the idea of a special newspaper. Unfortunately, this pleasure was only shortly enjoyed. In April 1940, the internees were transferred to other camps in the region. On the 18th of April, Camp des Milles was closed due to a decision by the French military authorities and the 400 remaining internees were transferred to the city of Lambesc, 27 kilometers away, where they would be staying in a canning-factory. Although the internees were negative at first, this transfer proved to be better than expected. Not only was the food much better, but the hygienic circumstances were also acceptable. 46

Camp for undesirables, June 1940 – July 1942

After the German invasion of the north of France, the situation changed again. On the 14th of May 1940, the press announced that all emigrated Germans (ressortissants du Reich) between the age of 18 and 55 had to go back to the camps. On the 19th of May, Les Milles was reopened and a day later the first internees arrived. It became clear immediately that the camp had changed. The soldiers in charge of the guarding were more strict and militaristic. The quality of the food however had not been increased and the portions were even smaller than before. In the morning the internees would receive a bit of coffee and 250 grams of bread. During the afternoon and at night they would receive some carrot soup and they would get a piece of meat of about 20 grams. Without smuggling and the black market, it would have

44 Fontaine, Le camp d’étrangers des Milles 1939-1943, pp. 71-74 45 Ibidem, p. 75 46 Ibidem, pp. 79-81 12 been impossible to survive. The latter was flourishing: the internees that still had the financial means would buy bouillon and extra food that would be shared. 47

In the beginning, the internees just tried to make the most of it, but later on it became harder to stay strong. This feeling was enforced by the fact that many of the male internees did not know whether their family was (still) safe. Because they were not allowed to send postcards or letters, they were simply hoping their wives and children were still okay. 48 The situation was chaotic, while war was at hand and the French troops were fighting against the Nazis. The internees became more and more anxious and were pressuring the French authorities to let them leave Les Milles. Captain Goruchon decided to plan their transportation to the Atlantic coast from where they would be able to flee aboard of ships. Early in the morning of the 22nd of June, hundreds of volunteering internees got on the train that was waiting at the train station of Les Milles and that would take them further south. They travelled for two days and the journey was horrible. When they heard that France and Germany signed an Armistice on that very day they left the camp, some decided to flee: various clauses in the armistice defined the ‘right’ that the Vichy regime would have to deliver German emigrants to the Nazis. Some of them succeed, amongst them Max Ernst and Lion Feuchtwanger. Other internees accept their fate and choose to return to the Reich voluntarily. 49 The armistice does not only describe the fate of German emigrants, but it also makes Les Milles enter its second phase, namely that of a camp for indésirables: foreigners from other camps in the southeast, veterans who fought in the Spanish Civil War and Jews that had been expelled from some German regions close to the border with France.

In the autumn of 1940, all internment camps were placed under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior and the Vichy regime decided to use Les Milles as a place to assemble foreign nationals who were planning on emigrating. The fact the regime assigned this function to the camp can be explained by two important factors. First, most of the consulates and foreign offices was located in Marseille and second, Marseille was the only port from which it was still possible to embark on ships to other continents. 50 Helping organizations were also present on the camp’s premises. These organizations were not only French, but included among others the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) and the HICEM (Hebrew Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration). They provided materials for the

47 Fontaine, ‘Internement au Camp des Milles et dans ses annexes. Septembre 1939 – Mars 1943’, p. 126 48 Fontaine, Le camp d’étrangers des Milles 1939-1943, pp. 83-85 49 Mencherini, Gaussman, Lalieu eds., Memoire du Camp des Milles 1939-1942, pp. 22-23 50 Ibidem, p. 26 13 activities of the internees, they would perform medical check-ups and they would assist the internees that were getting ready for emigration. To further facilitate their work an official emigration service was set up in the camp, consisting of a post office from where the internees could communicate with their contacts. 51

Transit camp, August and September 1942

In the beginning of July 1942, the French government accepted that the measures already in place in the occupied zone should also be applied to the free zone in the south. This model of the big round-up in July in Paris was reproduced in the Midi a month later. Secret letters and telegrams addressed to the police prefects explain in detail which groups would be targeted:

“Jews of German, Austrian, Polish, Tsjechoslovakian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Russian descent, and Jews from Dantzig and the Saar region, and Jews without a motherland, aged between 15 and 65 (55 for women), who have entered French territory after the 1st of January […]”52

Although the government was trying to keep their intentions in the dark by making sure the correspondence would happen as secretly as possible, the plans could not be sealed off sufficiently. Already on the 20th of July, the rabbi Hirschler let Marseille know that the Vichy ministers were planning the deportation of foreign Jews from the free zone to Germany. The detainees heard about the preparations of the deportations through a radio broadcasting by the English radio. In the following days, the deportation of the Jews was announced officially and as of the 3rd of August, Les Milles was guarded by extra men from the GMR (groups mobiles de reserves53), a reserve police battalion accompanied by police dogs. This enforcement of security was mainly to prevent detainees from escaping. Male internees from other camps in the south-east were transported to Les Milles and the women and children detained in the ‘hotels surveillées’ are also transferred to the camp. Awaiting their still unknown fate, they would have to stay in the overcrowded camp. 54

In those days of uncertainty and chaos, the organizations already mentioned were arriving at the camp grounds again to provide the internees with material and spiritual

51 Mencherini, Gaussman, Lalieu eds., Memoire du Camp des Milles 1939-1942, p. 27 52 Ibidem, p. 29 Original text: “les juifs allemands, autrichiens, polonaise, tchécoslovaques, estoniens, lituaniens, lettons, dantzigois, sarrois, russes ou apatrides, âgés de 16 à 65 ans (55 pour les femmes), entrés sur le territoire français après le 1er janvier 1936 […]” 53 Ibidem, p.31 54 Fontaine, Le camp d’étrangers des Milles 1939-1943 pp. 137-138 14 support. On the 7th of August, the rabbi of Marseille, Israël Salzer, organized a spiritual session and two days later pastor Manen did the same. The organizations also pressured the authorities to let them take the internees under 18. They succeeded in their efforts: about 70 children were saved from deportation. 55On the 10th of August though, the police authorized the deportation of the children, which had to be separated from their parents. This is perceived to be one of the saddest moments in the existence of the camp. While the younger children did not know what was happening and simply held onto their parents’ clothing, the older ones understood that this was a final goodbye and they were fighting their emotions. 56 In August and September 1942, close to 1500 people are transferred directly from Les Milles to Drancy in terrible circumstances. Others were sent to Rivesaltes before being deported to the north. About 2000 men, women and were deported and their majority was exterminated in Auschwitz. Only a few people could escape due to the actions of some individuals such as guards. 57

The German occupation of the free zone: the end of Les Milles

On the 11th of November 1942, the Nazis invaded the “free zone” and occupied the remaining part of France. As of the 13th of November, the Gestapo orders the searching and arrest of resistance members and people that had evaded the camps. The police of Marseille was assisting in these matters. On the 10th of December, the 170 last internees still held in Les Milles were sent to La Ciotat and other camps in the Marseille region. From mid-December 1942 to March 1943, the camp was liquidated under the command of Albert Robini. Around the 15th of March 1943 the Wehrmacht arrived at the premises and sent the remaining guards away. From that moment on, the factory was used as a depot for munition. 58 When one wants to estimate how many people were deported from Les Milles to Drancy and further east within its short existence, one could use the official number of 1928 people. This is however not entirely accurate, since it does not take into account the people who evaded or were removed from the convoys. 59

55 Mencherini, Gaussman, Lalieu eds., Memoire du Camp des Milles 1939-1942, p. 31 56 Ibidem, pp. 141-143 57 Ibidem, p. 33 58 Fontaine, Le camp d’étrangers des Milles 1939-1943, p. 164 59 Fontaine, ‘Internement au Camp des Milles et dans ses annexes. Septembre 1939 – Mars 1943’ p. 198 15

II Politics of memory in France

Looking at the history of the two camps, we can see that the French government and the French police have played a major role in the development and implementation of the Final Solution in France. It is not very surprising then, that one can encounter postwar difficulties with coming to terms with the grim past in France. When looking more closely at the research done into the French politics of memory, Henry Rousso’s work The Vichy Syndrome is one of the most important and interesting contributions to the field. His discussion of the French ways to deal with the past is in-depth and clear. In this chapter I would like to use his work to construct an overview of the post-war dealing with the past in France. Where necessary, other research on politics of memory will be used to clarify or further explain the phases of the French variant of Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

Phase I: Unfinished mourning 1944-1954

The first phase, which lasted from 1944 until 1954, he calls le deuil inachevé. In this phase we see the importance of the Gaullian myth that proclaimed that France had liberated itself from the yoke of the Germans. Another concept that was part of the Gaullian myth was that of the thirty years’ war. This meant that people would combine the First and the Second World War into one big conflict which made it possible to neglect the Second World War’s unique elements such as the importance of anti-Semitic ideology and the genocide. Another interesting element in this first phase of France dealing with the past is the emphasizing of the role of the resistance. Adding up to the myth of the French liberating themselves from the Germans, one also believed in the fact that a great part of the French population had taken part in resistance activities. Interestingly enough, the post-war French citizen clung to the myth that the French had been a people in resistance, but their desire for normalization hindered the real consecration of the Resistance. 60 This meant that even though they wanted to believe in the goodness of the French people and the role of the resistance, they were not willing to let the former resistance members be the new political elite. In the first two years after the war, there were many celebrations of the Liberation, which according to Rousso is proof that France had difficulties with creating a unified national memory. Another remarkable event is the amnesty law that was passed in 1952. According to Rousso, this was undeniably an act of clemency and an attempt to calm political

60 Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: history and memory in France since 1944, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1991 p. 19 16 passions and salve old wounds. The problems of the purge had prolonged the conflict within the country.

Phase II: Repression 1954-1971

The second phase, which is characterized by repression or refoulements, lasted from 1954 to 1971. According to Rousso, the year 1954 marked a turning point. The defeat of the French forces in Vietnam undermined the reconstruction of the French army that had begun in 1941. The inglorious ending of the war in Indochina and the war in Algeria undermined the French politics of ‘grandeur’. The year also marked the high point in the career of Pierre Mendès and it was the year of one of the last great postwar trials, namely that of Karl Oberg and . Oberg had been the commander of the SS in France from 1942 to 1944 and Knochen was his adjutant. Together they were responsible for the implementation of the Final Solution in France and the fight against the Resistance. 61

Again and still, we see the influence of De Gaulle on the way the country was dealing with the wartime memories. His influence can be seen in five stages. By the time of the liberation, he lay down the principles of ‘Gaullian exorcism’. Firstly, the collaboration of the French regime within Vichy should be obliterated and secondly, the Resistance had to be redefined as an abstraction, an achievement not of the resisting people alone but of the nation as a whole. This has already been discussed while focusing on the first phase of the Vichy syndrome. From 1946 to 1950 he was trying to win the sympathy of Pétain supporters, most likely as a political strategy. After Pétain died this strategy lost most of its symbolism and from that moment on, De Gaulle continued on his anti-Vichy quest. Between 1954 and 1958 he returned to his former ideas of exorcism and tried to remove the year 1940 from people’s minds. In 1958 he cut the retirement benefits of veterans, a measure that affected many former resistance members. This seems a rather contradictory measure since De Gaulle was trying to keep up the ‘resistancialism’ myth, but it becomes clear that it was simply a symbolic gesture that would disable people to share in his own heroic legacy. Another insult on the part of De Gaulle which marks the last phase is the issue of an order that would change the date of the celebration of victory in from the 8th of May to the second Sunday of the month, to fight the ‘proliferation of non-working holidays’ that would hurt the economy. In that year specifically, Sunday the 9th of May was not just dedicated to the Allied victory but also to Jeanne d’Arc, whose feast day also happened to fall on this date. It seems likely that De

61 Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: history and memory in France since 1944, p. 61 17

Gaulle had planned this ‘coincidence’ all along so the ceremony surrounding Jeanne D’Arc would get more attention that the celebration of Liberation. 62

In addition to this interesting playing with dates by De Gaulle, Rousso remarks that the French just love anniversaries in general. Therefore, the year 1964 was an important one for them. ‘It was time for French society to leave the troubled past behind and to establish its legitimacy on a sublimated version of history’, according to Rousso. The exorcism that happened under De Gaulle was no longer used. Now the challenge was to invent a new kind of honor and grandeur and bestow it onto the French citizens. The problem was therefore not just to bury the memories of the war and of different groups within France with various opinions on how to integrate the resistance in the government, but to orient on a future memory and to create a new and official version of the past appropriate to the country’s newfound grandeur. From that moment on, France would be cast as a nation that forever and ever resists the invader, whatever uniform he might wear. Since 1964, every year an award has been given out in schools for the best essay on the Resistance and deportation. The Resistance also became an important theme in novels, movies and plays, while Vichy and the collaboration were rarely or never mentioned:

“Again we come back to this constant of Gaullist thinking: the Resistance was above all a military action, a continuation of combat after the 1940 defeat and in the tradition of Verdun. Accordingly, Moulin was honored with parade after parade in the two-day ceremony marking the transfer of his ashes.”63

Twenty years after the Liberation, it was slowly becoming clear that a new generation had arrived at the scene and would soon take over power. The wartime generation, which up until then had held most of the reins of power, had rewritten history for the consumption of a new generation that had not known the worst of its parents’ suffering. But now, cracks began to show and the new generation was beginning to ask questions. Twenty years was also the time required for the statute of limitations to take effect for crimes committed in 1944. In June 1964 a bill was filed in the National Assembly suspending the statute of limitations for crimes against humanity as defined by the and the United Nations Charter. The bill was a response to an announcement by the West German government that the statute of

62 Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: history and memory in France since 1944, pp. 71-72 63 Ibidem, p. 91 18 limitations would take effect for all war crimes, including crimes against humanity as of 8 May 1965. 64

Despite the repression of wartime memories in the 1960s, memories of the Resistance were widely discussed, but largely within the framework established by the Gaullist version of the past. Yet this vision, that was focusing on the epical character of the resistance did not gain much ground until rather late in the day and it was never able completely unify the French citizenry and create a collective memory. Not even De Gaulle himself was entirely exempt from vengeful impulses. But as early as the mid-1950s, many French people clearly wished to put the controversy and fights about the past to rest, and the invented honor and grandeur provided by the Gaullist myth seemed like an appropriate way to do that. Because of these sentiments of normalization in French society, De Gaulle was able to build a consensus around his vision of ‘resistancialism’, a concept broad enough to make room for other partisan views. This one generation embraced the Gaullist myth, ignoring any critical groups.

The year 1968 marked another turning point in thinking about the Occupation. The truth of this observation is confirmed by a glance at the new interpretations of Vichy that would blossom a few years later. The new images of the past, the work of a handful of writers and filmmakers, marked a fundamental break with what had gone before. This new generation wanted to break traditions and wanted their parents and grandparents to be more open about what had happened in the war. This is a trend that is not only visible in France, but certainly in Germany too where youngsters were forcing their ancestors to be honest about the past and about their role. 65

Phase III: The broken mirror 1971-1974

The third phase is that of le miroir brisé. (1971-1974). By 1971 la douce France had begun to feel severe aftershocks of the 1940s. But now these blows were felt in literature, film and scholarship. The first symptom was , which showed some inaccuracy and ignorance in the portrayal of victims and the selection of witnesses. But most importantly, the film revealed French anti-Semitism. We see manifestations of anti-Semitism among the French in the southern zone, which was not initiated by the Nazis. This is a factor that would change the way the French viewed themselves. Instead of believing the Gaullist myth and feeling like French society had stood up to the German occupier collectively, they were

64 Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: history and memory in France since 1944, pp. 96-97 65 Ibidem, pp. 99-100 19 confronted with French collaboration and discrimination of the Jews. This point is crucial, since the 1970s also saw a reawakening of Jewish consciousness and memory in France. The movie also openly confronted the issue of how historical memory should be passed on. Those most hostile to the film remained implacable in their opposition, from 1971 to 1981. The difference between the hostile critics and their younger colleagues revealed a generation gap.66

Phase IV: Obsession 1974 – late 1980s

The fourth phase is that of obsession (as of 1974). Since the early 1970s memories of the Occupation have taken on a new dimension. Almost in each year there have been scandals and battles over how the past should be remembered. After 1974, open and explicit references to the year 1940 and the war in general became rather normal in the cultural scene. While economic factors may have influenced what Rousso has called the Vichy syndrome, other factors are more likely to have contributed to it. One of the most important ones is undoubtedly the reawakening of Jewish memory, a phenomenon by no means confined to France.

Between 1978 and 1981 France knew a series of events in which the anti-Semitism of the war years played a central role. They were all caused by a certain nervous feeling that had been growing within the French Jewish community since the 1960s, presumably linked to the events in Israel. The obsession with Vichy in the 1970s and 1980s was also a consequence of changes in the French political landscape. The election of Valéry Giscard D’Estaing to the presidency in 1974 ended Gaullism’s domination of the right.

While looking at the syndrome discussed by Rousso, we see that political figures have a great impact on the way a country deals with their past. Since De Gaulle was the main power holding figure in French post-war society, he could more or less dictate his war narrative to the French citizenry. Already during his reign but even more so after his decease, cracks and eventually a total breakdown of his ‘resistancialist’ myth are visible and people are starting to question the way they had been taught and transmitted their past in the decades directly following the Liberation.

While the Vichy syndrome suggests that there has been amnesia about the past in France at least in the first decades after the war, Joan Wolf feels that this is perhaps not

66 Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: history and memory in France since 1944, pp. 99-101, 104, 113 20 exactly right. She claims that there have been many heated debates about the French’ role in the destruction of the Jews, making it less of a taboo than some people feel it to be. 67 One of the reasons why the Vichy syndrome might not be completely usable is the fact that Rousso wrote his work in the 1980s and he thus did not discuss the developments that have taken place in the last two decades. Wolf however further elaborates on Holocaust memory in the 1980s and beyond, informing us on events that have newly formed the French Holocaust narrative. In the late 1980s, some big trials were held against some perpetrators of the Holocaust in France. This made the debate about French responsibility spark up again. In the period between the arrest of , a French collaborator who had killed a group of Jews in Rillieux-la-Pape near Lyon, and his trial in 1994, a new narrative in public discourse implied that the French people had also been victims of Vichy and that resistance had been very common, also under people who were not affiliated with the ‘official’ Resistance movement. Literature and film were focusing on how the Vichy regime had harassed the French citizens and on the way these French victims of Vichy had been helping the Jewish victims. 68

Another remarkable moment in the politics of memory in France is Mitterand’s second presidential term, which coincided with various 50-year World War II anniversaries. In 1992, 50 years after the tragic Vel d’Hiv round-up, a committee consisting of well-known academics, politicians and journalists issued an appeal asking the President to officially acknowledge Vichy’s responsibility in the crimes against the Jews. The signatories desired state acknowledgement of state crimes. Two days before the commemoration would take place, Mitterand appeared on national television and rejected the appeal, making a distinction between the French Republic and the Vichy regime, which according to him were two different states. He did attend the ceremony at the former site of the Vélodrome, but he arrived late and was received with negative cheering from the crowd. 69

From Jacques Chirac to Nicolas Sarkozy

In 1995, Mitterand lost his presidency to Jacques Chirac. He did what had been desired by many for a long time: during the 53-year-anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv round-up, he acknowledged the responsibility of the French state in the crimes committed against the Jews.

67 Joan B. Wolf., Harnessing the Holocaust: politics of memory in France, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2004 p. 2 68 Ibidem, p. 156 69 Ibidem, pp. 159-162 21

Thus Chirac, while in fact being a leader inspired by De Gaulle and his legacies, denounced the Gaullist myth of a France united in resistance and recognized, without directly mentioning the Republic, recognized French responsibility for the deportation of the Jews from France. He acknowledged that Vichy had been a French regime supported by French people and that France had done wrong in that moment. According to Wolf though, Chirac’s assumption of Vichy guilt on behalf of the current state had failed to provide an individual perpetrator, someone on which the public could display its anger and disdain. 70

After judicial and political acknowledgement of the French role in the Holocaust, material acknowledgement followed swiftly thereafter. In 1997, the Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France was started by the First Minister Alain Juppé. This mission, which has also been named Mission Mattéoli after its president, aimed to research the compensation claims that had been made regarding artworks and money that had been stolen during the war. The mission presented its conclusions in 2000, showing that 90 percent of the possessions had been restored by the specially established Commission Indemnisation des Victimes de Spoliations, which would restitute the stolen goods to the victims. Another element inherent to the mission was the creation of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah. This foundation would have the threefold mission of history, education and solidarity. This organization greatly supported the Memorial de la Shoah that was opened in Les Marais in Paris. 71 These initiatives were a clear break from the policies set up by Giscard d’Estaing and Mitterand, since they changed the relationship between the French government and the Jews. Chirac emphasized the importance and the uniqueness of the Holocaust and he actively supported a politics of memory that included financial assistance, the establishment of museums and the holding of ceremonies. Although this can be seen as a positive development, it also meant that the president was inclined to give in to the memorial demands given by the most diverse (or even random) groups. This led to the proliferation of commemoration days.72

According to Olivier Wieviorka, the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France’s new president, marked another turning point in French politics of memory. His first step in memorial policy was to restore the prestige of the Resistance that had existed for so many decades. He wanted to break with the policy of repentance that had dominated the dark years

70 Wolf, Harnessing the Holocaust: politics of memory in France, pp. 177-181 71 Olivier Wieviorka, Divided Memory: French Recollections of World War II from the Liberation to the Present, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2012 (translation by George Holoch) p. 148 72 Ibidem, p. 164 22 and was aiming for a nation ‘sure of its past, gallantly facing the future.’ Sarkozy intended on modernizing the ideology of the French right and his glorification of the Resistance had mere advantages. He replaced the epic saga of General De Gaulle with a mythology that reached from left to right, enabling him to avoid being locked into the partisan view that had dominated the dark years. His plans were however not working out the way he wished them to do. According to Wieviorka, this could have to do with the fact that a memorial policy only takes root when it responds to a social demand. While this was not the case, it was difficult for Sarkozy to successfully establish his Resistance myth, all the more because his choice of symbolism was rather surprising: the representation of the Resistance would be the young Guy Moquet, a Communist militant who actually had nothing to do with resistance activities. 73

73 Olivier Wieviorka, Divided Memory: French Recollections of World War II from the Liberation to the Present, pp. 165-168 23

III Drancy, 1944-1987

Although the extent to which Drancy had functioned within the scheme of the deportation and extermination of the French Jews was not entirely clear, it was a fact that the camp symbolized a dark chapter in French history, where people had suffered and French citizens had collaborated with the German oppressor. With those events belonging to the past, one began to think about ways to deal with them. This chapter will look at the first post-war decades in Drancy. What happened regarding memorialization and how was the Cité de la Muette being used after having been part of the grim past?

The late 1940s

Already in , when the exact numbers of deportees was not entirely clear, Drancy became a place where people would come on so called pilgrimages. Groups of Jews assembled on the central grounds of the camp on every year beginning on the 22nd of September 1944. The fact they picked this date was not coincidental: it marked the first Sunday in Tishri, the first month in the Jewish year. 74 Rabbis said some prayers and discussed the pain and sadness that existed within the community for all the lives that were lost. The first time such a ceremony was more organized was on the 21st of September 1947. 75 On this occasion, the committee already installed to take care of the commemorations announced the erection of a monument on which the names of the people that were killed would appear. Because the Cité de la Muette had been re-introduced into the Parisian system of low-rent housing and the efforts to create a monument on the site were abandoned after some time, commemoration would no longer take place in Drancy, but in the Grand Synagogue on the Rue de la Victoire in Paris. 76

Except for the camp itself, testimonies also provided of lieux de mémoire, even when they are not places in the literal sense. Already in the forties, former internees published their memoirs and shared their experiences. One of the most remarkable accounts is of the hand of Georges Wellers. His Drancy à Auschwitz, published in 1946, describes in great detail his two-year-long incarceration in Drancy, where he assisted in a big part of the deportations.77 In 1961 he was called to testify against in the famous in

74 Caroline Wiedmer, The Claims of Memory: Representations of the Holocaust in contemporary Germany and France, London: Cornell University Press 1999 p. 62 75 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, Paris: Perrin 2012 pp. 326-328 76 Wiedmer, The Claims of Memory p. 62 77 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, p. 320 24

Jerusalem. He was the only French witness. Another testimony that deserves recognition is that of Noël Calef. In his book Drancy 1941: camp de represailles Calef describes his time in the transit camp in the second half 1941, when it had just been installed. He was one of the 4223 Jewish men that were arrested in August 1941 and brought to Drancy. He started working on a manuscript about his time in Drancy that was first published in Italian in 1945 and was later edited and translated into French. Because it is so personal, it gives an interesting insight in the emotional state of internees during their incarceration.

In the late 1940s, the policemen that had been responsible for guarding the camps were arrested. Fifteen of them were suspected of liaisons with the enemy and threatening the nation’s safety. Ten of them had to appear in the Cour de justice de la Seine between the 19th and 23rd of March 1943. Three were released and seven of them were sentenced. Their sentences however were rather light due to testimonies by former internees that provided proof that the policemen had also taken part in (small) acts of resistance. Even when there were also clear examples and testimonies of their brutality, these accounts presented enough proof to lighten their punishment. 78These trials can be seen in the light of the resistance myth apparent in French society, enforced by Charles de Gaulle in the early post-war years and the reluctance to come to terms with the state collaboration within the Vichy regime.

The 1950s and 1960s

In the fifties, spurred by the welfare that spread around Europe, the population grew and housing projects were further developed. The Cité de la Muette too was functioning again as a housing estate, something that it was already intended to be in the thirties but which was obstructed by the crisis. The fact that a lieu de vie, a place where ordinary citizens were living in the present carried such a gruesome past, could mean that the memorialization would be slowed down or even stopped. Looking at the site and its functioning as a housing estate, it did not really obscure the memory of the Holocaust: there were indeed efforts to remember and to memorialize the camp grounds. In the context of the Cold War however, the Jews were not explicitly mentioned as being the biggest group of victims of the Nazis. This might have had to do with the fact that the organization that was fighting to keep the memory alive, L’Association fraternelle des anciens internes et déportés de Drancy affiliated with the Fédération nationale des déportés et internes résistants et patriotes. The latter can be seen as operating within a communist ideology and this explains the unwillingness in explicitly

78 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, p. 322 25 naming the Jews instead of just speaking of martyrs and comrades. The inscriptions in the commemorative plaques were therefore also discrete, focusing mainly on the prisoners of war (POWs) and never mentioning the fact that most of the victims were Jewish. 79

The 1970s and 1980s

With the 1970s came a new phase in the memorialization of Drancy. The ideas for creating a monument which had been discussed for years but never actually brought forward were finally picked up. Maurice Nilès, the communist mayor of Drancy at the time, set up a committee (Comité national pour l’érection du monument du souvenir) that would include representatives of the FNDIRP, UFAC and l’Union française des associations de combattants et de victims de guerre de Seine-Saint-Denis. Before even deciding upon who was going to create the monument, the first stone was placed on the 26th of October 1969. From then on, funds were collected to enable the swift creation of a monument. Important to mention here is the great amount of donations coming from the Jewish communities, which lead the committee to head for a monument in which the Jewishness of the victims had to play a role. The initiative collected about 620.000 francs. 80In 1973 a competition was started, in which a jury would pick one artist that would create the monument. After receiving more than 60 applications, the jury made a selection of five. After looking more closely at the proposals by these five artists, the jury unanimously voted for Shelomo Selinger’s design. He was appointed the winner and started with the creation of his sculpture. On the 9th of May 1976, the monument was inaugurated. 81

The three blocks on the pavement together form the Hebraic letter SCHIN, which is traditionally engraved in the mezouzas that hang above the door in Jewish homes. The two horizontal blocks symbolize the doors of death (Drancy was seen as ‘l’antichambre de le mort’). The central block is composed of 10 figures. This number was necessary to create the collective prayer (Minyan). On the front a male and a female figure symbolize suffering and dignity. In the center, a man with a religious cube symbolizes prayer. The Hebraic letters LAMED and VAV are formed by the arms and the beard of two persons on top of the sculpture. These two letters together have the numeric value of 36, which is the ‘just number’ and which is the reason the world exists. On the ground, two turned heads symbolize death. Also on the lower part of the sculpture are devouring flames that can be seen as both the

79 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, pp. 329-330 80 Wiedmer, The Claims of Memory, p. 62 81 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, pp. 332-333 26 flames with which people were killed and also the flames of memory that will always burn. On the sculpture is also a female figure holding a child. This symbolizes the fate of all children that were separated from their mothers and killed or killed together with them. 82

Next to the main sculpture are two identical pillars that carry the following inscriptions (in translation):

“The 20th of August 1941, 2000 Jews were arrested in Paris and assembled on this very place, from that moment called the Drancy camp, anti-chamber of the extermination camps. Around 100.000 Jewish men, women, children and elders were held here awaiting their deportation, mostly to Auschwitz. Only 1318 of them have returned. 256 of them were fusilladed as hostages.” (Left pillar)83

“This monument is a means to testify to the martyrdom of the Jewish victims of Nazi barbarism. When you pass it, do not forget about it. Look and see and wonder whether your pain can be compared to the pain of these people.” (Right pillar)84

Part of the text on the right pillar had been extracted from Jeremiah (the Bible) and the right pillar includes a translation in Hebrew and Yiddish, the latter being the language of the majority of the victims. The monument was inaugurated on the 9th of May 1976 at 10:30am. A flyer that had been made by Le comité de soutien pour l’érection d’un monument à la mémoire des victims des persecutions raciales internees au Camp de Drancy thanked people and municipalities for donating money that made the monument possible. The mayor of Drancy also tried to assemble as many people as possible to attend the opening ceremony of the monument. He did that by sending letters to the chief editor of Le Monde Juif.

82 Fondation du Judaisme français, Prix mémoire de la choa, Paris: Fondation Jacob Buchman 1993 pp. 8-19 83 Original text: Le 20 aout 1941 5000 Juifs furent arrêtés à Paris et rassemblés en ce lieu, inaugurant le camp de Drancy, antichambre des camps de la mort. Près de 100.000 Juifs, hommes, femmes, enfants, vieillards y furent internés avant leur déportation, pour la plupart à Auschwitz. 1518 seulement sont revenus. 256 furent fusillés comme otages. 84 Original text: Ce monument temoigne des martyres juifs de France, victimes de la barbarie nazie. Passant, recueille toi, et n’oublie pas. Regardez et voyez, s’il es tune douleur comparable à ma douleur (Lamentation 1:12) 27

Drancy memorial. Photograph by the author, January 2015

In June 1976 an article published in Notre Volonté (written by Henry Bulawko) discusses the inauguration of the monument. It states that it had taken 31 years for a monument of some sort was established at the former camp site which would probably be an interesting fact for historians (indeed). According to the author, the memorial does not only want to evoke the past, but it also wants appeal the people’s vigilance. Its creator aims to educate the younger generations that are responsible for the future of humanity. Bulawko, being one of the initiators of further memorialization of Drancy, was disappointed at the amount of people that attended the inauguration ceremony. He mentions that it is remarkable that in the years directly after the war, thousands would spontaneously show up at the former camp and now only two or three thousand had cared enough to come. Furthermore, the French mass media had been almost totally silent on this occasion. Bulawko however praised the efforts of mayor Nilès and the attendance of André Bord, minister for Veterans, who had come to represent the French government.85

Minister Bord was responsible for the official opening of the memorial and delivered a speech which has been criticized for its content. It was seen to be encouraging a rebirth of the Gaullian resistance myth and the erasure of the Jewish identity of the victims in order to achieve national homogenization; this proved to be difficult, while the monument ‘visibly insists on an ethnic heritage that is distinctly non-French’.86 Bord praises the fact that the monument has inspired memory, acknowledgement and determination. Memory, since the

85 Henry Bulawko, ‘Le memorial de Drancy’, in: Notre Volonté (1976) no. 4 86 Wiedmer, The Claims of Memory, p. 63 28 collective memory has proved to be more important that the victory of one group over the other; acknowledgement, because due to the sacrifice of one group, other people now feel the duty to protect freedom and the had already started with that during the war since they wanted to show that the French would not let themselves be led by the occupier; and determination, because the survivors and the new generations living in freedom have done everything to go beyond their differences to face the past because that would help the French nation.87 His speech shows how the government still highly glorifies the resistance and how they are not yet ‘ready’ to accept their responsibility in the Vichy regime and therefore the Final Solution. According to Wiedmer, he uses ‘the conventional shibboleth of distinguishing Vichy, or the French state, from the French republic. 88

Although the establishment of the monument was a ‘positive’ development, another factor can be seen as a step back in the memorialization process. In the 1970s, a part of the original collection of buildings of the Drancy camp was destroyed. While the horseshoe still remained in use, the five skyscrapers that had once been received with much enthusiasm and acclaim were torn down. They had never been used as housing estate, but had been habituated by camp guards and their families. This has been criticized by architectural historian Rémi Baudouï in a collection of essays he wrote in the 1990s. Although the Cité de la Muette had been promoted to being a national monument, he was not content with the way the French government dealt with the site. He felt like the evidence of the French collaboration was destroyed when the skyscrapers were taken down. According to him, what was left now was only half of the story. The response of Henry Rousso was completely different. To him, the camp site was not even that important. He felt like the French had been pressured by American and British officials to come to terms with their past for long enough. 89 This shows how within the French academic world, there was no consensus on the way the French government should deal with their lieux de mémoire.

Concluding remarks

When looking at the memorialization process in Drancy from the end of the war up until the late 1980s, it is hard to discern a clear red line in the memory policies. Although commemoration ceremonies were started already in the first years after the war, a real

87 Secretariat d’etat aux anciens combattants, ‘Le memorial des deportes juifs à Drancy inauguré par M. André Bord’, in Note d’Information (Mai 1976) no. 61 pp. 1-2 88 Wiedmer, The Claims of Memory, p. 63 89 Jo Glanville, ‘Memorializing Drancy’, in: Jewish Quarterly (2001) vol. 48 no. 3 p. 67 29 monument was only established in 1976. Furthermore, we see that while a Jewish artist created the memorial which explicitly references to the fate of the Jewish internees in Drancy, the French politician who opened the monument still emphasized and proclaimed the Gaullian myth of a France united in resistance, thus not acknowledging the responsibility of the French republic. Here we can clearly see ambiguities in the developments at the site and the ideas and goals of the French government.

30

IV Drancy 1988-2012

When looking at the first decades after the ending of the war, we see that although the Cité de la Muette was used as a housing estate almost immediately after the war, there have been many efforts to commemorate and to not forget what happened there in the forties. In this chapter I will discuss the history of the site as of the 1980s, trying to find out whether there have been any important changes in the way French society dealt with the former camp.

According to Wiedmer, the 1980s saw a turn in the memorialization process. Memorial work would be more and more focused on documentary and museum-like work instead of symbolic efforts. In the light of this shift, the camp site underwent a change in 1988. This time, a 1940s train wagon with an exhibition on the role of the Drancy camp in the Holocaust would be erected in close proximity to the monument that had been inaugurated ten years earlier. The wagon had been found and procured from the French railway company SNRCF by Shelomo Selinger and Henry Bulawko and it has been claimed to be identical to the wagons used in the convoys that departed from Drancy. The exhibition within the wagon was prepared by a specialist in historical documentation and is therefore rather museum-like and journalistic in style, according to Caroline Wiedmer. 90 The Drancy municipality had decided upon erecting this monument in the context of the trial of , SS Hauptsturmführer and Gestapo member known for his of French prisoners. 91 It would add a new dimension to the rather static monument. This wagon would most likely cause a more emotional reaction within the visitors. The focus on evidence and survivors’ testimonies, influenced by the success of Klarsfeld’s and Lanzmann’s efforts received praise from a delegation of the United States Holocaust Museum that visited the site in 1992. They were pleased to see that the memorialization process in Drancy was linked to their work in the museum. 92

In the 1980s, the French radio channel France Culture conducted some research in the Cité de la Muette. It interviewed people living within the HBM to examine to what extent the history of the former camp buildings was still a part of their lives. The content of the interviews showed that people unanimously thought the Nazi barbarism and its traces should not be swept away by amnesia, even when the monuments present at the site could cause

90 Wiedmer, The Claims of Memory, pp. 69-70 91 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, p. 336 92 Wiedmer, The Claims of Memory, p. 71 31 emotional reactions due to painful memories. Remarkable is the fact that even though some people have had their own family deported, they still choose to live in the Cité de la Muette. For them this functioned as some kind of homage to their loved ones. Although there is sometimes disinterest and disinformation about what took place on the premises of the Cité de la Muette, there is indeed some form of commemoration. In the eighties, the French people were still struggling with the fact that many of their ‘own’ policemen and ordinary citizens had joined the Nazis in their attempts to exterminate the Jews. This part of history was still silenced in most of the commemorative efforts. 93

One other key moment in the memorialization of Drancy was the establishment of the Association du conservatoire historique du Camp de Drancy. It is aiming to protect the site of the former Drancy camp and to transmit its stories and memories to the new generations. Its principal activity is welcoming groups of students and bringing them together with survivors who tell them about their experiences in the Drancy camp. The association also organizes conferences and even created a small exhibition, mainly on the tunnel. On the slightly simple website one can find the association’s objectives. Firstly, they take care of and protect the former Drancy camp and make sure everything that is organized there happens in an orderly fashion; secondly, they are looking to preserve the memories of those men, women and children that were deported to the death camps; thirdly, they want to contribute to reflection and research in ; and fourthly, they want to inform the younger generations on the camp, the deportations and the fact the Holocaust still brings up new questions even today. The website also contains some information on the monuments on the camp site and it provides of contact details, showing that the association was actually housed in one of the buildings belonging to the Cité de la Muette. 94

Even in the beginning of the 1990s, when one looked up Drancy in the dictionary, one would not find an explicit mentioning of the camp housing mainly Jewish internees. There were however new efforts towards memorialization of the Cité de la Muette. In the 1990s, five new plaques were added to the existing monuments. The first one was placed in 1994 near the building where the camp hospital had been housed and was dedicated to the poet , fifty years after his death. The second one included a description of the victims’

93 Rajsfus, Drancy: un camp de concentration très ordinaire 1941-1944, pp. 483-486 94 Le Conservatoire Historique du Camp de Drancy, organization website. Slightly dated. http://chcd.chez- alice.fr/ 32 identity and can be seen as a development in the memorialization process, since it mentioned the identity of the victims:

“In this place, which housed a concentration camp between 1941 and 1944, 100.000 men, women and children of Jewish religion or origin were interned by the Nazi occupier and then deported to the Nazi extermination camps where their majority was killed.”95

The complicity of the Vichy regime and the French policemen in the arrests and guarding of the camps was not mentioned here. It was also not really visible, since it was placed near building 8. To increase its visibility, it was placed alongside the two plaques commemorating the internment of French and British POWs. The third plaque celebrated the discovery of the beginning of the tunnel. It was discovered during the building of the gym Joliot-Curie.

The fourth plaque then was placed to commemorate De Gaulle’s call to action on the 18th of June 1940 and was part of a nation-wide campaign to remember this date. The fifth and last plaque was placed in February 1992 by the Union des étudiants juifs de France. The text of the plaque can be seen as characteristic for the 1990s, according to Wieviorka. It shows how Vichy was indeed responsible for the internment and the deportation of the Jews and the German responsibility for the Final Solution was even erased. This in an interesting change, since the French government had always been so eager to point at the Germans. 96

It is clear that the Cité de la Muette has remained a site that offers possibilities to remember and commemorate. The small exhibition in the wagon-souvenir had provided the visitors with some information on the workings of the camp, but limited to such a small space it could not tell the whole story. Encouraged by the Memorial de la Shoah on the Rue Geoffroy Asnier in Paris and financed by the private organization Fondation de la mémoire de la Shoah, a memorial building was officially opened on the 21st of September 2012. A remarkable date: the first official commemoration after the war was also held on this day. The building is constructed with reinforced concrete. The ground floor façade is clad with reflecting glass, angled in such a way that the square of the Cité de la Muette is presented as a mirror image. 97 The two underground levels house conference rooms. The first floor

95 Original text: En ce lieu qui fut un camp de concentration de 1941 à 1944, 100.000 hommes, femmes et enfants de réligion ou d’ascendance juives ont été internés par l’occupant hitlérien puis déportés dans les camps d’extermination nazis où l’immense majorité ont trouvé la mort. Extracted from Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, p. 331 96 Annette Wieviorka, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, pp. 330-331 97 Joseph Abram, Robert Diener, Sabine Von Fisher eds. Diener & Diener, London/New York: Phaidon 2011, p. 263

33 accommodates the archives and the documentation center where visitors can take a look at books and other publications on the Holocaust in France and Europe. The second floor is dedicated to rooms where educational activities are being held. The top floor houses an exhibition on the history of the camp and is dedicated to the view.

The exhibition in the Drancy memorial building has been set up by Karen Taïeb, archivist at the Memorial de la Shoah and author of some works on the Holocaust in France. It starts with an introduction, explaining the first months of the camp to then also explain some more about the administration of Drancy, the fate of the children and the other camps in France. It also displays two chronologies, focusing on three main themes, namely the history of Drancy, the fate of the Jews in France and the Holocaust in Europe. This serves to put the events in Drancy in a larger context. Information on the daily life in the camp is shown through video testimonies of former detainees and letters by internees written to their family and friends outside the camp. The display of personal artefacts and paintings by former internee Jane Levy enables visitors to maybe feel more connected to the victims: they were also just people trying to live their lives and wanting to express themselves with art.

The exhibition also dedicates a part to the postwar construction of memory in Drancy. It shows how testimonies were published rather quickly after the war and that ceremonies were already held in the first years. It also focuses on the trial of the camp guards and the testimony given by Georges Wellers at the Eichmann trial in , him being the only western European witness present. It further shows the process that led to the construction of the monument by Selinger and it focuses on anti-Semitic actions such as the vandalizing of the wagon-souvenir with anti-Jewish graffiti. The exhibition does not have a fixed route, which is confusing sometimes. The fact that visitors can use an audio tour in French or English however gives more structure. The colors used in the exhibition (white and grey) work calming and enable visitors to focus completely on the content. The fact that the exhibition has a lot of seats is positive as well, since people can take their time to look at the information and listen to the audio tour while sitting comfortably.

The opening of the memorial in Drancy was attended by the French president François Hollande, showing that commemoration at this very place was perceived to be very important according to the French government. Hollande addressed the audience with a speech that shows the straight-forward approach he has taken to deal with the French collaborationist past. According to him, the reality of the events that took place in Drancy is known by most now. The important factor is now to pass this knowledge on to the younger generations. 34

Hollande’s speech came only a few months after his public acknowledgement of the role of France in the Holocaust. With this he broke the tradition that had been held up by the leftist parties and most importantly François Mitterand, ‘hero of the left’ and Hollande’s mentor. He had always refused to acknowledge a broad role of the French police in guarding the camps and deporting the Jews to the East, as opposed to Jacques Chirac who opened up about France’s collaboration during the commemoration of the Vel d’Hiv round up in 1995. 98

Concluding remarks

When looking at the memorialization process in the last decades, we can discern a certain development from purely commemorating into informing and educating young people on the horrendous crimes committed in the Holocaust. In these later years, we can also see that efforts in Drancy were connected to nationwide campaigns: the installment of the plaque around the Armistice can be seen as part of a French political move. The opening of the memorial eventually, can also be connected to a broader development. As seen in chapter 2, when Chirac was elected president he started a memorializing policy that acknowledged the importance of education and the creation of museums. In 2004 the Memorial de la Shoah was opened in the heart of Paris. In 2007, Sarkozy was elected France’s new president and he propagated a new kind of ‘resistancialist’ myth. This might have caused delays in plans for a memorial in Drancy to be erected: focusing on the black pages of history and French responsibility in the Holocaust would not fit in Sarkozy’s new myth. This view is supported by the fact that when François Hollande was elected in May 2012, the memorial was opened only four months later. It is however not entirely sure whether this change of presidents really had such a great impact on the developments in Drancy: the fact that it took years to create a memorial in Drancy could also have been caused by financial matters.

98 Scott Saraye, ‘At Holocaust Center, Hollande Confronts Past’, in: New York Times (2012) 22nd of September 2012, p. A8 Accessible online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/world/europe/at-drancy-holocaust-center- hollande-confronts-grim-chapter-for-france.html?_r=1 35

V Les Milles, 1944-2012

The late 1940s

After the defeat of the Germans in 1945, all European countries were trying to find ways to build up the country and start industrial activities again. The year 1946 seems to have been key in the case of France. De Gaulle, head of government from that moment on, and the political parties making up the coalition, started reforms to reconstruct the industrial sector. They set up the Conseil national de la Résistance and they started nationalizing various sectors such as electricity, coal mines and banks. While the government was looking to reconstruct, it was also aiming for modernization. The Commissariat Général au Plan lead by Jean Monnet was the central factor in the efforts to modernize. The plans were known in Les Milles as well, but there they were hesitating to take up work again and reinstall the factory. Not because of the factory’s former function as a concentration camp, but mostly because of material problems. The family Rastoin to which the factory had belonged for years, had suffered great losses during the occupation and the war and the financial means to reopen the factory were thus quite meager. Due to the financial boosts provided by the Monnet initiative and the Marshall Plan (United States), the patriotic spirit and the recovering market, the factory was finally opened again. 99

The first group of workers was connected through their former service to the factory and the family. In the beginning, they were mostly using American materiel such as GMC vans to get the factory ready for production. After six months of renovation, the production started again in the summer of 1947. Although there were still traces of the camp’s existence, the workers and the people living nearby les Tuileries seemed to ignore these. Some suggest that maybe people thought it was just another tragedy in a war that was terrible for everyone 100 and they were not aware or did not want to be aware of the role of ordinary French citizens in the Holocaust. Reopening the factory and turning the place into an industrial lieu again, might have seemed a good way to erase the camp’s existence from people’s memories.

Industrial activities and oblivion

As of 1955, the factory was completely running again, producing six different types of tiles, 30 types of bricks and twelve types of ornaments. About 130 people were working in the

99 Boris Grésillon, Olivier Lambert, Philippe Mioche eds., De la terre et des hommes. La tuilérie des Milles d’Aix-en-Provence (1882-2006), Aix-en-Provence: REF.2C éditions 2007, pp. 47-48 100 Ibidem, p. 51 36 factory, both male and female. It becomes clear that the factory has been an important factor in the construction and development of Les Milles from a small agricultural village into a larger agglomeration with industrial activities. When walking through the village today, one can see that many walls and houses contain material from Les Tuileries. The factory was also a part of the village in a way: everyone would be able to hear the alarms that notified the workers when they could take a break or when they could leave to go home. Up until the seventies, the factory was the only industrial part of the village. After the creation of the Zone économique de desserement aixois (ZEDA) in 1970, the environment around Les Miles changed greatly. The creative industry began to develop and the population grew. Another development was the fact that owning a car was becoming normal. Although the fact that Les Milles was being integrated in the bigger industrial area of Aix-en-Provence and experienced growth, it also brought about some inconveniences such as air pollution and problems with transportation. 101

The year 1973 marked an important change in the existence of Les Milles. Two industrial organizations that had been working separately before were now integrated into one: les Tuileries de Marseille et de la Méditerranée. This change lead to Les Milles trying to increase their productivity by building another big factory, called Milles 3. The plans for the construction of this building would help to maintain the regional terracotta industry while also developing brick techniques. In just a few years, Les Milles expanded encompass twice as much land. By the beginning of the 1980s, caused by the fusion of the two organizations, Les Milles had turned into one of the most important places in regional industry and the capital of the regional terracotta industry, making up about 50% of the regional product capacity. Due to a recession in the early 1980s, the factory faced some difficulties. By coming up with ambitious plans to increase the sales again, the building of another factory, Milles 4, was planned.

The fact that les Tuileries were reinstalled as a tile factory, indeed seemed to influence the memorialization of the camp site. Neither in the first years after the war, nor in the decennia directly following the Liberation we can find proof of certain efforts to install a monument or even just a sign that would tell people of the tragic history of the place. To what extent these efforts were really non-existent or maybe just completely overruled and ignored by the Les Milles community and the Société des Tuileries de Marseille is still unknown to

101 Grésillon, Lambert, Mioche eds., De la terre et des hommes, pp. 59-60 37 this day. According to various persons invested in the history of Camp des Milles, no precise information is available on these années d’oubli.

After years of amnesia and only minor involvement with the history of the camp, something was started in the 1980s. In the 1983, presumably connected to the plans of creating another factory building to further amplify the production, a representative of the Aix-en-Provence local government announced the destruction of the mural paintings in des Tuileries des Milles. Former internees, but also resistance members, academics and the municipal council protested against this decision. They shared the view that the factory and thus the former camp would have to be turned into a memorial site where people could come to learn about the history of the Holocaust in the Marseille region. It is rather remarkable that these plans had never been brought up before and that now, because of the possible destruction of these mural paintings, people were finally realizing the importance of turning the factory into a lieu de mémoire. Is it true that simply no one had bothered to initiate memorialization efforts at the former camp site before? Not even groups of former internees or family members of ? Unfortunately, there is still a lot of mystery surrounding these questions, presumably caused by the fact that this ‘insufficient’ dealing with the past is in fact another issue that French society would rather forget about. In 1985 then, a committee was set up, consisting of Jewish organizations, not solely to protect the mural paintings that had been discovered, but also to create a memorial site in Les Milles.

The 1990s

The beginning of the nineties started with quite some initiatives in Les Milles. In 1990, the Chemin des Déportes was inaugurated. This path laid alongside les Tuileries symbolized the last walk of the internees before being deported to the East. In 1991, the Association du wagon-souvenir des Milles was created. This association consisted of groups of former internees, veterans and members from the Jewish community. Among the members of the committee were Serge Klarsfeld, president of the Association des fils et filles de déportés and Simone Veil, who had been an internee in Les Milles and was a member of the European Parliament at the time. It seems like efforts were being made to collect as many influential people as possible to make sure the memorializing project would not fail again. After such a long period of silence, the committee was aiming towards an ambitious process of memorialization that would include the installment of the wagon-souvenir and in a later stadium the opening of a memorial center inside the factory.

38

In November 1992, the wagon-souvenir that had been planned for quite some time was finally inaugurated. This had been initiated by Denise Torros-Marter, who had been interned in Les Milles. This special moment was accompanied by a week of manifestations and activities organized by the Association du wagon-souvenir des Milles, mainly focused on educating youngsters and students. In a letter to Henri Bulawko, in which he is thanked for the fact that he wants to join the Comité de Parrainage et de Soutien, we find a preliminary programme. There would be an exhibition on the deportations from the Marseille region, made by high school students within this region itself. There would also be two round-tables organized by the university initiated by the Interuniversitary institute of Jewish studies and culture. The first would deal with the Vichy regime and the deportation of Jews in the south of France and would be led by specialists on this subject. The second would not only deal with deportation, but also with the internment of Jews and the resistance on the part of the French in the Provence. Another grand element of the activities would be the screening of movies on the same themes, followed by debate rounds. Furthermore, a theatre performance and a big national exhibition on the round-ups would be organized, the latter initiated by the mairie of Aix-en-Provence. All activities would be organized around the theme Memoire d’hier (memory of yesterday) but also the vigilance d’aujourd’hui (vigilance of today). 102

At the inauguration of the wagon-souvenir on the 9th of November, kids from Les Milles carried with them 54 candles, one for each child that was deported from Les Milles in the summer of 1942, their names being written on a little paper attached to the candle. The fact that the inauguration ceremony was planned on this certain day, was not coincidental: it marked the of November 1938. After the recital of some moving songs, two people were asked to speak. The first one was Louis Monguilan, president of the Association du wagon-souvenir des Milles, who himself was deported to Mauthausen during the war. The second person was Denise Toros-Marter, who had been deported to Auschwitz and was now making an effort to educate people on the Holocaust.

Alain Chouraqui gave a speech in which he emphasized the fact that one should not be thinking in black and white. France was neither completely collaborating nor completely resisting. There were groups that did actually resist and there were Frenchmen that were criminals. The most important thing is taking the things that happened and keeping them in

102 Letter dated the 18th of September 1992 by Louis Monguilan, president of the Association du wagon- souvenir des Milles, to Henr Bulawko, president of the Commission du souvenir du CRIF 39 the past, acting vigilantly and thus trying to prevent similar events from happening in the future.

In the same year, Serge Klarsfeld published his work on the deportation of Jews from the Marseille region and a school was opened with the name of Auguste Boyer, appointed Juste parmi les Nations for he saved various Jewish children during the war. Another remarkable element was the classification of the mural paintings as being cultural heritage that would have to be protected in 1993. As mentioned above, the paintings were already discovered in the 1980s, but now they were being seen as worthy of preservation. This might have had to do with a certain unwillingness on the part of French governmental institutions to acknowledge the importance of preserving traces of the Holocaust.

In 2002, a committee was set up to fund the ambitious plans of the Association Mémoire du Camp d’Aix-les-Milles. Following these developments, the site consisting of 7 acres, was assigned the status of a historical monument. In the years after this, money was assembled and donated by public organizations as well as individuals and finally the site was bought after the help of the Memorial de la Shoah. In 2009, the Fondation du Camp des Milles – Mémoire et education was created. It was immediately recognized as serving the national community by a decree by the French prime minister at the time.

After years of battling amnesia in Les Milles and proposals to establish a museum in the former factory building, a memorial was opened in Les Tuileries in September 2012. It was a challenge to combine different elements such as the history of the camp and the fact the site had been used as a factory up until 2006. The atelier responsible for the renovation of the building and the creation of the memorial had certain principles in mind while they were working in the building. It would have to be left in its original state, visitors would have to be able to enter the building in different ways to enable control over the flows of people. 103 The exhibition is organized around three pillars: history, memory and reflection. In the historical part, scientific information on the camp’s past is present to teach visitors about the historical context (European and national) in which the events in Les Milles occurred. In the part organized around memory, people access the buildings where internees were held and they discover traces left inside and outside the building. The third and last element consists of making people reflect on collective and individual responsibility in preventing crimes against

103 Mencherini, Gaussman, Lalieu eds., Memoire du Camp des Milles 1939-1942, p. 210 40 humanity. In this part, visitors can read the results of all sorts of sociological research project on peer pressure and obedience to authority and they learn more about resistance activities. 104

Laure Quoniam who is a terrain planner working with the Atelier Novembre which was responsible for the creation of the memorial, elaborates on some of the choices made on the site. The group has tried to create a relation between les Tuileries and the wagon-souvenir outside, to really make people feel the intense emotions internees have most likely felt awaiting their deportation. On the outsides of the camp, not much has changed. Trees and hedges were planted to close the premises off from neighboring buildings and flowers are planted alongside the monument and the wagon-souvenir. The importance of young people visiting the site is emphasized by the fact that trees have been planted by groups of pupils visiting Les Milles.

The memorial was inaugurated on the 10th of September 2012 by the French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Alain Chouraqui, head of the Fondation du Camp des Milles. Remarkably, an important delegation of French officials attended the ceremony. Furthermore, organizations and individuals that had contributed in the creation of the memorial were represented and the public consisted of people from 28 different nations. It is interesting to see that so many people attended the ceremony: this seems to suggest that the French government as well as people from other countries finally valued the preserving of Camp des Milles as a lieu de mémoire after such a long period of amnesia and battle. 105

Concluding remarks

In the case of Les Milles, we see that while the first decades can be characterized as années d’oubli, in which nothing happened regarding memorialization or transmittance of the site’s history. As of the 1980s, groups were finally doing research and starting a project that would eventually lead to the inauguration of the wagon-souvenir and the museum. These developments could be linked to the memory boom that started in the 1980s, which caused interest in memory studies and remembering to spark.

104 Fondation du Camp des Milles –Mémoire et Education, Camp des Milles: Le seul grand camp français d’internement et de déportation encore intact et accesible au public, booklet published in 2013, p. 33 105 Ibidem, p. 27 41

VI Drancy and Les Milles in traditional and social media since 2012

In the previous chapters I discussed the memorialization process in Drancy and Les Milles until the opening of the memorial buildings in September 2012. Although this can be seen as a goal that has finally been reached, it does not mean that nothing would happen from that moment on. In this chapter I would like to research to what extent the two sites have appeared in traditional and social media. I would also like to explore whether the memorials are actively using social media to connect with people and to promote their goals.

Drancy in French traditional and social media

The opening of the Drancy memorial on the 21st of September 2012 got considerable attention in some of France’s most notable newspapers. This was most likely influenced by the fact that the inauguration ceremony was attended by François Hollande. In an online article to be found on the website of Le Monde, the inauguration speech by the French president is explained. In his speech, he emphasizes that French society should focus on transmitting the past to the newer generations to prevent crimes against humanity, instead of looking back and be indulged in justice and accusations. While this might be a good aim, it also shows the ever- existing difficulties the French government has with fully acknowledging their role in the Holocaust.106 We can find the same emphasis in the online article on the inauguration of the memorial by Le Nouvel Observateur. ‘Il s’agit de transmettre’, it is about transmitting now. In this spirit, listening to testimonies by is necessary, so their experiences will not be forgotten. Interestingly enough, the article also mentions Hollande complimenting a children’s choir on their ability to sing the Marseillaise without making any mistakes. This shows how there remains a strong emphasis on republican symbols such as the anthem. 107 Le Figaro also features an article on the opening of the memorial online, which unfortunately cannot be accessed without subscribing to the newspaper.

Since the memorial was opened, it has been featured in traditional media every now and then. Interestingly enough, news is often centered on Islamism and the difficulties that the

106 Author unknown, ‘François Hollande inaugure un mémorial de la Shoah à Drancy’, published on Le Monde.fr on the 21st of September 2012. Accessible online: http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/09/21/francois- hollande-inaugure-un-memorial-de-la-shoah-a-drancy_1763610_3224.html?xtmc=drancy&xtcr=9 107 Author unknown, ‘Hollande à Drancy: “il s’agit de transmettre”’, published on the website of Le Nouvel Observateur on the 21st of September 2012, accessible online: http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/politique/20120921.OBS3168/hollande-a-drancy-il-s-agit-de-transmettre.html 42

Parisian region has been facing regarding extremism. The Drancy memorial has been used as a space for discussion by imams. Another subject that has gotten attention in the past years is the release of the documentary La cite muette in May 2015. Le Monde features an article explaining the idea behind the film, which is unfortunately also not available without a subscription. The same goes for a review of the documentary in Le Figaro. Le Nouvel Observateur also features an article about the release of the film, explaining the director’s strategy when researching the subject and the content of the film. It is remarkable that of the various testimonies given in the documentary, one of a policeman who has helped Jews is featured in the article. Was this done on purpose to show how the French were in essence good people, or is it simply the most interesting testimony present in Van Tassel’s work? 108

Searching for Drancy on social media proves to be rather difficult, since the memorial does not really have its own name and when typing in ‘Drancy’, one finds content about the city itself. It is therefore important to use other keywords such as memorial or Holocaust to find out what has been said about the memorial on social media. When searching for memorial Drancy on Twitter, one finds numerous tweets about events held around the Drancy monument and within the memorial building. A frequent item when searching with these terms is a news article about someone performing the Nazi salute in front of the memorial. This shows how antisemitism is still a problem in France.

Searching on Facebook shows us that the Drancy memorial has its own page, which is called Memorial de la Shoah de Drancy. This name shows how the memorial can be seen as an extension of the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris. On the page we can find photographs taken during meetings, conferences and events and we can find announcements and exhibition flyers. The page has less than a thousand likes and people do not like or comment on pictures a lot, although it is updated regularly.109 This could be because people automatically search for the Memorial de la Shoah when they want to know something about the Holocaust in France and Paris and they might not know of the existence of the camp. This view is supported by the fact that the memorial in Drancy is only visited by about 8000110 people a

108 Jerome Garcin, ‘Drancy, 70 ans après’, published on the website of Le Nouvel Observateur on the 19th of May 2015, accessible online: http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/l-humeur-de-jerome-garcin/20150519.OBS9163/la- cite-muette-drancy-70-ans-apres.html 109 Memorial de la Shoah de Drancy, Drancy Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/MemorialShoahDrancy?fref=nf. Last visited on the 18th of June 2015 110 According to Noémie Tajszeydler, documentalist at the Memorial de la Shoah in Drancy, the Drancy memorial was visited by 8350 people in 2014 43 year, while the Memorial in Paris welcomes hundreds of thousands of people in the same amount of time.

Looking for pictures of the Drancy memorial on Instagram proves to be very difficult. When searching with the keyword ‘Drancy’, the majority of the posts are of young people with their friends spending their time in the city. In this overflow of posts, one will easily overlook the handful of pictures dedicated to the memorial. When using different hashtags such as #lacitémuette or #drancymemorial one does not get any hits. This shows how Drancy is either not visited much, or the people that visit are not using social media or feel like it would be disrespectful to take pictures of the site. The latter explanation seems unconvincing, since we live in an age where images are more and more important. While the visitors’ numbers are rather low, there are probably just not that many people who visit and feel the urge to capture it.

Camp des Milles in French traditional and social media

When looking at the way Camp des Milles has been featured in French traditional and social media, it is possible to say certain things about the extent to which the site has been a part of the collective memory and to what extent it has received public attention and acclaim. The first moment Camp des Milles was featured in the media was around its opening in September 2012. Journalists affiliated with newspapers such as Le Figaro, le Monde, L’Express and Le Nouvel Observateur published on the opening of this memorial. An online entry on the website of Le Monde features an interview with Denis Peschanski, who discusses the reasons for the memorial to be opened after so many years of amnesia. He argues that attention for Camp des Milles and other camps throughout France only came about in the 1980s, because of the memory boom and the shift from the victims as martyrs, into the victims as explicitly Jewish people that were targeted solely for their race. According to him, the attention for the Holocaust and the role of the French state also increased and changed after the publication of Paxton’s in which the responsibility of the French government was publicly discussed. 111 This is an interesting explanation, but it still does not seem convincing to me that in all those years nothing has happened.

111 François Béguin, ‘Inauguration du mémorial des Milles : “C’est stupéfiant d’avoir attendu aussi longtemps”’, published on Le Monde.fr on the 12th of September 2012, accessible online: http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/09/12/inauguration-du-memorial-des-milles-c-est-stupefiant-d-avoir- attendu-aussi-longtemps_1758661_3224.html?xtmc=camp_des_milles&xtcr=18# 44

When searching for Camp des Milles on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, it becomes clear that ever since the memorial was opened in 2012, people have been talking and posting about it on social media. After decades of silence, the organization is now trying to really make this memorial project successful. Since social media are such a big part of people’s lives nowadays, it only seems logical to include these in the policies. Especially since one of the most important goals of Camp des Milles is to educate young people on the Holocaust and other genocides, it is good that they turned to social media. Many people between the age of 12 and 25 have an account on Facebook on Twitter and it is therefore fairly simple to reach them on social media. Generating attention for certain events can also be done online. While people from the older generation might still prefer announcements in the newspaper or someplace else, younger people get most of their information online. Therefore, if you want to reach this group, it is important you think of media strategies.

Camp des Milles has its own Facebook page with more than 5000 likes and over a thousand people who have posted on Facebook about having been there. The page consists of pictures of commemorations, such as that of the liberation of camp Buchenwald in April and announcements for events. Looking at the page, it becomes clear that Camp des Milles organizes lectures, temporary exhibitions and other events on a regular basis. The first photos are dated 22nd of October 2012, which means that the page was started a little over a month after the inauguration of the memorial. Scrolling through the page’s content, one can see that people are invested in the memorial’s work: they are liking the pictures and commenting as well. This shows how Camp des Milles has been successful in involving people in their project by showing them what they are doing and giving them the opportunity to respond.112

Searching for Camp des Milles on Twitter proves to be rather interesting. The memorial does have an account, but it only has two followers and they have not yet posted anything. In the description, one can find a link to the Facebook page. Looking for the hashtag #campdesmilles is more successful. We can find tweets and photos on different events at the site, such as the National Resistance Day that took place in May and the National Day for Remembering the Deportation in April. It becomes clear that Rousso’s statement on the French and anniversaries is true, since many different days have been installed to commemorate a certain event or group of people.

112 Site-mémorial du Camp des Milles, Camp des Milles Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Site- M%C3%A9morial-du-Camp-des-Milles/106307502863581?fref=ts. Last visited on the 25th of June 2015 45

When looking for Camp des Milles on Instagram, one finds that the memorial does not have an account themselves, but the hashtag #campdesmilles is used by Instagram users who have visited the memorial and post about it on the social media website. Some of the pictures show the factory building, accompanied by descriptions such as ‘n’oublions jamais’. Others portray groups of school children visiting the memorial on school trips. These photos are perhaps most interesting, since they show typical teenagers being on a trip posting selfies and tagging them with terms such as ‘fun’ and ‘friends’. While these pictures might seem disrespectful to some, they show that the site is indeed visited by many students, which in itself is positive. French children are educated on their country’s responsibility in the Holocaust and this is something that is to be encouraged.

Concluding remarks

When looking at the way in which the sites have been appeared in traditional media, it becomes clear that the sites have received attention when the memorial buildings were opened and sporadically in later years, mostly when big events or commemorations were held at the sites. Looking at social media, we can see that Camp des Milles is more visible online than Drancy. It seems like Camp des Milles has more successfully included social media in their aims to educate young people on the Holocaust and the events that took place in France and Les Milles during the war. While most young people use Facebook and Instagram, these channels can be very useful in reaching them and informing them.

46

Conclusion

After having presented an overview of the history of both sites and a discussion of the French politics of memory since 1944, it is now time to formulate an answer to my research question and to make some concluding remarks. When looking at the two sites, it becomes clear that the process of dealing with the past has not been easy in either cases. Years of battling amnesia and initiatives not being embraced by local and national governments had to happen before these communities could finally come to a clear memorialization policy. Why did it take so long for the two memorial museums to be opened?

When looking at Drancy, it becomes clear that already in the early years after the war commemoration efforts were being made by survivors and family members of deportees. Ceremonies were being held as of 1945 and have continued to do so up until today. Fairly early on, there were plans to create a monument, which was finally established in 1976. In later years, the wagon-souvenir marked a new phase in memorialization more focused on a journalistic display of information. The inscriptions on the plaques placed around the Cité de la Muette however, displayed a certain narrative until the 1990s. Although the victims were mentioned as having been Jewish, the responsibility of the French state in guarding and deporting them to the East was not mentioned. We can trace these developments back to the Vichy syndrome elaborated on in the second chapter. The Gaullist exorcism that was reigning until the 1970s consisted first and foremost of a complete neglect of the responsibility of the French Republic in the crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. The obsession as described by Rousso and ‘memory boom’ in the 1980s corresponds with the creation of the 1976 monument by Shelomo Selinger, which focuses explicitly on the Jewish victims, including Hebrew and Yiddish text inscribed on the right pillar, and the establishment of the wagon-souvenir in 1988. The fact that the wagon was vandalized in the early 1990s can also be traced back to the fact that some high-profile trials were taking place at the same time, stirring up anti-Semitic sentiments amongst part of the population.

The start of the mission in the late 1990s shows that the French government was beginning to take Holocaust memory seriously: they were filling reparation claims and planned the establishment of the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris, which would house a monument but also a museum which would tell the story of the Holocaust in France and Europe as a whole. These developments can be explained through the new memorial policy that was started by Chirac when he was elected president in 1995. His approach led to a

47 proliferation of commemorations, but also to an emphasis on museums. This would lead one to think that in those years, a museum could have been opened in Drancy, since it was seen as one of the main pillars of the government’s memorial policies. The fact that Chirac was followed up by Nicolas Sarkozy, might have caused a delay in the plans to build a museum. In his strategy, the propagation of a new kind of ‘resistancialist’ myth, a site where this resistance had not been victorious might have been seen as undermining undesirable. Speculatively, the lateness of the museum could also have been caused by financial troubles. Perhaps the memorial organization could simply not assemble enough money to create the memorial. Today, the Memorial de la Shoah is a big organization which can count on support from amongst others the French ministry of Education, the city of Paris, the French railway organization SNCF and the European Union, but in its first years it might not have had the financial means to accommodate a dependence in Drancy.

Looking at Les Milles, we see an even more difficult situation. Due to the fact that the factory was reopened only a few years after the war, the site took up its former function and became an important hub in terracotta production in the Marseille region. This hindered the memorialization process. Supposedly, it was easier for the people of Les Milles to focus on regaining their industrial position in the region than to deal with the dark chapters of their recent past, still visible in the factory through mural paintings and other forms of art. It is however remarkable that there are no traces of initiatives in the first decades after the war, of people wanting to commemorate or install a monument near the factory building. Only in 1983, when the planned destruction of the mural paintings was announced, people stood on the barricades and started historical research, which developed into the installment of committee that would later initiate the building of the wagon-souvenir and the museum. Unfortunately, it is still rather difficult to answer the ‘why’ question in this regard. The industrial activity at the site does not provide a sufficient reason. The Cité de la Muette was also being used as a housing complex only years after the war, and this did not hinder the creation of a monument as early as in the 1970s. Maybe we can link the late interest in the site to the memory boom that started in the 1980s and that caused people to do more extensive research into lieux de mémoire? This might be one of the more plausible reasons, although it perhaps does not tell the whole story. Another explanation could be the fact that because Les Milles was situated in the free zone without any orders from German oppressors, it was harder to deny French responsibility and therefore it was best to just ‘forget’ everything instead of ruining the image of a nation in resistance. It is difficult to judge whether the memory projects

48 in Drancy and Les Milles have been successful, since it depends on the way you define success and progress in terms of memorialization. Comparing the two sites, I feel like what happened in Les Milles cannot really be defined as successful. Although the memorial committee has done a great job on the museum and in the last years there has been a lot of attention and emphasis on commemoration and education, it has taken decades of amnesia and years of battle. In Drancy, memorialization efforts were already started right in the beginning and have never really ceased to exist. The museum and exhibition are not as large as the one in Les Milles and it seems like not many people find their way to the site on the outskirts of Paris, but at least people tried to find ways to deal with the past early on instead of outright forgetting it for years and years. When one focuses on how the situation is now, I would however argue that the organization of Sité-memorial du Camp des Milles surpasses that of the Drancy memorial regarding the use of social media and the efforts to be visible.

Further research should definitely be focused on this gap between the memorial policies of Chirac started in the late 1990s and the opening of the museums in 2012 only. In the case of Les Milles, it is also necessary to find out more about the années d’oubli, meaning the first decades after the war. Although people affiliated with the museum have claimed that no information on this period is available, I simply do not believe that nothing has happened or has been done in those years. People might have gone looking for the camp in later years, finding only a factory once again in use. To find out about these things, it may be good to travel to Les Milles to interview people in the neighborhood or to speak to the people working at the museum personally. Judging by my experiences in Paris, this might prove to be a very difficult task, but it is definitely worth trying. Another recommendation for further research is adding the memorialization of other French camps such as Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers, to have more material for comparison. Furthermore, it would be interesting to place the French developments in a broader European context, examining to what extent the French way of dealing with the past stands out amongst other countries.

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Literature and sources

Sources Author unknown, ‘Camp d’Aubagne durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale’, online encyclopedia Anonymes, Justes et Persécutés durant la période Nazie dans les communes de France, accessible online: http://www.ajpn.org/internement-Hotel-Le-Terminus-du-Port- 91.html Author unknown, ‘François Hollande inaugure un mémorial de la Shoah à Drancy’, published on Le Monde.fr on the 21st of September 2012, accessible online: http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/09/21/francois-hollande-inaugure-un-memorial- de-la-shoah-a-drancy_1763610_3224.html?xtmc=drancy&xtcr=9 Author unknown, ‘Hollande à Drancy: “il s’agit de transmettre”’, published on the website of Le Nouvel Observateur on the 21st of September 2012, accessible online: http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/politique/20120921.OBS3168/hollande-a-drancy-il-s-agit-de- transmettre.html Béguin, François, ‘Inauguration du mémorial des Milles : “C’est stupéfiant d’avoir attendu aussi longtemps”’, published on Le Monde.fr on the 12th of September 2012, accessible online: http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/09/12/inauguration-du-memorial-des- milles-c-est-stupefiant-d-avoir-attendu-aussi- longtemps_1758661_3224.html?xtmc=camp_des_milles&xtcr=18# Le Conservatoire Historique du Camp de Drancy, organization website. Slightly dated. http://chcd.chez-alice.fr/ Fondation du Judaisme français, Prix mémoire de la choa, Paris: Fondation Jacob Buchman 1993 pp. 8-19

Fondation du Camp des Milles –Mémoire et Education, Camp des Milles: Le seul grand camp français d’internement et de déportation encore intact et accesible au public, booklet published in 2013, pp. 1-66

Garcin, Jerome, ‘Drancy, 70 ans après’, published on the website of Le Nouvel Observateur on the 19th of May 2015, accessible online: http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/l-humeur-de- jerome-garcin/20150519.OBS9163/la-cite-muette-drancy-70-ans-apres.html

Letter dated the 18th of September 1992 by Louis Monguilan, president of the Association du wagon-souvenir des Milles, to Henr Bulawko, president of the Commission du souvenir du CRIF

Memorial de la Shoah de Drancy, Drancy Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/MemorialShoahDrancy?fref=nf. Last visited on the 18th of June 2015

Secretariat d’etat aux anciens combattants, ‘Le memorial des deportes juifs à Drancy inauguré par M. André Bord’, in Note d’Information (Mai 1976) no. 61 pp. 1-2

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Saraye, Scott, ‘At Holocaust Center, Hollande Confronts Past’, in: New York Times (2012) 22nd of September 2012, p. A8 Accessible online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/world/europe/at-drancy-holocaust-center-hollande- confronts-grim-chapter-for-france.html?_r=1

Site-mémorial du Camp des Milles, Camp des Milles Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Site-M%C3%A9morial-du-Camp-des- Milles/106307502863581?fref=ts. Last visited on the 25th of June 2015

Literature

Abram, Joseph, Robert Diener, Sabine Von Fisher eds. Diener & Diener, London/New York: Phaidon 2011

Bulawko, Henry, ‘Le memorial de Drancy’, in: Notre Volonté (1976) no. 4 Fredj, Jacques, ed., L’internement des Juifs sous Vichy, Paris: CDJC 1996 Fontaine, André, Le camp d’étrangers des Milles 1939-1943, Aix-en-Provence: Édisud 1989 Fontaine, André, ‘Internement au Camp des Milles et dans ses annexes. Septembre 1939 – Mars 1943’, in: Les camps en Provence. Exil, internement, deportation. 1933-1942 Fontaine, Thomas, Benoit Pouvreau, ‘La camp de la cité de la Muette à Drancy, 1941-1944’, in: Lieux d’histoire et de mémoire de la déportation en Seine-Saint-Denis (2004) no. 37 pp. 1- 11 Glanville, Jo, ‘Memorializing Drancy’, in: Jewish Quarterly (2001) vol. 48 no. 3 pp. 67-68

Grésillon, Boris, Olivier Lambert, Philippe Mioche eds., De la terre et des hommes. La tuilérie des Milles d’Aix-en-Provence (1882-2006), Aix-en-Provence: REF.2C éditions 2007

Hansen, Alise, ‘A Lieu d’Histoire, a Lieu de Mémoire, and a Lieu de Vie: The Multidirectional Potential of the Cité de la Muette’, in: French Historical Studies (2014) vol. 37 no. 1 pp. 117-150 Klarsfeld, Serge, ‘La Rafle du 20 Aout 1941 et la création du camp de Drancy’ (extract from Vichy-Auschwitz (1942) no. 1 published in 1983) Read in: Noel Calef, Drancy 1941: Camp de represailles, Drancy la faim, Paris: FFDJF 1991 pp. XV-XIX

Levy, Claude, Paul Tillard eds., La grande rafle du Vel d’Hiv, Paris: Robert Laffont 1967 Mencherini, Robert, Angelika Gaussman, Olivier Lalieu eds., Memoire du Camp des Milles 1939-1942, Marseille: Métamorphoses/Le Bec en l’air 2013 Rajsfus, Maurice, Drancy: un camp de concentration très ordinaire 1941-1944, Paris: La Cherche midi éditeur 1996 Rousso, Henry, The Vichy Syndrome: history and memory in France since 1944, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1991 (translation by Arthur Goldhammer)

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Uyttenhove, Pieter, ‘From ‘grand ensemble’ to architectural heritage, from concentration camp to memorial: the mass housing project of the Cité de la Muette in Drancy’, in: Architektúra & Urbanizmus (2012) vol. 2-4 pp. 160-179 Wiedmer, Caroline, The Claims of Memory: Representations of the Holocaust in contemporary Germany and France, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1999 Wieviorka, Annette, A l’intérieur du camp de Drancy, Paris: Perrin 2012 Wieviorka, Olivier, Divided Memory: French Recollections of World War II from the Liberation to the Present, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2012 (translation by George Holoch)

Winstone, Martin, De Holocaustmonumenten van Europa, Amersfoort: BBNC 2014

Wolf, Joan B., Harnessing the Holocaust: politics of memory in France, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2004

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