Vichy syndrome

Vichy syndrome is a word describing the guilt and denial of the French people over the war crimes of Vichy France during the Holocaust.

Origin

The word was made by Jewish historian Henry Rousso in his 1987 book The Vichy Syndrome. He said that the war crimes of Vichy France remained a "past that doesn't pass away". The nature of Vichy French collaboration with Nazi Germany is a subject of debate. 

French government positions

The French government's position towards French responsibility for the Holocaust changed over the decades, with different presidents holding different views on the matter. 

Before Jacques Chirac

Before Jacques Chirac became the president, the French government insisted that Vichy France was an illegal regime separate from France, denying that the French participated in the Holocaust. 
 One of the first legal acts of the provisional government was to pass an ordinance reestablishing the rule of law: Ordonnance du 9 août 1944  relative au rétablissement de la légalité républicaine sur le territoire continental, article 1.



Jacques Chirac

Jacques Chirac was the first president to say that the French participated in the Holocaust.

Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron said on July 16, 2017 that Vichy France was the France during World War II, accepting responsibility for the Holocaust. When discussing the Vel' d'Hiver roundup, Macron said:

Holocaust denial in France

From the end of the war to the 1970s, it was a common illusion that almost every Frenchman was in the Resistance, or at least supported it, and that the collaborators were a minority. Another two popular beliefs went along with this, that of the "sword and shield", and the idea that to whatever extent there were harsh measures under the Vichy regime, it was because it was under the boot of the Germans and not by choice.

Proliferation

Particularly, anti-Zionists played a huge role in promoting Holocaust denial in France. For instance, Pierre Guillaume, an ultra-left anarcho-Marxist activist, published books denying the Holocaust, calling it a "distraction from class struggle" that "played into the hands of Zionism and Stalinism". 



Despite being left-wing, Guillaume's views were adopted by the French far right, who have trivialized the Holocaust by comparing the Holocaust to the Judean massacres of the Canaanites or the Native American genocide, and accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust to extort compensations from European countries.

A number of influential French Holocaust deniers emerged, such as Claude Autant-Lara, Maurice Bardèche, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Paul Rassinier, François Duprat, Serge Thion, Robert Faurisson, 

  and Dieudonné M'bala M'bala.

Today, the few remaining defenders of Vichy France maintain the claim made by its Catholic fascist leaders Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval: state collaboration was supposed to protect the French civilian population from the Occupation's hardships. At his trial, Pétain said that Charles de Gaulle had represented the "sword" of France, and Pétain had been the "shield" protecting France.

Academic views

Kim Munholland

Kim Munholland (1934‒2020) reported in 1994 a widespread consensus among historians on Vichy French authoritarianism and its



Robert Paxton

American historian Robert Paxton (1932 ‒ ) said:L'Humanité, 1 November 1997, Robert Paxton donne une accablante leçon d'histoire (Robert Paxton gives a damning lesson of history)  and Robert Paxton: History Lesson. Retrieved August 29, 2016.

Susan Zuccotti

American historian Susan Zuccotti (1940 ‒ ) said that the Vichy regime facilitated the deportation of foreign Jews, rather than French Jews, until at least 1943:Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews. University of Nebraska Press, 1999, pp. 168–169. 

Deportations from France started in summer 1942, several months after mass deportation from other countries had started. Whatever the Vichy government's initial or subsequent intent, the death rate was 15% for French Jews, slightly over half of that of non-citizen Jews residing in France.François Delpech, Historiens et Géographes, no 273, mai–juin 1979, 

Related pages

 Polish Memory Law
 Historical revisionism
 Secondary antisemitism

Footnotes

References

Category:Psychology
Category:Nationalism
Category:Controversies
Category:Genocide denial
Category:History of France