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| Europe | |
| France operated post WWII Concentration Camps | |
| 2004-10-05 | |
| EFL The government of Charles de Gaulle held hundreds of foreigners, including at least three Britons, in an internment camp near Toulouse for up to four years after the second world war, according to secret documents. The papers, part of a cache of 12,000 photocopied illegally by an Austrian-born Jew, reveal the extent to which French officials collaborated with their fleeing Nazi occupiers even as their country was being liberated. They also show that, when the war was over, France went to extraordinary lengths to hide as much evidence of that collaboration as possible. The documents are in a mass of registers, telegrams and manifests which Kurt Werner Schaechter, an 84-year-old retired businessman, copied from the Toulouse office of France's national archives in 1991. They are uniquely precious: under a 1979 law most of France's wartime archives are sealed for between 60 and 150 years after they were written.
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| Posted by:Mrs. Davis |
| #14 Cynic 2004 This is ridiculous. June 26, 1944 the Allies wee still struggling in the bocage and the only liberated part of France was the peninsula of Cotentin (that thing who points towards England west of Omaha beach). Around 1 percent of French soil. The guy who wrote the letter was on the other 99% and was taking his orders from Vichy not from De Gaulle. |
| Posted by: JFM 2004-10-05 4:08:09 PM |
| #13 #3 JFM I suppose these were friends of Lord Haw Haw? If so why were they transported to concentration camps? On June 26 the commandant informed the prefecture that he had four American "guests": Moore Sumner Kirby, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1895; Herbert Lespinasse, Stamford, 1884; Gerald McLanghin, Detroit, 1898; and James Smith, Los Angeles, 1904. Sumner Kirby is known to have died in the Leau concentration camp near Bernberg, Germany, on April 7 1945. Charles De Gaulle resigned in January 1946 and was succeeded by people who were hostile to him so attributing to "De Gaulle's government" So why did they continue his work? Anyway they were still Frenchmen |
| Posted by: Cynic 2004-10-05 2:36:40 PM |
| #12 I think everyone agrees that "The Guardian" is pro-Muslim and not to be trusted. I am with AC, I am very skeptical of the timing, regarding the article release. Some are angry about what the French did in the WWII era and some are angry about what the French did in this current Iraq war. But, here is what I will be forever angry(understatement) at the French. In fact, I will forget it as long as I live. The fact that the French DID NOT allow Reagan to fly over their country to bomb Lybia. The French did not have to provide troops, jets, logistics, intelligence, etc. Not a damn thing. Just flyover. If memory serves me right, I believe we lost a jet as a result of the French not allowing flyover. The French govt. always have and will be the lowest SCUM on earth. What will it take to replace these morons with Germany on the security council or better yet, abolishing the Useless Nations? |
| Posted by: Poison Reverse 2004-10-05 10:06:11 AM |
| #11 #4 Mark - quite a few, I would suspect. Especially in the government. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-10-05 9:54:57 AM |
| #10 Sgt. Mom- The heck with the documents - Alistair Horne's "The Fall Of The Third Republic" (40 years old but still an incredible work) should convince anyone that the French are no longer to be trusted. The rot set in after the Bourbon restoration, and it's been downhill since. Mike Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2004-10-05 7:46:12 AM |
| #9 Might it be...ummm...politic of the Guardian to post these documents on the internet where they can be minutely examined by...oh,I don't know...freaking everybody? Old photocopies of old archival docs... sound familiar, anyone? Not to compare a collection of 12,000 documents in an official archive with six documents of mysterious origin, but these are incindiary charges, and the Guardian has just as much a predisposition as CBS to give credance where their bias takes them. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2004-10-05 6:47:09 AM |
| #8 I see that Al Guardian is still running the libelous red herring about GWB's grandfather assisting the nazi's rise to power. They also have a lurid and emotional article about the mass suffering in Gaza, one that natually, blames Israel alone for it. As far as I am concerned, the Guardian staff and editors are war criminals under the Goebbels/Streicher precedent and should be treated accordingly. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-10-05 5:19:20 AM |
| #7 This is from Al Guardian and the obvious intention is to accuse the allies of complicity in the deportations to Germany, an absolute absurdity, but one which obviously follows from the article's references to deportations occurring after liberation, as though this were a whole and complete process from day one. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-10-05 5:04:57 AM |
| #6 I've never been one to let the French off the hook, but JFM is quite right. The French had every right to hold collaborators after the war, that is not an issue. Worse, this article misleadingly associates unrelated events in an attempt to blame deGaulle for events that occurred under the nazi occupation or after he left office. The article emphasizes, for example, that Sumner Kirby and the other foreigners were "transported" in "June," (which had to be in 1944 from context) and even that Kirby was believed to have died in Dachau. It pointedly fails to mention that these events occurred under the auspices of the Germans, not deGaulle and the Free French. In fact it tries to create the opposite impression. Juxtaposing the final transfer with a reference to deGaulle's victory parade, that the parade occurred first, and failing to mention that the camp was still under German control at that time, certainly invites the conclusion that deGaulle was somehow responsible. This is an outrageous slander, worthy of the nazi's own Joseph Goebbels, ironically enough. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-10-05 4:55:45 AM |
| #5 La collaboration d'état |
| Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-10-05 3:44:20 AM |
| #4 One has to wonder how many in France long for the Vichy days, and hope they will return, |
| Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-10-05 2:26:40 AM |
| #3 A few reamarks 1) Of course France retained foreigners in concentration camps. To begin with there were thousands of Russans who had fought in the German Army and, in revenge of the STO, many, many Germans who were kept for work in French farms. And for the three Britons, if they were from Lord Haw Haw kind they should thank the Lord for not having being shot on the spot (or handed to the British) 2) "The stain of a codwardly submission will be never erased. The poison of havoing surrendered will sap the efforts of future generation" This Clausewitz but is quoted by Hitler in Mein Kampf, and that is why Hitler was very careful in proposing "acceptable" cease-fire conditions in 1940 in order to get having the French government to surrender instead of going into exile. De Gaulle who had read Clausewitz (and probably Mein kampf too) knew about the poisoning effect and told in the 60s: "I don't care about truth, I care about allowing France to reraise". Ie by making believe to the French, that the defeat and collaboration involved uniquely an illegimate governùmant 5vichy) and that they were unananimously in the Resistance he wanted them to regain their self pride and trust in themselves. 3) If the French had collaborated so openly and freely then there wouln't have been any Jews left. Their survival rate was higher than in any other country except for Denmark. 4) Charles De Gaulle resigned in January 1946 and was succeeded by people who were hostile to him so attributing to "De Gaulle's government" a captivity who extended into 1948-1949 seems quite abusive to me. |
| Posted by: JFM 2004-10-05 2:15:47 AM |
| #2 Doesn't surprise me, Zen, few people in Europe collaborated as openly and freely as the French during the war. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2004-10-05 1:30:54 AM |
| #1 If proven true, this is a final nail in the coffin that is French perfidy. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-10-05 1:28:58 AM |