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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Record 450 French Jews headed for Israel |
| 2008-07-23 |
| A record 450 French olim were to arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport Wednesday, on three special flights sponsored by the Jewish Agency and the AMI immigration association. The immigrants were to be welcomed in an official ceremony, where they were to be addressed by Jewish Agency Chairman Zeev Bielski, Immigration and Absorptiion Minister Eli Aflalo and AMI founder Pierre Besnainou. France has one of the largest Jewish communities outside of Israel, totaling nearly half a million people. Its population is second only to America's Jewish population, which has now exceeded 5 million. Since 2000, there has been a marked increase in the number of French citizens immigrating to Israel, arguably due to the waves of growing anti-Semitism in the European state. Many French Jews say that they no longer feel comfortable or welcome in France, particularly within the working-class suburbs of Paris, where much of the tension has been focused. Last month, a Jewish teenager was brutally attacked in the 19th Arrondissement of Paris. That neighborhood, which has been the site of ongoing scuffles between North African Jews and Muslims living in Paris, was the same suburb in which 23-year-old Ilan Halimi was beaten and left to die a year before. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #7 Moose, look hard again. It was a battalion. That's far more than 21. I'm aware of SS impressment, but that doesn't kick in till late '44, early '45. And the SS were not the 'German Army' but a separate organization directly under Himmler. It's like us mixing our Army and Marine Corps, two distinct organizations with different chain of command till you get to the JCS. As far as the French government dropping the issue, it seems to have had more in line with relations with the new Germany rather than the individuals involved. Remember the French had no problem offing their own people who collaborated with the Germans during the occupation. Petain survived only because of his WWI stature. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-07-23 13:25 |
| #6 Moose, you have a reference that the SS were composed of draftees? That was something I remembered out of the fact the killers were actually pardoned by the french justice in the early 50's. I went to french wikipedia, and it sez that out of 21 killers, 14 were alsacians 'malgré-nous', IE forcibly-enlisted into the german army, as they were seen as ethnically and culturally german (which they are, though they have their own distinct regional identity). |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2008-07-23 11:27 |
| #5 Anonymous - Quite correct. My point was simply the possibility of a future brutalities at the hands of invaders. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-07-23 10:49 |
| #4 Moose, you have a reference that the SS were composed of draftees? In the days leading up to the Allied D-Day landings at Normandy, the local French Resistance increased its activities in order to disrupt local German forces and to hinder communications. 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich was ordered to make its way across the country to the anticipated fighting in Normandy. Along the way, the Germans killed many French citizens and, in turn, came under attack and sabotage from the French Resistance. Early on the morning of June 10, 1944, Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, commanding the I battalion of the 4th Waffen-SS ("Der Führer") Panzer-Grenadier Regiment, informed Sturmbannführer Otto Weidinger at regimental headquarters that he had been approached by two French civilians who claimed that a German officer was being held by the Resistance in Oradour-sur-Vayres, a nearby town. The captured German was alleged to be Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe, commander of the 2nd SS Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion, who may have been captured by the Maquis the day before. On June 10, Diekmann's battalion sealed off the town of Oradour-sur-Glane, having confused it with nearby Oradour-sur-Vayres, and ordered all the townspeople – and anyone who happened to be in or nearby the town – to assemble in the village square, ostensibly to have their papers examined. In addition to the residents of the village, the SS also apprehended six people who did not live there but had the misfortune of riding their bikes through town when the Germans arrived. All the women and children were then taken to and locked in the church while the village itself was looted. Meanwhile, the men were led to six barns and sheds where machine-gun nests were already in place. According to the account of a survivor, the soldiers began shooting at them, aiming for their legs so that they would die more slowly. Once the victims were no longer able to move, the soldiers covered their bodies with kindling and set the barns on fire. Only five men escaped; 190 men died. The soldiers then proceeded to the church and put an incendiary device in place there. After it was ignited, women and children tried to flee from the doors and windows of the church, but were met with machine-gun fire. Two-hundred and forty-seven women and two-hundred and five children died in the mayhem. Only one woman survived, 47-year-old local housewife Marguerite Rouffanche. She had managed to slide out of a small window at the back of the church, and hid in the bushes overnight until the Germans had moved on. Another small group of about twenty villagers had fled Oradour-sur-Glane as soon as the soldiers had appeared. That night, the remainder of the village was razed. A few days later, survivors were allowed to bury the dead. It was found that six-hundred and forty-two inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane had been brutally murdered in a matter of hours. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-07-23 10:47 |
| #3 The people killed at Oradour were not jews, they were your average forties french rural folks, and the actual killers were not germans, IIRC, but french soldiers from Alsace who had been forcibly enlisted in the german army (the only germans involved were the officers). |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2008-07-23 10:41 |
| #2 Can't blame them. One Oradour-sur-Glane is quite enough. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-07-23 10:15 |
| #1 The quick and the dead. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-07-23 09:56 |