Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

lenin1991 t1_j5si9f5 wrote

Reply to comment by YakuzaMachine in A firefighter's 1943 photos of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising have been found by Geek-Haven888

> History shows they did the right thing.

Active mass collaboration with genocide is not the right thing.

35

[deleted] t1_j5sihtf wrote

[deleted]

−9

Picticious t1_j5sn1fe wrote

Well, they may not have wanted to, but they sure participated.

Around 80% of the Jews arrested and sent to their deaths in France weren’t arrested by Germans, they were arrested by the French.

But ask any French person and they were all la resistance.

Pfft.

38

frenchchevalierblanc t1_j5src8d wrote

75% of jews in France survived though, including 70,000 hidden children.

It's true that France before 1943 was still struggling to act as if the French Police (essentially in the northern part of France officially "occupied" area where Vichy didn't have much control) was still in control, so they were responsible to arrest jews (they literally asked for it to the germans). There was no really way to know what would become of them though, jews didn't really know either. Quota asked by the germans were never fulfilled though. Lots of french policemen could help some families still pretending to arrest, some policemen just did as asked. Even in places like the Vel d'Hiv were jews where regrouped some people just "walk away" while policemen were looking the other way.

Things like "also arresting the children" was seen as they would go to work camps with families, people thought that if you keep families together with children it would mean they wouldn't kill everyone, why bother? That's all those subtle decisions and the dilution of responsibilities that makes things like shoah possible in the end.

Some people though understood exactly what the horror mean and did everything they can to hide / go out of camps.

1 million french soldiers were emprisonned in Germany and the germans used them as bargaining chips.

−3

Picticious t1_j5srqeb wrote

That’s 72,000 Jews still murdered.

72,000 people, were rounded up and slaughtered like pigs.

14

frenchchevalierblanc t1_j5ssqyc wrote

yes no one is denying that but the dilution of responsibilies make things happen it's not that french policemen went and killed everyone, they were sent to camps in Germany as far as they knew (after 1943 Germans were in charge for everything )

−6

scolfin t1_j5t4sew wrote

75% escaped, and it's interesting that you present the non-Jewish Frenchmen as more French and important.

9

grixit t1_j5sknnc wrote

According to one source i read, Vichy actually saved a lot of jews by losing them in the bureaucracy. "Honest, Herr Kommisar, we put them on a train to Berlin, i just can't seem to find the paperwork at the moment".

4

ATNinja t1_j5snfan wrote

Without any data on either side; that sounds like revisionist history to make France seem less complicit.

If there's a prevailing sentiment for many years and then you start seeing "maybe surrendering so quickly was smart" "maybe the Vichy were undermining the nazis from within" just seems like changing the narrative. Like what we started seeing with the confederates 60 years after the Civil War.

Even if some Vichy officials helped some jews escape, i bet they still harmed many more jews than they helped.

27

frenchchevalierblanc t1_j5sr7yb wrote

70,000 children from jewish families were hidden by french people, you can imagine how many people needs to be kept in secret and not tell anything to the authorities.

There were 350,000 jewish people on French territory in 1940, 100,000 of them were "foreign" jews that were not born French. France deported 75,000 of them (2,000 survived), mostly "foreign jews".

−4

Picticious t1_j5srytu wrote

Sweden, Denmark and Albania managed to save their Jews.

Your numbers sound good like this but they don’t account for the 72,000 rounded up and slaughtered.

Shall we talk about the political prisoners now? Resistance fighters that were murdered?

I wouldn’t care as much if France didn’t try and whitewash what they were involved with.

12

frenchchevalierblanc t1_j5ssoxk wrote

French didn't slaughtered those jews though nor asked to.

Vichy France was a racist dictatorial regime, that became a fascist one after 1943, people were bad.

France doesn't try to whitewash anything, French student learn everything about the collaboration, what Vichy France did, etc.. the horror in colonies, the racist state there, the racist state of Vichy.

No problem talking about resistance fighters murdered or political prisoners.

−2

LogicalConstant t1_j5z2z0d wrote

It seems like you're lumping all the French people together as a big collective. Some individuals were good and hid jews while some helped murder them. Politicians, police, and citizens each played different parts. Hard to discuss it intelligently without specifying who you're talking about.

2

scolfin t1_j5t46vm wrote

Intentionally? I've similarly heard that Austrian incompetence saved a lot of Jews.

2

frenchchevalierblanc t1_j5sqwvf wrote

It was not Vichy as a whole but more people working in the administration etc..

Pétain didn't care about jews, he just not want to be seen deporting french people. So foreign jews were given without a blink from Pétain.

1

IdesOfMarchCometh t1_j5sqo3i wrote

Poles didn't surrender. It was a lost cause and many died but the next invader will know it won't be easy.

1

Picticious t1_j5srfcf wrote

Numerous witness accounts of the poles hunting down Jews for the Germans though, even polish people who hid Jews never revealed it because they didn’t want the wrath from their own countrymen.

No one could go against the Germans!

Albania and Denmark and Sweden showed it could be done.

Interestingly Albania was the only European country to have more jews at the end of the war than when it began, how amazing is that!

−1