During the late 1980s, the battles over the memory of the Resistance came to centre on the figure of Jean Moulin. Since 1964, Moulin had become the emblematic hero of the Gaullist Resistance. It was to reclaim Moulin for the Resistance as a whole, as well as situate himself under the symbolic patronage of such a revered figure, that François Mitterrand decided to inaugurate his presidency, on 21 May 1981, by paying a solemn visit to the Panthéon to place a rose on Moulin’s tomb. Eight years later, under the general title of ‘The Unknown Man of the Panthéon’, Daniel Cordier published the first volume of his monumental biography of Moulin. Given Cordier’s own background, and his reasons for embarking upon a study of Moulin,80 it is not surprising that he produced a work which, for all its massive scholarship, sees the Resistance through the eyes of Moulin (and de Gaulle). This alone would explain the irritation which Cordier’s work caused among surviving resisters, but they were also offended by his decision to rely exclusively on written archival evidence and exclude memories or oral testimony. Cordier was challenging the position of the Resistance generation as the privileged witnesses to their own history, undermining their aspiration to transmit their memory to future generations.
Nothing, however, caused greater offence to surviving resisters than Cordier’s publication of what he claimed to be the Manifesto written by Henri Frenay in the autumn of 1940. The tone of this document, in which Frenay appears as an ardent supporter of the National Revolution and no particular friend of Jews, was not a revelation for any historian of the Resistance, and its authenticity has since been established almost beyond doubt. Nonetheless, numerous surviving resisters wrote to denounce this slur on the reputation of a great Resistance hero. Surviving members of Combat, including Claude Bourdet, met in November 1989 formally to condemn Cordier. As Henry Rousso remarks, surviving resisters reacted to Cordier as if from a bunker under siege.81
No one reacted with more violence than Frenay’s former lawyer, Charles Benfredj, whose book L’Affaire Jean Moulin, la contre-enquête (1990) moved from a defence of Frenay (and vitriolic denunciation of Cordier) to an attack on Moulin for having been a Soviet agent. He suggested that Moulin had never even been killed but had escaped to Moscow. Allegations about Moulin’s alleged Communist sympathies had originated with Frenay as early as 1950 and were repeated in his memoirs and then in a book with the lurid title L’Enigme Jean Moulin (1977). Drawing attention to Moulin’s pre-war Comintern and Communist contacts, Frenay argued that Moulin had created the CNR to allow the Communists to gain control over the Resistance. Even Frenay’s old comrade Claude Bourdet, himself no friend of the Communists, dismissed these allegations as absurd.82 Frenay’s curious thesis was born out of his own personal grievances. Having lost his battle with Moulin over the future direction of the Resistance, Frenay, as a minister in de Gaulle’s post-war Liberation government, was violently attacked by the Communists for his early indulgence towards Vichy. They dubbed him ‘Frenay-the-protégé-of-Pucheu’. Frenay expressed his own bitterness at this treatment by creating a conspiracy theory conflating what he saw as his two main enemies: Moulin and the Communists.
Frenay himself had never gone as far as to accuse Moulin of being a Soviet agent. This step was taken most dramatically in 1993 in a book by the journalist Thierry Wolton about the recruitment of Soviet agents by the Comintern in the 1930s. Although Wolton claimed to have read newly released Russian archives, he was coy in revealing his sources, and in the end his argument turned largely on guilt by association. The most disconcerting aspect of the whole affair was that some distinguished historians, like François Furet and Annie Kriegel, lent Wolton an aura of respectability by suggesting his interpretations were worthy of serious consideration.83
The role of professional historians was also important in what came to be dubbed the ‘Aubrac Affair’. In 1997, Gérard Chauvy, author of a solid history of Lyons under the Occupation, published a book on Raymond Aubrac.84 With his wife Lucie, Aubrac had been one of the founders of Libération-Sud, and subsequently its main military organizer. Arrested in March 1943, he had been released in May because the police had failed to realize who he was. On 21 June, he was arrested again, with Moulin himself, at the fated Caluire meeting. He escaped in October thanks to an audacious rescue operation organized by his wife. Although not particularly prominent after the war, over the years the Aubrac couple had increasingly taken on the stature of emblematic heroes of the Resistance, thanks to the lively memoir that Lucie wrote on their adventures in 1984. In February 1997, these adventures were romantically depicted in Claude Berri’s film Lucie Aubrac which received massive publicity. Four months later, Chauvy’s book appeared.
Based on genuine new discoveries in the archives, but also on the questionable ‘Testament’ of Klaus Barbie—a document cobbled together by Barbie and his lawyer Jaques Vergès in order to sow confusion among Barbie’s accusers— Chauvy’s book cast doubt on the accuracy of the Aubracs’ accounts of their Resistance activities. He was at the least able to show implausibilities and contradictions in their writings. Although not going as far as to assert, like Barbie, that after his first arrest Aubrac had become a Gestapo informer and was responsible for the arrest of Moulin, Chauvy insinuated that this was possible. Chauvy’s book caused outrage among former resisters of all stripes. Twenty of them, including the Communist Rol-Tanguy, the Gaullist Claude Serreulles, and the conservative de Bénouville, signed a manifesto of protest.85
The left-wing newspaper Libération organized a ‘round table’ at which the Aubracs could put their case to a group of respected historians of the period, including Henry Rousso and Daniel Cordier. What the Aubracs had expected to be a vindication of their position turned into something quite different. Although all the historians on the panel made it clear that they entirely rejected allegations that Raymond Aubrac had worked for the Gestapo, they launched a merciless dissection of the undoubted discrepancies which existed in the Aubracs’ accounts of their past: the round table took on the appearance of a trial. In the face of this assault, the Aubracs defended themselves by arguing that with events occurring so long ago, it was inevitable that inaccuracies should occur. Lucie pointed out that she had written her memoir, entirely from memory, at the age of 73: it was intended to be her history, not a work of history. The historians riposted by claiming that a history of the Resistance based on approximations would not in the long run serve the interests of the Resistance, but only those who wished to denigrate it. Cordier said he was reminded of Zola’s remark on Dreyfus’s performance at his trial: ‘It is enough to make you despair of the innocent.’ Another of the historians ended by quoting the inevitable Péguy on the need to tell the truth, however unsettling it might be.86
On one hand, it was somewhat unedifying to see these two old and courageous individuals subjected to an examination of this kind. The most distasteful moment came with the suggestion that the Aubracs’ imprudence had contributed to the arrest of Raymond’s parents, neither of whom was to return from deportation. On the other hand, unless there was to be a crime of lèserésistance, it was not illegitimate for historians to ask searching questions of two people who had, possibly in spite of themselves, become living legends.
In Search of the True France
What is the reason for the recent seemingly endless stream of pseudo-revelations about Moulin and the Resistance? At one level, they are symptomatic of nothing more profound than a predilection for conspiracy theories and a media-generated obsession with historical scoops. The latest theory on Moulin claims that he was killed as he was about to transfer his allegiance from de Gaulle to the Americans. This kind of history will always be written, and, like all conspiracy theories, it remains impervious to reason. Thus for Frenay the fact that Moulin in London avoided contact with the possible Soviet agent André Labarthe, whom he had once known well, was evidence that he had something to hide and was covering his tracks. Of course, if he had had contact with Labarthe, it would have been evidence that he was in contac
t with the Soviets. In the world of conspiracy theory, one can never win.
There is also an anti-Communist agenda in the attacks on Moulin. The historians ready to offer Wolton their support were mostly repentant Stalinists still struggling to overcome their own guilt about their past. In the attack on the Aubracs, latent anti-communism was also present since they had both been close to the Communist Party in the 1950s. But anti-communism has a decreasing hold on contemporary France, and the problem of remembering the Resistance has deeper causes. For the cultural commentator Paul Thibaud, it lies in France’s incapacity to acknowledge its debt to the Resistance generation. It is the reverse side of the ‘Vichy syndrome’. If the Occupation was such a dark period in France’s past, it is more comforting to believe that all were guilty than that the honour of the nation was saved by a tiny minority.87
Certainly, the memory of the Resistance seems to oscillate uncontrollably between denigration and celebration with nothing in between. Just as critics of Henry Rousso’s attempt to introduce more nuance into the history of Vichy ask whether ‘historization’ might not become the Trojan Horse of revisionist apologetics, so some Resistance historians have protested against the tone of the interrogation of the Aubracs, asking whether the ‘desire to de-mythify is not playing the game of those who have not given up their desire to demolish or undermine’ what is valid and important in the legacy of the Resistance.88
The continuing political resonance of these debates emerged during the Papon trial. Two years previously President Chirac had acknowledged that ‘France’ had during the war committed an ‘irreparable’ act towards the Jews. Many members of Chirac’s own party now wondered if he had not gone too far. In an article headed ‘Enough, Enough, Enough’, the Gaullist leader Philippe Séguin sounded a note of alarm at the ambient mood of self-flagellation, the ‘obsession with collective expiation’. De Gaulle had been right to declare Vichy ‘null and void’. If Vichy was France, what did that make de Gaulle or the Republic?89 The former Gaullist prime minister Édouard Balladur asked rhetorically: ‘During the Occupation, was France in London or Vichy?’90 The former president Giscard d’Estaing tried confusingly to distinguish between the Vichy State, France, and the French. He too warned against an obsession with French guilt which would only delight the ‘Anglo-Saxon media’.91 The Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin felt moved to make a statement in parliament:
Is France guilty? I don’t think so. Yes, policemen, administrators … a French State perpetrated … terrifying acts, collaborating with the enemy and with the final solution …It is in such terms, it seems to me, that the President of the Republic approached the question in July 1995, even if I myself did not use the same terms, and I myself did not personally use the word France … There is no guilt of France because for me France was at London or in the Vercors … because Vichy was the negation of France, in any case the negation of the Republic.92
Historians alone will never be able to resolve these quarrels of memory which are, at their most fundamental level, debates about national identity. Clearly any attempt to build an identity around the idea that Vichy was not France will be doomed to failure: de Gaulle’s assertion that Vichy was null and void no longer serves any purpose in contemporary France. On the other hand, it is no less misleading to repudiate the existence of a Resistance which also represented ‘France’. In the end, however, the polarity between these two ‘Frances’ is itself misleading and sterile. The solution to the problem cannot be to build identity around the utter repudiation of the one or the uncritical embrace of the other. If there is one lesson to be learnt from Péguy, it is that the French past must be faced in all its contradictions and complexity. Only then can it be critically evaluated, and instead of serving to salve the conscience of the present, it can become a usable memory for the future.
Appendix
The Camps of Vichy France
It is difficult to provide a full list of camps, and this list is far from exhaustive. The number of camps, and the use which was made of them, fluctuated constantly. In September 1940, not long after the signature of the Armistice, there were no fewer than thirty-one camps in the Unoccupied Zone and about fifteen in the Occupied Zone. A few of these fell into disuse; others were converted to new uses by Vichy; many more were created. Some camps were tiny, with only a score or so of inmates; others had several thousand inmates.
The following list gives the date of the setting up of each camp. Although some camps were restricted to only one category of inmate, most were not. Almost all camps were at some time or other used to intern Jews, and some were used uniquely for this purpose, but other inmates included Communists and other dissidents, Jews, foreigners, gypsies, black-marketeers (from June 1941), abortionists (from February 1942), prostitutes (from August 1943).
There were also several camps in North Africa (Boghari, Colomb-Bechar, Djelfa, etc.), and there was one German concentration camp in Alsace-Lorraine.
1. Rieucros (January 1939): originally for ‘foreign undesirables’; became mainly a women’s camp.
2. Argelès (February 1939): originally for Spanish refugees.
3. Saint-Cyprien (February 1939): originally for Spanish refugees; in 1940 Jews from the Palatinate sent there.
4. Barcarès (February 1939): originally for Spanish refugees.
5. Gurs (April 1939): originally for Spanish refugees; in 1940 Jews from Baden sent there.
6. Bram (September 1939): originally for nationals of enemy countries.
7. Agde (September 1939): originally for nationals from enemy countries.
8. Septfonds (September 1939): originally for nationals from enemy countries.
9. Casseneuil and Tombebouc (autumn 1939): originally for nationals from enemy countries; later used for foreign workers in GTEs.
10. Le Vernet (October 1939): disciplinary camp originally for foreign ‘political suspects’.
11. Milles (May 1940): for German nationals; became a transit camp for those wishing to emigrate from Marseilles.
12. Chibron (June 1940): mainly used to intern Communists.
13. Saint-Sulpice (October 1940): set up to intern Jews after law of 4 October 1940.
14. Brems (October 1940): set up to intern Jews after law of 4 October 1940.
15. Aincourt (October 1940): mainly used to intern Communists from the Paris region.
16. Mérignac (autumn 1940): originally for Communists and other political ‘dissidents’.
17. Rivesaltes (December 1940): founded to group internees with their families.
18. Troyes (December 1940): founded to intern foreign Jews living in the Burgundy area.
19. Noé (February 1941): founded as a ‘hospital camp’.
20. La Lande-des-Monts (March 1941): founded to intern foreign Jews.
21. Jargeau (March 1941): internment camp for gypsies.
22. Récébédou (April 1940): camp for the sick and old; intended as a ‘show camp’.
23. La Morellerie (December 1940): internment camp for gypsies.
24. Nexon (February 1941): in 1942 used to gather Jews prior to deportation.
25. Pithiviers (May 1941): founded to intern Jews recently arrested in Paris.
26. Beaune-la-Rolande (May 1941): founded to intern Jews recently arrested in Paris.
27. Fort-Barraux (July 1941): mainly used to intern Communists.
28. Drancy (August 1941): to intern Jews; in 1942 the main camp used to gather Jews prior to deportation.
29. Rouillé (September 1941): mainly used to intern Communists from the Paris region.
30. La Guiche (October 1941): ‘sanatorium camp’.
31. Poitiers (November 1941): internment of Jews.
32. Montreuil-Bellay (November 1941): internment camp for gypsies.
33. Vénissieux (1941): in 1942 used to gather Jews of Lyons area prior to deportation.
34. Compiègne (December 1941): founded to intern Jews.
35. Saliers (June 1942): internment camp for gypsies.
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Sources: J. Weill, Contribution à l’histoire des camps d’internement dans l’anti-France (1946); Centre de Documentation juive contemporaine, L’Internement sous Vichy (1995); A. Grynberg, Les Camps de la honte (1991); J. Grandjonc and T. Grundtner, Zone d’ombres; Exil et internement d’Allemands dans le sud-est de la France (Aix, 1990); M.-L. Cohen and E. Malo, Les Camps du sud-ouest de la France (Toulouse, 1994); D. Peschanski, Les Tsiganes en France 1939–1946 (1994); K. Bartosek et al., De l’exil à la résistance: Réfugiés et immigrés de l’Europe central en France 1933–1945 (1989); J.-P. Rioux et al., Les Communises français de Munich à Châteaubriant (1987).
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