Ethnicity and Nationality: Recent Representations of French Jews in Films on the Occupation

The occupation of france in World War II has undoubtedly produced a good deal of turmoil in individual and collective identities of postwar France. Attempts by President Sarkozy a few years ago to institutionalize politically correct memories in the national educational system bear witness to the crisis in France about what history should be taught to children, and to the difficulties of establishing collective memories. Sarkozy's showcasing of the young communist resister-hero Guy Môquet and the President's push to make school children research the lives and deaths of French Jewish children during the war were met with a mixture of skepticism and dismay. Ex-education minister Simone Weil, a survivor of Auschwitz herself, strongly advised against having ten-year-olds follow the fate of deported children in their classes. These attempts to present the modalities of heroism and the Shoah as typical French national memory play into contemporary political battles and tend to reduce the breadth of complexities in French history of the Occupation. Clearly, the goal of such attempts is to forge personalized connections to a consensual, collective memory, however misguided their implementation may be. Recently, another member of Sarkozy's government has tried to initiate a debate about French national identity from the top down: Immigration Minister Eric Besson¹ called upon French citizens to rethink the values of what it means to be French and to have French youth sing the national anthem, La Marseillaise, at least once a year. Few national anthems can rival this song for the praise of blood-thirsty violence! Many critics protested the timing of Besson's initiative, claiming it to be a political ploy right before regional elections. Respected historian Benjamin Stora remarked in a round table discussion that a debate on French identity initiated by citizens about their status would not be a bad idea, but that having it imposed as a form of patriotism by the government was not the way it should happen.²

In what follows I explore how French Jewish memory has been constructed in key French films about the war. Ultimately I would like to emphasize that some of the most effective recent attempts to promote a legacy of critical thinking about the war in its connections to Jewish memory and national identity have been from the bottom up, that is, with the focus on teachers and children reading and watching artistic works, rather than on government platforms. I would also like to make a more general assertion about the exemplary role of the arts and humanities in critical reading and writing on ethical, historical, and national identity issues, especially in an era of quick fixes and short-sightedness.

The aftershocks of World War II memory have resulted in a proliferation of films, novels, and memoirs and an enduring fascination/obsession with the period. We shouldn't forget that until the 2007 success of Dany Boon's Gallic comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, the most popular French film of all time among French movie-goers was Gérard Oury's La Grande Vadrouille, dating back to 1966. A slap-stick farce about World War II France, with comedic stars Louis de Funès and Bourvil playing two héros malgré eux, Oury's film is full of the myths of the Gaullist era: the French are all more or less resisters in the fight against the Nazis; there are no real collaborators; the Nazis are vehement buffoons; and no one is deported or actually dies. But what might seem most remarkable about the cast of stock characters is the conspicuous absence of Jews. This is a comic fantasy about bumbling good versus bumbling evil, much in the vein of the 1959 comedy Babette s'en va-t-en guerre, starring Brigitte Bardot.³ The Jew as victim, hero, resister or anything else is simply not part of the standard fare of what Henry Rousso called the periods of unfinished mourning and repression (1946-1970) in France's World War II memories.

With the 1970s' numerous reevaluations of France's wartime culpability...