Ces Profs qu’on assassine by Véronique Bouzou (review)

studies and mined the national and regional archival sources to describe the variety of reactions to the directives from Vichy. Several Vichy officials used the program to remove statuary of allegedly mediocre artistic value and occasionally also of works that embodied ideas seen as antithetical to its own ideology or to that of a regional politician. In the book’s conclusion, Freeman reviews the scholarly evidence for the aesthetic or “revanchist” motivation for removing certain statues and accepts recent scholarship favoring “acceptance of complexity” rather than a generally applicable explanation. (188) In the matter of church bells, however, Vichy’s ideology of close cooperation with the Church helps explain why relatively few bells were destroyed in France, other than in Alsace and Lorraine that had been annexed once more by Germany. Vichy “seriously underestimated the nature and extent of public reaction to the statue campaign.” (44) This reaction varied from often slow cooperation and administrative foot-dragging to the occasional “theft” of statues by local Resistance groups, and a good case is made for the statement: “Although the dismantled statues were not missed in Paris, they were desperately missed in the rest of France.”(4) Interesting also is the contradiction between Pétain’s avowed policy of valuing the regional identities of France, for example his support of the Félibrige in Provence, and the centralizing actions of his government in collaborating with the German occupation, which included the removal of the statue of Mistral, the Félibrige poet par excellence. For Freeman the local opposition to the bronze policy demonstrates the attachment of the people to their petite patrie and their dubious relationship to the French state. Mistral’s statue, like many others, was replaced after the war by one recast from the original plaster. Such restoration of originals also occurred when a bronze had been replaced by a stone replica, in particular if it was considered unworthy of the original, but also because the empty pedestals “served as uncomfortable reminders of a difficult, contentious, and divisive period.” (141) The book is usefully illustrated with numerous reproductions of postcards from the author’s own collection as well as with archival photos and those taken by Freeman. Unfortunately the quality of some originals and the reproduction should have been better. Some topics, for example the “Vichy Syndrome”— a term that comprises the complex and ambivalent ways in which post World War II France dealt with the Vichy years—could have been explained more completely for the non-expert. Freeman uses the term “total war” to describe Germany’s placing its entire economy on a war footing. But it usually refers to the treatment of civilian populations as essential to a country’s war-making capacity and thus may be attacked by all means, including bombing them into submission. Ursinus College, Emeritus (PA) Derk Visser BOUZOU, VÉRONIQUE. Ces Profs qu’on assassine. Paris: Jean-Claude Gawsewitch, 2009. ISBN 978-2-35013-172-6. Pp. 253. 18,90 a. Dès le Préambule, le ton est donné avec le rappel de récents incidents d’agression et de violence contre les enseignants: “une institutrice d’une maternelle [...] agressée par la mère d’une enfant” (10), un élève de 12 ans attaque “avec des ciseaux son professeur d’allemand” (10), et une professeure d’anglais enceinte de quatre mois reçoit “deux coups de poing dans la figure qui la font tomber” (11). 650 FRENCH REVIEW 84.3 Tout le long du livre, d’innombrables exemples viennent prouver irréfutablement “la gravité de la situation” (11) et “la souffrance qui mine de nombreux enseignants ” (12), y compris les suicides, car les assassinats du titre sont bien réels, et l’auteure de citer Elsa Triolet: “Il n’y a pas de suicides, il n’y a que des meurtres” (15). Le cas le plus tragique est sans doute celui de l’enseignant qui s’est suicidé suite à sa garde à vue pour agression, après avoir été accusé par un collégien de lui avoir donné un coup de poing, et qui admet plus tard avoir menti (49). Enseignante dans un établissement “que l’on classe ordinairement sous le...