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PARTISAN REVIEW
didn't go along and put in the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Germany.
How can France today justify its policies during the Nazi occupation
when it collaborated so wholeheartedly?
Annie Cohen-Solal: I
don't really understand the aggressive tone of
your question. But there's a lot of emotion in this room.
In
any event,
you cannot talk about everything in twenty minutes. I do agree with
you that the way the French police behaved on the orders of German
police during the German occupation was absolutely unbelievable. I even
organized a conference about that last December, with the journalist
who has written about Mitterrand's years in the Vichy government. No,
the French have not come to terms with the way their collaborators
acted during the German occupation. And it is unthinkable that a So–
cialist French president had been so involved in the Vichy government,
received a medal from Petain, and then became friendly with Bousquet,
the Minister of Jewish Affairs in Vichy France. He not only became
friendly with him, he even invited him to the Elysee when he became
president. And until Bousquet was killed two years ago, nobody knew
exactly what it was about.
In
fact, Bousquet was asked by the German
police to deliver twenty thousand foreign Jews to the German police.
Bousquet did more than fulfill the requests of the German police; he also
delivered French Jewish women and children. This is the most horrible
event in French history.
It
took place in July 1942, and Bousquet was
judged in the trials after the liberation of France. He was condemned
but subsequently acquitted. He became a businessman, a very powerful
banker. He financed many campaigns in the southwest, among them the
campaign of President Mitterrand. So here we are. The French. We have
not finished dealing with our past. Weare full of nightmares about our
collaboration with the German occupation. We also have to confront
the way we dealt with the war in Algeria. Since this war occurred
twenty years after the end of the liberation, this made it even worse. We
cannot get over it. So that's my answer.
David Rosenberg:
My question is for Mr. Fleck. The last time a pow–
erful united Germany dominated Europe was of course the Nazi era, and
Austria was absorbed into that state. A new powerful Germany is likely
to be the dominant power in Europe in the future. You said little about
the fact that the Austrians had rather appreciated the division in Germany
between. East and West because it opened up a role for Austria. What
kind of role do you see for Austria now, particularly with regard to the
southern Slavic regions which at one time were part of the Hapsburg
Empire?
