Remembering ‘V’ for Vichy

[additional-authors]

Gershon Hepner

September 17, 2022

Henri Philippe Petain (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In Laval-ruled Vichy France, collaborationist

was a term for someone worse than a collaborator,

The difference hardly more than just semantic, Pétainist

no less that the collaborator lethal as Jew hater.

Although opinions vary about Pétain, victor of Verdun,

their contradictions unresolved and somewhat squishy,

I think he should be treated not as a heroic son of a French gun,

but as a most revolting validator of Jewish genocide by Vichy.

In Britain, “V” stood just for victory, but in France it was

the letter that should be recalled before all others when we weigh

France in the balance for the genocide that it allowed because

its military hero threw, most viciously, morality away.

Maïa de la Baume writes in “France Confronts an Ignoble Chapter,” NYT, 12/15/14:

The 1942 telegram signed by one of the highest officials of the collaborationist Vichy regime urged local prefects in unoccupied France “personally” to supervise the transfer of thousands of Jews to deportation camps. “The head of state wants you to take personal control of the measures taken with regard to the foreign Jews,” wrote René Bousquet, who was Vichy’s chief of police at the time. “You should not hesitate to destroy any resistance you may encounter among these populations.”

Philippe Pétain, who led France to victory in World War I and then collaborated with the Nazis, is buried on a small island south of Brittany, where his grave is the site of bitter debates over his legacy,” according to an article in the NYT, 9/11/22, by Constant Méheut (“‘Glorious’ Hero or ‘Deplorable’ Traitor? Pétain’s Legacy Haunts French Island”):

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/world/europe/france-petain-grave-legacy.html

Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.