Protesting too much
Sam White
Paris The discovery by the Paris news weekly L'Express that Darquier de Pellepoix, the Commissaire for Jewish affairs in the Vichy government during the War, was alive in Spain and eager to be interviewed provided that journal with the non-scoop of the year. With his monocle and aristocratic affectations — the article in his name is of course Phoney — he was a well known figure in the better bars in Madrid and his name, address and telephone number are still listed in the Madrid telephone directory. As to what he would have to say, almost any half-wit could have written the script for this particular half into the the Jews had dragged France the War, he was proud of having been resPonsible for deporting 75,000 of them to Germany during that time and, as for the concentration camps and gas chambers, they were simply Jewish propaganda inventions.ons. 'Of course there were gas chambers but they were for delousing purposes only,, was about his only original contribution to the matter. Clearly L'Express thought this was pretty dreary stuff for, although it obtained the interview in August, it did not Publish it until last week —no doubt to fill an i unexpected gap in its bulky issue. That s, !no, why it was so unusually modest about its scoop i , carrying no announcement of t either in their advertising or on their cover. That this was the general view is clearly Shown by the fact that it took four days for the storm to break and it only did so because the enterprising radio reporter who spottedme interview in one of the advance copies SCflt. to the press promptly booked the Minister for Health, Madame Simone Veil, to apPear on a programme four days ahead to discuss it with him. Madame Veil who was herself deported with her mother, father, and brother and Who emerged as the only survivor of the family was understandably bitter about the in, terview and reproached L'Express for not _flaying carried additional editorial material rebutting the views of the ex-Commissaire. milie was, I think, mistaken. It is better to "h'. 1-°w someone to condemn himself out of ills own mouth and leave it at that rather an embellish it with elaborate editorial refigations. However after that the indig nation — genuine on the whole, suspect in some cases — took on a volume out of all proportion to the mediocrity of the incident. Even as I write, ten days after publication of the offending story, it is still reverberating. Some indication of the scale of the protests may be gathered from the fact that President Giscard himself intervened to condemn L'Express for publishing the interview; that Prime Minister Barre took the opportunity of warning French television of the dangers of innocently propagating anti-semitic views; that the National Assembly voiced its disapproval and asked that renewed efforts be made to secure Darquier's extradition; and that some quarters even suggested that L'Express itself might be anti-semitic. (Owner of L'Express — Sir James Goldsmith. chairman of its editorial board — Pro fessor Raymond Aron.) There were even suggestions that some kind of moral censorship should be imposed on such matters, rather along the lines of that proposed by communist and Third World countries at UNESCO's current session. At this point one became vaguely uneasy. Everyone was protesting a bit too much. Could it be that what many of the objectors were really objecting to was being reminded of a shameful and divisive period in French history. After all, you do not succeed in deporting 75,000 Jews without an army of police, hosts of informers and a largely indifferent public to help carry it out. This was certainly a large, possibly even the main, reason for the reaction to the Darquier interview: and as such, on reflection, it is not an altogether shameful one. There were, however, other reasons. The attack on L'Express, for example, was led by Le Monde and Figaro, one with a special grudge against L'Express and the other with a special reason for clothing itself in virtue. Le Monde has never quite recovered from the attack on it by Raymond Aron in the Express for its apologias for the BaaderMeinhof gang and especially the article it published on that gang by Jean Genet. As for the Figaro, it has several skeletons in its cupboard; some of the academicians who are among its regular contributors were Vichy men and its new owner, Robert Hersant, was sentenced to a term of national indignity after the war. It is reassuring to find them now so firmly in the ranks of the anti-sem ites.
Furthermore Figaro has just launched a new weekly magazine of its own which will be in direct competition with L'Express. It looks like yet another case of virtue being its own reward or rather virtue bringing its own rewards. No report on the matter, however, is complete without a dip into the Darquier dossier, First it was not much use seeking his extradition during the Franco years, and he is now in any case covered by the statute of limitations. Any attempt to have had him extradited, then or since, would immediately have raised the subject of Basque autonomists who regularly take refuge in France. To have asked for the extradition of French collaborators would immediately have been met with a Spanish request for the extradition of alleged Basque terrorists. Some historical facts concerning Darquier should now be recalled. He was forced on the Vichy government by the Germans because his predecessor in the post, Xavier Vallet, an old-fashioned French anti-sem ite from the royalist Action Francaise, clearly had no stomach for the job. He was detested by everyone in the government, including Petain who found it difficult to shake his hand and Laval who several times showed him the door of his office. Towards the end of the war he was finally removed and replaced by the aristocratic right-winger, Mercier du Paty de Clam, whose instructions were to discreetly set about dismantling the organisation.
By that time Darquier had become too hot to hold; he was blatantly enriching himself on sequestered Jewish property as well as receiving bribes from wealthy Jewish families he protected. One of these was the banking family, Worms, living in a villa in the south of France. In the L'Express interview he of course boasts of the Jews he protected and mentions the Worms family: when, fatuously, the interviewer cuts him off. In short he was running a highly profitable protection racket. This became a scandal in Vichy and in an oblique attempt to denounce Darquier the royalist newspaper, Action Francaise, asked how it was that the Worms could continue to live in comfort on the Riviera. The question had tragic consequences for, within days, the head of the family and his wife were murdered. No doubt Darquier had a hand in that. One final point — French television is now being attacked for never having shown the French film on the Occupation, The sorrow and the pity, and for having refused to buy Holocaust. The sorrow and the pity, was a cunningly contrived effort aimed more at discrediting De Gaulle and the Resistance than the Vichy regime and I commend French television for having refused to show it. As for Holocaust I can only judge by what critics whom I respect have written about it. In that case maybe French television is to be commended on that score too.
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