Myth of Resistance

Question 1

Susan Rabi Suleiman

Answer 1

Aubrac Affair highlights the problematic relations between public and private memory, and between history and fantasy, in the construction of both an individual and collective past

Question 2

Pieter Lagrou

Answer 2

myth of resistance centred on a cramped, artificially unanimous, singular icon of war memory that was presented as the norm during the 1950s

Question 3

Henry Russo

Answer 3

1. “Vichy syndrome”
2. explores how the proud nation of France, a nation where reality and myth commingle to confound understanding, has dealt with the “dark years” of occupation
3. highlights what the French have chosen to remember, and to conceal

Question 4

Robert Gildea

Answer 4

Communists were ejected from the narrative of resistance that developed in the immediate postwar context due to the onset of the Cold War

Question 5

Aubrac Affair

Answer 5

1. 1997
2. Raymon and Lucie Aubrac enjoyed national and international fame as heroes of Resistance
3. suddenly placed under suspicion of having betrayed their comrades, in particular Resistance hero Jean Moulin
4. raises fascinating issues about history and memory of Resistance in France

Question 6

Tony Judt

Answer 6

France and Belgium: deported resisters who turned were treated as heroes; however returning Jews could serve no such useful purpose

Question 7

France 1948 legislation passed stated the term “deportees” could be applied only to French citizens or residents deported for political reasons or for resistance

Answer 7

1. thus Jewish children who were locked in trains and shipped to Auschwitz for gassing were described as “political deportees”
2. these children were commemorated in documents and upon plaques as having “died for France”

Question 8

recovery aided by series of highly publicised trials for crimes against humanity

Answer 8

1. 1987 trial of Klaus Barbie (Nazi functionary notorious for role in persecution of resisters and Jews in Lyon
2. 1997 trial of Maurice Papon (highly placed French bureaucrat in charge of roundup of Jews in Bordeaux