History /
Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]
France though was scarcely a picknick either, Dirk! Don't forget that while admittedly there was no exact equivalent of Auschwitz or the German Gestapo to speak of, and the majority of French were dyed-in-the-wool anti-Nazi, she did nonetheless have Drancy, an internement camp to the South of France, the Vichy regime played on the centuries-old anti-Semitism of the peasant classes, and the local police often turned in Jews to the Germans.
If you recall a most poignant film, made around 1980 or so by Louis Malle, "Au Revoir Les Enfants", the two Jewish boys were turned in to the Gestapo by traitors, eager to score browny points with the police.
On the other hand, as noted before, France had perhaps the most visible resistance movement in Europe (don't let's not forget Jean Moulin), second only to Denmark and possibly Norway ("The Heroes of Telemark"):-)
France also has had a tradition of anti-Jewish hostility, from the snide writings of Voltaire (oddly enough, an otherwise most enlightened man) up through Edouard Drumont just prior to the Dreyfus Affair, followed by faschist types such as Pierre Laval and others.
No, France, like Sweden and a few others, was NO haven per se during WWII. Merely, their PR was ten-times or so more successful than that of Germany, Poland, even Austria and Switzerland.
