October 23, 2004
Winston Review, No. 16
Plus ça change,
plus c'est la même chose.
Irène Némirovsky was born to a Ukrainian Jewish family in 1903. Her family's flight from the Russian revolution brought her to Paris while the publication of her first novel, David Golder, brought her the acclaim of Paris' literary set. Suite Française is composed of two further novels, transcribed and edited by her daughter for publication some sixty years after her mother's death. The Telegraph reports (via Rantburg):
From the appearance of her first novel, David Golder, in 1929, when she was 26, Nemirovsky was feted as the darling of Parisian literary society. But she was also a Jew, born in Kiev to a prosperous banker's family. When the Germans invaded France, Nemirovsky was deserted by almost all those who had previously sought her company and admired her work.
Despite appeals to the German ambassador to Paris and Marshal Petain, the leader of the puppet Vichy regime, she was arrested by gendarmes and deported to Auschwitz in July 1942, dying of typhus a month later at the age of 39. Her conversion to Roman Catholicism as war broke out, and her family's move from Paris to Burgundy, failed to save her. Her husband, Michel Epstein, was detained later along with his two brothers and sister. They, too, perished, almost certainly in the Auschwitz gas chambers.
Radio France announces an evening of lectures in memory of Némirovsky, noting she was a friend of "Kessel and Cocteau," yet is obscure in its description of her arrest and deportation. It is as if these were the result of some unfortunate natural disaster instead of collaboration and betrayal. Perhaps, given the context, we are meant to take these as given. I can only imagine Némirovsky's thoughts upon the occupation of France. Nobody knew then the full scope of the monstrosity that was to be plotted at Wannsee. Not even the monsters themselves could have imagined the extent of a Satanic appetite having consumed its host, souless and longing only for murder. The world must have seemed upsidedown as that grave and gathering danger so few had apprehended became all too imminent. To be placed under arrest by the local police, denied even the acquiesance that was to be the sanctuary of France, must have been incomprehensible, a nightmare. I am forced to this question: in the midst of her horror was the worst of it her abandonment by those she thought to be her friends?
Dante Alighieri reserved a region of the lowest circle of Hell for traitors to their guests. The Telegraph is right say Suite Française has revived "uncomfortable memories of French collaboration with the Nazis." So it should. More to the point, it should inspire discomfort at contemporary French collaboration with fascism from Rwanda to Kosovo to Beslan to the spider holes of the Middle East. The French put it best: the more things change, the more things stay the same.
The sword and the arm of the people of the United States liberated France sixty years ago. The stout shield of the people of the United States has offered shelter, prosperity and peace to France in the sixty years since. The Winston Review is a Flea-feature intended to offer spirited, uplifting alternatives to the defeatists and apologists of the mainstream media. This week's Review points out there is but one region of Hell that Dante deemed worse than the one I have mentioned. It is reserved for traitors to benefactors.
This week in the Red Box:
Old Soviet-time Russian joke: Angua's First Blog relates a story but "I cannot tell you about it, since Sharon also controls all banks and media, in fact a Jew is about to take away my typewrite..... [sound of silenced dissent]."
Identifying Hatred Filth and Lies: Dean Esmay says "that anyone who paid to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has blood on his hands."
The Truth About Iraq: INDC Journal points to the news about Iraq the MSM is not reporting.
Saddam Hussein's Philanthropy of Terror: Deroy Murdock lays out the connections between the tyrant and terror (via lgf).
70% solution: Andrew Sullivan reprints a reader email that says the "one thing the Marine Corps taught me is that a 70% solution acted on immediately and violently is better than a perfect solution acted on later" (via Ace of Spades by way of INDC Journal).
If Bush had not invaded Iraq: SunnyBlog reports from an alternate reality where Iraq had yet to be liberated. No permalink I could spot but well worth scrolling down to 10/19/2004 and much else that is worth a look (via InstaPundit).
British act as bait in war with Mahdi: the Times of London reports on "Spectre baiting" and the first "'danger close' engagement signed off by a British commander since the Korean war" (via Rantburg).
Overheard At the Coffeeshop: Michael J. Totten is going to visit a real police state.
Your courage. Your cheerfulness. Your resolution.
Will bring us Victory.
Flea,
Your take on history is lacking in scope and depth in so far as American/French relations.
The benefactor of the United States is France - not the other way around.
Spin up the Wayback machine to 1781, to the Battle of York Town, Virginia.
Lord Cornwallis, commanding a very large British Army had tried to break the back of the American resistance by landing in Georgia, and marching North thru all the Southern Colonies, destroying and devestating everything in it's path. American troops could not contain the threat. They had retreated all the way to Northern Virginia, with Cornwallis hot on their heels....
Posted by: MWW at October 25, 2004 05:58 PMYes, and two-hundred years ago the United Kingdom was at war with the nascent United States. Respecfully, your logic this would have them as adversaries in World War II...
Posted by: Flea at October 25, 2004 06:01 PMIgnorning for the moment the huge amount of covert assistance provided to US resistance by France, Spain and Holland, prior to 1781, the direct military intervention by thousands of French soldiers and an entire fleet for French ships was directly responsible for the American victory in the war. This was the turning point in the American War of Independence and it is widely acknowledged by most US historians that without the assistance of the French, there would not have ever been a "United States of America".
My husband just wanted me to point this out. He is in fact a descendent of Jonathan Lafayette Bush - which might give you an indication that Americans at one point in their history did not hold France in such low-esteem and were grateful for her help.
Posted by: MWW at October 25, 2004 06:06 PMFlea,
Your posts talks about "Benefactors" and Traitors. The US and Great Britain have actually not been Allies that long in the scope of things.
The beginning of the period of reconciliation between Britain and American was the Treaty of Washington in 1870. Up until that time - they had remained bitter enemies continuously. During the American Civil War, Britain was arming Confederate troops and raiding United States merchant ships on the high seas. It was thinly disguised warfare against the US at a time when the US was in greater peril than at anytime since the Revolution. The US and Britain almost went to war in 1859 in the San Juan Islands, (the so called "pig war) in a dispute over where to draw the lines between US and Britian's Western Colony. Don't forget the War of 1812 either.
Posted by: MWW at October 25, 2004 06:17 PMYour nineteenth century examples have convinced me. Now I finally understand why the French have been such constant friends and allies of the United States.
Posted by: Flea at October 25, 2004 06:24 PMMy husband also wanted to point out that when US Troops landed in France in WWI - their message was not "You're gonna owe us for this... BIG TIME" , It wasn't "We're Here to Kick Kaiser Wilhem's Ass!" ... The actual slogan promoted at home and amongst the troops and State Department was...
"Layfeyette - We are Here!"
Spoken by General John Pershing of the American Forces upon his arrival in France - at the tomb of Marie Jean Paul Joseph
Roche Yves Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Layfette -- the French General, (as well as US Continental Army General) so instrumental in the War of Indipendence.
If you like France so much why don't you marry it?
Posted by: Flea at October 25, 2004 10:03 PMFrance (quite correctly) supported the nascent US for "raison d'etat". To put it bluntly, it was in order to stick a thumb in the eye of their old enemy, Britain. What was unpredictable would be that Lafayette and others would find themselves genuinely supporting the American cause. This had its effect later, when France had it's own revolution.
Later, during WW II the US (also quite correctly) helped liberate France for "raison d'etat", as part of the process of preventing the consolidation of a new hyperpower: a Nazi United Europe, that would likely prove a much greater threat that even the Soviet Union turned out to be. That many soldiers would find themselves fascinated by French culture was also unpredictable, and had its effects on the post-war period (from the Great War: "How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?")
Between great powers, there can be no gratitude, there are only power relations. That's what nation-states are FOR...really, just overgrown posse comitatus (or is it "posse comitati", plural?). I believe that gratitude and appreciation really only matter on an individual level. However, in the long run, it's those individual relations matter more. That's the level where history is truly made.
I believe, Irène Némirovsky had parished in Auschwitz - Birkenau 10 days after she was deported to the concentration camp.
I also feel, that 'Suite Française ' was supposed to be the beginning of the pentalogy, and was not meant to follow 'David Golder'. One can argue ofcourse, that the aforementioned books are united by their main concept.
Posted by: Alec at December 15, 2004 02:23 AM