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"The Resistance fought Germans in the '40s, revisionists in the '90s
EDVINS BEITIKS, Examiner reporter.
Tuesday, February 20, 1996
(02-20) 04:00 PDT FRANCE -- DAVID KLUGMAN remembers his anger after reading the article. It reported revelations in a new book by historian Douglas Porch, "The French Secret Services," and appeared on The Examiner opinion page under the headline, "The French Resistance myth."
"I immediately became indignant," said Klugman, who fought with the Free French 1st Division in World War II.
"I thought, "How dare he?' There are things you cannot deny. To deny the Resistance is like denying the Holocaust. It is absurd."
Monique Sisich, now 75, was a member of the French underground after Germany defeated and occupied France in 1940. She was captured in 1941 and sent to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. She talked about the anger that swept through the Bay Area's French community in the wake of the article about Porch's book - phone calls from one veteran to another, questioning why this had to appear, 50 years after the end of the war.
"Right away I thought of my comrades who were shot down in firing squads, singing "Les Marseillaise,' " said Sisich, who resides in Redwood City. "For me, it was a feeling of despair - all those people I fought with, their lives seem to have been in vain, their sacrifice doesn't seem to have left an imprint."
Alain Le Gourrierec, French consul-general in San Francisco, said, "When I read the article, my reaction was surprise, disbelief and sorrow, especially sorrow . . . to deny completely the Resistance, this goes beyond imagination."
Instead, "The French Secret Services" says the Resistance was hardly a factor before or after D-Day, that the underground movement was much weaker than believed. It suggests the Resistance was sometimes as mercenary as patriotic, pointing out that rescuers could be paid upward of $5,000 for spiriting downed fliers and Allied prisoners out of France.
The book prompted The Examiner's Paris correspondent to write, "The romantic image of selfless French men and women in berets and leather jackets blowing up bridges and ambushing columns of German soldiers on lonely country roads has become one of the most persistent wartime legends . . . (but) almost nothing of the sort actually happened."
Insisting "only about 5 percent of the French were even nominally members of the underground," and "a number of people grew rich from the Resistance," reporter Bernard D. Kaplan added, "Porch's work is significant because the yawning gap between wartime reality and myth is at the center of the self-doubt that has been nagging at the French psyche for the last 50 years."
For French military veterans now living in this area, that cut to the bone.
Klugman, 76, past president of the French War Veterans of Northern California, pointed out the population of wartime France was about 40 million "and 5 percent of 40 million is 2 million. Two million is a lot of people.
"There were so many variables of resistance," he said.
"Passive resistance, violent resistance, resistance from the inside, resistance from the outside . . . "
Klugman fought with the Free French 1st Division alongside the British in North Africa, then landed with his unit in the South of France as part of D-Day operations. To him, it is hard to believe anyone could discount the efforts of the French to fight off the Germans, before and after D-Day.
Klugman pointed to German murders of everyone living in Oradour and the destruction of that village after the D-Day invasion - retribution taken by an SS division angered at delays and detours the French made in the division's train route from Toulouse to Normandy.
"The village has never been rebuilt," Klugman said.
"To the French, this is our symbol of martyrdom, our Lidice."
There were hundreds of other examples of French Resistance, said Klugman, author of "The Conspiracy of the Righteous," a history of one French village's fight to protect Jews from a German pogrom.
There was the Battle of Vercors between the Resistance and German mountain troops in the foothills of the Alps. There were the hundreds of downed fliers helped out of France through the underground railroad. There were the political prisoners, sent to concentration camps, who continued to help the Allies.
Sisich, who spent four years in the camps, remembered small victories stolen from the Germans. Assigned to spoon out soup to fellow prisoners, she was told Jews were to get only the hot water at the top of the pot, but she managed to dip into the bottom of the soup for a few pieces of matted potato.
The war is two generations removed from memory. People forget, said Sisich. She said even the cadets in France's military academy told her the Resistance didn't do much until the Germans were in full retreat.
Sitting in the office of the consul-general, her eyes brimming with tears, Sisich said:
"I think what is forgotten, sometimes, is how people were scared for their lives, taking a chance they would be killed because they were overflowing with love for their country, for France."
French high school students have to be reminded of the Resistance's contribution, said Klugman, and the message is lost on many.
"Since then there have been other wars - Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, the Gulf War. World War II, it is getting to be ancient history, like the battles of Napoleon, the battles of Louis XIV."
Le Gourrierec said a unified Europe, supported by France, was created in part by French politicians who fought in the underground and were sick of a century of war.
"There were collaborators in France," he acknowledged,
"but there were also people just trying to survive, trying to stay alive, and there was a Resistance - a strong Resistance movement."
There is no denying some French were satisfied to collaborate with the Germans.
"There were these French Nazis, if you will, who dishonored France," said Kaplan, "but the others, those who fought, they were the honor of France."
And for veterans of the Resistance, the honor of France is everything.
Edvins Beitiks, an Examiner reporter and sports writer, interviewed Monique Sisich in June of 1994 on her return to Normandy for services marking the 50th anniversary of D-Day.<
This article appeared on page A - of the Examiner"
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