Thoughts on France

Thoughts on France

The plane ride from Tel Aviv to Paris is five hours and a thousand years.  Whereas Tel Aviv is the new city in the old-new land, Paris for all its sleek fashion and chic, for me anyhow, felt like stepping back into the court of a French monarch in the 17th century. 

Palaces, halls, churches, cathedrals all built on a fantastic scale times ten--this is the first impression of Paris.  No wonder America asked a Frenchman, Pierre L'Enfant, to design Washington.  They know grandeur on a grand scale.  The buildings are magnificent, epic.  They speak of empire, greatness, wealth, power, ambition, faith and history.  At the same time off of the main thoroughfares, squares and courtyards,  the streets are small, narrow and on a very human scale.  It is both a beautiful and a lovely city for walking.

The city reflects its grand past.

We visited the Museum of the Shoah and the Memorial to the Deportations.  The Memorial to the Deportations is on the Seine immediately behind the Cathedral of Notre Dame.  It is stark, somber, dignified--all totally appropriate.  I naturally wanted more.  I wanted bold signs saying "We the French Did This!  We Handed Our Fellow Citizens to be Murdered!"

I got that and more a few minutes later when we walked from the Deportation Memorial to the Museum of the Shoah in the Marais.  This is one of the most impressive and beautiful Shoah museums or memorials that I have ever experienced.  The memorial consists of a series of walls engraved with the names of every French Jew murdered.  There is a sculpture of a chimney with the names of the concentration camps.  Inside there is a dimly lit memorial hall --soft, sad, quiet, introspective.

The museum tells the story in a forthright way-- honesty no holding back--the  French experience and the European experience under Nazi rule and what it meant for Jews.  It is clear--yes, the French police organized round ups.  Yes, the French police herded Jewish children from orphanages.  Yes, the French authorities were zealous.  Yes, people closed their doors on their neighbors as 76,000 French Jews were taken away and murdered.

We left the museum and wandered past the outside wall where are engraved the names of those citizens of France that are included among the "Righteous of the Nations" by the Yad Va-Shem Commission in Israel, those that saved Jewish lives at the risk of their own and their families.  We stopped at the name of Father Andre Trocme of Le Chambon, the hero of the beautiful book Lest Innocent Blood be Shed.  Father Trocme was the Huguenot pastor during the war who when confronted with a Jewish family at his door let them in.  When asked why he did this, knowing that he was risking his life and his family, Father Trocme replied that he did not know what else to do.  In his faith when someone is in trouble, you help.  Father Trocme organized his entire village to become a safe hiding place for Jews seeking to escape the Nazis.  He himself was imprisoned by the  Nazis on several occasions.  He was relentless.  He would not say "no."  I liked seeing his name on that wall.  I read the book in 1980 and first saw his tree on the Avenue of the Righteous in Jerusalem in 1982.

We wandered through the Marais and were thrilled to see Israeli falafel and shwarma kiosks.   We felt at home.  The Marais remains a lively Jewish area filled with Jewish bookstores, Jewish artshops and Jewish restaurants.

Jumping now to Normandy

We had an amazing guide for three days of touring the Normandy battle sites, Paul Woodage.  Paul is clearly THE guide to use for a Normandy visit.  Unbeknownst to us when we booked him, when Max Hastings, Britain's foremost WWII historian visits Normandy he uses this guide as does every veteran from Band of Brothers.   Paul makes the battle into a human struggle.  He is about the people and not the weapons, formations and equipment--which he knows intimately.  For example, I learned about Sherman Tanks.  The Americans wanted an easily repairable tank that any mechanic could fix.  They also had to design a tank that could be easily shipped from Detroit to Europe--one that could pass under every railroad bridge and underpass--through every canal, etc.  It had to be designed to get from Detroit to the coast and from the coast onto a ship to Europe.  But for Paul--the story is about the brave men, leadership and sacrifice---thousands of stories of different kinds of men.

Courage-- what does it take to storm a beach in the face of withering machine gun fire?  The Normandy examples  from June- August, 1944, are way too many to count.   We visited spot after spot of courage--the Normandy invasion on a grand scale was a spectacular feat, the largest invasion force from sea to land in world history over miles of beaches.  This does not include the thousands of paratroopers who were dropped behind German lines the night before the invasion to try and secure the roads and bridges inland so that the invasion force would not be pinned on the beach.  (My favorite line from Band of Brothers, "Hey, we're airborne, we're supposed to be surrounded.")

That is the grand scale-- but such a massive endeavor is actually hundreds upon hundreds of small encounters--encounters where small units of 10-20-30 men held bridges and junctions against withering attack and overwhelming German force.  Brave men-- brave very young men--17, 18, 19 years old--led by officers who were 24, 25,26.

The American cemetery--rows upon rows of crosses with more than a few Stars of David-- "their last full measure of devotion." 

I very much wanted to come to Normandy to see what I had only read about.  Louise and I said kaddish.

Now to romanticize-- I can see why people love coming to France.  The countryside is beautiful, farms, green--the villages are on a human scale--walking the village of Bayeux--where we stayed while visiting Normandy was wonderful-intimate.  I said to Louise that it is like visiting Colonial Williamsburg but real.  Every village in Normandy has an enormous one thousand year old cathedral like church.  You can still see and feel what was here--what France was--an empire, wealth, church, king, royalty at the center.  The Bayeux Cathedral is glorious.

I want to come back to explore --especially Paris and see the museums-- we only got to one art museum to see a beautiful Chagall exhibit. 

France leaves me with an enormous feeling of past grandeur and history.

 Israel is so very different.   Israel remains that old-new land that tells and foretells my story.  Israel is our old story--yet being in Israel, you can feel the new pages being written.  In other words--simply to take two small towns--Bayeux, France and Afula, Israel are two totally different places.  Bayeux points to the past--Afula points to the future.