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.
