Vel' d'Hiv Roundup: Thirty years ago, Jacques Chirac finally acknowledged France's role in the genocide of the Jews
For fifty-three years, France refused to acknowledge its responsibility for the deportation of Jews. It was not until 1995 and a historic speech that it was officially acknowledged that the Nazi "criminal madness" was "supported by the French state."
Too often, in politics, words are just words, quickly swept away by the wind and time. On July 16, 1995 , words were actions. To speak is sometimes a serious gesture of appeasement, remembrance, and forgiveness. On that day, a stone's throw from the Eiffel Tower, Jacques Chirac stepped up to the podium to speak.
It took fifty-three years for a President of the Republic to do so. This one, elected only two months earlier, evokes "tears" and "shame," "horror" and "sorrow." He also warns against the "spirit of hatred" and the "racist and anti-Semitic ideology" of "certain political parties" who draw their theses "from the same sources" as Nazism and Pétainism....
L'Humanité
