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French restitution, German compensation: Algerian Jews and Vichy's financial legacy

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13629387.2012.723434

1743-9345

Susan Slyomovics,

North African History and Literature

Abstract Post-World War II German reparative measures had originally been created for the benefit of European Jews. The April 2004 official German compensation programme for Jews who were interned in World War II included reparations to Algerians Jews of North Africa who were involved in a history of German indemnification superimposed upon a prior history of French restitution. Post-war German reparations since 1952 continue to be rooted in ongoing vibrant debates about coming to terms with Germany's Nazi past. In contrast, France's attitudes and policies towards the Vichy past in France and Algeria foreclosed its financial responsibility to Algerian Jews (or for that matter Algerian Muslims) for what Frantz Fanon would call a 'just reparation' for the crimes of colonialism. Consequently, the case of Algerian Jewry and what happened to the community from the beginning of World War II through Algeria's 1962 independence, and into the era of their settlement en masse in France (where they received reparations as Pieds-Noirs, or 'repatriated' European colonial settlers), draws on Holocaust studies, post-colonial studies, Algerian Jewish diasporic history and the dynamic unfolding of French–Algerian decolonisation. Keywords: AlgeriaFranceGermanyJewscolonialismreparationsVichylabour camps Notes On legislation, legal and diplomatic history leading to the establishment of the Foundation, see Zumbansen (Citation2002). For commentary on the Foundation, and in particular some doubts concerning whether the settlement was helpful to broader concerns, such as addressing historical memory; see Adler and Zumbansen (Citation2002). See also website of the Foundation at: http://www.stiftungevz.de/eng/the_foundation_remembrance_responsibility_and_future/ On legal peace from future legal suits, see Article 17(2) of Foundation Law available at their website. See also commentary by Bazyler (Citation2003, p. 83). There is a large legal literature on reparations; for one overview, see Shelton (Citation1999). Rothberg (Citation2009) calls for a 'countertradition in which remembrance of the Holocaust intersects with the legacies of colonialism and slavery and ongoing processes of decolonization' in his remarkable work, Multidirectional memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the age of decolonization (p. xiii). For a history of early discussions involving Morris J. Cohen, Nahum Goldmann, and George Landauer, see Balabkins (Citation1971, pp. 81–82). Deutschkron (Citation1970, p. 43): 'The Stuttgart lawyer and restitution expert, Dr. Otto Kuster, explained that this term caught on in Germany after 1945 because it "made sense" to the people, and it was also taken up by the legislature'. See also her p. 42, footnote 5, Deutschkron interview with Otto Kuster (September 1967). See Rothberg (Citation2006, pp. 158–184). See also Paxton's (Citation1972) groundbreaking study, Vichy France: Old guard and new order, 1940–44. Citations for Vichy laws are compiled in Rémy (Citation1992). Citations for the original laws are: Loi du 3 octobre 1940 portant statut des Juifs, in Journal Officiel of 18 October 1940, p. 5323; Loi du 4 octobre sur les ressortissants étrangers de race juive in Journal Officiel of 18 October 1940, p. 5324; and Loi du 7 octobre portant abrogation du décret Crémieux, in Journal Officiel of 8 October 1940, p. 5324 as cited in Rémy (Citation1992, pp. 85–88, 91). See also Abitbol (Citation1983), Msellati (Citation1999), Ansky (Citation1950), Cantier (Citation2002), and Levisse-Touzé (Citation1998). Anderson (Citation2002), 'Preface à l'édtion francaise', L'imaginaire national: réflexions sur l'origine et l'essor de nationalism. Anderson's point about Algerian Jews willfully forgetting their autochthonous origins seems to be similar to Stora's (Citation1991) thesis in La gangrène et l'oubli: la mémoire de la guerre d'Algérie on Preface à l'édition française official non-recognition and forgetting of the Algerian war. Estimates are from Laloum (Citation1987, pp. 36–41). See also, 'Algeria Sephardim Deported from France or Executed in France during WW II', website based on Klarsfeld (Citation1978), La mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France, 1942–45. A study of a wartime Moroccan Jewish community south of Lyon reports that more than 100 Jews, holders of Moroccan passports, were denounced by the local French and deported to camps; only half returned (Atouf Citation2003, pp. 121–130). Quote is taken from the title of the collections of laws cited in footnote 7. Marrus and Paxton (Citation1981, pp. 191–197). Vichy's role in saving or persecuting French Jews remains a matter for debates: Poliakov's (Citation1951) Bréviaire de la haine credits Vichy with saving Jewish lives especially in 1943, while Aron (Citation1983) pointed to Vichy's participation in deportations as a 'dishonor' (p. 706). The question whether Vichy was a buffer that protected French Jews from Nazi Germany continues, see Paxton (Citation2001, p. 6), where he argues that Raul Hilberg's revised 2003 edition of The destruction of the European Jews notes that, 'At times Vichy would take initiatives that were stronger than German coercion could have compelled' (p. 642). Similarly Paxton citing Léon Poliakov's work on Vichy in the Italian occupied zone noted that Vichy made matters worse for the Jews and also cites Aron who concluded that nothing the Pétain regime did could offset the power of Germany to do whatever it wanted with French Jews but should not have participated in the deportations, see Aron (Citation1983, p. 706). For example, during the academic year, 1941–42, the year of Derrida's expulsion from school, Eisenbeth calculated that the 14% Jewish quota imposed on primary, secondary or technical school level retained 11,962 Jewish students and expelled 13,168, while a harsher 7% quota for the academic year 1942–43 reduced the number of Jewish students to 6582 with 18,544 expelled. At the university level, the 3% Jewish quota resulted in 110 Jewish students from a total of 452 retained during the academic year 1942–43 (Eisenbeth Citation1945, p. 41). See Joly (Citation2001). No exact numbers are currently available, see the chapter devoted to the camps in Ansky (Citation1950, pp. 261–281), Abitbol (1983, pp. 102–104), Bel Ange (Citation2006), Oliel (Citation2005), and Cohn (Citation1996, pp. 27–29), Levisse-Touzé (Citation1996, pp. 601–605), Aouate (Citation1984, vol. 1, pp. 47–58), Szajkowski (Citation1975). The German Foundation determined that 3000 Jews were interned from October 1940 to November 1942 with 300 still alive and eligible for compensation. See Bel Ange (Citation2006), Bensadoun (Citation2003), Oliel (Citation2005), Moine (Citation1972), Vanino-Wanikoff (Citation1971, pp. 80–82), and Satloff (Citation2006). According to German historians, Mallmann and Cüppers (Citation2006), there was ample archival evidence for German plans to extend the Holocaust to the Jews of Arab lands through measures against the civilian population similar to those the SS Einsatzgruppen (Special Mobile Killing Units) were carrying out in the Soviet Union (pp. 153–176). The circular states: 'Les militaires juifs algériens récemment déchus de la nationalité francaises seront regroupés en une unité des travaileurs jusqua'à la liberation de la classe à laquelle ils sont attachés'. See the Journal officiel de la République Francaise, 28 October 1943. See also Klarsfeld et al. (Citation2000). A detailed summary of the report in French is available at: http://crdp.ac-reims.fr/memoire/enseigner/memoire_vichy/11spoliation.htm By 2001 the Drai Commission received over 7000 individual claims for compensation, and accepted 1276 for compensation totaling 26.43 million Euros. On the 'triptych' of apology, trials and reparations, see Fette (Citation2006, pp. 259–285). This process was described by Shepard (Citation2006, pp. 169–182). See Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. On Facts and Files, see http://www.factsandfiles.com/ Browning (Citation2003) on collected survivor testimony to reconstruct 21-months existence of the Starachowice factory slave labor camp in Poland. According to Chetrit, he was contacted for German indemnification based on his memoirs written in Hebrew that included a section on his experiences in a forced labour camp in Tafilalet. Teissier (Citation2007), written question number 1527 published in the Journal officiel, 31 July, p. 5005. The response by the ministry in charge of veterans was published in the Journal officiel, 18 September, p. 5666. Teissier (Citation2007). In addition Achcar (Citation2010) notes, some 6300 Arabs from various countries served with the German military while according to historian Höpp (Citation2004), 1500 Arabs were interned in Nazi concentration camps (pp. 215–240).