News and Letters Article March 1998

Response from France

by an anti-racism activist

Paris-In response to the editorial, "The Papon Trial and French Fascism" (November 1997 N&L), Vichy was not a fascist regime in the usual sense of the term. As to the 1962 Demonstration against the Algerian War, where you write that "Papon's men killed five white French citizens at a Communist antiwar demonstration," there were not five but eight deaths at Charonne. De Beauvoir is always a bad historical source. It was a united demonstration of the whole opposition and of all the unions (except Force Ouvrere) against the OAS [rightist officers engaged in a terror champaign]. Everyone was there. For example, this was the only time in her life that my mother demonstrated. The demonstration was banned, like all demonstrations at this time. The Communist Party was very slow to get involved in the demonstrations of 1961-62. It is true, on the other hand, that the majority of those killed were Communists: they were together and the police attacked more violently because it was the end of the demonstration and only communists remained at that spot.

These were not "white citizens." If I remember correctly, there was a 17-year-old youth, a foreigner, and, I think, a Frenchman of Caribbean origin. Here journalistic abridgment is the problem. Also, in the USA, you have the deplorable habit of using your classification in five categories-perhaps it is operative in the USA, but it doesn't work elsewhere! One never speaks of "whites" in France. With regard to a racist murder, one says "a young Frenchman of Comoran origin," for example.

At the funeral of those killed at Charonne, there were 500,000 people of all sorts (and very likely workers were a minority there)-it was above all an ethical response. (My brother, a medical school professor, and all his colleagues were there. The churches were there.)

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