From that trainload, Francine Baur was 3-year-old, Myriam was 9 and Pierre and Antoine, 6 and 10 respectively, were all killed at the death camp. Their parents Odette, Andre and Myriam were also among those 828.
They were all born in France and lost their French citizenship under the Vichy regime, which teamed up with Nazi occupiers to exterminate Jews.
Andre Baur’s great nephew, a Paris mayor was scrolling through his Twitter feed when he saw that Adolf Hitler’s Vichy collaborators had saved France’s Jews against the Holocaust. Ariel Weil (mayor of the French capital’s central city) was even more upset by the fact that the false assertion came from someone pretending to be French president, who is also Jewish.
Eric Zemmour is a TV pundit and author who has been repeatedly convicted of hate speech. He is finding passionate audiences for his anti Islam, anti-immigration invective during the early stages in France’s presidential race. He’s filling auditoriums with paying audiences and filling supporters with visions of Trump-like leaps from the small screen to Elysee Palace, when France votes in April.
Zemmour, although not officially declared as a candidate yet, has largely shaped the campaign’s course and tone. Zemmour has been gaining airtime over declared contenders due to his rising poll numbers.
He also has destabilized them, insisting on immigration and the grave danger it poses to France. This makes it difficult for mainstream rivals and to direct campaign conversation back towards themes, such as combating climate change and post-pandemic reconstruction, which they want to concentrate on.
Zemmour is acting in the capacity of a presidential candidate. Candidates need the support of supporters to raise funds and get backing from elected officials. An exhibitor showed the rifle to him at a security fair and said, “When your are president, Mr. Zemmour,” before he replied, “Yes.”
This is a terrible scenario for French Jews, who are horrified by Zemmour’s sugarcoating the Vichy regime that was headed by Marshal Philippe Petain, a World War I hero. He was sentenced to death in World War II, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.
Zemmour, who is a descendant from Berber Jews from Algeria, speaks proudly about his family history, which has added to the pain for Jews who lost loved ones in the Holocaust.
Weil said in an interview to The Associated Press that “just because he’s Jewish, he’s doing something that no one else can do, which is just disgusting.” While history is complex, this is a simple fact: Petain didn’t protect French Jews.
Convoy No. 1 was full of terrified children, men, and women. The number of deported Jews from France grew to 74,182 by the end of World War II. Many were sent to Auschwitz in Nazi Germany-occupied Poland where they died.
In February, a Paris court acquitted Zemmour of a charge of contesting crimes versus humanity — French law — for arguing that Petain had saved France’s Jews during the Holocaust.
The court ruled that the deportation of French and foreign Jews was carried out with the active participation and support of the Vichy government, its officials and its police.
It acquitted Zemmour and said that he had spoken in the heat. It was also noted that Zemmour said that “some French Jews” had been saved (using “des” in French), which Zemmour maintained was true, but he also stated that “the French Jews were saved” (using “les” in French), a generality he claimed he rejected.
Zemmour used “les” last month to discuss Vichy again in a broadcast interview. He said: “I say Vichy protected French Jews and that they handed over foreign Jews.”
He added, “It’s abominable because these poor people died.”
The lawyers who challenge his court acquittal plan on citing that interview as evidence during their appeal hearing in January.
Zemmour’s political threat is most severe to Marine Le Pen, a far-right leader in France. In an effort to broaden her appeal, she has diluted some of her policies since losing the 2017 presidential election to Emmanuel Macron. Zemmour, however, is attempting to erode her base by poaching Le Pen voters who think she’s softening. According to some polls, they appear to be neck-and-neck. Both are expected to continue trailing Macron, however.
Both portray immigration as a threat for French identity. However, Zemmour uses language Le Pen doesn’t like and that his critics claim places him at the extremism of the far right. Zemmour is one of few political figures who openly differentiates between skin colors in a country that is officially colorblind. Zemmour described woke culture at a Versailles rally as a plot to make white, heterosexual, Catholic men feel so guilty that they will abandon their “culture” and “civilization.”
Zemmour tried to make a distinction on Vichy recently. He said in Versailles, “I’m not discussing historical points that historians discuss.”
For French Jews, however, the damage has already been done. He may have muddled decades of Holocaust research to indelibly document the horrors.
Eugenie Cayet (84), whose father was killed and deported from Paris to Auschwitz, said, “He is denying what was evident, which cannot be denied.”
“What is his goal?” To get all Le Pen’s votes behind him.”
