Word: laval
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...people can be held accountable for them--are still valid, but the United States government is in no position to put them into practice. For the government to screen out "undesirables" is more like Nazi Germany managing to survive the war and then denying refuge to Quisling or Laval on the grounds that they were undemocratic. If principles established after World War II were used today, justice for war crimes in Vietnam and Cambodia would be administered by the victorious governments in those countries...
Other major collaborators-Norway's Vidkun Quisling, France's Pierre Laval-were executed long ago by their countrymen, but Degrelle managed to escape to Spain. Though a Belgian court later sentenced him to death for high treason, the Franco regime has continued to insist that no one by the name of Léon Degrelle lives in Spain...
Some have forgotten more than the experience. Helmuth Tausend still believes that Alsace is part of Germany. Conte de Chambrun maintains that his father-in-law, Pierre Laval, was the savior of France. While Premier of unoccupied France, Laval once headlined the newspaper he owned: "Laval Wants a German Victory." One of the Resistance fighters still believes that his Communist compatriots fought because their allegiance was to Russia...
...DOCUMENTARY'S only villain is Premier Pierre Laval. His personal behavior casts him as such in the film's context of what is ugliest about the French: their anti-Semitism. They embraced the ideology of race purity using stricter criteria than the Nuremberg laws. Newspapers blamed France's defeat on "foreign elements." Doctors used the Gestapo to rid themselves of Jewish competitors. In the cinemas films played like The Jew Suss, which warned against interbreeding. Especially distressing is a newsreel of the memorialization of France's first anti-Semitic "authority" coupled with views of a touring exhibit...
...Laval's part in this tragedy is recounted by the biologist Dr. Claude Levy. The Gestapo requested a round-up of French Jews over sixteen, and in their enthusiasm the French gendarmes collected them all. The Nazis hadn't expected the children, so kept them in Paris while their parents were sent off to French concentration camps. While the bureaucracy made up its mind, Pastor Bougner appealed to Laval to evacuate the children. "It's of no importance," Laval replied. "I am practicing prophylaxis." Laval's insistence is documented by a telegram he sent. Did any of the children come...