The French helped send Jews to Auschwitz, but their honouring of les Justes deserves our respect, says historian MICHAEL MARRUS

Those who anxiously follow outbreaks of anti-Semitism in France should note an event tomorrow in Paris, one that not only recalls that country's inglorious Holocaust-related past but also highlights French men and women who rescued Jews from the Nazis and their fellow French during the Second World War. In an extraordinary ceremony, President Jacques Chirac will appear with Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, the outgoing head of the country's Shoah Memorial Foundation, to unveil a plaque in the Panthéon to rescuers, honouring what the French call les Justes and the Israelis the Righteous among the Nations.

Those who condemn French society for recent outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence may remain unmoved by this ceremony, deplore that this recognition has taken too long to happen, and disparage Mr. Chirac's consistent efforts to qualify wartime humanitarianism as consistent with French ideals. On the other hand, the more generously disposed will note that this extraordinary recognition, in the very epicentre of French national memory, beside the ashes of Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Victor Hugo, is an unprecedented gesture, comparable to none in other European countries.

My own sense is that gestures such as these deserve to be recognized for what they are -- not historical analyses but rather prescriptive commentaries on history, efforts to choose from the often shabby inventories of the past that which should be admired as a guide to conduct in the future.

Mr. Chirac has done this before. Twelve years ago, he hearkened back to the Holocaust in a speech commemorating the roundup of Jews at the Vélodrome d'Hiver, the now-demolished bicycle stadium where, in 1942, French police and extreme right-wing toughs interned nearly 13,000 Jews -- men, women and children -- most of whom were soon dispatched eastward, to be murdered by the Germans at Auschwitz. "It is difficult to evoke [those events]," Mr. Chirac said, "because those black hours forever stain our history, and are an insult to our past and our traditions. Yes, the criminal folly of the occupier was seconded by French people and the French state."

This has consistently been Mr. Chirac's claim: that terrible wrongs were done but that French ideals, properly understood, dictated otherwise. Reiterating this theme, he delivered a major address in 2004 in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, on a windy plateau in south-central France, where Protestant fundamentalists rescued nearly 5,000 Jews and other refugees being tracked by the Germans and their collaborationist French allies. "Here in adversity," the President declared, "the soul of the nation manifested itself. Here was the embodiment of our country's conscience." Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, he said, symbolized "a France true to her principles, faithful to her heritage, true to her genius."

French presidents, I think it fair to say, are more given to rhetorically grandiloquent claims about their nation's virtues than meet the taste of most of us. Still, I think these particular lofty flourishes deserve respect, and for several reasons. First, the reality of rescue. Yad Vashem, the Israeli commemorative and research institution that studies Holocaust rescue in close detail, has identified 2,725 French rescuers -- men and women of every walk of life who risked their lives to conceal and save Jews during the war.

The number of these rescuers is certainly greater, for many went without recognition and didn't seek it. More than two-thirds of the 330,000 Jews in France escaped the Holocaust, and it is probably fair to say that every single one of them, at one time or another, was helped by a non-Jew who hid, fed, sheltered, warned, clothed, provided false identities, or otherwise facilitated their escape. The French persecuted, robbed and collaborated with the Germans, but they also rescued, as Ms. Veil pointed out movingly when she spoke of the saving of so many Jewish children whose parents were taken away.

Second, we often say of countries, and it is certainly said of France, that they must "come to terms with the past." But the French, it should be acknowledged, have gone over this ground repeatedly in recent decades, to the point that some commentators claim they are obsessed with the subject. Books on the Holocaust in France fill shelves in bookstores; les Justes have been commemorated by the French parliament, which instituted a national day to commemorate "victims of racist and anti-Semitic crimes of the French state and [pay] homage to the Justes of France who welcomed, protected and defended, at risk of their own lives and without any recompense, one or several persons threatened with genocide." France has also provided restitution and pensions to victims, and generously endowed a national educational and commemorative institution on the Holocaust.

France has its anti-Semitic problems, to be sure; but it is not alone in this, one need hardly say. Gestures such as those of Mr. Chirac tomorrow are the other side of the coin -- ignored by those who see only one side but who might be hard pressed to find, on the official level at least, anyone who does it better.

Michael R. Marrus is Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto and the co-author, with Robert O. Paxton, of Vichy France and the Jews.

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