Mitterrand’s dark past
QUESTION Was former French President François Mitterrand a collaborator during World War II?
THIS is a contentious topic in France. Rumoured for years, it was only confirmed in the 1994 book: A French Youth: François Mitterrand 1934-1947 by Pierre Pean. Mitterrand worked for the collaborationist Vichy regime in 1942 and 1943, but was an active member of the French Resistance from 1943.
François Mitterrand was born in 1916, in Jarnac in south-western France. The son of a stationmaster, he studied law and political science in Paris.
At the outset of World War II, he enlisted in the infantry. He was wounded and captured by the Germans in June 1940.
Mitterrand escaped from captivity and joined the Vichy government in 1942, working as a bureaucrat in Marshal Petain’s support organisation The Legion of Veterans. Petain, a hero of World War I, was the Chief of State of Vichy France from 1940 (after France’s defeat by Germany) to 1944. He is now considered a collaborator whose (pro-fascist) government aligned itself with Nazi Germany.
By late 1942, Mitterrand was a press officer for a board for the rehabilitation of PoWs and lauded the Vichy regime in articles he published. In one, he endorsed the labour draft and criticised the legion’s lack of fanaticism. In another article from December 1942, he denounced the country’s 150 years of ‘mistakes’.
The article did not contain any specifically pro-German content, but was published alongside denunciations of Jews, masons and Gaullists. For his service to the regime, Mitterrand was awarded a Vichy decoration called the Francisque.
However, in 1943, he joined the Resistance, gained the confidence of Charles De Gaulle and, in March 1944, became head of a unified resistance group of PoWs. This was the foundation upon which he built a political career, serving two terms from 1981 as the Socialist President of France. Mitterrand co-operated with Pean on his book, making it clear that he never supported Vichy and claiming he was working from within to help the Resistance from the start.
Subsequent biographies have been less generous, saying he was a ‘vichysto-resistant’, a loaded term coined by French historian Jean-Pierre Azema to describe those who joined the Resistance only when it became politically expedient to do so.
Mitterrand never adequately explained his friendship with René Bousquet, secretary general to the Vichy regime police who took part in the Round-up of Marseilles in 1943 in which 2,000 Jewish citizens were arrested and sent first to internment camps and then to concentration camps. Marianne Bisset, London N13.
QUESTION Apart from Paddington Bear, which railway stations have inspired characters in literature?
FENCHURCH is Arthur Dent’s love interest in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, the fourth book of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
She was named after Fenchurch Street railway station in London where she was conceived in the ticket queue. ‘They [her parents] refuse to elaborate further, saying only that you wouldn’t believe how bored it is possible to get in the ticket queue at Fenchurch Street Station.’ Unfortunately, while hitching a ride on an interstellar liner with Arthur, she disappeared into a temporal fold, leaving him in a time/space in which she no longer existed.
Jim Butler, Cheltenham. JACQUES Austerlitz, the protagonist in W. G. Sebald’s acclaimed final novel Austerlitz, is named after Gare d’Austerlitz, a railway station in Paris.
Sebald was a German novelist who explored his country’s postwar identity following the horrors of World War II. Many of his novels begin with someone setting out on a journey, and this is certainly the case for Jacques.
He is sent to Britain as part of the Kindertransport and was raised by a family in Wales. On learning that his mother had died in Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, Jacques embarks on a journey across Europe, visiting several railway stations along the way.
The word Austerlitz is evocative: it was the site of a bloody battle. In 1805, Napoleon defeated the Austrians and Russians outside the town of Slavkov in what is now the Czech Republic, reminding us of Jacques’s roots.
Jewish men, women and children rounded up in Paris were taken in cattle trucks from Austerlitz station to the internment camps of Pithiviers and Beane-la-Rolande. Most were then transported to Auschwitz concentration camp.
Jessica Marnes, by email.
QUESTION The film title Krakatoa East Of Java is incorrect because the volcano is west of Java. Are there geographical blunders in other movie names?
FURTHER to the earlier answers, an entertaining, non-geographical error was made in Greer Garson’s movie, Her Twelve Men, directed by Robert Z. Leonard.
Garson plays a widow hired to be the first woman to teach at a boarding school. William Roberts and Laura Z. Hobson’s screenplay was adapted from Louise Baker’s popular novel, Miss Baker’s Dozen. This title clearly points to the fact there were 13 students in the story – as there are in the film, despite its name. Gina Lowry, by email.
QUESTION How does a Fitbit measure blood pressure when an apparatus is normally used to compress the arm?
FITBITS measure heartbeat, steps taken, sleep patterns etc., but they do not measure blood pressure (BP).
But there are BP wrist monitors: the Braun Icheck, Heartisans Watch and the Omron HeartGuide, for example. These utilise pulse transit time (PTT) to measure your blood pressure using two sensors on the watch: an electrocardiogram (ECG) sensor, and an optical heart rate (PPG) sensor. The two measurements are combined to calculate PTT – the time it takes for a pulse to travel from the heart to the wrist. The pulse travels faster if your BP is higher and slower if it is lower.
But to get an accurate reading with a wrist monitor, your arm and wrist must be at heart level. Measurements taken at the wrist are often less accurate than those taken at your upper arm.
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