Daily Mail

Secret hero or Vichy toadie?

- IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspond­ents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT; fax them

QUESTION Was former French President Francois Mitterrand a collaborat­or during World War II? This is a contentiou­s topic in France. it was rumoured for years, but confirmed in the 1994 book A French Youth: Francois Mitterrand 1934-1947, by Pierre Pean.

it describes how Mitterrand worked for the collaborat­ionist Vichy regime between 1942 and 1943, then joined the French Resistance from 1943.

Mitterrand was born on October 26, 1916, in Jarnac in south-western France. The son of a station-master, 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 who was known as ‘The Lion of Verdun’, 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 government aligned itself with Nazi Germany.

By late 1942, Mitterrand was working as a press officer for the rehabilita­tion of PoWs and lauded the Vichy regime in articles he wrote. in one piece from December 1942, which appeared in the Vichy publicatio­n France, he denounced his country’s 150 years of ‘mistakes’.

it did not contain any specifical­ly proGerman 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 his political career, serving two terms from 1981 to 1995 as socialist President of France.

Mitterrand co-operated with Pean on his book, making it clear he never supported Vichy and claiming he was working from Rumour: Francois Mitterrand in 1988 within to help the Resistance. 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 long- term friendship with Rene Bousquet, secretary-general to the Vichy regime’s police force.

Bousquet was involved in the infamous Round-up of Marseille in 1943 in which 2,000 Jewish citizens were arrested and sent first to internment camps and then 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 the City of 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.’

While hitching a ride on an interstell­ar liner with Arthur, she disappears into a temporal fold, leaving him in a time/space in which she no longer exists.

Jim Butler, Cheltenham, Glos. sCOTT PiLGRiM is a popular Canadian series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley in which Pilgrim, a bass-playing slacker, must defeat seven evil exboyfrien­ds of his lover Ramona Flowers. The film spin-off scott Pilgrim vs. The World was released in 2010.

scott’s brother is Lawrence West Pilgrim, named after Lawrence West station on the Toronto undergroun­d.

Carl Mason, Southampto­n. 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 brilliant German novelist who explored his country’s post-war identity. Many of his novels begin with someone setting out on a journey.

Jacques is sent to Britain as part of the Kindertran­sport and is raised by a religious family in Wales. On learning that his mother died in Theresiens­tadt concentrat­ion camp in Czechoslov­akia, Jacques embarks on a journey across europe into his past, visiting railway stations along the way.

The choice of the name Austerlitz is evocative: it was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the 19th century. in 1805, Napoleon defeated the Austrians and Russians outside what is now the town of slavkov in 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 internment camps. Most were then transporte­d to Auschwitz concentrat­ion camp.

Jessica Marnes, Radford Semele, Warks. QUESTION The film title Krakatoa East Of Java is incorrect because the volcano is west of the Indonesian island. Are there geographic­al blunders in other movie names? FuRTheR to earlier answers, an entertaini­ng, non-geographic­al error was made in Greer Garson’s last film for MGM, her Twelve Men. she plays a widow, Jan stewart, who is the first woman to teach at a boarding school.

The screenplay was adapted from Louise Baker’s popular autobiogra­phical 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, Bury, Lancs.

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