How does the civil society react when it is confronted with barbarism? Based on recent historians researches, "The Resistance" throws a new glance on France for the 40/44 years. A collection that tells otherwise the history of these unknown persons who fought Vichy and the Nazis from June 1940, and traces the unknown fate of those who risked their lives to save Jews.
THE PROJECT
On television as on the cinema, the Resistance is often approached under the angle of personalities’ monographs: Jean Moulin, Lucie and Raymond Aubrac, Oscar Schindler ...
With the Resistance, Christophe Nick and Andrew Bampfield offer a new reading of this period, showing and demonstrating that it is a profound movement, large, which has mobilized hundreds of thousands of people and claimed the lives of more one hundred thousand of them. The most recent work of specialists show that, facing the most violent totalitarianism, the Resistance was the culmination of a multitude of attitudes, as explained by historian Olivier Wieviorka: "A portion of the French tried, with its means to resist its way to things that seemed unbearable. It demonstrates that between the vision of 1944 of the triumphant Gaullism, an entire nation in the Resistance, and the more black vision of the 70’s, the weak and collaborating people, there is a between-two period, which interests more and more the historians. We go out of the polarity, which until then served as sesame to understand the period, with on one-hand collaborators and on the other the Resistance fighters."
It is a whole collection which France Televisions dedicates to this subject, with about seven hours of programs all in all: two documentaries-fictions of 90 minutes diffused on France 2 and four documentaries of 52 minutes diffused on France 5. The set approaches the Resistance under two angles: the resistance in the occupation period and the resistance facing the Shoah.
Both documentaries-fictions, diffused on France 2, adopt a new language, a realization that mixes images of that period and reconstructions in an original narrative flow. They are based at the same moment on the exploitation of archives, public or private, and on the rigorous narration, only reporting on authentic facts. Scenes played by comedians allow to show notably the mechanisms of the passage in the act, the everyday life of the Resistance fighters, the secret meetings and the historic meetings... Each of these two documentaries-fictions has an appropriate theme and a story. They are autonomous but suggest, together, an answer to the essential questions.
Four documentaries proposed by France 5 are cut in a thematic way. Using the greatest historians of that period, they provide an innovative approach of the Resistance. These conversations constitute the backbone around which articulate archives and reconstructions. The intersection of interviews, the juxtaposition of points of view brings to this collection wealth and unity. An interaction inherent to the complexity of the Resistance.
This broadcasting event is complemented by a DVD release and by a website, developed jointly by france2.fr and france5.fr. This website offers video testimonials of resistant fighters, bonuses on the shooting of the series, historical reminders and a place for debate open to the Internet users.
1940. While the Germans settle down in France and Pétain signs the Armistice, one part of the French civil society opposes with rather weak means. She multiplies the acts of insubordination and sabotage. But at what point can we qualify them as acts of resistance?
SUMMARY
The occupation of France was appalling. The collaboration was hated. Since December 40, the SS Helmut Knochen, in charge of security questions for Berlin in Paris, felt that France was rumbling. It was necessary to track down the first Resistance fighters without whom an organized resistance was going to take place. Knochen was the first one to detect what Vichy and Pétain understood less than year after the defeat. In spring, 41: “a bad wind” blew over France.
The resistance did not exist, but nevertheless, in the whole country, demonstrations of anger break out: strikes, sabotage, patriotic demonstrations, underground newspapers, and evasion networks for war prisoners... These forms of contesting without coherence or strategy, totally improvised and often politically vague, are going to be managed by one man to coordinate them: Jean Moulin. For him, the question is not "how many people can resist?", he knows they are countless, but "how to make this resistance efficient?". He is the one who convinces General de Gaulle in autumn 41 to become the leader of this civil resistance. While in London, the First of the Resistance fighters thought that they were deceived in England, alongside the allies.
Little by little, the anger of this civil society is going to be embodied in these networks and secret movements. By unifying and by coordinating, they generate in turn forms of action adapted to the fight against an occupying army and armed groups, espionage, propaganda, rescue of the persecuted, underground forces, the resistance movement. From their federation will rise a common reflection on the values of a France becoming free again. It is these values that, since the beginning of 43, regenerate the French, avoiding in the country a civil war and allowing all those who can fight to become an actor in the liberation of the Nation.
ARTISTIC LIST
A film by Christophe NICK, Félix OLIVIER and Patricia BODET Authors: Andrew BAMPFIELD and Christophe NICK in collaboration with Pierre PEAN Director: Félix OLIVIER Producers: Emmanuel GIRAUD et Christophe NICK Historical advisers: Pierre LABORIE, Jacques SEMELIN with the kind contribution of Denis PESCHANSKI, Serge KLARSFED, Sabine JANSEN and Lucien LAZARE Voice-over: Emmanuel BLANCHARD Told by Tcheky KARYO Original music: Loïk DURY et Serge FEYS Journalist: Vanessa RATIGNIER Photo director: Lubomir BAKCHEV First Director Assistant: Marion LALLIER Researchers: Christine LOISEAU et Anne CONNAN Sound engineer: Jérôme AYASSE Set designer: Sébastian BIRCHLER Costume designer: Cyril FONTAINE Casting: Christophe MOULIN Hairstyle: Christian GRUAU Make-up: Laurent ZUPAN Production director: François DROUOT Stage manager: Karine RAPHAËL Montage: Elke HARTMANN, Claudio HUGUES, Samuel LAJUS et Yen LE VAN Archives montage: Christophe BOUQUET Sound montage: Serge ROUQUAYROL et Géraldine FALIEU Sound mixing: Ludovic ESCALIER
The Resistance
"The Rescue of the Jews, the unknown alliance"
Broadcasted on February 19th, 2008 by France 2
ABSTRACT
The tracking of Jews by the Nazis and the Vichy regime, and the race against death of those who have done everything to save them. How can you convince a trapped family to entrust their child to an association, or to neighbours? Tell them that we could save his child, was also announcing his own death...
SUMMARY
On one hand there are organizations stemming from Jewish communities, on the other hand, charity organization from the civil society. All find themselves confronted with two anti-semitic inhumanities, from the first days of occupation: those of the Nazis, those of Vichy.
About ten Jewish organizations of assistance coordinate secretly from June 15th, 1940, in Paris, in the occupied zone. About twenty Protestant and Jewish charity organisations meet in a committee in Nimes in a non-occupied zone from October 40. Each of them with their charismatic leaders, find themselves in the frontline to take care of the persecuted in internment camps, orphanages, soup kitchens. They are entailed in a race against death that little by little obliges them to convince the moral forces of the country, to carry out illegal activities to enter the resistance.
When the Nazis decide on the Final Solution, the French State agrees to be party to the genocide. The raids of summer 42 sentence, in a few days, more than 23 000 Jews to death. The shock is such that a part of the Roman Catholic Church, pushed by the activists, breaks the silence and little by little calls for the duty of solidarity of the whole society. The Associations then help tens of thousand Jews to enter the French civil society, in spite of the pursuit of the Jews by the Nazis and Vichy. The absolute priority belongs to the children. A gigantic enterprise of camouflage begins. 77 000 Jews of France are going to disappear in the Shoah. But thanks to this mobilization, and at first that of the very Jews, 250 000, that is three quarters of the Jews living in France, are going to be able to escape. This kind of resistance, totally underestimated, is presented for the first time in its global nature.
ARTISTIC LIST
A film by Christophe NICK, Félix OLIVIER and Patricia BODET Authors: Andrew BAMPFIELD and Christophe NICK in collaboration with Pierre PEAN Director: Félix OLIVIER Producers: Emmanuel GIRAUD et Christophe NICK Historical advisers: Pierre LABORIE, Jacques SEMELIN with the kind contribution of Denis PESCHANSKI, Serge KLARSFED, Sabine JANSEN and Lucien LAZARE Voice-over: Emmanuel BLANCHARD Told by Tcheky KARYO Original music: Loïk DURY et Serge FEYS Journalist: Vanessa RATIGNIER Photo director: Lubomir BAKCHEV First Director Assistant: Marion LALLIER Researchers: Christine LOISEAU et Anne CONNAN Sound engineer: Jérôme AYASSE Set designer: Sébastian BIRCHLER Costume designer: Cyril FONTAINE Casting: Christophe MOULIN Hairstyle: Christian GRUAU Make-up: Laurent ZUPAN Production director: François DROUOT Stage manager: Karine RAPHAËL Montage: Elke HARTMANN, Claudio HUGUES, Samuel LAJUS et Yen LE VAN Archives montage : Christophe BOUQUET Sound montage: Serge ROUQUAYROL et Géraldine FALIEU Sound mixing : Ludovic ESCALIER
The Resistance
"The deaf rumbling of a nation"
Broadcasted on February 22nd, 2008 by France 5
ABSTRACT
How individuals react to the Occupation? Why and how individuals keel over in the Resistance?
SUMMARY
How does the civil societies react when they are confronted with the most extreme violence, with totalitarianism? Military occupation barbarism, mass crimes are intended to crush individuals, to break the solidarity. Far from being submitted, many of these societies develop mutual aid, resistance, which sometimes manages to liberate people from the oppression they undergo.
How did the Resistance appear? How, by starting from a deaf hostility of a country to the occupant and to the collaboration, formed secret organizations that, little by little, embodied the real national legitimacy?
From the speech of Pétain in June, 1940 until the parade of the resistance fighters of Ain to Oyonnax in November 1943, via the "flame of the Resistance" lit in London by de Gaulle and the role of Jean Moulin, this episode evokes the "do-it-yourself" of the first acts of resistance, the birth of underground newspapers, the sabotages, the murders of German officers and the arbitrary death sentences that followed, the institution of the Compulsory Labour Organisation, deported politicians…
The historians return on the will of revolt, the reflex of action that stimulates the populations, the emergence of a spontaneous front of refusal, the reproduction of small gestures and the mechanisms by which the civilians enter dissidence, then fall over to Resistance.
"I try to understand why and how individuals, at some point, have been engaged in what we call today the Resistance. Why the others did not do it? (...) I show a big humility, as historian, in front of the mystery of the decision, the gearing towards the Resistance."
Jacques Semelin, Director of researches CERI-CNRS
"For some individuals, we can consider the entry to resistance as the pinnacle of some individual acts, which are not reflected acts, instinctive acts of solidarity, generosity, sympathy. (...) At the beginning, it was necessary to invent something (...) Learn how to resist. There was no manual of the good Resistance fighter."
Julian Jackson, Professor at the Queen Mary, University of London
ARTISTIC LIST
Author: Christophe NICK Directors : Christophe NICK and Patricia BODET Producers : Emmanuel GIRAUD et Christophe NICK Historical advisers: Pierre LABORIE, Jacques SEMELIN with the kind contribution of Denis PESCHANSKI and Serge KLARSFELD Photo director: Christophe MICHELET Sound engineers: Julien CHAUMAT and Michel ADAMIK Montage: Claude TRINQUESSE Archives montage: Christophe BOUQUET Reseachers: Christine LOISEAU and Anne CONNAN Production director: François DROUOT
The Resistance
"The armed conflict"
Broadcasted on February 29th, 2008 by France 5
ABSTRACT
How the hatred of the occupation and the Vichy regime did change into a collective strength capable of gathering men and organizing the armed struggle?
SUMMARY
An attack every hour! In December 1943, resistance fighters hit everywhere in France. This is not the height of summer 1944, but the impalpable rebel friction that ran through France after the collapse of 1940 finally took shape. How, in a few years, hatred of the occupier and the Vichy regime, first individually, has turned into a collective force capable of unifying and organizing men? This film calls upon French, English and German historians, and explores the most emblematic motives of Resistance: the armed resistance.
Initially, the resistance is underestimated by De Gaulle and ignored by the allies; most of all there is a lack of resources and man capable of violent actions leading up to murder. On 22 June 1941, Germany attacks the USSR. This is the trigger. So far silent, the Communist Party counterattacks. The Battalions of youth Albert Ouzoulias and Colonel Fabien establish terror by killing isolated German soldiers. In reprisals for each murder, the Nazis execute hostages by tens, including the now famous Guy Môquet. We estimate approximately to three months the life expectancy of these young communist terrorists, who will massively be arrested in spring 1942. Afterward, the other movements of resistance take fewer risks and favour the acts of sabotage. They will gain their legitimacy in the heart of the French people in 1943, when Vichy establishes the Service of Compulsory Work in Germany. Henceforth, all the families are concerned: they have to oppose or comply with this measure that threatens to carry away their sons and husbands. It is a chance of a lifetime for the Resistance that supervises and forms the rebellions in scrublands to the Compulsary Labour Organisation. In 1944, the armed forces of the Resistance unite under a unique command. The French Forces of the Interior were born. Finally recognized by the Allies, this FFI receives massively weapons and explosives. The battle of the Liberation can begin...
"You can undermine the morale of the occupant by distributing pamphlets but, if you kill a German or if you destroy a tank, the action is at once visible and concrete. (...) There are also other motives in the Resistance: the taste of adventure, the vengeance, and the revenge with regard to an army, which had totally collapsed in 1940."
Olivier Wieviorka, Professor to the Superior teachers' training college of Cachan.
"To become a resistant in July 1944 was not opportunism. On the contrary. It was paradoxically more dangerous to become resistant in July 1944 when it was really war even if it was sometimes a symbolic participation; it was not without danger."
Julian Jackson, Professor to Queen Mary, University of London.
ARTISTIC LIST
Author: Christophe NICK Directors : Christophe NICK and Patricia BODET Producers : Emmanuel GIRAUD et Christophe NICK Historical advisers: Pierre LABORIE, Jacques SEMELIN with the kind contribution of Denis PESCHANSKI and Serge KLARSFELD Photo director: Christophe MICHELET Sound engineers: Julien CHAUMAT and Michel ADAMIK Montage: Claude TRINQUESSE Archives montage: Christophe BOUQUET Reseachers: Christine LOISEAU and Anne CONNAN Production director: François DROUOT
The Resistance
"Victims agains executioners"
Broadcasted on March 7th, 2008 by France 5
ABSTRACT
The resistance of the French Jewish organizations facing the Nazis and Vichy, goes over progressively to forms of more and more radical fight.
SUMMARY
The Jewish communities living in France did not give in, on the contrary too many people believe if three quarter of escaped from the Shoah, it is mostly because they resisted. Since the arrival of the Nazis in Paris, on June 14th, 1940, a secret coordination of Jewish charity works is set up under the name of comity Amelot. At the beginning, the organizers only think of helping the persecuted populations. They are very soon going to face SS, the raids, the segregation and the despoliation. Their posture, "the refusal of obedience", is going to gain little by little a big part of the Jewish organizations in France. Demonstrations are held in front of the internment camps of Pithiviers and Beaune–La-Rolande with the coordination of the transported convicts of Drancy. The manufacture of false papers with the creation of networks of camouflage and networks of rescue is the improvisation of the emergency of the resistance of the victims to their executioners.
The historians describe the mechanisms of the Final Solution in France and how the Jewish organizations faced it, the more and more radical way to illegal and secret forms of fight. The impact of the raids of the summer 42 on the French civil society modifies in depth the attitude of the whole society. The Jewish organizations can from now on use the social fabric of the broad mass of French people to save the Jews.
"The Nazi policy is characterized by the will to always make the victims take care of their own victim's situation (…) The societies who became aware of this trap went beyond assistance and led an action of resistance, rescue."
Denis Peschanski, head of the research department in CNRS.
"The purpose of the Germans is at the same time to track down the Jewish communities, and to cut the links of these Jewish communities with the non Jewish civil society. From this point of view, they do not reach it. And if three quarter of the Jews of France were saved, it is thanks to the links protected with the non Jewish civil society."
Michel Laffitte, associated researcher at the CNRS-IRICE.
ARTISTIC LIST
Author: Christophe NICK Directors : Christophe NICK and Patricia BODET Producers : Emmanuel GIRAUD et Christophe NICK Historical advisers: Pierre LABORIE, Jacques SEMELIN with the kind contribution of Denis PESCHANSKI and Serge KLARSFELD Photo director: Christophe MICHELET Sound engineers: Julien CHAUMAT and Michel ADAMIK Montage: Claude TRINQUESSE Archives montage: Christophe BOUQUET Reseachers: Christine LOISEAU and Anne CONNAN Production director: François DROUOT
The Resistance
"Facing the deportation of the Jews"
Broadcasted on March 14th, 2008 by France 5
ABSTRACT
The mobilization of the associations of mutual aid to help the outlaws of Vichy locked into internment camps, and to set up rescue and evasion networks for the Jews leaning on the French civil society.
SUMMARY
Summer 1942. In Europe, raids on Jews multiply. But, in France, a resistance appears in front of the anti-Semites persecutions. 320 000 Jews lived in France in 1940. 76 000 were deported. How did three quarters escape from death? It is this mechanism that specialist historians of the Occupation decipher here. Based on I mages of archives and fiction, this film returns to a facet underestimated by the Resistance: the rescue of Jews.
In September 1939, no Final Solution is made, but certain elements draw to the next tragedy. Persecuted, the Jews of Germany run away westwards. Nobody then takes their drama into account. Taken within the context of important waves of immigration, they are parked in France in internment camps together with Spanish republicans and Italians fleeing the regimes of Franco and Mussolini. After the armistice, the international charity movements of which Cimade (Committee among the evacuees) and OSE (Work to help the children) discover the existence of about forty camps which Vichy keeps secret. 40 000 person’s are crowded together.
This workforce is going to double following the anti-Semitic laws of October 1940. It is the hunting for foreign Jews. To cover up the abnormally high death rate which reigns in the heart of camps, people like Dr Joseph Weil, of the OSE, or Madeleine Barot, of Cimade, settle their own offices there: the movement of the voluntary internees was born.
Once in the camp, it is easier to take care but especially, to get these prisoners out. Overwhelmed, the associations appeal to outside networks and to religious authorities, at first to Protestants, to take over their action.
The terrible raids of the summer 1942 precipitate everything. For the first time, a part of the Roman Catholic Church raises itself openly against Jewish persecutions and calls up for mutual aid. So supported, the massive rescue can begin. In camps or in sorting centres, the children are the easiest to save. But there is a strategy for every group of individuals. War wounded, nationalities, protégés, military decorations, sanitary risks or of contagion… False or real, these so called reasons allow the filtering out of thousands of people, sometimes requiring the complicity of high-ranking bureaucrats opposed to Pétain. Then spread into the broad mass of French people, protected by the complicity or the silence of the population, 250 000 Jews will not be deported.
"There is a symbolic modification of the opinion of the status of the Jew, wrongly considered up to here, as the people responsible for the defeat of France. And then, at the time of the raids, the Jew becomes a victim. Yet, the Jewish victim is often a neighbour. A complete transfer takes place: the Jew finds the humanity that the prejudices had shielded from him."
Pierre Laborie, director of research at the EHESS
"Why did that work? Because there is a clichés of goodness, which matches the commonness of the evil put forward by Hannah Arendt. All these rescuers are very common people who agreed, at some point, to have this initiative of welcome towards a child, towards a family... Maybe they feel almost embarrassed to see themselves settled on a pedestal because, as they say they precisely did only their duty."
Jacques Semelin, director of research at the CERI-CNRS
ARTISTIC LIST
Author: Christophe NICK Directors : Christophe NICK and Patricia BODET Producers : Emmanuel GIRAUD et Christophe NICK Historical advisers: Pierre LABORIE, Jacques SEMELIN with the kind contribution of Denis PESCHANSKI and Serge KLARSFELD Photo director: Christophe MICHELET Sound engineers: Julien CHAUMAT and Michel ADAMIK Montage: Claude TRINQUESSE Archives montage: Christophe BOUQUET Reseachers: Christine LOISEAU and Anne CONNAN Production director: François DROUOT
