ZGram - 5/13/2003 - "What I learned about the World War II..."
zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
Wed May 14 17:49:12 EDT 2003
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny
May 13, 2003
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
A real treat, this letter from a young French citizen, sent to Ernst
Zundel in response to an article in France about his unjust
imprisonment. I tried to preserve the charm of this missive:
[START]
Dear Sir -
Please find an international reply coupon, a blank sheet and an
envelope. I don't expect an answer, but I hope they will be useful
for you.
You want, like Udo Walendy does, the "Truth for Germany". Because
of the historical subject about which you've made investigations,
you're prosecuted in so-called democratic countries - I mean Germany,
if you're about to go back there, the United States, and Canada.
I'm born in the early seventies in a little French town. When I was
young, I mean when I was a child, I was told that French population
was about fifty millions, and that the world population was about
four thousand millions. I couldn't understand what it meant, but
when, in a car, we were going from a town to another one, I could see
houses everywhere, a huge number all along the road, the road itself
being only, on the maps, a little part of my country, which was only
a little part of the world.
Thus, when I was told about "Le Pere Noel", called "Santa Claus" by
the Anglo-Saxons, I wondered how it was possible for him to give toys
to so many children in one night only, even in the very little part
of France I knew... I wondered how he succeeded in bearing so many
presents in his bag, and how he could go so quickly from a house to
another one...when so many houses, including mine, had no chimney,
how old he was, if he had parents, if a school existed for new "Peres
Noel" and so on.
But of course, I didn't dare to admit that adults were liars!
Once, I made as if I was sure that Santa Claus didn't exist, and
asked an adult why adults used to lie to children about Santa Claus.
I was surprised, because she didn't even try to pretend that he
existed. She first was surprised, too, having probably thought that
I was still believing he existed. But, soon, she answered to me that
a Santa-Claus-believing child was a moving one. For my own, I felt
ill at ease for having been so long before daring to say that Santa
Claus was a lying.
Please excuse me for my poor way of speaking or writing English, but
I left school ten years ago.
My mother was having books about the WWII, and especially about a
certain subject. But she didn't want me to read them too early,
fearing I would be shocked. Thus became to me this subject the most
awful thing possible.
I was fond of history, however, and read almost any book I could.
Each of them showed the German people as a powerful monster, having
no human feeling. Of course, I didn't really believe that a whole
country's population could have been bad, but I thought that a part
of that might be true. The German people I could see in France, who
came to spend holidays in my country, didn't look like monsters:
Probably they had changed a lot since the war!
The parents of my father had, after the WWII, a German prisoner of
war working in their farm. The young man my grandmother described to
me was rather a German like those I knew than a monster. And I could
speak with my other grandmother about the World War II.
Whereas I was young, I knew a lot, or I thought so, about it: I was
able to describe its main battles, and knew the names of many
generals. I expected my grandmother to describe the France, during
the World War II, like a country so unhappy and so dark that never
the sun shined in the sky. I thought about Gestapo's agents
prosecuting people who, however, incredible it could see, sometimes
succeeded in surviving. I thought about things so ugly that never a
mother would let her children to know them, for fear of destroying
their mind.
But the war my grandmother knew was not the war of the books; it was
not the war of the movies. The war she spoke about was rather like a
shipwreck, in which the whole crew suffered, without anyone
understood why the ship had sunk. It was a war with French, American
and German human beings, living in the same hard time. It was a war
of starvation, and she spoke about hunger as if it was more present
than the air we were breathing, as if it was the war itself. She
remembered this hunger so easily that I understood she was still
hungry, and that this hunger would never end.
At school, the WWII was teached to us in "troisieme", it means in
"third", the beginning of which being in the year of our fourteenth
birthday. I had read, before that year, many books regarding the
prosecution against Jews during the war, and using the word
gaschamber. I knew that millions of Jews were reported to have been
killed. But never, before the teacher said it to us, I had either
read or heard any testimony about the way gaschambers were reported
to have been used. And, as she spoke, I stared at her, at the
teacher, trying to know if she understood her own words, and if she
really believed in her speech. But, each time her eyes met mines,
she escaped by looking elsewhere. I looked the other pupils, trying
to find in them the print of my feelings, but none else seemed so ill
at ease.
That day, I didn't become an opponent to the official history, but I
regarded the gaschamber's story, as it was told by our teacher, as
impossible, and, furthermore, didn't succeed in finding a means of
making it credible. I felt guilty for, once more, having doubts
about adults. But my opinion was that, even if it couldn't have
happen exactly as she said, something awful had been made to Jews by
Germans.
When I was a child, France was regarded as one of the four main
winners of the World War II. But President Jacques Chirac, whereas
he's a member of the gaullist party, suddenly said that my country
was responsible for the genocide committed against Jews. It is no
more possible to escape to your questions, Herr Zundel, neither for
Germany nor for France, my country being now one of the four loosers
of the World War II, thanks to president Chirac.
A few years ago, I was a student, living in the turkish part of Lyon
(Anglo-Saxons write Lyons the name of this town). To be a white
person is there the worst crime you can commit. Each time I tried to
speak about it to anyone living somewhere else, I was looked as if
this to whom I was speaking was better than me, as if I was foul, as
if he was good and I was bad; I was answered by gaschambers and
called a racist.
When someone speaks about riots against white people, the answer is
he's a racist who wants to build gaschambers. And when the American
government wants to make a war against any little country in the
world, the leader of this little country is, by any newspaper, or
almost any, and by any radio or TV channel, called a new Hitler, who
is to be stopped by any means, before a third world war. In the same
time, each of us is expected to admit that nothing can be compared to
the IIIrd Reich, and that none can be compared to Hitler: b is equal
to a, but a is not equal to b. Each time anyone says one word, he
aims at "no more that".
Those are the reasons why I read historical review books.
You mistaked, dear Mr. Zundel, if you ever thought it was only for
the German people you struggled. It was also for Europe, for the
world, for the right of speaking, for the right of thinking, and for
what I know about the World War II, thanks to my grandparents. It is
for any of us you're fighting.
Please, dear Mr. Zundel, in your jail, do not give up our hopes,
please do not surrender. Everyone needs you fighting.
[END]
More information about the Zgrams
mailing list