Des terroristes à la retraite
In April 1942, a resistance group called the FTP-MOI (Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d'œuvre immigrée) was founded, led by the Romanian Jewish immigrant Baruch Bruhman, better known by his alias Boris Holban.
[3] The British historian Gawin Bowd wrote that the FTP-MOI: "...turned out to be the most courageous and deadly arm of the Communist resistance in the Paris area: as foreigners, and often Jews, they had little to lose in occupied France, while a long experience of clandestine activity and civil war had made them well-prepared.
[5] At the time of the final mass arrests, the French police discovered that the FTP-MOI had members from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Armenia.
Boucault's mother had survived the occupation in France and had been forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge, inspiring her son with the desire to make a film that would "settle the score".
[11] After graduating from the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques, Boucault set out to make a fictional film about a young man who discovers his father was executed during the war as a FTP-MOI member and that his family is Jewish, which was hidden by his mother to promote their assimilation into French society.
[19] Boucault called allowing people to speak at length the "magic of the documentary" that made it possible for “the witnesses [to] have time to breathe, to exist rather than being used simply as tools, a sentence here and there by way of illustration.”[19] Three of the men interviewed, namely Jacques Farber, Louis Gronowski, and Adam Rayski were leaders of the FTP-MOI.
[21] The other four men interviewed, namely Ilex Beller, Charles Mitzflicker, Jean Lemberger and Raymond Kojitski were all Polish Jews who immigrated illegally to France in the 1930s and who served as FTP-MOI assassins.
[20] Lemberger was the constant victim of corrupt French policemen who knew that he was an illegal immigrant and forced him to pay extortion money to avoid being deported back to Poland.
[23] As Kojitski lists all of his family members who were exterminated, the camera focuses in on the steel needle of his sewing machine stabbing the cloth, which serves as a metaphor for his rage.
[25] The reenactments are intentionally humorous as the absurdity of two elderly men with a host of health problems posing as the vigorous and dangerous young assassins they once were are readily apparent.
[27] The American historian Brett Bowles noted:Despite their parodic dimension, the reenactments retain enough realism to impress upon spectators just how unglamorous, frightening, and risky a typical bombing attack actually was.
Wearing a brown long sleeve sweater and flowered blouse open at the neck, she sits comfortably in the living room of her modest apartment on an overstuffed chair with legs uncrossed and looks directly into the camera as she speaks, occasionally pumping her hands for emphasis".
[29] Holban smoldered with anger as he watched his television before taking a drag on his cigarette, causing his face to be obscured by the smoke, giving a vague impression of being someone sinister and malevolent before he even said a word in rebuttal.
Perfect, the resistance will be French...On the other hand, these men from Central Europe, with their heavy accents, with their distinctive faces, from the moment they stopped receiving ammunition and money, they were left on their own and could do nothing but wander around and get caught".
[32] Boucalt offers on the screen the text of Manouchian's last letter to his wife, which is read out by Mélinée with the words "I forgive all those who have wronged me except for the one who betrayed us to save his own skin and those who sold us out" highlighted in red.
[34] In response to the Communist campaign, Héberlé asked the authority for media regulation, La Haute Autorité de l’Audiovisuel, to assess the documentary to see if it was scholarly enough to be aired on French television.
[14] Sudreau referred to the recent Palestinian bombings of American and Israeli targets and stated: "At the very moment when we are again talking about direct action, this broadcast legitimizes terrorist methods.”[14] Bourdet called the film "racist and anti-Semitic".
[14] During the spring and summer of 1985, the dispute about whether the film should be aired or not developed into an affaire of the sort that required French intellectuals to weigh in with lengthy opinion pieces published in the newspapers.
[38] On 28 June 1985, the Communist weekly newspaper La Voix de l’Est ran an article that accused "un certain Olivier" ("a certain Oliver" - another of Holban's aliases) as having exaggerated his role in the resistance.
Fully incorporated into the school curriculum and in official commemorative culture as part of the civic catechism, the Resistance became a vital shared reference point for the French.
The elevation of Jean Moulin as the transcendent figure of resistance--culminating in the solemn transfer of his remains to the Pantheon in 1964--was particularly emblematic of this myth-making impulse in post-war French political culture.
"[35] This "nation in arms" narrative first started to be challenged with the 1969 documentary Le Chagrin et la Pitié by Marcel Ophüls and the 1972 book Vichy France Old Guard and New Order by the American historian Robert Paxton.
[40] The breakdown of the Gaullist "nation in arms" narrative starting about 1969 with Le Chagrin et la Pitié made it possible for what Rousso called the "Jewish Memory" to emerge as previously it had been insisted that almost all French people were more or less equally victims of the Third Reich.
[41] The first book ever devoted entirely to the subject of the FTP-MOI, Le sang de l’étranger co-written by Stéphane Courtois, Denis Peschanski and Adam Rayski was published in 1989.
[42] Since the publication of Le sang de l’étranger, it has been accepted that it was "brutally efficient police work" by the Brigades spéciales that led to the mass arrests of FTP-MOI members in Paris in November 1943.
[42] However, it has been confirmed that Manouchian did ask for permission in 1943 to move his group out of Paris, saying the filture tactics of the Brigades spéciales were steadily closing in on the FTP-MOI, and was refused by Henri Rol-Tanguy, the military commander of the FTP.
[44] The British historian Nigel Saint credited Des terroristes à la retraite as being one of the works that helped lead to pressure to put up a memorial listing all the names of those shot at Fort Mont-Valérien.
[44] Saint also noted that the sculptor who put up the memorial at Fort Mont-Valérien, Pascal Convert, wrote an essay in L’Humanité in February 2004 that called Des terroristes à la retraite a "fabrication" of history.
[53] Peschanski wrote that regardless of Le sang de l'étranger which was based on research in the French police archives, that: "This has not prevented Boucault's films and its ideas from enjoying a certain success, especially in the United States.
[53] The American writer Nancy Kricorian stated in 2007 that viewing the film during its run in New York in 2001 was a major inspiration for writing the book that ultimately became her 2013 novel All The Light There Was, set in an Armenian district in Paris during the occupation.
