<p>From the Liberation purges to the Barbie trial, France has struggled with the memory of the Vichy experience: a memory of defeat, occupation, and repression. In this provocative study, Henry Rousso examines how this proud nation―a nation where reality and myth commingle to confound understanding―has dealt with <i>les années noires</i>. Specifically, he studies what the French have chosen to remember―and to conceal.</p>

The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944

History

Henry Rousso

Europe

Harvard University Press

Inflamed by current events and sometimes inaccurate news reports, French scrutiny of the Vichy regime and its involvement with Nazi policies began to intensify in the 1980s. Recent disclosures about the ambivalent role of French President Francois Mitterand, coverage of the Paul Touvier trial, and the recent trial of Vichy civil servant Maurice Papon have further galvanized French attitudes toward the role of officials and public institutions during the Nazi occupation. The authors argue that such frenzied attention "is disproportionate with respect both to the context of French history and to that of the present international scene, " and that France's self-imposed duty to remember has led to "a total denial of the legitimacy of the right to forget."

Vichy: An Ever-Present Past (Contemporary French Culture and Society)

Éric Conan

Dartmouth College

Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas (Pour une histoire du XXe siècle)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Librairie Arthème Fayard

La France est malade de son passé. Depuis 1944, le souvenir de l'Occupation n'en finit pas d'agiter la mémoire 'collective'. Vichy est toujours d'actualité, dans la presse, dans le débat politique, au cinéma ou dans la littérature, dans les prétoires d'une justice constamment sollicitée. Le Syndrome de Vichy n'est pas un livre de plus sur cette époque trouble, mais l'histoire de sa difficile résorption ou de sa survivance : celle des mythes constitutifs, du pétainisme au résistancialisme, qui ont tenté de reconstruire et travestir une réalité plus complexe que les images d'Epinal, tout en perpétuant des clivages ancestraux. L'auteur s'interroge sur la transmission comme sur la réception des représentations mouvantes et contradictoires de quatre années que certains auraient souhaité rayer de notre histoire.

Le syndrome de Vichy : De 1944 à nos jours (French Edition)

French and European Publications Inc

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Books by Henry Rousso