Europeans love to smirk and make snide comments every time George W. Bush (or other senior Americans) makes a gaffe. Just an illiterate cowboy, they snort. Can’t even say "nuclear" correctly. Grammar problems ("Families is where our nation finds hope") and other comments somewhat reminescent of Yoggi Berra. We won’t even begin to recite what the Euros say about Dan Quayle, Al Gore, and other gaffe-meisters.
The French are without a doubt the snootiest of them all. Which makes it all the more delicious to discover that the Foreign Minister of France was not aware of the fact that Germany did not conquer the UK during World War II. (Maybe he has been attending a public school with a teachers union?)
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy was in Israel on a state visit and was taken to the Holocaust Museum and Memorial Site in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, On September 8 during the visit, he asked - while perusing maps of European sites where Jewish communities had been destroyed - whether British Jews were not also murdered. That is, he was under the impression that Britain had been conquered by Hitler during World War II. At least we assume that he knew that it was World War II that Hitler started and not the Peloponnesian War.
Needless to say, Douste-Blazy’s question was met by his hosts with speechlessness at his ignorance. "But Monsieur le minister," Le Canard quoted the ensuing conversation, "England was never conquered by the Nazis during World War II." No doubt the Israelis present felt an overwhelming desire to scream "Duh!"
The minister apparently was not content with this answer, which was given by the museum curator, and persisted, asking: "Yes, but were there no Jews who were deported from England?" (To be exact, Germany did briefly hold a few of Britain’s Channel Islands and it is believed that three Jews were deported from them by Germany during that time.)
Douste-Blazy arrived in Israel earlier this month for a first visit, as the guest of his Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
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September 19th, 2005 at 1:25 pm edit
This illustrates the shocking decay of French education. France, snooty or not, had a rigorous educational system for over a century since the advent of compulsory national education. Whether one admires French culture or not, it was this system that kept the general cultural standards of the country high. Back in the sixties when I first went to France, an American college degree was roughly equivalent to a French high school diploma. Americans and other foreigners had to embark on a fiercely difficult course of study to be able to compete for the French University degree.
This powerful educational system was evident in the cultural output of the country - a never-ending stream of poetry, literature, music, art , cinema- that inspired so many of us to major in French and become (for better or worse) francophiles.
The collapse of their system is due to multiple factors, mostly related to the immigration of Muslims and to the adoption of counter-cultural attitudes by young people. Today adults and government officials pander to the kids and to the immigrants, with the result that the French schools are awash in criminal behavior, low standards and the handing out of bogus diplomas.
Honest French people acknowledge this, but most people do not - it’s a stinging humiliation for them to admit that they no longer have their once very successful education system.
September 19th, 2005 at 2:18 pm edit
No wonder they are so easily conquered. First Rome, then everybody else who has tried. And now the A-rabs. Ignorant ass.
With well-educated leaders like this they will soon give their nukes to an A-rab voting majority. Say 30 years. Let’s hope missile defense is ready for the moslem state of France.
September 19th, 2005 at 4:55 pm edit
The hell with those chicken-s–t sob’s, they’re not our friends! And they can take their wine and cheese along with their long snooty noses and stick “em” where the sun doesn’t shine!
September 19th, 2005 at 5:59 pm edit
(To be exact, Germany did briefly hold a few of Britain’s Channel Islands and it is believed that three Jews were deported from them by Germany during that time.)
Do we know for sure whether the French Foreign Minister knew about this? If he did, then I don’t think his questions about the map constitute a “d’uh” moment. I know this may be an overly generous allowance on my part, but still….
September 19th, 2005 at 6:30 pm edit
Maybe France had an education system which was too good. I don’t really like being anti-intellectual, but when you sit around coffee shops all day chainsmoking, talking about socialism, Sartre, and Neitsche. And looking down your nose at everyone else. It is no wonder when your economy collapses, you loose prestige around the world, and no one takes you seriously. Cest la vie!
September 19th, 2005 at 6:34 pm edit
A French imbecile? Wow!
It makes me want to drink a beer to the fucking frogs and then say, “Oui oui!”
September 19th, 2005 at 6:57 pm edit
Why would the French be particularly fond of Nietzsche? He was German. And the French always did look ridiculous for fawning over Jean-Paul Fartre, considering how intellectually incontinent and flighty he was. At least Albert Camus had some integrity.
September 19th, 2005 at 8:43 pm edit
Duh!
September 20th, 2005 at 1:20 am edit
Unfortunately it’s a little known fact that England shipped off many of its Jews to camps in Australia during World War Two.
Call them what you will, internment camps, concentration camps or a Devil’s Island for Jews. It was a miscarriage of justice, to say the least.
Don’t be surprised. Anti-Semitism has a long history in England. Their inquisition put the overrated Spanish Inquisition to shame. As far as I know, concentration camps are an English innovation. The British army originated it by interning Boer women and children when beating the men proved more difficult than they’d bargained for.
Not that his excellency Douche-Blazy is aware of any of this. If he were, he wouldn’t have asked his foolish questions.
September 20th, 2005 at 5:29 pm edit
This is fascinating!… For those interested, go back to the Haaretz link above and follow the blog responses to the original story.
September 20th, 2005 at 5:43 pm edit
What nasty things we say here about our last fighting ally in Iraq!
Anyway, those were German Jews, and they were also sent off to Canadian camps, as enemy aliens. Thus the story of the puzzled British constable on the transport, remarking, “Hard to believe, how many Jews are there among the Naazis.”
Probably no one told Churchill. Perhaps he said, “ship them all out except the Jews,” and the cops could not figure who was and who wasn’t Jewish. Perhaps Churchill didn’t care.
September 21st, 2005 at 3:57 am edit
Hapless,
you hate the British military almost as much as the American military. Spare me your mock sympathy.
Anyway, those were British Jews and their descendants that fled oppression in Germany. Not exactly Nazi material, distorter. Your glee concerning their hardship comes as no surprise. Next time you do a google search, check the factual sites. The anti-Semitic drivel you’re posting here isn’t going to slip under the radar, hatemonger.
Churchill was 1000,000 times the man you could ever hope to be. Spare us your attempted character assassination.
How many aliases do you use, distorter? Your poor writing and plagiarism are a dead giveaway.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:23 am edit
I must repeat, those were not British Jews, they were German Jewish refugees and were deported with other Germans and Italians. The story of what the British constable said comes from a book or an interview with a deportee I read or heard many years ago.
Sounds to me like Bargholz hates the Brits, and is willing to switch the citizenship of the deportees to prove the Brits antisemitic, while I suggest that the motive for the deportation was not hatred, but bureaucratic idiocy.
Churchill was known to give orders and forget to follow them up, as when he told Eden that the gas chambers or the railroad to Auschwitz should be bombed.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:08 pm edit
Is it true that French tanks have 1 forward gear and 8 reverse gears?
September 22nd, 2005 at 7:04 am edit
Hapless,
men born and bred in England were consigned to concentration camps. Jews all.
According to you, Jews of foreign origin were fair targets.
The Brits are still anti-Semitic to this day. You’re an anti-Semitic scumbag. You also revile the correct decisions made by Churchill.
You aren’t fooling anyone, lowlife.
September 22nd, 2005 at 2:11 pm edit
Pardon me, I was under the impression that all the deportees were enemy aliens. If you have information to the contrary, please share it.
According to Phillip Adams, writing in “The Australian,” “The story began with 75,000 refugees from Germany and Austria, mostly Jewish, being rounded up in Britain in May and June 1940.
Threatened by a German invasion, Winston Churchill insisted that the German-speaking Jews might well be supporters of Hitler. He wanted them out of the country.
Australia agreed to take 6000 of them, but only 2732 arrived on HMT Dunera. Canada took three shiploads and a fourth ship was sunk by a U-boat.
The Dunera’s military crew, like Churchill, confused their Jewish charges with Nazis and subjected them to humiliation and brutality. Atrocious behaviour was hushed up – the Home Office put the papers on the Dunera case on a 100-year embargo.”
September 24th, 2005 at 9:35 am edit
Hapless,
Jewish refugees were not enemy aliens. Nor were the English born Jews that were imprisoned. You need to do a better job with your research.
September 25th, 2005 at 12:12 pm edit
German Jews were rounded up as enemy aliens. Of course they were not enemies, Neither were the California Japanese.
If the children born to aliens were deported with their parents, it was done because they were foreigners, not because they were Jews.
Please share the information you have on the deported British Jews.
September 25th, 2005 at 2:23 pm edit
WW II, Ã la France
“But Monsieur le minister,” the museum curator responded, “England was never conquered by the Nazis during World War II.” The minister seemed discontented with the answer given by the Israelis and continued asking: “Yes, …