ZGram - 5/13/2003 - "What I learned about the World War II..."

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

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]