| Chapter Intro: | Introduction |
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Over the years, dismissal did begin to degenerate into denial. The memory and consequent commemoration of Nazi atrocities centred on crimes committed against the French such as the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane, rather than on the so-called ‘grande rafle du Vél d'hiv’ in Paris. The martyred village of Oradour-sur-Glane was visited by Charles de Gaulle in 1945, who ordered that it be preserved for posterity as a memorial to Nazi aggression. The Vélodrome d'Hiver sports stadium on rue Nélaton near quai de Grenelle in which over 13,000 Jews were confined before being transported to Auschwitz, however, was demolished. Similarly, the horror of the Nazi concentration camps centred on Buchenwald where resisters and political dissidents were imprisoned rather than on Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Jews and Gypsies formed the majority of detainees. The period between 1958 and 1971 were the years of the Gaullist Fifth Republic, which sought to rapidly silence any voice that served as a reminder of past divisions. The amnesties of 1951 to 1953 had sought to mark a clean departure from the past and herald a new beginning. This was a period of increasing affluence in which a growing number of French citizens experienced the fruits of post-war prosperity. The creation of national myth thus functioned as a perfect sedative which would render the collective consciousness immune to divisions. It also served as a polished façade beneath which vulgar realities would be suppressed. Such were the years of de Gaulle's dominance. The tenets of ‘le mythe Gaulliste’ were based on the myth/legend/story that collaboration had been minimal and that France was a country of national unity and deep patriotism. It claimed that her interests had been protected by an elite force of heroic Resistance fighters. Rather