Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Maximilian Kowler - April 26, 1984

Thoughts on the French

You said um, the French did not--you knew the French were gonna lose the war...

Yeah. Q:...the French government really didn't do very much. Was there any--among French Jews, or among the émigrés, was there any, any bitterness or um, resentment toward the French military or the French government?

No.

You think that--but they could...

Yes, there should have been, there could have been. I don't think there was any--we just saw, saw how incapable the French people were to fight the war. They were not willing to fight the war. Uh, France just sat there behind the little Maginot, and thought the little Maginot is gonna do the job. Um, that the guns couldn't be turned around, and uh, the little Maginot was, was taken by the back, you know, and all that, I mean, I--they were so uh, how should I say? Completely uh, unworried--I don't know what the English word. I mean, that they, they just--couldn't care less. It, it was absolutely amazing. Uh, a lot of people say it was because of the, the Fifth--la cinquième colonne and, I mean, there are many reasons. I just say--I would just say that France was unprepared for the war and France didn't--the basic French...Frenchman didn't want to fight the war.


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