At the dawn of the 21st century, the destiny of France remains unclear and difficult to define. Its voice in the world has lost considerable steam while the feeling of belonging to the people of France seems undeniably in decline, particularly among some of the youth. Some people, believing themselves to have great intellectual finesse, even pretend to no longer understand the essential question: “What does it mean to be French?” »
France is being eaten away from the inside by all kinds of metastases which are gradually spreading to every part of the country until at times it becomes unrecognizable.
However, this is not the first time that France has faced tremors likely to project it into the abyss. To refresh your memory, nothing better than going to the cinema and seeing There Battle of Gaulle, directed by Antonin Baudry. In addition to evoking one of the most serious periods in French history, the film brings together prestigious actors: Simon Abkarian, Niels Schneider, Benoît Magimel and Mathieu Kassovitz, to name a few.
The story begins in June 1940. France, which then had one of the most powerful armies in the world, thought it was defeated. Under the leadership of Marshal Pétain, she is preparing to sign the armistice with Germany. France seems to disappear as it had almost disappeared in the past with the Treaty of Troyes, which offered the crown of France to England.
While the country was overcome by indignity, resignation and cowardice, Charles de Gaulle chose to continue the fight from England. He organized Free France. The film precisely traces de Gaulle's fanatical, fantastic and almost insane fight to bring together the French who refuse defeat, want to continue the fight and intend to weigh in in the eyes of the British as the legitimate voice of France.
Little by little, Free France managed to regain a foothold in the French Empire. Then comes Bir Hakeim. For the first time since 1940, France holds its own against the Germans. From May 27 to June 11, 1942 in the Libyan desert, the heroic battle of Bir Hakeim pitted the forces of Free France against German and Italian troops commanded by Marshal Erwin Rommel. It is on this episode that I wish to stop.
Bir Hakeim shows the world that France is not defeated. She proves that she is still capable of resisting German and Italian forces while Rommel frantically advances towards Egypt with the strategic objective of seizing the Suez Canal.
The British set up a line of defense in the desert around the Gazala region to prevent Rommel from advancing. This line is made up of several fortified positions. Bir Hakeim is one of them. Located to the very south of the Allied system, it is held by approximately 3,700 Free French soldiers commanded by General Marie-Pierre Kœnig.
The aim of the French was to hold Bir Hakeim as long as possible in order to protect the southern flank of the British army. For sixteen days, French soldiers will sacrifice themselves heroically in the most extreme conditions: intense heat, burning sand, repeated bombings, lack of ammunition, lack of water, physical exhaustion and almost total isolation.
Kœnig refuses Rommel's request for surrender. He supports his men who sacrifice themselves day after day. In the film, the scene of the battle of Bir Hakeim is one of the most moving. We see in particular General Kœnig, played by the magnificent Benoît Magimel, observing the burial of a Jewish soldier while the tragic recitation of Kaddish resounds.
While anti-Semitism is coming back into vogue, including in certain cultural circles, Antonin Baudry chooses to show this scene. It is not only aesthetically beautiful but above all it reminds us of what some too often forget: the Jews fought the Nazis during the Second World War.
It never hurts to remember that among the first to join de Gaulle in London were Jews, alongside young people from Action Française. Jews did not simply join de Gaulle because of Nazi persecution. They also joined him because of a total patriotism which deeply animated the Israelites of that time.
This patriotism was so strong that it led Maurice Barrès after the First World War to a real mea culpa. He who had been one of the great figures of anti-Dreyfus nationalism came to recognize the place of the Jews in the nation, designating them as one of the “ spiritual families of France ". We can also recall this formula: “ Israel is working hard in this war to prove its gratitude to France. »
In Bir Hakeim, we can cite Peter Schwiefert, a German Jew who joined the Free French Forces in Lebanon in August 1941. He died on January 7, 1945 in Sermersheim in the last battles for the liberation of France.
Kœnig's respect for the Jewish burial shown in the film, even if the scene is fictional, resonates with a very real story between Kœnig and the Jewish fighters.
Leaving Bir Hakeim in the night, the Free French forces of Kœnig encountered, according to several accounts, the Jewish fighters of Bir-el-Harmat who, like those of Bir Hakeim, held their ground against Rommel.
This isolated position is held by Palestinian Jewish volunteers engaged in the British army, like the Jewish Legion twenty years earlier during the First World War. As at Bir Hakeim, these Jewish soldiers commanded by Felix Liebmann stood up to Rommel's German-Italian tanks.
Throughout the month of June, cut off from the rest of the world, deprived of water and food, prisoner of a desert white with heat, the Jewish detachment resisted the panzers. In the camp, men are dying like flies, crushed by the shells of the tanks and the bombs of the Luftwaffe which constantly returns to the charge. Dysentery and malaria ravage the garrison. But the Germans do not pass.
At the end of the battle, of the 500 Jewish soldiers engaged, only around fifty survivors remained. Yet they continue to fight with the same rage. The Zionist flag flies above the position and with each attack the enemy tanks retreat before the fierce defense of the Jewish fighters.
Their strength lies above all in their determination and their knowledge of the minefields that they themselves helped to lay around the position.
On the morning of June 11, 1942, when the survivors of Free France managed to regroup after the evacuation of the encircled positions, Kœnig discovered Liebmann's men. Surprised, he asks who these men are. Liebmann replies that they are fighters of the Jewish National Home but that they cannot fight under their own flag, prohibited by British regulations.
Kœnig would then have reacted with admiration. He would have ordered their Star of David pennant to be displayed. In front of his Free French officers, he would have saluted this flag in tribute to the courage of the Jewish fighters. Some stories even report this sentence: “The Jewish flag, gentlemen, salute! »
Basically, this meeting between Kœnig and Liebmann in the heart of the turmoil says something profound. The French people, like the Jewish people, are surprising peoples, difficult to defeat and capable of being reborn at the very moment when their enemies believe them to be defeated.
France, each time it seemed on the verge of disappearance, saw an almost mysterious figure emerge as if its history itself refused to be interrupted. When the kingdom appears lost in the heart of the Hundred Years' War, Joan of Arc stands up and restores France to its king.
After ten years of Revolution and civil war, Napoleon appeared and restored France to glory. In 1940, when all seemed lost, de Gaulle stood up and saved French honor.
The Jewish people also know this profound law of history. When the Hebrews seemed condemned to slavery in Egypt, Moses appeared and led them to Eretz Israel. When Haman wants to annihilate the Jews of Persia, Esther stands up and saves her people from extermination. When Rome crushes Judea, Bar Kokhba even embodies in the tragedy the Jewish refusal to disappear. Then, after centuries of exile, Herzl and Jabotinsky resurrected Jewish national feeling.
Even today, in a time when Israel is attacked on all fronts, Benjamin Netanyahu embodies for his supporters this desire to fight and not let Israel's enemies decide the destiny of the Jewish people.
This is what Bir Hakeim, Bir-el-Harmat and later the Jewish Brigade founded in 1944 say. The soldiers of Free France like the Jewish soldiers engaged under the British uniform show that the French nation and the Jewish nation are fighting nations of honor.