Marianne in Chains [antikvár]

IntroductionThe rules of the Academy of Tours forbid the audience from asking the speaker questions but not, it appears, from causing a riot. In 1997 I was invited to present a paper to this society of local notables and antiquaries by its president, a Jewish doctor, professor, writer and former member of the Resistance. Having undertaken a certain amount of oral history in the region, I entitled my talk 'What the French of the Loire valley think in 1997 of the German Occupation'. The gist of the presentation was that under the four years of Occupation more complex relationships than those of brutal oppression had developed between Germans and French and that far from always going hungry the French had managed to keep themselves fed and even enjoy themselves. The president, who had recently suffered a bereavement, was unable to attend and the secretary, chairing the meeting in his place, had difficulty keeping order. At one point a man got to his feet and shouted, 'What about the 230 people who were shot in Tours during the Occupation?' At another moment, when I cited a country-dweller who said that her family had never wanted for food under the Occupation, there was a wave of murmuring and shaking of white heads in the room. Although two teachers whom I knew approached me after the talk to endorse what I had said, I was left with the feeling that I had defaced the tablets of stone on which the official history of the Occupation and Resistance had been written.The officers of the Academy, now rejoined by the president, wined and dined me in some style and the secretary invited me to submit my paper for publication in the proceedings of the Academy. Having read it, however, he returned it to me saying that, 'While each of the examples rings true, your audience, myself included, failed to find in