The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the Liberation purges to the Barbie trial, France has struggled with the memory of the Vichy experience: a memory of defeat, occupation, and repression. In this provocative study, Henry Rousso examines how this proud nation--a nation where reality and myth commingle to confound understanding--has dealt with les années noires. Specifically, he studies what the French have chosen to remember and what have chosen to conceal.

SYNOPSIS

A paperback re-issue of the 1991 book which deals not so much with the facts of the German collaborationist French government but with the "memory" of that period.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

The traumas of collaboration, resistance, and near civil war during World War II have not yet disappeared in France. This new book by a young French scholar is an interesting and valuable review of the changing ways the French have interpreted the Vichy era. Unlike the many and often conflicting accounts of Vichy, this volume is a history of the memories of that troubled era. The author contends that the changes reveal cycles of purposeful memories with specific political goals by those who tried to shape interpretation and memory of the past. Rousso finds in these memories a neurosis or the ``Vichy syndrome.'' The result is an era poorly understood even now by the French but one whose memories evoke emotional and passionate responses as revealed by the public reaction to Max Ophuls's The Sorrow and the Pity or the trial of Klaus Barbie. Strongly recommended for general readers and for scholars in contemporary Europe .--Frank L. Wilson, Purdue Univ., W. Lafayette, Ind.

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