Private Letters of a Noble French Statesman
Statesmen Pierre Mendès France welcomes Jawaharlal Nehru at a French airfield. Image by Getty Images
By Benjamin Ivry January 27, 2012
Along with Léon Blum, Pierre Mendès France (1907-1982) was the only Jewish statesman ever allowed to serve as Prime Minister of France. Mendès France held that office from 1954 to 1955, following years in the wartime French Résistance. Like Blum, Mendès France was targeted for a multitude of anti-Semitic insults, which made him resolve not to run for President of France, fearing his candidacy would lead to a further upswing in Gallic hatred for Jews.
Historian Gérard Boulanger’s 2007 study from Les editions Calmann-Lévy, “The ‘Jew’ Mendès France: a Genealogy of Anti-Semitism” documents the statesman’s forbearance during these lifelong attacks, while a book out from Les éditions Robert Laffont in October, offers more evidence of Mendès France’s patience and wisdom.
Entitled “Politics in the Service of Intelligence,” the book gathers letters exchanged between 1953 and 1981 by Mendès France and two French Jewish journalists, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (or JJSS) and Françoise Giroud. Edited by historian Eric Roussel, president of the Institut Pierre Mendès France, a Paris archive, “Politics in the Service of Intelligence” shows Mendès France’s gift for conciliation, trying to smooth out interpersonal disasters caused by the belligerently over-bearing JJSS.
In 1960, after Giroud had a breakdown after being dumped by her lover JJSS, Mendès France thoughtfully drafted two versions of a public announcement to be printed in the magazine they all contributed to, L’Express, sensitively mentioning her illness. In gratitude, Giroud wrote to Mendès France: “You always give me courage,” adding in 1962: “You remain the incarnation of moral and intellectual probity.”
A dry wit is revealed when Mendès France quietly informs JJSS in 1962 that a speech by Charles de Gaulle about a nation’s leader being captain of the ship of state used the identical metaphors as a speech from three months earlier by Spain’s Generalissimo Franco. The trendy publicity hounds Giroud and JJSS betray exasperation at Mendès France’s innate loathing of personality cults in politics, and insistence of adherence to the strict truth.
This lucid veracity is so rare in world politics that more of Mendès France’s books should be translated into English, to join the scant few which are available, such as his reflections on Asia; on France and Europe; and a memoir of his war years. Urgently awaiting translation is his 1976 “Truth Guided Their Footsteps” from Les editions Gallimard, about heroic activists whom he admired, from Zola to Blum, and alongside whom Mendès France is equally worthy of esteem.
Watch Pierre Mendès France at a 1954 [ceremony commemorating][6] the wartime French Résistance movement.
Watch Mendès France on French TV in 1977, in a program presented by Anne Sinclair.
And, watch a video about a 2007 exhibit on Pierre Mendès France at the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris, as presented by librarian and archivist Jean-Claude Kuperminc.
[6]: http://www.ina.fr/politique/allocutions-discours/video/CAF92034789/discours-de-Mendès France -a-nevers.fr.html
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
