You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [62]
“Yes. Good.” He went on. “Of those twelve thousand Jews, more than four thousand were children. Pétain used both the Vel’d’Hiv and the Gymnase Japy as detention centers. The Jews were kept there until they were sent to Drancy. And from Drancy they were sent to Auschwitz where most of them died. So now we jump forward to 1958 when, instead of Jews, the French police begin rounding up Algerians, throwing them into the Seine, torturing them, and so on. This continues through 1961, when the FLN resumes its attacks on the French police, eleven of whom are killed in less than two months. As a result, anyone who even looked Algerian was fair game—people were attacked, arrested, drowned, and tortured. Men had their hands tied behind their backs and were thrown into the river for appearing Algerian. Maurice Papon called a curfew and made it illegal for Muslims, not only Algerians, Papon said ‘Muslims,’ to be out in the street between eight-thirty and five-thirty. The FLN called for a peaceful protest and in October of 1961 thirty thousand people marched against the curfew. Throughout the city, the police shot into crowds and flung people into the Seine. Most famously at Pont Saint-Michel, not far from where many of you spend your Saturday nights drinking. Two hundred people were killed. All of them Arab.
“Ten years ago we discover Papon collaborated with the Nazis. He was convicted of ‘complicity in crimes against humanity’ and sentenced to ten years in prison. But that’s another story. Why am I telling you this?”
He looked around the room, daring one of us to respond.
“Why? Because Sartre, living in the midst of all of this, having once been a prisoner of war, spoke out in support of the FLN and an independent Algeria.”
He hesitated for a moment and shook his head. “Never mind his failures during the occupation.”
He went on. Fierce.
“Sartre wrote angry articles against the mistreatment of Algerians and the racism endemic throughout France. He was called a traitor and anti-French. Accused of treason, he received death threats and yet he did what he’d been doing for nearly all of his adult life, he continued to write. Sartre’s apartment was bombed. He kept writing. And then again it was bombed, this time entirely destroyed. But he kept writing anyway.”
No one spoke.
“What’s the point, right? You tell me. What’s the point? Abdul? What’s the point?”
Abdul ran his fingers back and forth across his page. Silver looked around the room.
“Anyone?”
“I suppose, sir,” Colin said looking blankly at the backs of his hands, “the point would be that we should do the same. We should fight against things like that. Corruption and oppression and the like. Despite fear. Do the thing anyway. Would that be right, sir? That if we don’t, sir, it’s all just writing, it’s just theory like you told us, just, like you said, ‘words on a page.’”
He spoke without emotion. Silver looked at him steadily and nodded.
“The thing is, sir, about all this fighting back and standing up, we’d need to have courage, right? We’d need to be able to find the courage to do the fighting. And if we can’t, well, we’re just stuck here watching the world go by, like you told us, watching the world go by, like everyone else, like you said, ‘cowards.’”
“That’s true,” Silver said nodding, his eyes narrowing.
“Would that be like you, sir?” Colin asked finally looking up and meeting Silver’s eyes.
“I’m sorry?”
“Someone like you. A fighter. Someone who, like you said, has the courage,” Colin flipped through his notebook until he found the page and read, “‘To travel the distance between desire and action’ is what you said. That’s what you told us about courage, sir. That’s what separates the brave among us, ‘the ability to travel the distance between desire and action.’ I’ve got it right here. October 27.”
Colin raised his notebook from the desk and held it open for Silver who nodded and said, “Yes, Colin. I think that’s right. But what’s your point here?”
“My point, sir? I was answering your question. It was your point we were discussing. The point you were making