the essential
Journalist and writer, Pascal Bouchard immersed himself in the intimate writings of his grandfather, Frédéric Empaytaz, the last prefect of Lot under Vichy, to recount the difficulties of carrying out his public missions under the German occupier.
Today you are publishing part of the memoirs of your grandfather, Fréderic Empaytaz. How did this project get started ?
I was always the one responsible for carrying his moral and intellectual legacy. However, it is complex. Prefect of Vichy, for a left-wing man like me who lived with the unanimous condemnation of this past, it’s complicated.
He had left a family book: three large volumes of 200 pages each which tell the story of his life.
I only took the hundred pages devoted to Cahors. I thought that was the most interesting.
Why do you think he took the time to write down his life on paper?
He doesn’t try to justify himself. But he needed people to understand that life is more complicated than what triumphant Gaullism tells us, he wanted to make people understand the complexity of an era. I put myself in his place: how, an honest, rather philo-Semitic, humanist man, a man of the right and a fervent admirer of Barrés, how did I manage to get through this period by doing everything possible?
Concretely, how did your grandfather behave as prefect of Vichy in Cahors?
Every time he received instructions to send gendarmes and round up Jews, he left the paper lying around. He was careful that the order did not circulate immediately in order to warn the people who were to be arrested. He gave them time to escape.
There were no Jews rounded up by the gendarmerie or the police in the Lot under his orders. When it did, he had no say in it. He describes himself as someone who engages in passive resistance.
Also, when he knew that an operation was planned against the maquis, he warned them.
If he does not approve of the raids committed, that does not prevent him from confessing great admiration for Philippe Pétain whom he describes, alongside Laval, as “good French people seeking to alleviate the misfortunes of France.” »
He is a total admirer of Soldier 14-18. If he does not admire Laval, he completely adheres to the theory of the shield and the sword [une thèse révisionniste présentant, après l’Occupation, le général de Gaulle et le maréchal Pétain agissant tacitement de concert pour défendre la France. NDLR]. For him, the orders he receives from Pétain or Laval to round up Jews are because they have no choice. But, for him, that means that he has no obligation to obey. At the same time, for him, that a small colonel like de Gaulle dared to challenge a Marshal of France seemed completely ridiculous.
However, your work is not at all a rehabilitation of Pétainism.
Oh no, not at all. It answers my heritage but also this question of knowing what I would have done in his place. It took me a very long time to realize that the question didn’t make sense. If I had been in his place, I would have done the same thing… Because if I was in his place, I would have been other than I am. We are always the product of an era.
On the other hand, the question is rather: what would I do tomorrow? Given that the future is still full of concerns, we have to ask ourselves what we will do, what our red lines are, how far I would be prepared to go or not go… If tomorrow we have a government of extreme right, support of Putin who is in the process of invading and subjugating Europe, we will have to ask ourselves questions about our actions to take or not.
