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Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France

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In this eye-opening account of the Holocaust and the Second World War in France and the interwar years in that country we are given a great insight into the life of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, who himself is partly a symbol of France itself or perhaps the underbelly of Franc. Louise Darquier was a minor Frenchman from a small town south of Paris and had served in World War One. He had a plethora of family members and contacts but he chose to marry a strange and slightly insane English woman and spend the post-war years wandering the world to Australia and the U.K.

Having evnetually settled in France in the 1930s he became a rabid anti-semite and befriended the various right wing veterans movements fighting in the streets agains the government of Leon Blum. When Vichy fell in 1940 the Nazis plucked him out of obscurity to head up the department of Jewish affairs. He set to work extorting Jews and eventually deporting them to their deaths. At the end of the war he fled to Spain where he lived out the rest of his years into the 1970s. He never gave up his anti-Semitism, eventually turning it into anti-Israel rhetoric.

This is a brilliant popular book, an investigation of family and life, a true picture of an age and a tragedy. This book reads like fiction, and could have been such if it were not a true story based one exhaustive research. THe Footnotes are veritable encyclopedia of inter-war french anti-semitism.

Seth J. Frantzman

By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
I don't envy the John Le Carres, Frederick Forsyths, Robert Harrises and Len Deightons of the literary world, trying to come up with characters for their political thrillers that even come close to matching the real thing. Carmen Callil has crafted a nonfiction thriller in "Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France" (Knopf, 640 pages, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, appendixes, index) that reminds us that the Germans weren't alone in their efforts to wipe out the Jews of what British historian Mark Mazower has aptly called "The Dark Continent" - Europe.

Vichy France - named for the spa city which served as its capital - was more like Franco's Spain than Hitler's Germany, in Callil's assessment. It is necessary to remember that although he was anti-Semitic in the conservative Roman Catholic tradition, Francisco Franco never participated in the Holocaust. Franco did provide sanctuary for many French war criminals, including Louis Darquier (1897-1980), a rabid anti-Semite and "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs" for the Vichy collaborationist regime from 1942 to 1944.

Movie fans will remember the regime from "Casablanca" (1943) set in a French Morocco ruled by Vichy before the Allied Invasion of North Africa. Real movie buffs will recall a marvelous documentary by filmmaker Marcel Ophuls called "Le Chagrin et la pitie" ("The Sorrow and the Pity") depicting life in the Vichy French town of Clermont-Ferrand, focusing on French participation in the Holocaust. Clermont-Ferrand is the hometown of Blaise Pascal and the founders of the Michelin tire firm and is the headquarters of Michelin.

The 1970, 270-minute film (it's the best documentary ever made in the view of many critics - and in my opinion) was how Callil, born in Australia in 1938 and living in London when she met Dr. Anne Darquier, made the connection between her therapist - Anne Darquier -- who was only eight years older than Callil and the Holocaust. In a true tale that sounds stranger than fiction, Carmen Callil, founder in 1972 of the Virago Press and later managing director of Chatto & Windus, an English publisher, learned of Anne Darquier's connection with Vichy France from watching "The Sorrow and the Pity" in London.

In the film, Darquier meets Reinhard Heydrich, whom many consider the Nazi behind the "Final Solution" that led to the extermination of 6 million human beings of the Jewish faith and millions more who were gypsies, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses and - yes--Masons. The French, driven by Catholic hatred of a competing cult, were fiercely against Freemasonry and Darquier shared this prejudice. The meeting took place in May 1942; Heydrich was assassinated in Prague on June 4, 1942. The Germans massacred the entire town of Lidice, Czechoslovakia in reprisal for the assassination of Heydrich, born in 1904 and rumored to have had a Jewish grandparent. Heydrich was dubbed the "Blond Beast" and "The Hangman" by his fellow Nazis.

In many ways, Vichy France, led by World War I military hero Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain, was what Catholics considered payback time for the turn of the 20th Century Dreyfus affair, which led to anticlericalism and the separation of Church (the Catholic variety) and the French state in 1905.

Those who defend the Catholic Church - an extreme branch of which claims Mel Gibson's dad Hutton Gibson - for its actions and inactions in the 1930s and 1940s do not include author Callil. She blames the hierarchy of the Church, including Pope Pius XII, and the entire top rank of French Catholic bishops and cardinals. She says that many parish priests and ordinary French gave sanctuary to Jews - many as a way of protesting the hated Vichy Regime and the many French who collaborated with the Germans. It was probably more a case of hatred of Germans and collaborators than any love of Jews in a France where anti-Semitism persists to this day, despite the murder of at least 75,000 French Jews - including many young children - in the death camps of Germany and Poland or the French concentration camps like Drancy.

Ironically, Callil points out, it was Charles de Gaulle - whom the Vichy government had sentenced to deathm - who helped create the myth of widespread French participation in resistance to the German occupiers. The reality, portrayed beginning with Ophuls' film and other works, is that many more French collaborated than resisted. Collaborators included the families behind the Coty and L'Oreal cosmetics firms, Coco Chanel, and the Taittinger champagne family, as well as many French authors including Celine, Callil points out. Many French actors and authors, including Jean-Paul Sartre, born in 1905, continued to work during the German occupation. This couldn't have occurred without some form of collaboration.

Anne Darquier was born in London in 1930, from the union of two phonies, Louis Darquier, from the southwestern French city of Cahors, and Myrtle Marian Jones, a native of the Australian state of Tasmania, who had married the ne'er do-well Frenchman a few years before. Myrtle Jones had been married before to an actor and was a minor actress and singer herself. Only after her death in the 1970s did Louis Darquier learn that she was four years older than Darquier. Like Darquier, who appropriated the aristocratic name de Pellepoix without any claim to it, Myrtle was a poseur and a snob.

The couple placed their young daughter in the care of an English nanny, who raised Anne more or less as her own child. Basically, they abandoned the young girl. Thanks to her persistence and moral support from her extended English "family," Anne Darquier went on to graduate from Oxford University and qualify as a physician at London's famed St. Bartholomew's Hospital. She was a popular and successful therapist who attracted a worshipful following among her patients - including author Carmen Callil.

"Bad Faith," which owes its title to a passage from "The Drowned and the Saved" by Italian holocaust survivor Primo Levi ("To keep good and bad faith distinct costs a lot; it requires a decent sincerity and truthfulness with oneself, it demands a continuous intellectual and moral effort. How can such an effort be expected from men like Darquier?") is a multi-layered biography of the entire Darquier family, including the conflicted and tormented Anne. Callil had been seeing Anne for several years when, in 1970, she learned of the death of a woman she credits with saving her life and giving it focus. The death of the 40-year-old physician was ruled accidental, but it was probably a "slow suicide" for the tormented woman, Callil surmises.

Louis Darquier served in the French army in both World Wars and was briefly a POW in 1940, after the French signed an armistice with the Germans. (France was the only nation defeated by Germany in WWII that signed an armistice - mirroring the Nov. 11, 1918 one with the Germans). He was released, largely because the Germans saw him a useful player in their extermination of the Jews of Europe. He had been in the pay of the Germans before the war and was active in the many anti-Jewish organizations of the Third Republic - many of them - like Action Francaise and Croix-de-feu - funded and favored by the Catholic Church of France.

In her description of the looting of French Jewish art collections and other institutions by both Vichy and Nazi Germany, Callil relies heavily on "The Rape of Europa" by Lynn H. Nicholas, a seminal 1995 work. Earlier this year I reviewed a moving book by Lynn Nicholas called "Cruel World" (Knopf, 2006) dealing with the fate of children "caught in the Nazi web." Callil's description of French Jewish families torn apart by the Germans and their French collaborators is moving in the extreme. More and more, I think that if there is a God, he has turned the planet Earth into his own private insane asylum. Reading books like Callil's and the two Nicholas works and Jan Gross's "Fear" (Knopf, 2006) - also reviewed on this site this past summer - certainly reinforces that feeling in me.

Darquier was everything he falsely accused Jews of being: Corrupt, greedy, sexually promiscuous and exploitive, grasping for power and money. He owed his survival in 1944 to his resemblance with another monocle-wearing Frenchman, who was assassinated during the brief French civil war following Liberation in the summer of 1944, after D-Day. Thousands of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen were killed after Liberation and many - like Darquier - managed to escape to Franco's Spain. Louis and Myrtle Darquier lived in Madrid, where he survived by working as a translator, helping promote tourism in Spain. He had limited contact with Anne Darquier after the war and Anne refused to meet with her half sister Teresa, born of a liaison between the womanizing Darquier and a much younger Frenchwoman.

Carmen Callil's "Bad Faith," published last year in England by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House, is a magnificent, moving, well-documented book that deserves wide readership. I've recommended it to all my friends. It would form the basis for a wonderful follow-up documentary to "The Sorrow and the Pity." If this book is optioned for a movie, Australian actress Nicole Kidman could be a wonderful Anne Darquier, who after all, was half-Australian.

Publisher's web site: www.aaknopf.com

Fascinating as a history of anti-Semitism in France. The author, however, is off-putting in the first section of the book. So much time and space is evoted to the family background in Australia, and the detail is so involved, that there is a temptation to put the book down and forget about it. But skip through this intial section and it becomes more and more revealing and exciling and gruesome as we learn of this wretched bunch of French fascists fighting among themselves to rid their country of a tiny minority on whom they blame all their social ills. Stanly B. Dickes

Carmen Callil, the Australian author of Bad Faith and founder of Virago Press, began to see a psychiatrist in 1960 after a failed suicide attempt. She was referred to Dr. Anne Darquier in part because Dr. Darquier was part Australian, although born and raised in London. After a decade of three times a week sessions, Callil went to her appointment one day and the doctor was not in. Anne Darquier de Pellepoix (Calill saw her full name on her funeral program) had indeed committed suicide herself.

Needless to say, when Callil saw this name while watching a television documentary about Vichy, France (Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and the Pity: The Story of a French Town in the Occupation) and knew this surname to be connected to an official of the Vichy government, she was intrigued. When this man was shown in the film "respectfully" greeting Rienhard Heydrich, the Nazi head of France's Reich Central Security Office, Callil knew there was a story to tell.

Similar to Adolf Hitler, Louis Darquier was not the smartest or most motivated kid. While his bothers excelled in school and business, Louis spent a lot of time drinking, carousing, playing around, and then getting angry because his work wasn't getting done and his grades were bad or he wasn't making any money. As Callil shows, he married his Australian actress wife while she was still married to another man, and proceeded to physically and psychologically abuse her while they both stayed drunk most of the time and begged money from family. Like Hitler, who blamed the downfall of the German economy on the Jews, Louis Darquier blamed his own economic downfall on Jews who happened to do better business than he did.

Men like Darquier bloomed during the occupation of France, collaborating within the Vichy government and drinking in as much power, wealth, and alcohol as humanly possible. Suddenly, stupidity was actually the rule of the day, and men like Darquier had the means to exact revenge on anyone they felt had wronged them in the past, especially if they happened to be Jewish.

While Callil's research is impeccable and she approaches her subject with fervor, I could not share her excitement. Darquier is yet another stupid idiot who floated to the top of the heap when idiots ruled the world. Witness his treatment of his daughter Anne, raised by a nanny far away from home and never seen by her parents, who assumed that sending a teeny bit of money and asking for a photo once in a while constituted care. He apparently didn't even believe that Jews were being sent to die; he just wanted them out of his backyard and enjoyed the power conferred on him by the Nazis. It is even worse that he outlived his wife and daughter, moving to Spain where he died in 1980, denying the holocaust all the way.

A very readable, and personal examination of an individual family experience before, and during the German occupation of France. It focuses primarily on Louis Darquier and his spouse Myrtle Jones - about as loathsome a couple as can be found. There is really not much one can say that is remotely positive about these two.
The author examines the historical genealogy of both. Louis's origins are from Cahors in France and Myrtle from Tasmania (the island at the bottom of Australia). What is so striking is they are both the bad apples of their families (who said opposites attract?). The other family member's became self-sufficient and successful in their respective societies. Admittedly Louis's family had a difficult time during the occupation and his brother Jean collaborated too closely with the Vichy regime. Louis Darquier was a complete "loser".
Louis was never able to support himself; he constantly borrowed large sums of money from his family which he never returned. For him, and his wife Myrtle, lying was not second nature - it was their way of life. From this perspective they were soul-mates. They only knew how to spend money extravagantly - they constantly lived in hotels and ate out. They had a child which they promptly abandoned.
During the 1930's after Hitler came to power - Louis found his calling and became involved with right-wing anti-Semitic groups. He published a great deal of repulsive hate literature propaganda - anti-Semitic and repetitive. He established many contacts in this under-world. At this stage much of his money was coming directly from Nazi Germany, so at least he was not so dependent on his family. He and Myrtle continued living the high life in hotels and restaurants. After the fall of France in the summer of 1940 this underworld ascended to real political power and Louis pontificated at the head of several anti-Semitic organizations. These were involved in the deportation of Jews to Germany - most were killed in concentration camps. There were many children among the victims.
Even though this is a dismal story it is extremely well told and illuminating. It puts a human face on a particular person who did horrible crimes. To his dying day in Spain this anti-Semitism was very alive in Louis Darquier.
It would be interesting to speculate on why anti-Semitism became such an important part of Louis life during the 1930's. Prior to this, it was not a significant focal point in his life. It is possible that Louis simply latched onto this as a money-getting scheme - being the opportunist that he was.
A very sad aspect of this story is the daughter they abandoned in England. She became a psychiatrist and helped many of her patients - one of them being the author of this book. Unfortunately she self-destructed and died at the age of forty. She was morbidly disillusioned with both her parents.
This detailed story gives one a greater understanding of Vichy France and the agony of a country under occupation. Louis was but one of a large group that collaborated. France still copes and suffers from this debacle.
And to twist history - if France had successfully resisted the German invasion of 1940 - Louis would have remained a non-entity with his hundred or so dismal followers. Quite possibly he would have been arrested and imprisoned.

After reading 400+ pages I don't feel that I truly know the full extent of Louis Darquier as an individual. I have no doubt that this book was expertly researched but it left me feeling that I understood Vichy, Louis Darquier, collaboration, etc. on the surface but without the insight I would expect from a book of this length. The exploration of French anti-Semitism and Catholicism before the war is the only aspect of the book that comes across as truly 3 dimensional. I learned a lot from this book but it leaves me looking for other sources that will take me deeper into these people, institutions and times.

I would like to echo the other reviewer's comments on this excellent book. It tells of the story of the anti- Semitic, cowardly and thoroughly unlikable Louis Darquier and the way he takes advantage of the situation in France and most notably the detested Vichy regime for self advancement at the vast expense of others.

He meets and marries an alcoholic fantasist (from Tasmania interestingly) called Myrtle Jones and they have a child who becomes a bit of an encumbrance not to mention a drag on their finite resources, so they bundle her off to a `nanny' in England and to all intents and purposes abandon her, except to use her plight as emotional black mail to extort money from her Australian relatives. Her story is woven into that of the Darquiers and is genuinely moving.
Lois Darquier becomes a Nazi collaborator and `Commissioner for Jewish Affairs', and is responsible for sending thousands of Jews to their deaths, sadly he escaped justice along with his equally as culpable wife.

This book is excellently researched, beautifully written and historically spot on, it thoroughly and succinctly addresses the `International Jewish Conspiracy' and exposes it for the myth it truly was and does so in an objective way. Anyone interested n the more obscure stories from history will find this book an absolute treasure.

Shortly after France surrendered to Germany in 1940, Louis Darquier, a captured French officer, was released from a prison camp. The Germans thought that Darquier, a professional anti-Semite, would be useful to them in occupied France.

In the 1930s, Darquier had made a reputation in France as a participant in an anti-government riot, as a right wing, nationalistic politician and journalist, and as "Hitler's parrot" for crying "Bravo, Fritz!" after Kristallnacht when Hitler unleashed Nazi terror against Germany's Jews.

In Vichy France, German's puppet state, Darquier was eventually elevated to the position of Commissioner of Jewish Affairs, a position in which he could put his anti-Semitic rhetoric into effect.

Several strands run through Carmen Callil's very interesting book. The main strand traces Louis Darquier's life before and after the point where "he could be paid by the Vichy state as well as the Germans to rid France of its Jews" while also getting his long dreamt of "public recognition, power, honor and acclaim."

In the period before Vichy, Darquier had adopted himself to a French political landscape saturated in anti-Semitism. Callil is very good at describing the far right, anti-Semitic political milieu in 1930s France. It was a time when right wing groups were "like squabbling soldiers ignoring the enemy and turning upon each other in the trenches, they argued and disagreed and fought each other with words and fists and with their little newspapers." Initially aligning himself with royalist and French fascist Charles Maurras, Darquier eventually found his own place on the anti-Semitic right that detested the government of the Jewish and socialist Prime Minister Léon Blum.

It is Callil's assertion that Generals Pétain and Weygand, who were called to lead France in the war against Hitler, shared this hatred and surrendered to the Germans because they "viewed a good portion of (their) countrymen and women as unworthy of defense." The new national revolution that Pétain intended to make under the auspices of the Germans gave Darquier and his ilk their moment.

Although Darquier held power of life or death over French Jews, he seems to have wanted his position more to preen and to enjoy himself than to exercise those powers. Callil writes that the Germans always underestimated the extent of Darquier's allergy to work and notes that he was one of the few people who gained weight during the war. As depicted, Darquier was a loudmouth, a bully, a liar and a ranting anti-Semite. He was also extremely lazy and inefficient at his job as well as greedy. When he actually was in his office and not at a bar, Darquier would sign arrest warrants for Jews, though not for Jews who could pay him a nice sum. It was men like Rene Bousquet, Vichy's Secretary-General for the Police, who really did the dirty work for the Nazis in occupied France.

As said before, the main strand of the book is Louis Darquier and his nastiness. Callil also tells the story of Louis' marriage to an Australian, Myrtle, an alcoholic who had a life-long loyalty to Louis. More important to Callil is the story of their daughter Anne whom Louis and Myrtle abandoned in Britain and who grew up to be Callil's psychiatrist and friend. Anne's unhappy life and early death inspired Callil to write this book, but the best part of the book is about Louis who survived his wife and daughter to die in Spain in 1980.

In one scene in Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg makes a little girl wearing a red coat stand out in the midst of a crowd fleeing and hiding from the Nazis. In same way, Callil focuses on one man in the tumult of the thirties and in Vichy's "renewal of France." The background of Darquier's life is French, despite the shifts in scene to Australia, Britain and Spain. Darquier is there when France goes to war in 1914, disintegrates politically in the 1930s, and collapses in 1940. Of the war years, Callil writes:

"In one sense the years 1940 to 1944, for the French people, had little to do with the world war raging outside their occupied territory, but much to do with what the French did to the French, and how they ended the long civil war which had begun with the revolution in 1789."

Watching Darquier thrive in those awful years is to come closer to understanding how France came to that ending.

This is very scholarly book but never boring. It is a fascinating look at an evil man. I was sad to come to the end of it, I enjoyed it so much.