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Colonialism and Neocolonialism 28
nightmares and save from our shame. You remain silent, and that is an error of
judgement: fear that you may be judged on your silence today rather than on your
commotion of November.
Why? Because the circle is closing, because we are going to be caught in a dreadful
trap and, unfortunately for us, in a posture that we ourselves have condemned. False
naiveté, flight, bad faith, solitude, silence, a complicity at once rejected and accepted, that
is what we called, in 1945, collective responsibility. There was no way the German
people, at the time, could feign ignorance of the camps. ‘Come off it!’ we said. ‘They
knew everything.’ We were right, they did know everything, and it is only today that we
can understand: because we too know everything. Most of them had never seen Dachau
or Buchenwald, but they knew people who knew other people who had caught a glimpse
of the barbed wire or consulted confidential files in a ministry. They, like us, thought that
this information was unsound, they kept quiet, were mistrustful of one another. Do we
still dare to condemn them? Do we still dare to absolve ourselves? How many mattresses
will we have to lay on the Place de la Concorde to make the world forget that children are
being tortured in our name and that we say nothing?
There is still time to thwart those who are demolishing the nation, it is still possible to
break the infernal circle of this irresponsible responsibility, of this guilty innocence and
this ignorance which is knowledge: let us look at the truth, it will put each one of us in a
position either to publicly condemn the crimes committed or to accept responsibility for
them in full knowledge of the facts. That is why I felt it necessary to bring to the attention
of the public the reservists’ brochure. There is the evidence, there is the horror – ours: we
will be unable to see it without tearing it from ourselves and crushing it.