PARIS —France’s Prime Minister Edouard Philippe came out in favor of the planned publication of anti-Semitic pamphlets written by French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Celine, despite fierce objections from the country’s Jewish community.
Three racist 1930s texts by Celine “Trifles for a Massacre” (“Bagatelles pour un Massacre”), “School for Corpses” (“L’ecole des Cadavres”) and “A Fine Mess” (“Les Beaux draps”), are set to appear in a volume titled ‘Polemical Writings’ by leading French publishing house Gallimard in May, sparking angry calls for the book to be banned.
Philippe said Sunday he thought the pamphlets should be published, but only alongside a carefully composed critical and contextual commentary.
“I am not afraid of these pamphlets’ publication, but they must be thoughtfully accompanied,” he told French weekly the Journal du Dimanche.
“There are very good reasons to detest the man himself, but you cannot deny the writer’s central position in French literature,” he added.
Celine, best known for his 1932 novel “Journey to the End of the Night”, is regarded as one of France’s most prominent — and controversial — modern novelists.
The publishing house said that the essays would be edited “in a scientific style” that would point out and explain their anti-Semitic content.
But the plan to publish the writings has been met with fierce backlash from France’s Jewish community.
Crif, the umbrella representative group for Jewish institutions in France, issued a statement objecting to the publication of the three “racist, anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler” essays.
For Crif, as for other French personalities, these texts constitute 75 years after their original publication ‘’an unbearable incitement to anti-Semitic and racist hatred.’’
Nazi hunter and lawyer for the families of French Jews deported during World War II, Serge Klarsfeld, has also demanded Gallimard be stopped from publishing the collection.
‘’It is unthinkable for the French political society to accept such harmful texts that incite tà racist hatred and to the extermination of Jews,’’ he said.
‘We will not allow republication of such texts that led our parents to death,’’ Klarsfeld stressed.
The Israeli ambassador to France, Aliza Bin-Noun, added her voice in demanding that Gallimard cancel the republishing project.
“The thought of this author has always been unambiguous,” she said, emphasizing the “intolerable” nature of this publication in a context of renewed anti-Semitism.