FRANCE:President Jacques Chirac has paid homage to the 2,740 French men and women certified by the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem to belong to "the just among nations" for having risked their lives to save Jews during the second World War.
The solemn ceremony took place yesterday at the Pantheon, France's temple to great men, at the initiative of Simone Veil, the concentration camp survivor who later became a government minister and the first woman president of the European Parliament.
Accompanied by four children descended from "the just" and Holocaust survivors, Ms Veil and Mr Chirac stood before an inscription in gold letters beside the tomb of Jean Moulin, the Resistance hero who was tortured to death by the Gestapo.
"Homage of the Nation to the Just of France," it says.
"Under the leaden weight of hatred and night that fell over France during the years of occupation, thousands of lights refused to go out . . . They embodied the honour of France, its values of justice, tolerance and humanity.
"Thanks to you, and other heroes through the centuries . . . we can look our history in the eyes," Mr Chirac said. "Sometimes there were profoundly dark moments, but there was also and especially that which was best and most glorious.
"Our history must be taken as a whole. It is our heritage, our identity. . . Yes, we can be proud of our history, yes, we can be proud to be French."
In a sense, the hour-long evening ceremony brought Mr Chirac full circle. Twelve years ago, one of the first acts of his presidency was to commemorate the deportation from the "Vél d'hiv" cycling stadium of 12,884 Jews to Nazi death camps on July 16th, 1942.
"France, the country of the enlightenment and of human rights, land of asylum, committed the irreparable on that day," he said.
Mr Chirac's recognition of France's role in the deportation of Jews is considered a great achievement of his presidency, on a par with his refusal to support the invasion of Iraq. Before him, presidents Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand maintained that the collaborationist Vichy government was an aberration, that the true France was that of the Resistance.
The French president cited many examples of heroic French people who sheltered Jews, including the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon in Haute-Loire, where 3,000 Protestants saved up to 5,000 Jews, under the leadership of Pastor Trocmé.
Of the more than 75,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, deported from France, only 2,500 survived. For decades, the negative has been emphasised: the over-zealousness of Vichy officials in carrying out Nazi orders; the fact that France, along with Bulgaria, was the only country that handed over Jews from territory unoccupied by the Germans.
Yesterday's ceremony was an attempt to right the imbalance.
Mr Chirac quoted Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld, saying "the just" "helped to spare three-quarters of the pre-war Jewish population from deportation and almost certain death". By contrast, 80 per cent of Jews in Belgium and the Netherlands perished.
Under Mr Chirac, France has undertaken other feats of travail de mémoire ("labour of memory"), including slavery, which is now remembered every May 10th.
Homage is paid to the harkis - Algerians who fought for France in the 1954-1962 Franco-Algerian war - every September 25th. The injustice done to Captain Alfred Dreyfus, and to Arabs and Africans who fought in two world wars, has also been recognised.
The Élysée Palace hopes that France will now be able to put the second World War behind it. The more recent trauma of the Algerian war may take more time.
Only this week, right-wing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy said France must offer "not expiation but fraternity" to its former colonies. "Let us not judge the past too severely with the eyes of the present."
Mr Chirac sought to make the heroism of "the just" relevant to today's France. Their "essential message", he said, was "the battle for tolerance and fraternity, against anti-Semitism, discrimination, all types of racism".
At a time when Europe is debating legislation to punish negationism, when the extreme right has just formed a group in the European Parliament, Mr Chirac took a stand: "We must fight negationism without mercy," he said.