Re: [CR] French Constructeurs During WWII

(Example: Bike Shops:R.E.W. Reynolds)

In-Reply-To: <a062309c2c763cfb88efb@72.244.201.179>
References: <29cfc1e00912311443i16bd96d9j94d77e2a1edd23c2@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 11:51:12 -0500
From: "Edward Albert" <ealbert01@gmail.com>
To: Jan Heine <heine94@earthlink.net>
Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR] French Constructeurs During WWII


I know that this will only inflame things but I cannot stay out of it any longer. All this talk about "doing as well as they could," and 'keeping the record straight" makes me uneasy to say the very least. The French had, for years rewritten the history concerning the relationship between the so-called man in the street and the Nazis occupation. I recent years that "cover-up" has been somewhat abandoned and some light has been let in. Of course there were heroes and saviors but, in large part, the French tradition of benign and not so benign antisemitism was alive and well in occupied France. The Dreyfus affair did not stem from nowhere after all. As I did off list yesterday, I refer any one interested in this topic to watch Max Ophul's spine chilling chronicle of "doing the best that they could" as their neighbors boarded the boxcars in his film "The Sorrow and the Pity" which, BTW, has a very disturbing sequence with the "great" bike racer Rafael Geminiani. I also refer anyone interested in this period of history to read the relatively recent "Bad Faith" by Carmen Callil and equally chilling account of the individual responsible for the deportation of the Jews. It is not the individual that is of importance in the present context but the help he received in his vigorous endeavors not only from the most elevated levels of French society but from those very individuals where were "doing the best that they could. Sorry for the disruption, we now resume your regular programming.

Edward Albert Chappaqua, New York, U.S.A.

On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 11:30 AM, Jan Heine <heine94@earthlink.net> wrote:
> At 10:43 PM +0000 12/31/09, Norris Lockley wrote:
>
>> I read in an article recently that Andre Reiss, the builder of the
>> renowned
>> REYHAND frames, was arrested by the German army in the early 1940s,
>> possibly
>> in 1940 itself, deported and shot.
>>
>
> Reiss was not arrested and deported, but he died in battle during the
> German invasion. The sources for this are the first post-war edition of Le
> Cycliste, which lists the "disparus," as well as Raymond Henry's article on
> Reyhand in Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 5, No. 1. Raymond Henry did a lot of
> research on Reiss, including talking to many of his friends when they still
> were alive.
>
> Since you apparently read something different, please give us the source.
> There are a lot of myths, half-truths and fabrications out there, and we
> should try to keep the record straight.
>
>
> While it appears that some of the Paris-based cycleframe builders were
>> able
>> to carry on much as usual, the same could not be said of others in other
>> parts of France.
>>
>>
> The assumption that all life stopped in France with the invasion simply
> isn't true. During the war in France, there was no draft, and few people
> were interested in working for the Germans, so most simply carried on what
> they had been doing... as well as they could.
>
> Even in Lyon, builders continued to work during the war, for example, Paul
> Charrel continued to make bicycles, as you can read in the profile of this
> builder in the last Bicycle Quarterly (Winter 09).
>
> Charrel's shop was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid on Lyon, so he
> moved his shop into his mother's kitchen. Clearly, he can't have made too
> many bikes there, but that is all he did to earn a living. What else could
> he do? It's not like anybody was hiring in those days...
>
> Jan Heine
> Editor
> Bicycle Quarterly
> 2116 Western Ave.
> Seattle WA 98121
> http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com