AN ARCHIVE OF FREEDOM

摘要

In 1967, the national library made a purchase that, from today's perspective, looks like an inspired choice and a considerable bargain. For US$800, the Library acquired, from Kraus Periodicals in New York, a collection of hundreds of documents relating to the French experience of the Second World War. The identity of the person who originally compiled this material is a mystery. We can, however, be grateful for the judgement that assembled a miscellany that is unusually comprehensive in its representation of the period's ambiguities and complexities: the collapse and defeat of the French army; the humiliations and oppressions deriving from Nazi occupation and the Vichy State (including the persecution and deportation of Jews, and savage reprisals against civilians); the various forms of collaboration and resistance; the difficulties of liberation, including the attempts to purge France of those deemed to have betrayed it.