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Scum of the Earth
At the beginning of the Second World War, Koestler was living in the south of France working on Darkness at Noon. After retreating to Paris he was imprisoned by the French as an undesirable alien even though he had been a respected crusader against fascism. Only luck and his passionate energy allowed him to escape the fate of many of the innocent refugees, who were handed over to the Nazis for torture and often execution.
Scum of the Earth is more than the story of Koestler's survival. His shrewd observation of the collapse of the French determination to resist during the summer of 1940 is an illustration of what happens when a nation loses its honour and its pride.
--From the 2006 paperback edition.
Scum of the Earth is more than the story of Koestler's survival. His shrewd observation of the collapse of the French determination to resist during the summer of 1940 is an illustration of what happens when a nation loses its honour and its pride.
--From the 2006 paperback edition.
253 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1941
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About the author
Arthur Koestler
152 books948 followers
Darkness at Noon
(1940), novel of Hungarian-born British writer Arthur Koestler, portrays his disillusionment with Communism; his nonfiction works include
The Sleepwalkers
(1959) and
The Ghost in the Machine
(1967).
Arthur Koestler CBE [*Kösztler Artúr] was a prolific writer of essays, novels and autobiographies.
He was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest but, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. His early career was in journalism. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Germany but, disillusioned, he resigned from it in 1938 and in 1940 published a devastating anti-Communist novel, Darkness at Noon, which propelled him to instant international fame.
Over the next forty-three years he espoused many causes, wrote novels and biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968 he was awarded the prestigious and valuable Sonning Prize "For outstanding contribution to European culture", and in 1972 he was made a "Commander of the British Empire" (CBE).
In 1976 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and three years later with leukaemia in its terminal stages. He committed suicide in 1983 in London.
Arthur Koestler CBE [*Kösztler Artúr] was a prolific writer of essays, novels and autobiographies.
He was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest but, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. His early career was in journalism. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Germany but, disillusioned, he resigned from it in 1938 and in 1940 published a devastating anti-Communist novel, Darkness at Noon, which propelled him to instant international fame.
Over the next forty-three years he espoused many causes, wrote novels and biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968 he was awarded the prestigious and valuable Sonning Prize "For outstanding contribution to European culture", and in 1972 he was made a "Commander of the British Empire" (CBE).
In 1976 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and three years later with leukaemia in its terminal stages. He committed suicide in 1983 in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
July 7, 2012
Oh France, why must you be so full of fail?
For anyone who’s a fan of Western civilization—as I am, most days—the fall of France in 1940 represents a spectacular, game-seven meltdown on the part of the home side. Born decades later and a continent away, I can still access some vicarious shame at that whole debacle. A great, modern democracy folding up like a set of Wal-Mart patio furniture – well, it’s something you never want to see, any more than you want to see your dad cry.
Scum of the Earth is Arthur Koestler’s brilliant, bitter take on the French collapse. Its main theme is that 1940 was more than just a military disaster; it was a complete moral capitulation. In his view, France—sour and divided, and half in love with easeful death—was already whupped before the first panzers nosed their way out of the Ardennes.
Koestler had good reason to be pissed off. Living in Paris when the war broke out, he was rounded up with hundreds of other ‘undesirable aliens’ and placed in an internment camp. Most of these men, including Koestler himself, were refugees from fascism, and asked for nothing better than to join the French army and fight the Nazis. Instead, the government let them rot in atrocious conditions and, when the Germans came, simply handed them over to the Gestapo (helpfully providing their dossiers). Koestler managed to escape to England, where he immediately sat down and wrote Scum of the Earth, at least in part as a well-deserved fuck you to France.
I’ll probably have a new theory next week, but as of now, I believe that one of literature’s noblest functions is to rescue things from oblivion. Which sounds pompous, but just amounts to this: bearing witness, getting it all down. You read a book like Scum of the Earth and suddenly a whole vanished world is before you again, with its stinks and slang, its gadgets and ambience. And then there are the people: ordinary people, mostly, who leer up out of the book for a page or two, say something trivial or profound, and fade back into history. At one point, Koestler catalogues some of his fellow internees in the filthy barrack at Le Vernet:
There was also the ex-Buddhist monk from Mongolia who sold postcards of nudes in Montparnasse cafes, and Balogh the Hungarian, who had been commander of a warship on the Danube and a stamp-collector, and who had been invited by King George V to London in 1912 to show his collection…There was Dessauer, the ex-rabbi and medical orderly, who wore his wristwatch on the wrist of a prosthesis which replaced his right arm; at night the prosthesis with the watch hung on a nail over his place in Barrack 33, and whoever wanted to know the time took Dessauer’s arm and carried it to the oil lamp next to the entrance. And there was Herr Birn, a German business man who had spent the four years of the Great War as a civilian prisoner in England and had learnt all the variants of the Italian opening by heart from the chess book and now, interned for a second time, learnt with the same German thoroughness the variants of the Queen’s Gambit, and yet, when it came to playing, lost every game within twenty moves.
So there they are: the exotic offscourings of wartime Paris, all doomed by some combination of French malice and French inertia. But a writer remembered them and put them in a book: a tenuous afterlife, you might say, but more than most of us will enjoy.
June 3, 2013
The dedication says it all
'To the memory of my colleagues, the exiled writers of Germany who took their lives when France fell;'
This is a book double edged in its title. 'The Scum of the earth' initially seems to refer to the people interned by the French government at the beginning of the Second World War. This was the way in which they were collectively spoken of by politicians and the press as they desperately sought to shore up the rotten edifice of France. However, as the account continues and the betrayal and crass stupidity of the authorities and the disingenuous cowardice of those in power unfolds, the title switches in Koestler's mind and indeed in the mind of any right thinking reader to crown the ruling class of France in all its traitorous, heartless guilt.
We journey through the first 18 months of the war being led by the experiences and raging anger and frustration of Arthur Koestler a Hungarian writer who through his experiences in the civil war and its aftermath in Spain has both a hatred of Fascism and of the totalitarian expression of Soviet repressive communism. He looks with a piercingly horrified look at the betrayal of the French Authorities and I found myself again and again shaking my head in confused horror as the ruling class abrogated any responsibility to justice or decency.
Many of the men and women rounded up by the military and police were people who had expressly fled from the repression and viciousness of the growing power of Nazism in Germany. They had sought, and thought they had found, a safe haven in France. With the outbreak of war they were betrayed by the very people with whom they had sought refuge. Refused permission to join up to fight for France they were then accused of undermining France because they were not fighting.....Orwellian doublespeak, doublethink, doubleinsanity....and imprisoned and then as the Germans swept across Europe and into France the 'New Government of France' not only did not help these opponents of the Fascists France had previously declared war against but handed them over, dossiers and all, to those very invaders.
The amazingly moving thing is the book was written in January-March 1941. The copy I read was that first edition, the book I was holding in other words was first read by a man or a woman who had no idea whilst they turned the pages whether this was the last cry of a dying hero or the courageous growling of a beast regaining strength to re-enter the fight. I read it as a history of over seven decades ago, though still raw enough and embittered with Koestler's sense of betrayal and agonized frustration to exhaust me, but I knew that the courage shown by so many in this book, their sacrifices and their decency, did win out in the end but I also knew how many of those people disappeared into camps and ovens and pits and were never heard from again.
It is a book of fury and sadness intermingled with flashes of overpowering compassion and goodness. All life is here, as the cliché goes, but from Koestler's vantage point, a Canute-like figure standing out against the seemingly unstoppable crashing waves of Nazi Germany, the milk of human kindness is rankly curdled and vile.
He writes lovingly and movingly of individual characters, people of courage and nobility, the true tragedy of the book is many if not all of those thus acclaimed would almost certainly have been tortured and murdered by the Nazis as they were, almost without exception, still imprisoned as the Nazis arrived.
As I read the book I fell in love with his skill as a writer. He has a great flair for extended metaphor. His use of imagery and words is startling and though some may appear overblown, when you consider he was writing what might have been a eulogy for European civilization (as it must have appeared at the darkest time of 1941 when only the UK stood out free against German occupation and power), he can surely be forgiven.
When area after area is subjugated:-
"And so another lump of Europe's bleeding flesh would be thrown to the monster to keep him quiet for six months - and another lump next spring and another next autumn. And, for all one knew, in due time the monster might die a natural death of indigestion"
On the spineless capitulation and lack of leadership of the Authorities:-
"If a nation is a body, the working classes are its muscles and sinews. By cutting them, the body becomes paralysed - a helpless bleeding prey to be stamped on by the boots of the goose-stepping conqueror"
Of the mindless Ostrich-like hiding from reality:-
"Utterly unconscious of what has happened. Sparrows chattering on telegraph wires while wire flashes telegram that all sparrows must die."
"As if the dark powers of history had chosen on purpose the loveliest season and the loveliest town on this planet to demonstrate their superiority over the powers of light"
Simple sentences which speak volumes
"The type of Frenchwoman who already as a bride has the future widow written on her face "
"They wore their martyrdom like a robe too large for them"
Two images which are brilliantly effective is his use of the Marianne figure of France now changed from a fresh faced hope-filled figure to a gnarled old crone scared to death of her people and 'waiting for the barbarian prince to save her'.
And secondly of the exchange by modern day rulers of the antiquated scapegoat for a dragon. How all governments of the time realized that the dragon 'Could receive one deadly blow after another but never completely die.....it could be re-baptized and consisted, so to speak, of interchangeable parts' and thus the unscrupulous government could keep re-launching the horror and thus re-panic its citizens into the corner in which they wished them to cower.
An extraordinary piece of writing, an almost unimaginable betrayal. Something that shouts out 'Lest we forget'.
'To the memory of my colleagues, the exiled writers of Germany who took their lives when France fell;'
This is a book double edged in its title. 'The Scum of the earth' initially seems to refer to the people interned by the French government at the beginning of the Second World War. This was the way in which they were collectively spoken of by politicians and the press as they desperately sought to shore up the rotten edifice of France. However, as the account continues and the betrayal and crass stupidity of the authorities and the disingenuous cowardice of those in power unfolds, the title switches in Koestler's mind and indeed in the mind of any right thinking reader to crown the ruling class of France in all its traitorous, heartless guilt.
We journey through the first 18 months of the war being led by the experiences and raging anger and frustration of Arthur Koestler a Hungarian writer who through his experiences in the civil war and its aftermath in Spain has both a hatred of Fascism and of the totalitarian expression of Soviet repressive communism. He looks with a piercingly horrified look at the betrayal of the French Authorities and I found myself again and again shaking my head in confused horror as the ruling class abrogated any responsibility to justice or decency.
Many of the men and women rounded up by the military and police were people who had expressly fled from the repression and viciousness of the growing power of Nazism in Germany. They had sought, and thought they had found, a safe haven in France. With the outbreak of war they were betrayed by the very people with whom they had sought refuge. Refused permission to join up to fight for France they were then accused of undermining France because they were not fighting.....Orwellian doublespeak, doublethink, doubleinsanity....and imprisoned and then as the Germans swept across Europe and into France the 'New Government of France' not only did not help these opponents of the Fascists France had previously declared war against but handed them over, dossiers and all, to those very invaders.
The amazingly moving thing is the book was written in January-March 1941. The copy I read was that first edition, the book I was holding in other words was first read by a man or a woman who had no idea whilst they turned the pages whether this was the last cry of a dying hero or the courageous growling of a beast regaining strength to re-enter the fight. I read it as a history of over seven decades ago, though still raw enough and embittered with Koestler's sense of betrayal and agonized frustration to exhaust me, but I knew that the courage shown by so many in this book, their sacrifices and their decency, did win out in the end but I also knew how many of those people disappeared into camps and ovens and pits and were never heard from again.
It is a book of fury and sadness intermingled with flashes of overpowering compassion and goodness. All life is here, as the cliché goes, but from Koestler's vantage point, a Canute-like figure standing out against the seemingly unstoppable crashing waves of Nazi Germany, the milk of human kindness is rankly curdled and vile.
He writes lovingly and movingly of individual characters, people of courage and nobility, the true tragedy of the book is many if not all of those thus acclaimed would almost certainly have been tortured and murdered by the Nazis as they were, almost without exception, still imprisoned as the Nazis arrived.
As I read the book I fell in love with his skill as a writer. He has a great flair for extended metaphor. His use of imagery and words is startling and though some may appear overblown, when you consider he was writing what might have been a eulogy for European civilization (as it must have appeared at the darkest time of 1941 when only the UK stood out free against German occupation and power), he can surely be forgiven.
When area after area is subjugated:-
"And so another lump of Europe's bleeding flesh would be thrown to the monster to keep him quiet for six months - and another lump next spring and another next autumn. And, for all one knew, in due time the monster might die a natural death of indigestion"
On the spineless capitulation and lack of leadership of the Authorities:-
"If a nation is a body, the working classes are its muscles and sinews. By cutting them, the body becomes paralysed - a helpless bleeding prey to be stamped on by the boots of the goose-stepping conqueror"
Of the mindless Ostrich-like hiding from reality:-
"Utterly unconscious of what has happened. Sparrows chattering on telegraph wires while wire flashes telegram that all sparrows must die."
"As if the dark powers of history had chosen on purpose the loveliest season and the loveliest town on this planet to demonstrate their superiority over the powers of light"
Simple sentences which speak volumes
"The type of Frenchwoman who already as a bride has the future widow written on her face "
"They wore their martyrdom like a robe too large for them"
Two images which are brilliantly effective is his use of the Marianne figure of France now changed from a fresh faced hope-filled figure to a gnarled old crone scared to death of her people and 'waiting for the barbarian prince to save her'.
And secondly of the exchange by modern day rulers of the antiquated scapegoat for a dragon. How all governments of the time realized that the dragon 'Could receive one deadly blow after another but never completely die.....it could be re-baptized and consisted, so to speak, of interchangeable parts' and thus the unscrupulous government could keep re-launching the horror and thus re-panic its citizens into the corner in which they wished them to cower.
An extraordinary piece of writing, an almost unimaginable betrayal. Something that shouts out 'Lest we forget'.
October 26, 2019
And more suicides: ...Walter Benjamin, author and critic, my neighbour in 10, rue Dombasle in Paris, fourth at our Saturday poker parties, and one of the most bizarre and witty persons I have known. Last time I had met him was in Marseilles...and he had asked me: 'if anything goes wrong, have you got anything to take?' I had none, and he shared what he had with me, sixty-two tablets of a sedative, procured in Berlin during the week which followed the burning of the Reichstag. He did it reluctantly, for he did not know whether the thirty-one tablets left him would be enough. It was enough. A week after my departure he made his way over the Pyrenees to Spain, a man of fifty-five, with heart disease. At Port Bou the Guardia Civil arrested him. He was told the next morning they would send him back to France. When they came to fetch him for the train, he was dead.
And how many unknown? Old Jews and young anti-Fascists, cheating their guards in an unobserved moment, killing themselves hurriedly, secretly; stealing out of life as they had stolen over barbed wire and frontier posts, after even this last exit permit had been refused to them.
A feverish account of Koestler's experiences in France between late 1939 and the German invasion of 1940, which involved being arrested without charge and forced into manual labor at a camp called Le Vernet- his fellow prisoners included Spanish Civil War veterans, Communists and former Communists, Socialist Hungarian poets, White-White Russians and Red-White Russians (but not Red Russians), the commonality being that most of them were foreigners to France, and most could be politically associated with the left. Koestler wrote Scum of the Earth in an even shorter time frame than the one it describes, between January and March of 1941 in England, having escaped from France by the skin of his teeth and waiting to join the Pioneer Corps. At this point, he writes, "my friends were either in the hands of the Gestapo, or had committed suicide, or were trapped, seemingly without hope, on the lost Continent. The agony of the French collapse was still reverberating through my mind as a scream of terror echoes in one's ear." These friends are the scum of the title- people stranded by the dislocations of the time without documents, without visas, without citizenship, moved to the other side of an imaginary line, which in many cases cost them their lives.
Born in Budapest in 1905, Koestler joined the Communist Party in Germany in 1931; he left in 1938, having become disillusioned by Stalinism. By late '39, while living in the south of France, he was working on Darkness at Noon, which would turn out to be one of the century's great works of anti-totalitarian literature, along with Orwell's 1984. But Koestler believed in a way that I don't think Orwell ever did ("he was of a less romantic disposition than I", as Koestler puts it here in his introduction), which gave Koestler, like Victor Serge, a more intimate understanding of apostasy. When he describes the psychological effect of the anti-left French dragnet on his fellow prisoners, you get the sense that he's describing the temptation he feels as well:
the unprecedented wave of political persecution that swept over France cured the Communist rank and file of their heretical doubts. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, they opted for the deep sea. They closed their eyes, as they had been trained to do, and took a headlong plunge back into the familiar depths of blind, unquestioning, absolute faith.It was finally Molotov-Ribbentrop, however, as Koestler describes in an earlier scene, that insured he would never take that plunge:
We had...turned our backs on Russia, yet wherever we turned our eyes for comfort we found none; and so in the back of our minds there remained a faint hope that perhaps and after all it was we who were in the wrong and that in the long run it was the Russians who were in the right...but now [the illusion] was dead. While I was reading that notice [about Molotov-Ribbentrop], I was not depressed, only excited...but I knew that I would be depressed tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and that this feeling of bitterness would not leave me for years to come; and that millions of people, representing that more optimistic half of humanity, would perhaps never recover from this depression, although not consciously aware of its reason...a war was to be fought. [We] would fight, but in bitterness and despair; for it is hard for men to fight if they only know what they are fighting against and not what they are fighting for.Despite the haste and uncertainty with which he had to write this account, and in contrast to the frenzied pace of the escape from France in the book's second half, Koestler creates a novelistic and almost leisurely atmosphere for the chapters on Le Vernet, bringing the reader into the daily routine of the camp and painting empathetic (and sometimes humorous) portraits of the people there. An Italian named Mario, for instance, convinces Koestler of the uselessness of trying to get all of their fellow internees to agree on a petition:
This is what I tried to explain to G., who was born in the year of the Treaty of Versailles and could not understand why a man of thirty-five should make such a fuss at the funeral of his illusions- belonging, as she did, to a generation with none.
"Cosa sinistra", he said. "Leftist tradition. Fill this barrack with Fascists of any country and you would see them sign in a jiffy."The conditions qualify as torture- forced manual labor on an inadequate diet, five men to sleep in a space 21 inches long, beatings and isolation for any infractions- but even here Koestler maintains a sense of perspective.
I wanted to go on, nevertheless, but I could never argue against that particular quiet smile of Mario's; it made me feel futile and childish, although he was younger than I. I knew it had taken nine years of imprisonment to form that smile...he had been nineteen when the cell door closed behind him- and twenty-eight when it opened again, two years ago. This kind of experience either crushes a man or produces something very rare...
The standard of comparison in the treatment of human beings having crashed to unheard-of depths, every complaint sounded frivolous and out of place. The scale of sufferings and humiliations was distorted, the measure of what a man can bear was lost. In Liberal-Centigrade, Vernet was the zero-point of infamy; measured in Dachau-Fahrenheit it was still 32 degrees above zero.Why did Koestler write this book? For the people who couldn't, certainly. I'm sure there were psychological, political and world-historical reasons as well, but I like to think that it also might have been so that future readers, who through the vagaries of fate might someday find themselves in similar situations, would be able to take just a small amount of strength from another person's experience: life is unpredictable, Koestler seems to be saying, so stay adaptable- you can continue to observe and think even in an unprecedented situation, you can keep your sense of humor, and the bonds you form with the people around you might help you to endure. I do wonder if, when we finally get around to WWIII, there will be anyone around with the wherewithal- or just the inclination- to set down their thoughts and experiences like this.
A point that Koestler keeps returning to is not only the injustice but the foolishness of the French internment policy, which neutralizes many of those who, a few years earlier, had been willing to risk their lives in Spain to fight fascism...which leads Koestler to conclude that elements of the French establishment have decided that Hitler is a better guarantee of financial security and their vested interests than a revolution from the left would be. Koestler turns out to be an exception among the scum- he's eventually released due to his journalistic connections- but the most horrific part of the story is that the prisoners at Le Vernet are just left there during the German invasion, which proves only too convenient for the Gestapo.
There was not a single man in our squad who had not to be taken to the hospital for a few days. They came out still unsteady on their feet, for space in the hospital scarce, to be sent back to forced labour. And that is what they are doing still, drudging with spade and pick, hammer and saw, unpaid, underfed, hopeless. Not time, only space separates us from them as they stand on the arid downs north of the Pyrenees, swinging picks in their blue, frozen hands, little clouds of steam in front of their heads, apathetic ghosts of the great defeat.Koestler is an exception in eventually being able to escape from France, as well. Writing in 1941, he wisely doesn't disclose every detail of this escape- it seems that Varian Fry played a role, as he did in the escape of so many others- but he provides another reason in a passage towards the end, switching to third-person:
From the day of his arrival in Marseilles, the author's personal story has to fade out. He has told it at some length as far as his personal adventures were typical for the species of men to which he belongs: the exiled, the persecuted, the hunted...the thousands and millions who, for reasons of their race, nationality or beliefs, have become the scum of the earth...but this ceases to be the case in the last chapter of his story. The fact that the author escaped, and the way he did it, is no longer typical, but accidental and due to merely personal circumstances. For those who escaped are the exception, and those who perish are the rule...Incidentally, I happened to read Scum of the Earth during the same week that a report came out about how some major Democratic donors have threatened to support Trump in next year's election if the Democrats nominate Elizabeth Warren (never mind what they'd do in the case of Bernie Sanders- Defcon 1, no doubt). I'm not sure if this threat was supposed to be kept secret or not, but then again, why would they bother? It was hard not to notice a parallel with the element of the French establishment who evidently accepted Hitler as a bulwark against the left, not to mention the infamous Junkers who enabled Hitler in Germany.
One of Hitler's cleverer feints was in naming his party what he did- there were apparently a number of early Nazi supporters who believed that the second word in the phrase "National Socialism" really meant something. By the same token, Trump cleverly poached some of Bernie's rhetoric in '16, but there hasn't been much on the agenda except tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, when the Goldman Sachs of the world, and all the corrupt influences on our politics that Trump vituperated against during the last campaign, start lining up behind his re-election; the wealthy know who their friends are.
March 31, 2012
Arthur Koestler had a knack for getting himself locked up. For several years in the 1930s and ‘40s, he took an inside tour of European prisons and concentration camps in Spain, France, and the UK. (Strangely, my edition of this book was published by a travel book publishing company, but I can’t think they would recommend this particular itinerary). Koestler’s friend George Orwell attributed his predilection for incarceration to his “lifestyle,” which is a bit unfair, but there is no doubt Koestler was often in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe the right place from a literary point of view, since he had plenty of life experience from which to draw in writing his most famous novel, Darkness at Noon, about a Russian revolutionary in prison.
In Scum of the Earth, Koestler recounts his experiences of being interned in a concentration camp in France. Koestler, a Hungarian living in France working as a writer and journalist, was rounded up along with other “undesirables” shortly after France entered the war against Germany in 1939. They were a ragtag group, outcasts who “could be divided into two main categories: people doomed by the biological accident of their race and people doomed for their metaphysical creed or rational conviction regarding the best way to organise human welfare” (p. 93). His fellow prisoners included refugees who had fled from country to country as the German forces advanced across Europe as well as socialists and Communists. Ironically, almost all of them were fiercely anti-Nazi, sometimes much more so than the French police and soldiers they dealt with. Many, including Koestler, were Jewish, and many of them had volunteered to fight in the French army against Germany.
Koestler’s camp, Le Vernet, was one of the more unpleasant ones. Koestler and his fellow ethnic and political outsiders had no legal protection of any kind, with no official charges against them and no due process. They were kept in miserable conditions doing unpaid hard labor. He writes,
“In Liberal-Centigrade, Vernet was the zero-point of infamy; measured in Dachau-Fahrenheit it was still 32 degrees above zero. In Vernet beating-up was a daily occurrence; in Dachau it was prolonged until death ensued. In Vernet people were killed for lack of medical attention; in Dachau they were killed on purpose. In Vernet half of the prisoners had to sleep without blankets in 20 degrees of frost; in Dachau they were put in irons and exposed to the frost” (p. 94).
Koestler points out that the pro-Nazi prisoners in France, who were taken elsewhere, were often treated better due to oversight by the Red Cross and the fear of German retaliation against French prisoners of war. He describes seeing photographs of the conditions for actual Nazi prisoners of war in France, who lived in comparative luxury, “We saw them having a meal in a tidy refectory, and there were tables and chairs and dishes and knives and forks. And we saw them in their dormitory, and they had real beds and mattresses and blankets” (p. 117).
Koestler managed to be released from Le Vernet before France capitulated to Germany, but most were not so lucky. The Gestapo took over the French concentration camps without missing a beat. Helpfully, the French supplied the Gestapo with records and dossiers on the prisoners, so that there was no doubt about their anti-Nazi activities.
Koestler writes vividly of the chaos in France following the capitulation. Caught in a bureaucratic nightmare, he and other undesirable foreigners tried to escape from the country before being captured by the Germans. Many of Koestler’s friends and acquaintances, including fellow writers and intellectuals, commited suicide to avoid being captured. After a lot of complicated maneuvering, Koestler managed to make it to England, where he was promptly imprisoned for six weeks, but at least in relative comfort compared to his experience in France.
Before and during World War II, there was an epidemic of nationalistic and xenophobic feeling. Hitler and Stalin win the dubious prize for infamy with their death camps and gulags, but it was a fairly shameful time in history for “the good guys” as well, with American internment of Japanese-Americans, the concentration and forced labor camps in France described here, and numerous other instances of officially sanctioned persecution of “foreigners” (including citizens of “foreign” descent) in the US, Canada, the UK, and the British colonies. Scum of the Earth provides a disturbing example of how, given the right mixture of xenophobia and national security concerns, a supposedly democratic nation can willingly sacrifice the civil rights, liberties, and due process of its own people and legal visitors.
In Scum of the Earth, Koestler recounts his experiences of being interned in a concentration camp in France. Koestler, a Hungarian living in France working as a writer and journalist, was rounded up along with other “undesirables” shortly after France entered the war against Germany in 1939. They were a ragtag group, outcasts who “could be divided into two main categories: people doomed by the biological accident of their race and people doomed for their metaphysical creed or rational conviction regarding the best way to organise human welfare” (p. 93). His fellow prisoners included refugees who had fled from country to country as the German forces advanced across Europe as well as socialists and Communists. Ironically, almost all of them were fiercely anti-Nazi, sometimes much more so than the French police and soldiers they dealt with. Many, including Koestler, were Jewish, and many of them had volunteered to fight in the French army against Germany.
Koestler’s camp, Le Vernet, was one of the more unpleasant ones. Koestler and his fellow ethnic and political outsiders had no legal protection of any kind, with no official charges against them and no due process. They were kept in miserable conditions doing unpaid hard labor. He writes,
“In Liberal-Centigrade, Vernet was the zero-point of infamy; measured in Dachau-Fahrenheit it was still 32 degrees above zero. In Vernet beating-up was a daily occurrence; in Dachau it was prolonged until death ensued. In Vernet people were killed for lack of medical attention; in Dachau they were killed on purpose. In Vernet half of the prisoners had to sleep without blankets in 20 degrees of frost; in Dachau they were put in irons and exposed to the frost” (p. 94).
Koestler points out that the pro-Nazi prisoners in France, who were taken elsewhere, were often treated better due to oversight by the Red Cross and the fear of German retaliation against French prisoners of war. He describes seeing photographs of the conditions for actual Nazi prisoners of war in France, who lived in comparative luxury, “We saw them having a meal in a tidy refectory, and there were tables and chairs and dishes and knives and forks. And we saw them in their dormitory, and they had real beds and mattresses and blankets” (p. 117).
Koestler managed to be released from Le Vernet before France capitulated to Germany, but most were not so lucky. The Gestapo took over the French concentration camps without missing a beat. Helpfully, the French supplied the Gestapo with records and dossiers on the prisoners, so that there was no doubt about their anti-Nazi activities.
Koestler writes vividly of the chaos in France following the capitulation. Caught in a bureaucratic nightmare, he and other undesirable foreigners tried to escape from the country before being captured by the Germans. Many of Koestler’s friends and acquaintances, including fellow writers and intellectuals, commited suicide to avoid being captured. After a lot of complicated maneuvering, Koestler managed to make it to England, where he was promptly imprisoned for six weeks, but at least in relative comfort compared to his experience in France.
Before and during World War II, there was an epidemic of nationalistic and xenophobic feeling. Hitler and Stalin win the dubious prize for infamy with their death camps and gulags, but it was a fairly shameful time in history for “the good guys” as well, with American internment of Japanese-Americans, the concentration and forced labor camps in France described here, and numerous other instances of officially sanctioned persecution of “foreigners” (including citizens of “foreign” descent) in the US, Canada, the UK, and the British colonies. Scum of the Earth provides a disturbing example of how, given the right mixture of xenophobia and national security concerns, a supposedly democratic nation can willingly sacrifice the civil rights, liberties, and due process of its own people and legal visitors.
September 16, 2021
"Listened during breakfast to repetition of new Foreign Minister Baudouin's broadcast of yesterday night: 'It is because we are sure of the French people's spirit of independence ... that we have asked on what conditions the carnage of our sons might be stopped.' Strange how melodious a self-contradictory sentence can be made to sound in French. 'Because we love independence, we accept Nazi domination.' No information how far Germans advanced.
After breakfast dragged out the luggage, dumped it on the road and tried to stop a car. The other people in the restaurant said they would stay there and wait until armistice was signed, and then go back north to their homes. Did not mind whether Germans caught up with them. Were not afraid of Germans, only bombs. All relieved that war is over; showed it openly: fallait en finir. Thought Germans would take back Alsace, did not care. Alsatians were Boches, anyhow. Mussolini might get Djibuti, perhaps Tunisia. When I suggested he might ask for Nice and Savoy, they laughed: 'Never on your life. We'll kick him in the pants.' Utterly unaware of what has happened. Sparrows chattering on telegraph wires while wire flashes telegram that all sparrows must die." (p. 199)
I LOVE this book. While I was reading it, I kept raving about it to anyone who came near me. (Found this gem hidden in a library archive so yay libraries.)
Koestler gives a personal account of his days in France during the WW2. He was a reporter for years so has a keen eye for political intrigues but also for what's happening in the streets. Before coming to France he fought in the Spanish Civil War and spent time on death row there. He's very politically aware, an intellectual (who puts his money where his mouth is) with an often surprisingly modern take on things. As the Nazis keep coming nearer Koestler gives a blow-by-blow report of basically everything going on in French society while he's locked up in an internment camp for no other reason than being a foreigner. He manages to get out of the camp and finally out of the country in time but he knows he's one of the lucky few to survive.
Koestler has psychological insight, empathy, intelligence, a sense of humour. Considering what he went through and how quickly after living through these experiences this book was published (1941), it's amazing how balanced he sounds. This was a moving, insightful and informative book that shows many of the grey areas of wartime where so many books spin war into something that conisists solely of heroics or evil. Apart from the typos (that nobody managed to correct when they reissued the book decades after it was first published) this is amazing stuff.
Besides being well-written I also found this book incredibly relevant to everything going on in the world today. Koestler keeps trying to work out why people believe in batshit crazy theories or rumours fed to them, while I keep trying to understand the current global rise of the extreme right. It seems Koestler spent his life writing about this theme so I'll be reading more of his work.
P.S. September 2021:
Do read the comments for my current view on Koestler.
After breakfast dragged out the luggage, dumped it on the road and tried to stop a car. The other people in the restaurant said they would stay there and wait until armistice was signed, and then go back north to their homes. Did not mind whether Germans caught up with them. Were not afraid of Germans, only bombs. All relieved that war is over; showed it openly: fallait en finir. Thought Germans would take back Alsace, did not care. Alsatians were Boches, anyhow. Mussolini might get Djibuti, perhaps Tunisia. When I suggested he might ask for Nice and Savoy, they laughed: 'Never on your life. We'll kick him in the pants.' Utterly unaware of what has happened. Sparrows chattering on telegraph wires while wire flashes telegram that all sparrows must die." (p. 199)
I LOVE this book. While I was reading it, I kept raving about it to anyone who came near me. (Found this gem hidden in a library archive so yay libraries.)
Koestler gives a personal account of his days in France during the WW2. He was a reporter for years so has a keen eye for political intrigues but also for what's happening in the streets. Before coming to France he fought in the Spanish Civil War and spent time on death row there. He's very politically aware, an intellectual (who puts his money where his mouth is) with an often surprisingly modern take on things. As the Nazis keep coming nearer Koestler gives a blow-by-blow report of basically everything going on in French society while he's locked up in an internment camp for no other reason than being a foreigner. He manages to get out of the camp and finally out of the country in time but he knows he's one of the lucky few to survive.
Koestler has psychological insight, empathy, intelligence, a sense of humour. Considering what he went through and how quickly after living through these experiences this book was published (1941), it's amazing how balanced he sounds. This was a moving, insightful and informative book that shows many of the grey areas of wartime where so many books spin war into something that conisists solely of heroics or evil. Apart from the typos (that nobody managed to correct when they reissued the book decades after it was first published) this is amazing stuff.
Besides being well-written I also found this book incredibly relevant to everything going on in the world today. Koestler keeps trying to work out why people believe in batshit crazy theories or rumours fed to them, while I keep trying to understand the current global rise of the extreme right. It seems Koestler spent his life writing about this theme so I'll be reading more of his work.
P.S. September 2021:
Do read the comments for my current view on Koestler.
November 11, 2015
By describing his own experiences of internment and harassment during 1939 and 1940, Koestler reveals the circumstances that led to the collapse of France in the face of Nazi invasion. He describes the reluctance of French army conscripts, asked to fight and perhaps die in yet another war against the Germans. He asks how it is that he and others, committed anti-Nazis, are persecuted by the French authorities, instead of being welcomed as allies in the struggle against the Germans. Koestler points to the moral and political bankruptcy of the upper echelons of French society at the time, and the near-Fascist opinions of so many of its functionaries, which eventually led to the dismaying horrors of the Vichy regime. Amongst other things, this state of mind, even before the German invasion, involved extreme paranoia about foreigners, especially those, such as the Hungarian, Jewish ex-communist Koestler, with a history of left wing activism, so that they were rounded up, interned, imprisoned, hounded, tormented and finally, handed over to the Gestapo.
Koestler’s particular story involved internment at Le Vernet camp, near the Pyrenees, designed for those, like him, considered particularly dangerous or unruly. A punishing regime, involving forced labour, sometimes brutal guards, inadequate food, shelter and medical care, resulted in great suffering and many deaths, although Koestler was protected from the very worst of this by virtue of his contacts outside the camp. They sent him food and, ultimately, were able to lobby successfully for his release. After that there were uneasy weeks in Paris, always risking re-arrest and another internment, waiting for the Germans to come, negotiating unsuccessfully with the Kafkaesque French bureaucracy to depart for Britain, where he hoped to join the British armed forces in struggling against Fascism. When the invaders reached Paris, he fled south, just in front of the Germans, and eventually made an adventurous escape from the country, with the new identity of a French foreign legionnaire.
During much of this time, incredibly, he was writing his book Darkness at Noon, which many consider to be his masterpiece. How he managed to focus on this work in the midst of the eventful life he was leading is beyond me, but write it he did, and when he eventually got to Britain, he immediately dashed off this work, Scum of the Earth, which was first published in 1941, earning him enough to live on for the initial period of adjustment to life in England.
The book provides more than just insights into the mentality of the French ruling class, or the attitudes of conscripts. In fact, the majority of such insights concern the mental and emotional effects of persecution and imprisonment, in many cases on men who have experienced this in one country or another for years on end, so that they have become, and all too often think of themselves, as the ‘scum of the earth.’ Koestler is an expert on the psychology of the persecuted, both by virtue of his own experiences, and his acute capacity to observe the people with whom he shares his fate. He notes the corrupt hierarchies that emerge within the inmate population, the continuation of ideological squabbles between communists and other elements of the left, the fate of idealism when faced with the gnawing demands of hunger and the struggle for safety and survival.
The book is dedicated to a number of exiled writers, including Walter Benjamin, who took their own lives as France fell. Throughout, Koestler reminds readers of the people who, unlike him, failed to get away, many of whom will have ended up in the German concentration camp system by the time the book was published. A preface, though, written in 1968 in the edition that I read, records his continuing friendship with one ex-internee, who like him, escaped.
I found this book taught me a great deal about aspects of world war two that I had only sketchily known about before. I found it instructive to compare Koestler’s camp experiences with the situation of people in migrant and refugee camps today, thinking about both points of difference and of similarity. I can recommend it to anyone interested in the period.
Koestler’s particular story involved internment at Le Vernet camp, near the Pyrenees, designed for those, like him, considered particularly dangerous or unruly. A punishing regime, involving forced labour, sometimes brutal guards, inadequate food, shelter and medical care, resulted in great suffering and many deaths, although Koestler was protected from the very worst of this by virtue of his contacts outside the camp. They sent him food and, ultimately, were able to lobby successfully for his release. After that there were uneasy weeks in Paris, always risking re-arrest and another internment, waiting for the Germans to come, negotiating unsuccessfully with the Kafkaesque French bureaucracy to depart for Britain, where he hoped to join the British armed forces in struggling against Fascism. When the invaders reached Paris, he fled south, just in front of the Germans, and eventually made an adventurous escape from the country, with the new identity of a French foreign legionnaire.
During much of this time, incredibly, he was writing his book Darkness at Noon, which many consider to be his masterpiece. How he managed to focus on this work in the midst of the eventful life he was leading is beyond me, but write it he did, and when he eventually got to Britain, he immediately dashed off this work, Scum of the Earth, which was first published in 1941, earning him enough to live on for the initial period of adjustment to life in England.
The book provides more than just insights into the mentality of the French ruling class, or the attitudes of conscripts. In fact, the majority of such insights concern the mental and emotional effects of persecution and imprisonment, in many cases on men who have experienced this in one country or another for years on end, so that they have become, and all too often think of themselves, as the ‘scum of the earth.’ Koestler is an expert on the psychology of the persecuted, both by virtue of his own experiences, and his acute capacity to observe the people with whom he shares his fate. He notes the corrupt hierarchies that emerge within the inmate population, the continuation of ideological squabbles between communists and other elements of the left, the fate of idealism when faced with the gnawing demands of hunger and the struggle for safety and survival.
The book is dedicated to a number of exiled writers, including Walter Benjamin, who took their own lives as France fell. Throughout, Koestler reminds readers of the people who, unlike him, failed to get away, many of whom will have ended up in the German concentration camp system by the time the book was published. A preface, though, written in 1968 in the edition that I read, records his continuing friendship with one ex-internee, who like him, escaped.
I found this book taught me a great deal about aspects of world war two that I had only sketchily known about before. I found it instructive to compare Koestler’s camp experiences with the situation of people in migrant and refugee camps today, thinking about both points of difference and of similarity. I can recommend it to anyone interested in the period.
April 5, 2007
This is an unusual autobiography because it's not so much about the author as a whole generation of political refugees who had to move across one border after another with little more than a suitcase. Usually in the middle of the night.
Set from 1939 to 1941 the author tells how people fleeing facism, communism or both finally ended up in France by Sept 1939.
They thought they were safe.
They were wrong.
The French media branded them the Scum of the Earth,
responsible for all the crime and other ailments of 1939 France.
They were put into concentration camps where few survived.
This is the only book I know that mentions French concentration camps.
One thing that adds to the interest of this book is that it
was published in 1941 before the United States entered the war.
The prevailing mood in France was that Hitler would conquer
Britian and Russia and with a mood of schadenfreude, the French were pleased with the thought.
Few thought Hitler would ever be defeated.
Not as well known as his fictional "Darkness at Noon",
I found this book to be more interesting.
Set from 1939 to 1941 the author tells how people fleeing facism, communism or both finally ended up in France by Sept 1939.
They thought they were safe.
They were wrong.
The French media branded them the Scum of the Earth,
responsible for all the crime and other ailments of 1939 France.
They were put into concentration camps where few survived.
This is the only book I know that mentions French concentration camps.
One thing that adds to the interest of this book is that it
was published in 1941 before the United States entered the war.
The prevailing mood in France was that Hitler would conquer
Britian and Russia and with a mood of schadenfreude, the French were pleased with the thought.
Few thought Hitler would ever be defeated.
Not as well known as his fictional "Darkness at Noon",
I found this book to be more interesting.
April 16, 2015
A mémoire by Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian journalist that survived and later wrote about the events surrounding the German invasion of France, of which he was a part.
He was trapped, arrested by the French authorities and interned in a French prison-camp as an undesirable alien (a Jew). He was released and arrested once again, even though he was widely recognized for his vehemently vociferous, anti-fascist stance. This was quite normal during that period. Being arrested and spending time in prison – for your political aspirations and standing up for your rights (free speech) – was considered the norm.
Koestler eventually escaped from the camp and joined the French Foreign Legion with the help of false identity papers and made his way to England through north Africa via Portugal.
This story is about an egregious moment in French history. Instead of protecting the millions of immigrants that were fleeing the fascist evil of the 1930s, the French lost their national identity, their backbone and lazily went along with the Nazi wave that engulfed Europe with terrible consequences. The xenophobia of the French people easily matched the Nazi anti-Semitism that was rife at the time. This was further aided by the hesitant stance of other European governments. Many people that moved around Europe like homeless ghosts readily accepted that they were outcasts for being born in the wrong place or to an undesirable religious creed.
People should know what happened and there is no one better to tell it than Arthur Koestler. It may seem like fiction and completely surreal because of the unbelievable injustice and the geography Koestler physically covers, but this is a true story that he survived through.
Koestler’s writing ventures far beyond the obvious, literary epidermis of this non-fiction tale. It is also a travelogue about life in pre-war France; a political treatise; an observation of the Spanish Civil war (1936¬–1939) where he was also caught up, arrested, incarcerated and so much more.
I fail to see how anyone would find this uninteresting, but I notice that some reviewers have. Personally, it held me captive.
His reason for being in France during this important period of history was because he was writing his well known novel “Darkness at Noon” that was heavily influenced by his experiences as a prisoner in Spain. He dispatched the manuscript to his London publishers 10 days before the German invasion of France. It was published some time later – while he was being held in Pentonville prison, England – to great acclaim. One of my favorite quotes sits amongst the pages of Darkness at Noon: “History had a slow pulse; man counted in years, history in generations.”
During this French apocalypse WWII, Koestler lost fifteen years of his journalistic work, unpublished books, and the only typescript copy of his travels through Soviet Central Asia and his journey to the Arctic on board the Graf Zeppelin.
One thing that I really liked was that in this novel he personified his car by calling it Theodore. A quote: "Poor Theodore had been immobilized long ago and stood flat-footed in a corner of the garage, staring sadly with his blind eyes into the pools of oily water on the concrete floor."
That and several other techniques about his writing tells me that Arthur Koestler was ahead of his time and completely original as a novelist.
There is a Kafka-esque quality and a vast amount of profound symbolism swirling about this work if you are prepared to dig deep in-between the trenches of his beautifully constructed sentences.
It is a wonder that Koestler didn't lose his mind considering what he saw and survived through during the war years. Not just that, but he managed to put his memories down eloquently in black and white for many generations to read, experience and learn. It must be due to his personal view about matters regarding his morale surrounding this difficult time in history. Of that he said: "Victories, big or small, are vitamins for the morale."
Arthur Koestler – a great author.
Sergiu Pobereznic (author)
amazon.com/author/sergiupobereznic
He was trapped, arrested by the French authorities and interned in a French prison-camp as an undesirable alien (a Jew). He was released and arrested once again, even though he was widely recognized for his vehemently vociferous, anti-fascist stance. This was quite normal during that period. Being arrested and spending time in prison – for your political aspirations and standing up for your rights (free speech) – was considered the norm.
Koestler eventually escaped from the camp and joined the French Foreign Legion with the help of false identity papers and made his way to England through north Africa via Portugal.
This story is about an egregious moment in French history. Instead of protecting the millions of immigrants that were fleeing the fascist evil of the 1930s, the French lost their national identity, their backbone and lazily went along with the Nazi wave that engulfed Europe with terrible consequences. The xenophobia of the French people easily matched the Nazi anti-Semitism that was rife at the time. This was further aided by the hesitant stance of other European governments. Many people that moved around Europe like homeless ghosts readily accepted that they were outcasts for being born in the wrong place or to an undesirable religious creed.
People should know what happened and there is no one better to tell it than Arthur Koestler. It may seem like fiction and completely surreal because of the unbelievable injustice and the geography Koestler physically covers, but this is a true story that he survived through.
Koestler’s writing ventures far beyond the obvious, literary epidermis of this non-fiction tale. It is also a travelogue about life in pre-war France; a political treatise; an observation of the Spanish Civil war (1936¬–1939) where he was also caught up, arrested, incarcerated and so much more.
I fail to see how anyone would find this uninteresting, but I notice that some reviewers have. Personally, it held me captive.
His reason for being in France during this important period of history was because he was writing his well known novel “Darkness at Noon” that was heavily influenced by his experiences as a prisoner in Spain. He dispatched the manuscript to his London publishers 10 days before the German invasion of France. It was published some time later – while he was being held in Pentonville prison, England – to great acclaim. One of my favorite quotes sits amongst the pages of Darkness at Noon: “History had a slow pulse; man counted in years, history in generations.”
During this French apocalypse WWII, Koestler lost fifteen years of his journalistic work, unpublished books, and the only typescript copy of his travels through Soviet Central Asia and his journey to the Arctic on board the Graf Zeppelin.
One thing that I really liked was that in this novel he personified his car by calling it Theodore. A quote: "Poor Theodore had been immobilized long ago and stood flat-footed in a corner of the garage, staring sadly with his blind eyes into the pools of oily water on the concrete floor."
That and several other techniques about his writing tells me that Arthur Koestler was ahead of his time and completely original as a novelist.
There is a Kafka-esque quality and a vast amount of profound symbolism swirling about this work if you are prepared to dig deep in-between the trenches of his beautifully constructed sentences.
It is a wonder that Koestler didn't lose his mind considering what he saw and survived through during the war years. Not just that, but he managed to put his memories down eloquently in black and white for many generations to read, experience and learn. It must be due to his personal view about matters regarding his morale surrounding this difficult time in history. Of that he said: "Victories, big or small, are vitamins for the morale."
Arthur Koestler – a great author.
Sergiu Pobereznic (author)
amazon.com/author/sergiupobereznic
January 3, 2022
Néhány impresszió.
Koestler mellőzöttnek látszik, egyike azon szerzőknek, akiknek a rendszerváltással nyílt tér – csak épp a tér nem volt rá kíváncsi. De ez illúzió, a magyar nyelvterületről nézve látszik így, K. sokkal ismertebb, mint a számomra hozzá hasonló Márai. (Márai naplója olvasott szöveg, a napokban említette Knausgard, több regénye és a vallomásai pedig pl. online megtalálhatóak kínaiul is.) Mégis van egy másfajta mellőzés, érzésem szerint, ez pedig azoknak a mellőzése, akik nem sodródnak olyan könnyen az árral: Wass Albertet vagy Solohovot lehet az ideológiára tekintettel olvasni („azonosulás”), K.-t alig. Leginkább szociáldemokratának mondanám, de minden ideológiával szemben kritikus.
Napló és jegyzetek 1939 augusztásától 1940 őszéig főleg Franciaországból. A megszállásról kicsit más képet kapunk, mint a filmvígjátékokból, a franciák zöme nem ellenálló volt. A „Bor és Búza” országa, mondja, mondták, mint az akkori és a mostani Magyarország, a lelkek is hasonlóan működnek: lemaradtak az iparban, kiszálltak a nagy birodalmak versenyéből, az okok keresése összeesküvés-elméleteket szül (vagy vesz át), vissza a lelki középkorba, a szabadság, egyenlőség és testvériség helyett család és haza: hagyjanak minket békén. Lenyűgöző a hasonlóság az itt és mosthoz.
K. mindenhol jegyzetel, aztán amikor kimenekül a kontinesről és kiszabadul az angol börtönből is – mert azokra, akik végigmenekültek Európán, Angliában is börtön várt –, összerendezi a szövegeket. Gyanítom, ha London bombázása előtt jelenik meg, senki sem hitte volna el, amit mond – de a jelek szerint a koncentrációs táborok létezése sem volt elég, hogy megértsék az angolszászok, mi a fasizmus. (Ahogy a Sötétség délben után sem kaptak a fejükhöz, akik hinni akartak a kommunizmusban – erről is szó van itt.) Örök reflexnek tűnik: nem akarjuk elhinni, ami a szemünk előtt zajlik.
Rejtélyes számomra ez a fajta személyiség. Nyugalom és erő árad a szövegből, minden leírt szörnyűség ellenére azt éreztem, ez az ember nem inog meg – aztán egyszerre megemlíti az idegösszeomlást, az öngyilkossági kísérletet. (A menekülők nem tudták, hová meneküljenek: nem hitték el, hogy Franciaországban megtörténhet olyasmi, ami a barbár Németországban, és, egyrészt, Anglia sem kezelte a menekülteket máshogy, mint a franciák, másrészt úgy tűnt, Anglia sem lesz képes Hitlernek ellenállni.)
De egészében: Comédie Française. Road-movie – meg is nézem, nem filmesítették-e meg. (Nem, az IMDb szerint.)
Koestler mellőzöttnek látszik, egyike azon szerzőknek, akiknek a rendszerváltással nyílt tér – csak épp a tér nem volt rá kíváncsi. De ez illúzió, a magyar nyelvterületről nézve látszik így, K. sokkal ismertebb, mint a számomra hozzá hasonló Márai. (Márai naplója olvasott szöveg, a napokban említette Knausgard, több regénye és a vallomásai pedig pl. online megtalálhatóak kínaiul is.) Mégis van egy másfajta mellőzés, érzésem szerint, ez pedig azoknak a mellőzése, akik nem sodródnak olyan könnyen az árral: Wass Albertet vagy Solohovot lehet az ideológiára tekintettel olvasni („azonosulás”), K.-t alig. Leginkább szociáldemokratának mondanám, de minden ideológiával szemben kritikus.
Napló és jegyzetek 1939 augusztásától 1940 őszéig főleg Franciaországból. A megszállásról kicsit más képet kapunk, mint a filmvígjátékokból, a franciák zöme nem ellenálló volt. A „Bor és Búza” országa, mondja, mondták, mint az akkori és a mostani Magyarország, a lelkek is hasonlóan működnek: lemaradtak az iparban, kiszálltak a nagy birodalmak versenyéből, az okok keresése összeesküvés-elméleteket szül (vagy vesz át), vissza a lelki középkorba, a szabadság, egyenlőség és testvériség helyett család és haza: hagyjanak minket békén. Lenyűgöző a hasonlóság az itt és mosthoz.
K. mindenhol jegyzetel, aztán amikor kimenekül a kontinesről és kiszabadul az angol börtönből is – mert azokra, akik végigmenekültek Európán, Angliában is börtön várt –, összerendezi a szövegeket. Gyanítom, ha London bombázása előtt jelenik meg, senki sem hitte volna el, amit mond – de a jelek szerint a koncentrációs táborok létezése sem volt elég, hogy megértsék az angolszászok, mi a fasizmus. (Ahogy a Sötétség délben után sem kaptak a fejükhöz, akik hinni akartak a kommunizmusban – erről is szó van itt.) Örök reflexnek tűnik: nem akarjuk elhinni, ami a szemünk előtt zajlik.
Rejtélyes számomra ez a fajta személyiség. Nyugalom és erő árad a szövegből, minden leírt szörnyűség ellenére azt éreztem, ez az ember nem inog meg – aztán egyszerre megemlíti az idegösszeomlást, az öngyilkossági kísérletet. (A menekülők nem tudták, hová meneküljenek: nem hitték el, hogy Franciaországban megtörténhet olyasmi, ami a barbár Németországban, és, egyrészt, Anglia sem kezelte a menekülteket máshogy, mint a franciák, másrészt úgy tűnt, Anglia sem lesz képes Hitlernek ellenállni.)
De egészében: Comédie Française. Road-movie – meg is nézem, nem filmesítették-e meg. (Nem, az IMDb szerint.)
January 11, 2017
این کتاب بهنوعی اتوبیوگرافی یکسال از زندگی نویسنده است... تقریباً از اوت 1939 تا اوت 1940 ... مقطعی حساس و بحرانی در تاریخ اروپا و بالاخص فرانسه که در این زمان محل اقامت این نویسندهی پُرجنبوجوش بوده است.
کتاب با مسافرت کستلر و دوستش به جنوب فرانسه آغاز میشود. آنها به دنبال جای آرامی میگردند تا در آن مکان، کستلر به نوشتن رمان تازهاش مشغول شود، رمانی که بعدها خواهیم فهمید، همان شاهکارش "ظلمت در نیمروز" است. جای مناسب پیدا میشود اما اتفاقات سرنوشتساز به سرعت از پی هم میآیند؛ شوروی و آلمان به توافق مهمی میرسند (مولوتوف – ریبنتروپ) و دست آلمان برای حمله به همسایگانش باز میشود. با حملهی آلمان به لهستان، فرانسه و انگلستان به آلمان اعلام جنگ نمودند و در این شرایط کستلر و دوستش به پاریس برمیگردند. در پاریس پلیس خارجیان را احضار و بازداشت میکند و این قضیه شامل کستلر هم میشود. او که مدتی را در زندانهای اسپانیا (فرانکو) زیر حکم اعدام گذرانده است در اینجا نیز طعم زندان و اردوگاه کار اجباری را میچشد. او پس از سه ماه آزاد میشود اما با نزدیک شدن نیروهای آلمانی به دنبال راه فرار از فرانسه است و ...
کتاب ضمن اینکه بیان مصائب نویسندگان و مبارزان ضدفاشیسم در کشوری است که مورد تهاجم نیروهای فاشیستی قرار گرفته است(!!!) به تحلیل وضعیت اجتماعی سیاسی فرانسه در این مقطع میپردازد که از این دو جنبه قابل تأمل است.
این کتاب در فاصلهی ژانویه تا مارس 1941 نوشته شده و از طرف نویسنده به دوستان و همکارن تبعیدیاش از آلمان که پس از شکست فرانسه دست به خودکشی زدند نظیر والتر بنیامین، کارل انیشتین و... تقدیم شده است.
عنوان کتاب برگرفته از اطلاعیهایست که پلیس فرانسه در هنگام بازداشت خارجیان در روزنامهها منتشر نموده است: «جماعت خارجیها که در دو روز اخیر به وسیلهی پلیس هوشیار ما بازداشت شدهاند سمبل خطرناکترین عناصر تبهکار پاریس بودهاند. وازدگان واقعی خاک!» به قول نویسنده همین چند سال پیش بود که ما را شهیدان توحش فاشیستی، پیشآهنگان نبرد برای تمدن، مدافعان آزادی و چه چیزهای دیگری نامیده بودند. روزنامهها و دولتمردان غرب در مورد ما سر و صدا و اعتراض کرده بودند، شاید به خاطر اینکه ندای وجدان خود را خاموش کنند و حالا ما شده بودیم وازدگان خاک.
در صورت تمایل برای مطالعه کامل مطلب به آدرس زیر مراجعه فرمایید:
http://hosseinkarlos.blogsky.com/1395...
کتاب با مسافرت کستلر و دوستش به جنوب فرانسه آغاز میشود. آنها به دنبال جای آرامی میگردند تا در آن مکان، کستلر به نوشتن رمان تازهاش مشغول شود، رمانی که بعدها خواهیم فهمید، همان شاهکارش "ظلمت در نیمروز" است. جای مناسب پیدا میشود اما اتفاقات سرنوشتساز به سرعت از پی هم میآیند؛ شوروی و آلمان به توافق مهمی میرسند (مولوتوف – ریبنتروپ) و دست آلمان برای حمله به همسایگانش باز میشود. با حملهی آلمان به لهستان، فرانسه و انگلستان به آلمان اعلام جنگ نمودند و در این شرایط کستلر و دوستش به پاریس برمیگردند. در پاریس پلیس خارجیان را احضار و بازداشت میکند و این قضیه شامل کستلر هم میشود. او که مدتی را در زندانهای اسپانیا (فرانکو) زیر حکم اعدام گذرانده است در اینجا نیز طعم زندان و اردوگاه کار اجباری را میچشد. او پس از سه ماه آزاد میشود اما با نزدیک شدن نیروهای آلمانی به دنبال راه فرار از فرانسه است و ...
کتاب ضمن اینکه بیان مصائب نویسندگان و مبارزان ضدفاشیسم در کشوری است که مورد تهاجم نیروهای فاشیستی قرار گرفته است(!!!) به تحلیل وضعیت اجتماعی سیاسی فرانسه در این مقطع میپردازد که از این دو جنبه قابل تأمل است.
این کتاب در فاصلهی ژانویه تا مارس 1941 نوشته شده و از طرف نویسنده به دوستان و همکارن تبعیدیاش از آلمان که پس از شکست فرانسه دست به خودکشی زدند نظیر والتر بنیامین، کارل انیشتین و... تقدیم شده است.
عنوان کتاب برگرفته از اطلاعیهایست که پلیس فرانسه در هنگام بازداشت خارجیان در روزنامهها منتشر نموده است: «جماعت خارجیها که در دو روز اخیر به وسیلهی پلیس هوشیار ما بازداشت شدهاند سمبل خطرناکترین عناصر تبهکار پاریس بودهاند. وازدگان واقعی خاک!» به قول نویسنده همین چند سال پیش بود که ما را شهیدان توحش فاشیستی، پیشآهنگان نبرد برای تمدن، مدافعان آزادی و چه چیزهای دیگری نامیده بودند. روزنامهها و دولتمردان غرب در مورد ما سر و صدا و اعتراض کرده بودند، شاید به خاطر اینکه ندای وجدان خود را خاموش کنند و حالا ما شده بودیم وازدگان خاک.
در صورت تمایل برای مطالعه کامل مطلب به آدرس زیر مراجعه فرمایید:
http://hosseinkarlos.blogsky.com/1395...
July 8, 2024
Intellectual honesty is a virtue that is not widespread. Arthur Koestler possesses it. He just cannot fool himself and that is why he denounced Stalinism as having betrayed the communist ideals early, much earlier than many many other intellectuals. It didn’t save him from internment in France when WWII broke out, where the government preferred to lock the anti-fascists up instead of allowing them to fight against the common enemy…
Scum of the Earth is Koestler’s lucid and horrifying report of his adventures in France, written in 1941 when safe in Great Britain, unawares of how the war would end (and of the unimaginable holocaust).
There is too much in the text to discuss here but one of the experiences that struck Koestler, and me, is the irrational, conspiracy type of opinions of many people that he encounters, mostly gentle, nice people that he became friends with. The parallel with the covid crisis is apparent. Included in this are the opinions of the Dominican whose beliefs Koestler considers as irrealistic as those of others. The author concludes: "Perhaps the deepest cause of Socialists' failure that they tried to conquer the world by reason. Perhaps Hitler's genius is not demagogy, not lying, but the fundamentally irrational approach to the masses, the appeal to the pre-logical, totemistic mentality. (Jung's archetypes)."
Scum of the Earth is Koestler’s lucid and horrifying report of his adventures in France, written in 1941 when safe in Great Britain, unawares of how the war would end (and of the unimaginable holocaust).
There is too much in the text to discuss here but one of the experiences that struck Koestler, and me, is the irrational, conspiracy type of opinions of many people that he encounters, mostly gentle, nice people that he became friends with. The parallel with the covid crisis is apparent. Included in this are the opinions of the Dominican whose beliefs Koestler considers as irrealistic as those of others. The author concludes: "Perhaps the deepest cause of Socialists' failure that they tried to conquer the world by reason. Perhaps Hitler's genius is not demagogy, not lying, but the fundamentally irrational approach to the masses, the appeal to the pre-logical, totemistic mentality. (Jung's archetypes)."
March 23, 2016
Koestler describes his life in pre WWII France, his arrest and imprisonment in Le Vernet Concentration Camp just prior to the German invasion of France, his release and escape from France and the many people he meets along the way.
The scum of the earth were the liberal free thinkers. Communists and socialist exiles who were scooped up by the pro-Vichy fascists and sent to concentration camps were most were later taken by the Gestapo. The book’s strength is in his observations about the Spanish war and conflicts between political systems that occurred during the 20s and 30s.
This book is so much better than any other on this period and why France was a failed State in 1939 and the French race had degenerated because of laziness, selfishness, alcoholism and lack of national identity.
The scum of the earth were the liberal free thinkers. Communists and socialist exiles who were scooped up by the pro-Vichy fascists and sent to concentration camps were most were later taken by the Gestapo. The book’s strength is in his observations about the Spanish war and conflicts between political systems that occurred during the 20s and 30s.
This book is so much better than any other on this period and why France was a failed State in 1939 and the French race had degenerated because of laziness, selfishness, alcoholism and lack of national identity.
January 9, 2022
“If a nation is a body, the working classes are its muscles and sinews. By cutting them, the body became paralysed—a helpless, bleeding prey to be stamped on by the boots of the goose-stepping conqueror.”
October 18, 2018
What a book... I could not stop reading, although daily commitments forced extraction out of this account of an unforgettable, and unforgiveable, "true" story. I do quote truth, as this is the story of the author, by the author: Commentators often confirm facts and analysis in the story, with exceptions.
I applaud the writting skills, the ability to sprinkle irony all over the pages, and the courage. Reading is smooth, except two chapters introduced as almost verbatim copy of notes. The shape of these two chapters is understandable (the author does not want to live again these times), but it is harder to read and prone to errors of interpretation (a few times I am not sure what the author actually means).
Nonetheless a great book, and a great lesson.
I applaud the writting skills, the ability to sprinkle irony all over the pages, and the courage. Reading is smooth, except two chapters introduced as almost verbatim copy of notes. The shape of these two chapters is understandable (the author does not want to live again these times), but it is harder to read and prone to errors of interpretation (a few times I am not sure what the author actually means).
Nonetheless a great book, and a great lesson.
June 25, 2017
This is a very interesting book about a Hungarian writer living in France when WWII begins. His account of his maltreatment as a foreigner is enlightening. It was difficult some times to follow all the many political factions and movements going on at that time. The book was written just after his escape from France while the war was still going on, and the timing brings a great sense of immediacy to the story.
Strangely, although I have been trying to avoid recently written books on WWII because I am burnt out on that topic, I have found that books written by people who were there still attract me.
Strangely, although I have been trying to avoid recently written books on WWII because I am burnt out on that topic, I have found that books written by people who were there still attract me.
November 9, 2025
absolut geniales Buch um aus der Innenperspektive zu lesen und zu "fühlen" wie es war damals 1940 in Frankreich vor und nach dem deutschen Überfall auf das Land. Mit unbezähmbar humanistischer Perspektive verfasst schaut der Autor nicht nur auf die große Politik, sondern auch die kleinen Entscheidungen die Menschenleben retten können. So werden auch die Auswirkungen des Stalinismus auf den französischen oder vielmehr europäischen Antifaschismus erfahrbar. gut waren sie nicht.
November 19, 2018
This is one of those books that documents a time in history when most documents were destroyed or lost. The author was able to write in detail about the first year of the Nazi occupation in France. He was arrested September 1939 and goes through an amazing journey before he is finally able to escape to England later in 1940. The whole saga is a real-life version of Kafka's The Trial. He is never told why he is arrested and he gets sent from place to place and no one can figure out what to do with him but no one will give him permission to leave. It's mind-boggling. Fortunately, he is creative and has many friends and figures out a way to escape, unlike many others.
He reveals the ways in which many of the French people helped the Nazis and treated all foreigners as "scum of the earth". I had always assumed that the French resisted the Nazis, but that was not evident in his experience, though there were some exceptions among the people who helped him escape. He cogently describes reasons for the French people's attitudes, and many of them reminded me of Trump supporters.
This book is quite relevant for our current time, and I highly recommend it to see what can and might happen here if we don't prevent it.
He reveals the ways in which many of the French people helped the Nazis and treated all foreigners as "scum of the earth". I had always assumed that the French resisted the Nazis, but that was not evident in his experience, though there were some exceptions among the people who helped him escape. He cogently describes reasons for the French people's attitudes, and many of them reminded me of Trump supporters.
This book is quite relevant for our current time, and I highly recommend it to see what can and might happen here if we don't prevent it.
December 8, 2018
Tells the very personal and bitter experiences of Koestler, interned as an ‘undesirable’ in the lead up to the fall of France in WWII (as he writes, regarding the actions of the British and French governments ‘anti fascists were obviously a great nuisance in a war against fascism’). This follows his experiences from internment to his eventual escape to Britain, and shows the utterly preposterous situations that he found himself in, as a result of mind blowing bureaucracy and the fact that the French government seemed more concerned at points at the threat of a communist revolution than it did of German invasion. Of course the story is a tragic one (many of his contemporaries committed suicide rather than risk being handed over to the Germans and as it was written in 1941-42, Koestler is still unaware of the fate of those that he left behind in detention) but there is also plenty of humour even if this is drenched in cynicism rather than light heartedness.
I don’t know enough about this period to judge whether his views about the moral collapse of France in the run up to the German invasion are fair or not, but this feels like an important book with a different, and, in my experience, not often discussed perspective.
I don’t know enough about this period to judge whether his views about the moral collapse of France in the run up to the German invasion are fair or not, but this feels like an important book with a different, and, in my experience, not often discussed perspective.
February 22, 2018
This is from a letter I wrote to my grandma Rawn in August 1997:
"I'm reading a book right now called 'Scum of the Earth', written by Arthur Koestler. He was a Hungarian, former Communist, turned anti-Fascist journalist and author. This book is about his internment in France during the second world war, and how he escaped to England just days before France turned all their anti-Fascist prisoners over to the Gestapo. It's very interesting - he's a very good writer and he's very good at making people's ways seem ridiculous, whatever their beliefs."
"I'm reading a book right now called 'Scum of the Earth', written by Arthur Koestler. He was a Hungarian, former Communist, turned anti-Fascist journalist and author. This book is about his internment in France during the second world war, and how he escaped to England just days before France turned all their anti-Fascist prisoners over to the Gestapo. It's very interesting - he's a very good writer and he's very good at making people's ways seem ridiculous, whatever their beliefs."
May 28, 2024
هیچ میدانستید به غیر از آلمان، بقیه کشورهای اروپایی هم اردوگاه کار اجباری داشتند و اتفاقا آنها هم بسیاری از یهودیها را در آنها میانداختند؟ این کتاب را بخوانید تا با نوع فرانسویاش آشنا شوید. (و یا برای مدل انگلیسیاش اینجا را بخوانید)
خودبرتربینی نویسنده در جای جای کتاب موج میزند با این وجود او یک وقایعنگاری خواندنی تحویل خواننده داده است.
خودبرتربینی نویسنده در جای جای کتاب موج میزند با این وجود او یک وقایعنگاری خواندنی تحویل خواننده داده است.
May 11, 2014
Like so so many books I have recently encountered reflecting on lives lived in previous times of social upheaval and conflict, Koestler's autobiographical window into the lives of the undesirable, the outcasts of Europe before the fall of France in 1940, catches glimpses of the fault lines in man's humanity that appear across the ages; glimpses of 1940 France seen today in our land.
December 28, 2017
Xenophobia - "...one must distinguish clearly between the popular origin of the mass psychosis, with its deep, mainly unconscious roots, and its conscious exploitation for political purposes. Hatred of foreigners, as such, seems to be the oldest collective feeling of mankind..." We've made no progress since 1941.
"In fighting the Communists, one is always embarrassed by one's allies."
"In fighting the Communists, one is always embarrassed by one's allies."
December 23, 2014
I loved Darkness at Noon by Koestler but this book felt like I was swinging a 16 pound sledge hammer just to get from one page to the next. It's set in WW2 so that's the only positive I give this book.
July 19, 2018
Koestler's Scum of the Earth reminds of of Orwell's political writing at its best ("Shooting an Elephant"). A gripping memoir and a scathing critique of France in the run-up to that country's prostration before Hitler.
March 8, 2024
A great book, albeit rather dated by the passage of time.
It was written by the author after he had escaped from France following the French surrender to Germany in 1940. It follows his adventures from when the war broke out and he - as an Hungarian was working in France with a British girlfriend - decided to stay where he was. After bein ginterred as a foreign national for a few weeks, then released again he found he could not get to the UK as his pre-war visa had been automatically revoked on the outbreak of war. When France fell he found himself on a wanted list issued by the Germans. Having heard that others on the list had been arrested by French police and sent to Germany he went on the run.
Great adventure tale. But what I found fascinating was his account of France in the face of the German Blitzkrieg. The way that army officers walked away from the units rather than fight, how civic authorities simply stopped working, how civilians fled, collapsed into apathy or committed suicide. Amazing! I mean being hit by a Blitzkrieg can't have been much fun, but the reaction the author describes is of a society on the brink of collapse anyway.
It was written by the author after he had escaped from France following the French surrender to Germany in 1940. It follows his adventures from when the war broke out and he - as an Hungarian was working in France with a British girlfriend - decided to stay where he was. After bein ginterred as a foreign national for a few weeks, then released again he found he could not get to the UK as his pre-war visa had been automatically revoked on the outbreak of war. When France fell he found himself on a wanted list issued by the Germans. Having heard that others on the list had been arrested by French police and sent to Germany he went on the run.
Great adventure tale. But what I found fascinating was his account of France in the face of the German Blitzkrieg. The way that army officers walked away from the units rather than fight, how civic authorities simply stopped working, how civilians fled, collapsed into apathy or committed suicide. Amazing! I mean being hit by a Blitzkrieg can't have been much fun, but the reaction the author describes is of a society on the brink of collapse anyway.
September 4, 2020
Brilliant memoir of a dark year in France. Stupidity in high places and apathy everywhere else sent Koestler to the edge of Hell. A testament to the self-destructive French national pulse of the first half of the 20th century. A brilliant look at the failure of the schemes of men in high places with no principles.
March 2, 2023
"Que l'humanité se débrouille sans moi" [Let humanity get along without me] (Koestler, Scum of the Earth)
https://archive.org/details/scumofear... (Full text of book)
"On May 10, 1940, by going on the offensive, the Germans put an end to the "phony war" begun in September 1939 and to this period when, without going to war, France had nevertheless entered the conflict for more than eight months. The French Military High Command had opted until then for a defensive strategy: the “lightning war” of the Wehrmacht demonstrated the failure of this choice. On May 15, the front was broken through and, after the attacks on the Somme (June 7) and on the Aisne (June 10), the French defeat was consummated. On June 10, the government leaves, where the German troops made their entry on the 14th. A week later, they were in Bordeaux. The disaster is immense. There are more than 90,000 French soldiers who died in combat, 200,000 wounded and 1,850,000 prisoners. At least 8 million people, panicked, are on the roads of an exodus which reflects both "the excess of an indescribable event in its totality", "the fragility of the social framework and the seriousness of the crisis of the nation." ( Translated quote from: https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violen...)
"Scum of the Earth" is Koestler's account of France's descent into Vichy rule just prior to and during the Nazi invasion. The book includes Koestler's typically acute observations of the people he encountered on the ground, as well as his experiences trying to obtain or retain his freedom from incarceration in a French concentration camp before the invasion. Although it is not widely discussed, the French far right had already begun proactively arresting and interning people of interest to the Nazis prior to the actual invasion. Koestler himself was held at a camp in the Pyrenees (Le Vernet) for several months with other undesirable aliens, mostly immigrants, revolutionaries, and intellectuals; in short, those whom the French press had dubbed the "Scum of the Earth."
At the beginning of the book, Koestler is relaxing with the English sculptor Daphne Hardy on the French Mediterranean as he edits the final manuscript of his now-classic work on totalitarianism, "Darkness at Noon." Hardy translated the work into English and eventually smuggled it out of France when circumstances related to the war forced her to separate from Koestler near Bordeaux. (Note: there is conflicting evidence regarding the language in which "Scum of the Earth" was written. It may not be particularly relevant, but it's worth considering whether Koestler credited Hardy for her work. Koestler was notorious for his treatment of women and was either a serial rapist or seducer, depending on whom you ask. Hardy remained friends with Koestler until his infamous end, when he and his much younger wife committed suicide together in London.
This document is not widely read today, and it often bristles as Koestler recounts his unfair treatment by the French administrations. It is important to keep in mind that Koestler, as a well known anti-fascist Jew was not actually guilty of anything prior to the Nazis invading. After the successful invasion, of course, he was exactly guilty and faced at best a slow death in a Nazi gulag. The fact that segments of the French administration had rounded up the 'Scum' as a housewarming gift for the incoming Nazi administration prior even to their victory is where the bulk of Koestler's anger settles. Even as it provides a highly readable account of this chaotic period in France readers might consider reserving some patience and sympathy for the war-weary French population. However, no such patience need be extended to the Vichy regime.
Notes:
With the German's Polish campaign well under way, on August 30th 1939 The journal Eclaireur du L'Est advocated for peace at any price and that there was nothing in the German demands that couldn’t be settled with peaceful negotiation. This is the start of K's bitter thesis that a majority of the French were ready to capitulate before the Germans even appeared on their borders.
Hardy and K. eventually had to make their way back to Paris where their primary residence was to prepare for the war and so that K could turn himself in as 'undesirable' alien. Somewhere in the Loire Valley after Lyon they stopped and had a nice lunch with a bottle of Pouilly Fumé, which K recounted, 'was a wine that makes you happy and wise like no other wine in the world." Being a bore I will certainly bring this up every time I uncork a bottle of Pouilly going forward.
The last 50 miles to Paris they saw a cauchemar of traffic streaming out from Paris. The dominant fear was that the Germans would bomb or more likely gas Paris before the declaration of war. When K handed his building's Guardian (basically the Paris version of a very complicated concierge that still exists today) a bottle of the forementioned Pouilly she grew suddenly loyal and conspiratorial and alerted him that the police had come looking for him the days before. Here I learned that since the times of Joseph Fouché (Ministre de La Police dead1820) that all Parisian guardians must collaborate with the police in their investigations. My surly equal opportunity Guardian, when she is not misplacing my mail, likely collaborates with both the local pimps and police.
At this time something like the Terror's infamous "Loi de Suspects" returns to France. You can read about the initiation and evolution of this barbarism in the document here: https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violen...
Translated excerpt: "October 1940: Vichy adopts the status of Jews, with a definition based on “race”. The next day, another law allows the internment in “special camps” or in “forced residence” of foreign nationals of the Jewish race. For the rest, in terms of administrative internment, Vichy also relied on the decree-laws of the Third Republic (those of November 12, 1938 and November 18, 1939 in particular; D. Peschanski, 2004). “This real law of suspects is at the heart of the repression and persecution system of the French State in the southern zone” (D. Peschanski, 2006, in Historical Dictionary of the Resistance, p. 25)."
"The apocalypse as a family picnic". K often talks of the exodus of nearly 9 million French from the north of the country to the south. These migrants are crammed on the roads in any type of transport that they can find: Pigalle tourist buses, chicken coops or oil trucks. Everyone amazes at the easily identified Parisians whose women prioritized and sloppily strapped their feathered mattresses to the top of their cars. Naked to the elements the mattresses and many other of their goods were often ruined by rain. Eventually everyone runs out of petrol and distributes their conveys into large tents on the side of the road for a prolonged picnic supplied with vast quantities of food and especially wine.
Pétain actually said on the radio that 'all of the disasters of France were due to the people's love of pleasure'. This Vichy concept is explored in a long rant at the end of the book which is interesting but wildly speculative and purely hateful.
Koestler runs into Walter Benjamin in Marseille who splits his lot of 62 morphine pills with him so that he may also choose suicide over Nazi maltreatment. This of course was quite common at the time, see the famous forward to this book on that. Later, of course, Benjamin despairing that he will be returned to France at the Spanish border town of Portbou takes his allotment of 31 and dies. Koestler, later takes his 31 in Lisbon and survives. We know that Benjamin was 55 with chronic heart problems and that Koestler was if anything a highly robust sex fiend, still it seems unlikely that he took his entire dose. Koestler was eventually successfully extracted to London. Today there is a beautiful memorial overlooking the ocean in Portbou for Benjamin devotees that I highly recommend. You can get there via a long trek by foot or bike from France.
https://archive.org/details/scumofear... (Full text of book)
"On May 10, 1940, by going on the offensive, the Germans put an end to the "phony war" begun in September 1939 and to this period when, without going to war, France had nevertheless entered the conflict for more than eight months. The French Military High Command had opted until then for a defensive strategy: the “lightning war” of the Wehrmacht demonstrated the failure of this choice. On May 15, the front was broken through and, after the attacks on the Somme (June 7) and on the Aisne (June 10), the French defeat was consummated. On June 10, the government leaves, where the German troops made their entry on the 14th. A week later, they were in Bordeaux. The disaster is immense. There are more than 90,000 French soldiers who died in combat, 200,000 wounded and 1,850,000 prisoners. At least 8 million people, panicked, are on the roads of an exodus which reflects both "the excess of an indescribable event in its totality", "the fragility of the social framework and the seriousness of the crisis of the nation." ( Translated quote from: https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violen...)
"Scum of the Earth" is Koestler's account of France's descent into Vichy rule just prior to and during the Nazi invasion. The book includes Koestler's typically acute observations of the people he encountered on the ground, as well as his experiences trying to obtain or retain his freedom from incarceration in a French concentration camp before the invasion. Although it is not widely discussed, the French far right had already begun proactively arresting and interning people of interest to the Nazis prior to the actual invasion. Koestler himself was held at a camp in the Pyrenees (Le Vernet) for several months with other undesirable aliens, mostly immigrants, revolutionaries, and intellectuals; in short, those whom the French press had dubbed the "Scum of the Earth."
At the beginning of the book, Koestler is relaxing with the English sculptor Daphne Hardy on the French Mediterranean as he edits the final manuscript of his now-classic work on totalitarianism, "Darkness at Noon." Hardy translated the work into English and eventually smuggled it out of France when circumstances related to the war forced her to separate from Koestler near Bordeaux. (Note: there is conflicting evidence regarding the language in which "Scum of the Earth" was written. It may not be particularly relevant, but it's worth considering whether Koestler credited Hardy for her work. Koestler was notorious for his treatment of women and was either a serial rapist or seducer, depending on whom you ask. Hardy remained friends with Koestler until his infamous end, when he and his much younger wife committed suicide together in London.
This document is not widely read today, and it often bristles as Koestler recounts his unfair treatment by the French administrations. It is important to keep in mind that Koestler, as a well known anti-fascist Jew was not actually guilty of anything prior to the Nazis invading. After the successful invasion, of course, he was exactly guilty and faced at best a slow death in a Nazi gulag. The fact that segments of the French administration had rounded up the 'Scum' as a housewarming gift for the incoming Nazi administration prior even to their victory is where the bulk of Koestler's anger settles. Even as it provides a highly readable account of this chaotic period in France readers might consider reserving some patience and sympathy for the war-weary French population. However, no such patience need be extended to the Vichy regime.
Notes:
With the German's Polish campaign well under way, on August 30th 1939 The journal Eclaireur du L'Est advocated for peace at any price and that there was nothing in the German demands that couldn’t be settled with peaceful negotiation. This is the start of K's bitter thesis that a majority of the French were ready to capitulate before the Germans even appeared on their borders.
Hardy and K. eventually had to make their way back to Paris where their primary residence was to prepare for the war and so that K could turn himself in as 'undesirable' alien. Somewhere in the Loire Valley after Lyon they stopped and had a nice lunch with a bottle of Pouilly Fumé, which K recounted, 'was a wine that makes you happy and wise like no other wine in the world." Being a bore I will certainly bring this up every time I uncork a bottle of Pouilly going forward.
The last 50 miles to Paris they saw a cauchemar of traffic streaming out from Paris. The dominant fear was that the Germans would bomb or more likely gas Paris before the declaration of war. When K handed his building's Guardian (basically the Paris version of a very complicated concierge that still exists today) a bottle of the forementioned Pouilly she grew suddenly loyal and conspiratorial and alerted him that the police had come looking for him the days before. Here I learned that since the times of Joseph Fouché (Ministre de La Police dead1820) that all Parisian guardians must collaborate with the police in their investigations. My surly equal opportunity Guardian, when she is not misplacing my mail, likely collaborates with both the local pimps and police.
At this time something like the Terror's infamous "Loi de Suspects" returns to France. You can read about the initiation and evolution of this barbarism in the document here: https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violen...
Translated excerpt: "October 1940: Vichy adopts the status of Jews, with a definition based on “race”. The next day, another law allows the internment in “special camps” or in “forced residence” of foreign nationals of the Jewish race. For the rest, in terms of administrative internment, Vichy also relied on the decree-laws of the Third Republic (those of November 12, 1938 and November 18, 1939 in particular; D. Peschanski, 2004). “This real law of suspects is at the heart of the repression and persecution system of the French State in the southern zone” (D. Peschanski, 2006, in Historical Dictionary of the Resistance, p. 25)."
"The apocalypse as a family picnic". K often talks of the exodus of nearly 9 million French from the north of the country to the south. These migrants are crammed on the roads in any type of transport that they can find: Pigalle tourist buses, chicken coops or oil trucks. Everyone amazes at the easily identified Parisians whose women prioritized and sloppily strapped their feathered mattresses to the top of their cars. Naked to the elements the mattresses and many other of their goods were often ruined by rain. Eventually everyone runs out of petrol and distributes their conveys into large tents on the side of the road for a prolonged picnic supplied with vast quantities of food and especially wine.
Pétain actually said on the radio that 'all of the disasters of France were due to the people's love of pleasure'. This Vichy concept is explored in a long rant at the end of the book which is interesting but wildly speculative and purely hateful.
Koestler runs into Walter Benjamin in Marseille who splits his lot of 62 morphine pills with him so that he may also choose suicide over Nazi maltreatment. This of course was quite common at the time, see the famous forward to this book on that. Later, of course, Benjamin despairing that he will be returned to France at the Spanish border town of Portbou takes his allotment of 31 and dies. Koestler, later takes his 31 in Lisbon and survives. We know that Benjamin was 55 with chronic heart problems and that Koestler was if anything a highly robust sex fiend, still it seems unlikely that he took his entire dose. Koestler was eventually successfully extracted to London. Today there is a beautiful memorial overlooking the ocean in Portbou for Benjamin devotees that I highly recommend. You can get there via a long trek by foot or bike from France.
April 7, 2024
Arthur Koestler, periodista, escritor e intelectual húngaro de origen judío, fue mayormente conocido por haber publicado en 1940, “Darkness at Noon” (en España bajo el título, El cero y el infinito). La obra constituía una crítica enconada al totalitarismo estalinista. Precisamente, en una nota del escritor en, “Escoria de la tierra”, libro aquí tratado, escrito por Koestler entre enero y marzo de 1941, tras haber escapado de la Francia ocupada a Inglaterra, escribe, “Había estado afiliado siete años al Partido Comunista, del que me fui asqueado en 1938, pero aún mantenía ciertas ilusiones sobre la Rusia soviética y «la solidaridad internacional de las clases obreras como mejor garantía para la paz», que se reflejan a lo largo del libro”. En verdad, era una esperanza latente en el autor, la ayuda soviética, mientras sucedían los tristes acontecimientos que provocarían la ocupación de Francia.
En español, se editó únicamente en Argentina, tal como nos cuenta Sergio Campos Cacho en el epílogo del libro, “Las únicas ediciones en español, hasta hoy, se hicieron en Argentina: una primera de 1943 y una segunda de 1951”. En España, por tanto, en 2023, se ha publicado este valiosísimo testimonio autobiográfico, por vez primera, por la editorial independiente, Ladera Norte.
El libro es extraordinario, no tan sólo por tratarse de un testimonio único de unos sucesos históricos que tambalearon el mundo, sino principalmente por el modo en que nos lo cuenta el autor. Es evidente que Koestler es un gran escritor, y su vena periodística se aprecia en cada línea del libro. Las críticas mordaces son precisas y certeras y el desencanto por el que va atravesando es indudable, aunque no duda en emplear la ironía cuando la situación lo requiere. No hay que olvidar tampoco el momento en el que está escrito, inmediato, en el borrador que escribe en Marsella, y definitivo, antes del ataque alemán a Rusia. Sabiendo este hecho cuando se va a publicar, decide mantener tal cual sus opiniones sobre Rusia, pues no exculpa su pacto de agosto de 1939 con Alemania. Acababa de ser liberado de la prisión de Pentonville y se había alistado en los Pioneer Corps. Aprovechando ese impasse culmina el relato bajo los bombardeos alemanes. La honestidad de Koestler es ejemplar, lo muestra el hecho de su ayuda desinteresada a los compañeros en la adversidad, tal como nos muestra Sergio Campos Cacho en su valioso epílogo.
Crítica completa:
https://queridobartleby.es/arthur-koe...
En español, se editó únicamente en Argentina, tal como nos cuenta Sergio Campos Cacho en el epílogo del libro, “Las únicas ediciones en español, hasta hoy, se hicieron en Argentina: una primera de 1943 y una segunda de 1951”. En España, por tanto, en 2023, se ha publicado este valiosísimo testimonio autobiográfico, por vez primera, por la editorial independiente, Ladera Norte.
El libro es extraordinario, no tan sólo por tratarse de un testimonio único de unos sucesos históricos que tambalearon el mundo, sino principalmente por el modo en que nos lo cuenta el autor. Es evidente que Koestler es un gran escritor, y su vena periodística se aprecia en cada línea del libro. Las críticas mordaces son precisas y certeras y el desencanto por el que va atravesando es indudable, aunque no duda en emplear la ironía cuando la situación lo requiere. No hay que olvidar tampoco el momento en el que está escrito, inmediato, en el borrador que escribe en Marsella, y definitivo, antes del ataque alemán a Rusia. Sabiendo este hecho cuando se va a publicar, decide mantener tal cual sus opiniones sobre Rusia, pues no exculpa su pacto de agosto de 1939 con Alemania. Acababa de ser liberado de la prisión de Pentonville y se había alistado en los Pioneer Corps. Aprovechando ese impasse culmina el relato bajo los bombardeos alemanes. La honestidad de Koestler es ejemplar, lo muestra el hecho de su ayuda desinteresada a los compañeros en la adversidad, tal como nos muestra Sergio Campos Cacho en su valioso epílogo.
Crítica completa:
https://queridobartleby.es/arthur-koe...
December 30, 2018
Anyone wanting to understand why France fell so quickly in 1940 should read this. Ever since I read Darkness at Noon I have wanted to read this but it has taken me a long time to get round to it. Well worth the delay.
December 9, 2017
Hungarian born journalist, writer, sometime communist and anti nazi Arthur Koestler, charts the outbreak of the Second World War through his own experience. Because it was written before the end of WWII, without the benefit of hindsight or retrospection, it has a very different feel to other factual or biographic accounts from the same period. Koestler, along with other anti nazis communists and various persecuted groups from all over Europe, find themselves rounded up and interned by the French. Koestler, only by the most drawn out and unlikeliest of escapes, avoided the inevitable fate of many of these unfortunate prisoners and managed, eventually, to get to Britain. The story gets bogged down in parts with detailed accounts of the chaotic politics of the time and Kafka-like bureaucracy as the French establishment melts down in the months preceding invasion and the desperate confusion before final capitulation. Great if you are an historian of the period; slightly laborious if you are not (in parts). However, this does not detract from the sense of injustice conveyed, the prejudice encountered by these 'undesirables' at the hands of the French and I found myself educated by a writer who skilfully kept me engaged even through the most convoluted intricacies of European Politics.
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