|
|
|
|
Home
|
Welcome to Pierre-van-Paassen.com
Dear Friends of PvP:
After a long absence I return with good wishes for a
not-so-New Year and the hope that we can
again think together about important issues. Today I invite you to
share ideas on a piece I have just written about an event that took
place a couple of weeks ago on the campus of the University of
Victoria. You will find it here, or at the top of the Articles list. Do feel
free to let me know your thoughts about it, and start a discussion.
Cheers, David
|
A note about the flags
These flags represent crucial points in PvP's life, but in the face of the ups and downs of his career I have had to take certain liberties. Some flags, like those of Holland, Canada, and France, represent long years of PvP's residence, whereas those of British Palestine, Nazi Germany, and Switzerland represent at most only a few weeks of PvP's presence in them. The reason they were given equal prominence in the row of flags is that in spite of their much shorter "time-spent-there", they weigh heavily in the impact they had on his life career. The following account should make that clear. An omission: Pierre also reported on events in the Soviet Union and covered the war in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).
The flags in order from left to right:
(1) Holland: PvP was born in 1895 in the ancient fortress town of Gorinchem where he lived until 1911 when he and his younger brother Tom emigrated to Canada.
(2) Canada: under the "Red Ensign" (replaced in 1965 by the "less British" maple leaf), PvP studied,worked, and in the last year of the war served with the Canadian Forces in France. Back in Toronto, he chanced into a job as rookie reporter at the Globe, starting what was to become a long, variously questioned and acclaimed, journalistic career.
(3) U.S.A.: between 1923 and 1925 he was part of the editorial staff of the South's great liberal paper, the Atlanta Constitution where he started a syndicated and widely read column "World's Window". Through his work at the Constitution he became a life-long supporter of Zionism. His increasing fervor for the Jewish cause, with a Christian background, made him of special interest to the Zionist leadership in New York where in 1925 he became a steady visitor.
(4) France: As a result of his New York contacts he was recommended to the prestigious New York Evening World which named him its roving correspondent, stationed in Paris. From there he reported on principal flash-points that threatened the peace of Europe.
(5) British Palestine: In 1926 PvP was there only briefly but he wrote glowingly about the work he had seen in the Jewish rural cooperatives. Those reports, as well as pessimistic ones about the endangered Jewish underclass in Pilsudski's "New Poland", were blacklisted by Louis Marshall, a prominent lawyer and "Jewish leader". Asked by the editors of PvP's paper, the New York Evening World, for his opinion on PvP's articles from Palestine and Poland, he strongly advised against their publication. The articles did not appear, but history showed that PvP had been right on both counts.
(6) Nazi Germany: Though probably only a few weeks in the country, his familiarity with the language and culture enabled him to see and hear with greater acuity than many other journalists. PvP's revealing reports to the Toronto Daily Star led to the paper being banned and to his expulsion from Germany. Those events undoubtedly influenced the direction of his career: the next dozen years made PvP a major voice against Nazism and in support of the hounded Jewish people of Europe.
(7) Switzerland: Though PvP was there only for brief visits, Zurich became an important focus for him. In 1934, as a result of his overt involvement in the politics of the left-oriented Popular Front, he was noted by the surete, France's secret police. In 1935, before he could be arrested on the order of Pierre Laval, the new right-wing Prime Minister, PvP fled with his family to Zurich in Switzerland, where his friend, the left-wing Christian philosopher Leonard Ragaz lectured and issued the radical journal "Neue Wege" (New Paths). Pierre left his family in Zurich and travelled to the United States to earn money by lecturing. Some months later, Laval's government having fallen and with the socialist Leon Blum the new prime minister, PvP and his family were able to return to Paris.
(8) Spain: This is the flag of the short-lived Spanish Republic which in 1936 was attacked by the forces of the insurgent General Franco whose North African army was supported by the air forces of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. On the course of that "Civil" War, as George Orwell contemptuously called it, PvP throws a participant observer's searing light in " L'Infame", the ninth chapter of his famous Days of Our Years. Spain also proved PvP's undoing as a newsman. Based on questionable but widely distributed allegations by Toronto's pro-Franco Catholic Register, of supposedly fraudulent reporting on the part of PvP, the Star's publisher, threatened with a boycott by Catholic subscribers, decided to fire its renowned newsman.
Paradoxically, that blow to his journalistic career opened new opportunities for PvP. In spite of the uncertainties about his future, he managed to produce a remarkable manuscript which, becoming the best-seller Days of Our Years, led to his new career as author of twelve successful books.
In this brief space I had to omit reference to other places where Pierre van Paassen worked as newsman. Thus he reported on what he saw of Stalin's starvation of the Ukrainian peasantry, on the Negus, Abyssinia's emperor and Mussolini's imperialist war against the ancient kingdom, and on the Arab slave trade in Africa.
Here I wanted to provide grist for the PvP mill, in the hope that by creating interest in him you will look for his books in the library. And you cannot do better than to start with Days of Our Years. Good Luck!
February 5, 2006
The question has been raised why a site devoted to Pierre van Paassen
would also address issues occurring now, almost four decades after
his death. We think it is proper and indeed necessary, especially in
matters affecting the fate of the Jewish people, a subject that for
two critical decades was uppermost for him. This website is to give
PvP's spirit a new life so that with his help we may better
illuminate and understand the present. It is urgent, for the clock
seems turned back to events of the early Nazi era. Then Hitler's
rhetoric laid the groundwork for the one used by the president of
Iran. He publicly speaks of "wiping Israel off the map" while,
reminiscent of the Nazis' illegal rearmament program, Iran has
renounced its agreement not to proceed with what almost certainly
will be the production of nuclear bombs. Meanwhile the Western powers
of today dither helplessly as their predecessors did then. Pierre
van Paassen spoke out clearly and forcefully when others were mute.
His spirit and voice are badly needed again.
December 15, 2005
And welcome to the Pierre van Paassen forum!
Can the internet be the medium for finding someone forgotten or lost? Not long ago it was done through the newspaper's 'Personals' column, like: "Rachel, Memphis, Tenn., October 10, 1974, seeks birthmother". In our case the search is not for a missing person, but for the memory of one. We want to revive the legacy of the man who can no longer speak for himself.
Pierre van Paassen's name was once a household word in Canada and the United States. During the 1930s and 1940s this unusual journalist became a spokesman for endangered species, especially Jews. Now, some four decades after his death, his insights and voice are once again needed.
You may ask what can be in it for those who participate here? For the curious reader of the discussions and articles pages, my selections are meant to provide not only food for thought but opportunities for flexing the mind's muscles. And as PvP's biographer I shall do my level best to make participation in this forum interesting and enjoyable for you.
|
|
