Christian de La Mazière

Christian Clodomir Martial Lamazière (22 August 1922 – 15 February 2006), better known as Christian de La Mazière, was a journalist and member of the Charlemagne Division of the Waffen-SS. He enlisted in the Charlemagne Division shortly before the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, fighting Soviet troops in Pomerania from February to March 1945 before his capture. Afterwards he was put on trial and sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served two. He then worked in public relations and journalism. He is known for discussing his role in the 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity. He wrote a memoir of his war experiences in 1972, The Captive Dreamer, and a second memoir, Le Rêveur blessé (lit. 'The Wounded Dreamer'). Quotes The Captive Dreamer (1972) Quotes from 1974 English edition. I thought I had dismissed my past, but one morning it caught up with me. p. 1 It is precisely when the house is on fire, as I said to myself, and there is a good excuse to flee, that one should defend it all the more energetically. I suppose I acted less because of an ideology than to be true to myself. p. 2 In a broader way, I discovered those those great, simple truths that had escaped me in the kind of magic circle I had shut myself into: that war is hideous, fanatical beliefs murderous, and death the supreme evil. p. 4 I shall never be so embittered as to discourage the faith of those who are twenty years of age. I believe, though, I have earned the right to urge prudence, not as regards the act of commitment itself, but in the choice that leads to it. p. 5 There was also anti-Semitism, a tricky problem. I did not feel then, and have never felt, any racial hatred. To me the Jews were a symbol; to oppose them was to fight against international capitalism. In the closed world in which I moved they represented the forces of evil. p. 31, quoted in Now I can smile at this fervor. But I do not repudiate it. It is, above all it was, a part of my truth. p. 31 Pain was in the order of things and restored the much-scoffed-at-discipline. And it was just such a discipline that I expected from the Waffen SS, founded not on caste or compulsion but, to the contrary, on a kind of internal justice, accepted by each member as a matter of course because it was based on a communal ideal in which all were equal, even the higher ranks in the hierarchy. pp. 31–32, quoted in Prisons, like churches, always escape the bombings. p. 159, quoted in I decided to take a risk, not out of pride, but simply because it was only by a certain frankness that I could keep my self-respect. p. 213, quoted in External links Category:1922 births Category:2006 deaths Category:Authors from France