This intriguing account of dark times in France during WWII focuses on the curious figure of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix – alcoholic, virulent anti-Semite and devoted Catholic anti-Republican. He rose to notoriety as the Commissioner for Jewish Affairs in the Vichy government, in which capacity he was responsible for the deportation of thousands of French Jews to Auschwitz. Darquier’s deplorable antics are countless. He invented a noble ancestry for himself, adding ‘de Pellepoix’ to his name; ignored his daughter, whom he had abandoned in England at three months old; and lived off his brother’s hard-earned pay for eight years.
Although it’s not much discussed in the book, how Callil became acquainted with Darquier’s story adds another layer of interest. Anne Darquier, Louis’s abandoned daughter, was Callil’s psychiatrist in her early twenties, and the two became lifelong friends. Darquier never confided in Callil about her family, and it was only after attending Anne’s funeral and seeing the carving ‘de Pellepoix’ on her tombstone that she put two and two together.
The storytelling is consistently deft, yet the most compelling part of the book is a transcription of an interview that Darquier gave to the magazine L’Express. Strikingly, he would show no remorse and dismissed any proof of his involvement as ‘Jewish propaganda’. The interview starts with a warning: ‘You’ll have to read it more than once.’ This can easily be said of ‘Bad Faith’ in its entirety.
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