Many European Nations Don\'t Confront Past Atrocities

Can Germany ever close the chapters of the Second World War? Over the past 60 years, successive German governments have been compensating victims of the Holocaust.

In my latest Letter From Europe, I write about the battle over how to pay pensions to Holocaust survivors who volunteered to work in the ghettos and contributed to the government pension plan.

But compensating Holocaust victims is not only about money. It is also about dealing with the past and ensuring that Jews living in today's Germany can feel safe and believe that it is their home.

The Holocaust dwarfs the tragedies of history. Yet other European governments are also haunted by the past, often finding it extremely difficult to apologize for cruelties during war or occupation, despite the passage of time.

When François Hollande, the French president, made an official two-day visit to Algeria last month, Algerians were hoping that he would apologize for the way French atrocities during an effort to brutally crush Algeria's war of independence in 1961.

Mr. Hollande had already gone further than his predecessors when last October, he acknowledged the injustice done to Algerians during colonial rule. In particular, he cited the killing of up to 250 Algerian protestors in the streets of Paris on October 17, 1961. ‘‘Fifty-one years after this tragedy, I pay tribute to the memory of the victims,'' Mr. Hollande said.

But in Algeria, Mr. Hollande fell short of making an apology.

“I want to define with Algeria a strategic partnership on an equal-to-equal basis. I am not here to repent or apologize, I am here to tell the truth,'' he said after meeting the Algerian President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Maybe, said analysts, an apology will be made once those French po liticians who were in power at the time are no longer alive.

Dealing with the past has also proved extremely difficult for the countries of the former Yugoslavia that were plunged into civil war just twenty years ago. The media in Serbia is still reluctant to write about Serb atrocities in Bosnia and in Kosovo. Indeed, across this part of Europe, there is a prevailing sense of victimhood. Analysts said this makes it difficult for governments to talk to each other about the past and normalize their relations.

Yet remarkably, after many decades of distrust and enmity, Poland and Russia are slowly dealing with the past.

In April 2010, President Vladimir Putin visited Katyn, in western Russia where 60 years earlier an estimated 22,000 Poles were killed in April 1940 on Stalin's order.

Mr. Putin was the first Russia leader to make such a gesture and the first to invite a Polish leader to commemorate the event. A Polish-Russian historians' commission has al so been established to delve into the many chapters of their difficult relationship. Perhaps historians in the Balkans could emulate such a commission.

Putin Grants Passport to Tax-Exile Depardieu

Vladimir V. Putin has stepped into the feud between Gérard Depardieu, the French actor and would-be tax exile, and France's tax-the-rich Socialist government.

In a one line statement from the Kremlin on Thursday, it was revealed the Russian president had granted citizenship to the man who once played “mad monk” Grigory Rasputin in one of his many films.

As David M. Herszenhorn reports from Moscow a public feud between Mr. Depardieu and French officials has grown nastier, with Mr. Depardieu complaining of France's high tax rates on the wealthy and French politicians and commentators lambasting him for renouncing his French citizenship and registering as a resident of Néchin in Belgium, which has lower taxes.

A spokesman for Mr. Putin, Dmitri Peskov, said that Mr. Depardieu had recently applied for citizenship, and that it was granted in honor of his cultural achievements.

David writes:

It seemed likely, however, that Mr. Putin also saw a poetic opportunity in the chance for Russia, long known for losing wealthy citizens to the West, to claim one in return - and not just anyone, but a macho actor instantly recognizable by a giant nose that seems made for sniffing Bordeaux by the barrel.

In a published cri de coeur last month, the actor hit back at officials who had condemned him as “pathetic” for announcing he was quitting France and moving to Belgium after the government threatened to impose a top tax rate of 75 percent.

A subsequent decision by France's Constitutional Council to reverse the measure failed to change his mind.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the French government spokeswoman, had no direct comment on the latest development, saying Mr. Putin's offer “is an exclusive prerogative of the Russian chief of state.”

We asked Rendezvous readers last month if they would leave home to escape taxes. Well, now's your chance to tell us if you would still leave, if it meant moving to Russia.

Skeptics See Hidden Agendas in Latest Anglo-Argentine Spat

LONDON â€" Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is on the offensive again over Britain's refusal to hand over the Falkland Islands, the windswept South Atlantic archipelago that Argentines know as Las Malvinas.

In a new diplomatic twist, she has chosen to make her latest “give us back our islands” appeal via a paid advertisement in British newspapers.

Marking the 180th anniversary of the date on which she says Argentina was forcibly stripped of the islands in a “blatant exercise of 19th-century colonialism,” Ms. Fernández de Kirchner urged Britain to negotiate the return of the disputed territory.

In an open letter on Thursday to David Cameron, the British prime minister, she said the Malvinas issue was a cause embraced by “the vast majority of peoples around the world that reject colonialism.”

Even in Argentina, however, s keptics suggested there might be a hidden agenda behind the president's decision to revive the dispute.

Argentina's Urgente24 news Web site suggested the second-term president was seeking to cultivate a positive image ahead of midterm legislative elections this year. Ms. Fernández de Kirchner has suffered a slide in popularity as Argentina battles rising inflation and economic stagnation.

Urgente24 published a range of Twitter postings from Argentines, including some that accused their politicians of pulling the Malvinas issue out of the hat whenever they were in trouble.

Eduardo Antin, an Argentine blogger and a critic of the nationalistic stance of both Buenos Aires and London on the issue, said that in these quiet days, the president's propagandists had decided there was always a benefit in raising it.

To be fair to Ms. Fernández de Kirchner, the British may have proved irksome to her of late.

In December, Mr. Cameron's government renamed a vast swath of British Antarctic Territory, which Argentina claims as its own, as Queen Elizabeth Land in honor of the British monarch.

Argentina responded with a stiff protest note that criticized Britain's “anachronistic imperialist ambitions that hark back to ancient practices.”

That coincided with a message from Mr. Cameron to the 2,800 British citizens who inhabit the islands, urging them to vote in a referendum this year on retaining their links with Britain. He said they would be sending a “definitive” message to the international community about the future of their homeland.

Responding to the Argentine president's open letter on Thursday, a spokesman for the British leader said the people of the Falklands had shown “a clear desire to remain British” and their interests would be protected.

Margaret Thatcher, a previous Conservative prime minister, sent a task force across the Atlantic in 1982 to recapture the Falklands from an Argentine invasion force. She rebuffed a request from her ally and friend, President Ronald Reagan, to spare the Argentines the ignominy of a total surrender, according to recently declassified papers.

The victory was widely seen as crucial to restoring her popularity a t the time.

While some in Argentina were suggesting Ms. Fernández de Kirchner might have a hidden motive, one British poster, the Labour Party town councillor Phil Rackley, pondered on Twitter: