30 Second Bottom Line: Men who now live quiet lives, were part of the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris during WWII. They tell why and how peaceful men committed violent acts.

Story Line: When the Germans defeated France and occupied Paris, two of the goals they had in mind were to rid the city of Jews and to turn it into a playground resort. Unlike the Germans, many of the Jews in Paris came there to escape persecution in places like Poland and/or they wanted more economic opportunities.

This sobering documentary grabs you by the shoulder and makes you pay attention. While it touches on the holocaust, it's about the militant Jewish side of that story. The path from freedom to the death camps is so short that it's almost as incomprehensible as passenger planes flying into the World Trade Center and the buildings falling down an hour later. After September 11, 2001, the term terrorist takes on a new meaning to Americans and the world at large.

First the Jews were identified, much as in a census-very civilized and on the surface normal and rational. Then they are assembled in gymnasiums and other buildings, almost like a town meeting to which only they were invited. After simply being put on trains, the Jews were taken to camps, whose key purpose was the extinguishment of life-death camps. In the United States, during WWII, the government sent Japanese citizens to internment camps here. This is not to imply that internment camps were okay but to establish that there is a difference in how to do the wrong thing.

In 1943, Missak Manouchian, a militant immigrant Armenian leader in the French Resistance was arrested and later executed along with 22 other partisans. These were the ones focused on from a group of approximately 200 members who were eventually rounded up and executed. What was special about the 22 was that they were immigrant Jews with non-French names. This made them perfect to put on a poster for propaganda purposes.

The Germans thought that Jews were the result of the interbreeding of "Aryans, Mongrels and Negroes" and they deserved to be treated as something other than human. The poster denounced the immigrants as "Jewish, Armenian and other stateless terrorists." This helped to further separate them, for the official record, from the true (French-born) heroes of the Resistance (sarcasm intended but this is not meant to demean the French resistance fighters). Although I don't pretend to be an expert on the meaning of the term terrorist, I think that many would agree that when another country invades you and you strike back, your actions are those of a patriot and not a war criminal.

Many of the men interviewed for Terrorists in Retirement were in their 60's and 70's when the movie was made. Most lived in the 11th arrondissement in eastern Paris and worked as tailors. They were refugees from Eastern and Central Europe who had fled Nazi oppression to settle in Paris in the late 1930's and early 1940's. As they were at the end of the line, they were receptive to recruitment by the French communists to take the most risky assignments.

Interviews were conducted while some of the men were working at their sewing machines and in some cases they did mini recreations of their acts to kill Germans. They showed how to make a pipe bomb. They related how one German was shot in the back and head as he walked onto the subway. Another was shot as he entered his automobile and more were killed as they followed the routine of walking down the street. Once the target began to walk from a given point, a signal was given by opening an umbrella, which alerted the man with the bomb to place it in a trash can, timed to go off when the Germans were passing within the kill zone.

Resistance fighters had a simple organization. They always had a military man, a technical person (bomb making for example) and intelligence. Some men at times found it difficult or impossible to kill a person who had done nothing to them. Over time, they learned to get over that fact.

Tell Me More About It: Hatred is needed more than fear to encourage one to be a resistance fighter or terrorist. Today, the US suffers from terrorism from external and internal sources. Let's not forget that the man who brought down the federal building in Oklahoma City was not a Muslim, not a foreigner and not a person who hated all Americans. He just hated some Americans and had his own misplaced sense of how justice should be served. Some Americans will take more comfort in Muslim terrorists because they are (presumably) easier to identify, become afraid of and take action against. The Oklahoma terrorist (I refuse to print his name, as he does not deserve to be remembered that well) did not result in the stereotyping of all white American males. I hope that the snakes who perpetrated the attack on September 11, 2001, don't come to represent all Muslims, in the US and abroad.

Why do people hate? Sometimes there are good reasons. The Jews in the French resistance often had many, if not all, of their family wiped out by the Germans and they sought revenge. I hope neither my relatives nor I ever know if those reasons to hate are correct. Surely, something had to be done to stop the madness, just like the US can't let the acts of September 11, 2001 go unpunished.

Americans should not be hated because America is an open country, in spite of its many faults both in the past and present day, that allows a difference of opinions to flourish in too many ways to count. Like other countries (e.g., Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, France and England), not being poor is not a sin. Should the US attack Japan because they have been so successful in selling cars or the Chinese for the many jobs they have taken from Americans? To the extent that other countries import our culture, be it blue jeans or fast food hamburgers and pizza, they have to approve it, not us. When an American community does not allow a Wal Mart store to be built, the folks from Arkansas don't come and bomb them.

Getting back to WWII and the Jews in the French Resistance, with the end of the war in sight, the Communists were competing with de Gaulle's Free French for a leading role in the movement. There is a strong suggestion that the immigrant terrorists were sacrificed on the altar of French nationalism. Historian Philippe Ganier-Raymond said, "It would have been exceedingly embarrassing for the French Communist Party to have to reveal that their Resistance heroes were not grassroots Frenchmen but people with names like Mitzflicker, Weissberg, and Kojitski."

War and acts of violence against people you don't know raise many more questions that I'm not prepared to answer. However, these acts should make us all think about fundamental questions regarding what are human rights and what things are appropriate to do to others when they don't agree with you.