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dunno about the discussions about the french collaboration with the nazis, how much that is discussed in france, and if you have certain holidays to remember their victims
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for this, the French have been utter cowards. France woke up at the Liberation as if every frenchman was a proud member of the Resistance. The top heads in the Vichy government have been put to trial and sanctioned, but NONE of the usual daily collabos assumed their past. There was also antisemitism in France in the 30's (like just about everywhere else in Europe, take Poland f.ex.) and since the act of collaborating only consists in trying to get along for the better with the occupying force, eventually giving out the name of one or two jew in one's neighbourhood, it was some very silent, underhand, sneaky business. Nothing to see like actively supporting a party and being a militant - such things you cannot hide. But hardly anybody knew that his neighbour was a collabo... except for the most obvious ones. These guys usually had trouble at the Liberation, their wives and the women that were collaborating with the nazis got their hair shaved so that everybody could recognize them, and other vengeful acts took place. But I am pretty certain that a good half of the most active people seeking revenge on the collabos did it just because they were collabos themselves and they wanted to bury their past ASAP.
Now the young generations speak absolutely freely of the Resistance and the collaboration, just anywhere and with anybody, be it in a bar with unknown folks (which I'd bet that's where it happens the most), and almost everybody is pretty much aware of what really happened, however that was NOT the case with our grandfathers. The taboo was the rule then, and those who talked about it were not saying it outloud. I still learn a lot of things each time I listen to my grandfather talking about the occupation. I have no big problem understanding the fascination a well-disciplined army like the Wehrmacht could have had on some frenchmen. The one of my grandfathers who's dead used to say he was always impressed by their discipline.
However, I was not talking of "freedom of speech" in the sense where it's constrained by the law, but rather of taboos caused by feelings of guilt. My godfather married a german woman who told me once that such discussions were not easy to have among nationals in Germany.
Stupidly enough we do not have any holiday for the victims of the nazism, which is a shame but IMO also a political choice: 80% of the Resistance were communists.