Figure 1.--. |
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France is unique among all the countries which experienced the Holocaust. France was the only defeated Allied country whose government actively assisted the NAZIs. After the French surrender. The Vichy authorities actively assisted the NAZIs track down and deport Jews. [Eizenstat] The first action taken against French Jews after the 1940 invasion was the expulsion from Alsace. To my knowlege, this was one of the very few non-lethal expulsions conducted by the NAZIs. Presumably the master plan for killing the Jews had not yet been fully worked out. Another early action involving German Jews was deporting Jews in Western Landen (Baden, the Saar, and the Palatinate), including some of the oldest German Jewish families, in October 1940 to
camps in the French Pyrenees (Gurs, Noé, Récébédou, and Rivesaltes). Gurs was the largest. The death rate was very high because there were not even the most basic facilities. The camps were run by Vichy authorities. The killing of Dutch, Belgian and French Jews began in July 1942 when the death camps in Poland became operational. Vivian Fry, before American entered the War, worked tirelessy in Vichy to build up a rescue network working with the Emergency Resue Committee, a private relief organization. The NAZIs had inserted a "suuender on demand clause" in Article 5 of the Franco German Armistace of 1940. Fry succeeded in resucing more than 1,500 artists, musicians, politicams, scientists, and writers, many but not all Jewish. The Germans make life a nightmare for French Jew, both in Vichy as well as the occupied area. Many French people risked their lives to protect Jews, including French people that were anti-semitic. One French girl recalls a priest who helped save her and her family describe how he disliked Jews, but saving them from the Germans was the "Christian thing" to do. [Cohn] Others assisted the Germans.
Jews first reached France during the Roman era. There has been a ontinuing Jewish presence in France since that time. With the coming of Christianity, the Jewish community went through periods of both toleration and persecution depending on the policies of both the Church and the ruling monarch. The secularization of the French Revolution brought an era of toleration and emancipation. Even so there was a strong anti-Semetic element within France. even into the 20th century. Jews in the 19th and 20th century played a major role in French intelectual and commercial life.
After the erruption of NAZI violence on Kristallnacht (November 1938), the British permitted 10,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jewish children to seek saftey in their country. The French did not open their borders to the children. It is no clear just why. One scholar points out that France had already admitted large numbers of Jewish refugees while Britain had not. The French were also overwealmed with refugees from the Spanish Civil War. [Heim] This may expalin why there was no Kindertransport to France.
The world was shocked when the German Panzers broke through the French lines on the Ardennes, crossed the Meuse and racged through the Channel. The British Expoditionary Force (BEF) and French units were forced to evacuate at Dunkirk. Paris fell and France asked for terms. Although under the ternms of the Armistace, only part of France was occupied, provisions allowed the Germans to persue any one they wanted even in the unoccupied or Vichy zone. This included Jews.
France is unique among all the countries which experienced the Holocaust. France was the only defeated Allied country whose government signed an armistace with the NAZIs. Under the terms of that armistace, the Vichy Government had to cooperate with the Germans. The NAZIs had inserted a "suttender on demand clause" in Article 5 of the Franco German Armistace of 1940. The police and Vichy aythorities actively assisted the NAZIs. After the French surrender. The Vichy authorities actively assisted the NAZIs track down and deport Jews. [Eizenstat]
The first action taken against French Jews after the 1940 invasion was the expulsion from Alsace. A large number of French Jews lived in Alscace. The province was to be incorporated into the Reich. To my knowlege, this was one of the very few non-lethal expulsions conducted by the NAZIs. Presumably the master plan for killing the Jews had not yet been fully worked out.
The Pétain Government after signing the armistace with the NAZIs on June 22 set up a governmnt in Vichy for the sector of southern France that was not occupied by the Germans. The Vichy regime in many ways cooperated with the NAZIs. The most shameful single act was Vichy assistance in rounding up over 80,000 foreign and French Jews as part of the Holocaust so they could be shipped to the death camps in Poland. vichy even ran camps in France with apauling death rates. After the War some Vichy officials were executed and the Gaullists nurtured a myth that the great majority of the French people bravely resisted the Germans. Gaullist claimed that the French people never accepted the Vichy regime as a legitimate French Government. Gradually it has become increasingly clear that the bulk of the
French people, shocked by the collapse of the French army and thinking that the War was lost, sought accompdation with the NAZI occcupiers and looked upon Marshal Philippe Pétain with reverence. [Curtis] For years, any questioning of that myth was highly controversial. The film by Marcel Ophuls "Le chagrin et la pitié" (1969) was commissioned by French Government-controlled television, but the documentary on French life during the occupation proved so embarassing that officials were afraid to broadcast it.
Another early action involving German Jews was deporting Jews in Western Landen (Baden, the Saar, and the Palatinate), including some of the oldest German Jewish families, in October 1940 to camps in the French Pyrenees (Gurs, Noé, Récébédou, and Rivesaltes). Gurs was the largest. The death rate was very high because there were not even the most basic facilities. The camps were run by Vichy authorities.
Ome of the heros in the sad history of the Holocaust in France is Hiram Bingham IV. That name will seem familiar to some readers because his father was he Hiram Bingham who duscovered Machu Pichu (1911). He went on to serve as Republican govenor and senator for Connecticut. His son attended Yale and went on to enter the diplomatic service. He was posted to Marseilles, France as vice consul (1936). At the time tthis would have been conidred a plum posting. Ths was just the time that war clouds began appearing in Europe. Bingham was still in Maseilles when France declared War (Septembr 1939) and France fell (June 1940). Marseilles was in the unoccupied zone of Vichy. Jews were, however, not safe in the unoccupied zone. Vichy officials with various degrees of anti-Semitism and to court German favor, aggressively implemented anti-Semetic measures. Bingham did everything he could do to assist refugees including larg numbers of Jews. It is believed he saved more thab 2,000 lives. He issued travel visas as well as unauthorized Amrian passports. He sheltered some refugees in his home and allowed those assisting the refugees use his home. One of the most reviting episodes was getting novelist Lion Feuchtwanger to saftey. Bingham got him through German checkpoints by desuising him and providing with a fake passport. He managed to pass Feuchtwanger off as his mother-in-law. Others resuced by Bingham was noted abstract painter Marc Chagall and political philosopher Hannah Arendt. (It was Arendt who coined the phrse "the banality of evil".) This was in direct oposition to his intructions from the State Department in Washington which ordered diplpmatic posts to restrict the flow of immigrants and refugees to the United States. Binhham worked without the knowlwdge of his superiors. The Consul General told him, "The Germans are going to win the war. Why should we do anything to offend them?" The Germans and Vichy officials soon learned of what Binghan was doing and complained to the U.S. Government. The State Department then revoked Vivian Fry's passport. (Fry and the American Emergency Rescue Committee was working closely with Bingham.) The State Department trasferred Bingham to Portugal where he continued to assist refugees. Finally he was posted to Argentina. He caused further diplomatic problems there by turning up information on Argentine actions to give santuary to NAZI war criminals and war loot. When the State Department refused to take any action, Bingham resigned from the Foreign Service in protest (1946) even though he was only 4 years from earning his pension.
Concerned Americans organized the American Emergency Rescue Committee to assist refugees (1940). They managed to convince President Roosevelt to authorized a few hundred visas for notable artists and intellectuals. Refugees were a difficult issue for the Roosevelt Administration. Eleanor in particular pushed her husband to do more. There was, however, considerable opposition in Congress to allowing refugees to enter America. And Congressional approval was needed by the Roosevelt to aid the Allies and re arm America. The Committe sent journalist and scholar Vivian Fry to France to assist Jewish and other refugees. Fry before American entered the War worked tirelessy in Vichy to build up a rescue network. Hiram Bingham proved crucial in Fry efforts because he provided travel documents that could only be issued by Ameican diplomats. Fry succeeded in resucing more than 1,500 artists, musicians, politicams, scientists, and writers, many but not all Jewish. After German and Vichy authorities complained to the State Department, Americn officials revoked his passport, forceing him to return to America (early 1941).
The Germans make life a nightmare for French Jews. Vichy officials do not appear to have resisted the NAZI demands and cooperated closely with NAZI officials. Thus anti-Jewish measures were introduced both in the German occupied areas and in the unoccupied Vicy areas area, although the time-table varied somewhat in the two areas.
The NAZIs acted quickly after their victory to begin persecuting French Jews. The first step was to legally definejust who was Jewish. In France it had become a religious matter. To the NAZIs of course it was racial. A NAZI ordinance defined a Jew as an individual who belonged to the Jewish religion or who had more than two Jewish grandparents (September 27, 1940). This ordinance was issued by the military occupation authorities and thus covered the two-thirds of France (including Paris) that was occupied by the Germans. One of the first anti-Semitic measure by Vichy banned Jews from occupying certain positions and defining a Jew as an individual with three grandparents of the Jewish race or with two grandparents of that race if his/her spouse were Jewish (October 3, 1940). This at first applied only to "unoccupied" Vichy. Vichy's language was more comprehensive than the German occupation ordinance. (For example, a half-Jew who was not practicing Judaism was not classified Jewish by the Nazi ordinance, but was classified as Jewish by Vichy if he/she had married a Jew. [Weisberg]
Another Vichy law prohibited Jews from holding specified jobs not covered by the October 3, 1940 measure. This law applied to both the unoccupied and occupied zones. It defined a Jew as a person with at least three Jewish grandparents--or with two such grandparents if his/her spouse had two Jewish grandparents or if he/she were not a practicing Catholic or Protestant (June 2, 1941). The French legal establishment never denounced these anti-Semitic acts. Many lawyers and jurists argued definitional and proceduralissues such as who had the burden of proving that a half-Jew was a practicing Christian. Even "liberal" jurists and attorneys seem to have fully accepted the measures as binding and sought to obtain rulings to benefit a few individuals. [Weisberg] Of course it is easy in the saftey of the post-occupation world to make such inditements. It is unclear what would have happened if the legal profession had refused to accept the Vichy laws and justvwhat dangers that would have posed. The June 2, 1941 law, in addition several additional administrative decrees, limited the number of Jewish lawyers to 2 percent of the
ttorneys inscribed in the Bar of each jurisdiction. There were "numerus clausus" of Vichy law which prevented Jewish attorneys from practicing. [Weisberg] Many were eventually arrested and transported to Auschwitz.
NAZI authorities required Jews in France to wear the Star of David (June 1, 1942).
The second Justice Minister in the Vichy Government was Joseph Barthelemy. He had been a liberal Catholic before the German occupation. As Justice Minister, he played an importanr role in drafting and administering the anti-semitic system, At the same time he is known to have intervened to assist individual Jews. [Weisberg]
I believe that Jewish children were expelled from French schools by both the German and Vichy authorities, but do not yet have details on what the process was and when this occurred.
There was considerable anti-semistism in France, exposed by Emil Zola in his famed "J'acuse" editorial. This there were many French willing to assist the NAZIs track down Jews.
French Jews as in many other countries were vulnerable because thry were no fully integrated into French society. In many cases, most of the close friends of French Jews were other Jews. Thus when they needed support, many had few gentie families to turn to. You could not just ask any one to hide you or assist. There were very stiff punishments for those cost hiding or assisting Jews.
Few French were aware of what happened to the Jews after they were arrested by the police. German behavior in France was much more correct than in Poland and Russia so it was not nearly as apparent that they were being murdered in Poland as it was to people in the East.
Vichy established the General Commission for Jewish Affairs (CGQJ) to expedite actions against Jews, especially decissions as to whether a particular person was Jewish
and if so whether his/her property should be "ayranized", meaning transferred to a non-Jewish provisional administrator or in practical terms stolen by Vichy authorities. Her jurisdictioanl disputes developed with the ordinary French law courts. [Weisberg]
After the War, Vichy officials claimed that the anti-Semitic lawse forced on them by the NAZIs. If that was true then logically the regulations would be the same as the NAZI laws or less severe. In fact in many ways the legal system in Vichy was more severe than in NAZI Germany. One author reports that German officials were "annoyed" that the CGQJ often demanded that half-Jews desiring to be classified Ayran because he/she was a practicing Christian, had to prove that their baptismal records were valid. German authorities apparently wanted the CGQJ to assume that such documents were legitimate. NAZI authorities in the Reich generally refrained from deporting Jews married to Aryans. In one celebrated incident near the end of the War, Berlin Jews with German wives were arrested but later were released when their wives protested. Vichy authorities, however took actions against such individuals. If a person was classified a Jew, the French ethnicity of their spouse would not preclude them from being interned in a camp where Jews were deportable under Vichy
law. Most of these cases involved non-citizens.
Some courts assisted economically distressed Jews to obtain rent reductions. Vichy and German decress empverished Jews and looted their property. Ayran "administrateurs provisoires" took control of Jewish businesses, apartment buildings, and securities. Legally they were to serve as trustees but often the property was used by these trustees for their own purposes. Regulations blocked Jewish bank accounts so that money could not be withdrawn. Any legacies and inheritances had to be turned over to the "administrateur provisoire". [Weisberg]
Vichy officials cooperated with the NAZIs in the roundup and confinment of Jews, both foreign and French Jews.
The killing of Dutch, Belgian, and French Jews began in July 1942 when the NAZI death camps in Poland became operational. Vichy officicials assisted the NAZIs in these deportments. The deportments are bellieve to have totaled 24,500 French Jews and 56,500 foreign Jews that had fled to France for saftey. [Curtis]
Drancy was originally a French police barracks outside Paris. The NAZIs turned it into a transit camp for Jews being deported. Unlike the earliest French camps which had been created for refugees from the Spanish Civil War, Drancy was created by the Vichy regime and was overseen by the French police. The first raids rounding up Jews were conducted by the French police (1941). They targeted foreign Jews. Those arested were interned at Drancy. Evidence suggests that the French police mistreated thise arested and interned at Drancy. Vonditions were poor. The camp was overcroded. Sanitation was poor and food inadequate. Vichy authorities and the NAZIs deported about 77,000 mostly foreign Jews through Drancy (1941-44). One family of German Jews interned at Drancy were the Karliners. Most were deported to Auschwitz with the full knowledge and complicity of Vichy officals. Most of the Jews deported were killed in Auschwitz. Very few survived.
The French rail system as the rail system in other occupied countries plasyed a key role in the NAZI Holocaust. Thousands of French Jews were deported over the French rail system. A French court in Toulouse ordered the State and the National Railroad Company (SNCF) to pay $80,000 to a Jewish family whose members were delivered to the World War II transit camp at Drancy, outside Paris. Jews there were deported to NAZI death camps in Poland. This was the first court case in which SNCF had been found liable for their role in the deportation of French Jews. The suit was brought by two brothers in 2001. They were arrested by the Gestapo and transported to Drancy in 1944, where they remained until it was liberated when the Allies reavhed Paris (August 1944). a few months later. According to the plaintiffs' lawyer, Ré mi Rouquette, the Toulouse court found that the state did nothing "when it had a chance to" and that the railway did not object and in fact billed the state for third-class travel despite using freight and cattle cars to deport the Jews. [Bernard]
Many French people besides the Vichy authorities cooperated with the NAZIs. There were rewards for informing on Jews and French people hiding Jews. Conditions were very difficult under German occupations. Not uncommonly French collaborators informed in Jews for the most seemingly inconsequential rewards. That was how the Gestapo found the Jewish boy in Au revoir les enfants--a true account.
Despite 3 years of NAZI occupation and the active complicity of the Vichy Government in the roundup and deportation of French Jews to NAZI death camps, somehow most French Jews survived. An estimated three-fourths of France's Jews, about 250,000 people, survived the Holocaust. The number which perished is terrible, but French Jews on the whole fared better than Jews in most of the rest of NAZI occupied Europe. Foreign Jews fared less well. This did not occur by accident. There appear to be two reasons for the relatively high survival rate. One, Spain was a haven for Jews and France bordered Spain. Unlike Duch Jews who were trapped, French Jews had an outlet. Two, most French people did not collaborate with the NAZIs and anti-Semitic Vichy officials. One author attributes the high survival rate to "benign neglect". [Zuccotti] Most French men and women kept silent which allowed French Jews to blend in with the population, hide, or cross the Spanish border. Many Jews managed to obtain fake papers and ration cards. They survived by living quietly and taking odd jobs. Of course this was easier if one did not look obviously Jewish. This required the passive goodwill of French men and women who simply went their every day lives. There were also many French people who risked their lives to protect Jews, including French people that were not sympathetic to Jews or even overtly anti-semitic. One French girl recalls a priest who helped save her and her family describe how he disliked Jews, but saving them from the Germans was the "Christian thing" to do. [Cohn] There were clandestine Jewish rescue organizations. The armed Jewish resistance groups often aided Jews. There are many heroic stories. Many French people and church groups took great risks to hide and protect Jews, particulary the children. There were many schools and other facilities, many run by the Catholic Church, that manged to successsfully hide Jewish children. One such facility was the Ecole de plein air de Faïdoli. The 3,000 residents of Le Chambon hid some 5,000 Jews in their homes. This was an act of great bravery with parents putting their entire family at risk. All it would have taken was one collaborator to turn them in to the Gestapo.
We have begun to collect individual accounts about the experiences of French Jews during the NAZI Holocaust.
A French reader tells us, "Our family knew a Jewish family with two children in Paris during the war. Unfortunatly the end was tragic for them. I asked my Parents why they didn't keep the children in our home. The situation was very difficult."
A French reader asks where Jewish children may have been taken to in France. She has some information about the Bobkra administration district. She reports that Jewish children were taken from several villages and towns in this district at the same time in a coordinated operation. Hranki-Kuty was more a village than a town. Near to it was Brzozodowce (2 miles) and Chodorow (8 miles). Apparently at the same time some blond Christian children were also taken, presumably as part of the less well known NAZI Lebensborn program. I am not sure how the children were taken. It appears that they were just taken from the streets, maybe out playing. I am not sure if the Germans entered the schools to take the children. A French reader reports, "At the same time that the Jewish children were seized, my father and his cousins were taken--apparently because they were blonde and had blue eyes and Polish. My father and his cousins (Piotr and Josef) were all about the same age, 12-15 yeas old. Only father in his family was seized, not his father and younger sister. Father and his cousins only discovered they were different when they got to Poland, until then they were all just the same. Father was born in 1926 and was 13-14 years old at the time. It was March or April, possibly 1940. He defiantely went with Jewish children , and they were taken to Chateau Salins in Moselle (Lorraine). At some piont they lived with an SS officer on a farm , where father had to work. His cousins were in factories working during day hours. My father and his cousins were liberated from Natzwiller.
He told me when they were Liberated they were sent to Germany , but left to join Anders (Polish general who formed a Polish army that fought the Germans with Allies) . Father went to Scotland , Piotr stayed on in France , Josef was wounded in Monte Cassino and latter went to Canada I only have sketchy information on this because father did not like to talk about it at all." [Winnik] HBC note: There is some confusion here with the dates which we are trying to work out.
A French boy was 10 years old when the Germans invaded France (June 1940). His family was a non-practicing Jewish family. They fled to the unoccupied zone and settled in Toulouse. The authorities suspected his father of being active in the resistance. They broke into the living room, interogated him there, and took him away. They never saw him again. Somehow he managed to hide their idntity cards, which identified them as Jewish, under the living room rug. The police did not return as they would have if they had realised that they were Jewish. He was taken in by a Christian family--an act of great courage. He and his mother survived the War. [Tangy]
Georges Andre Kohn and Jacqueline Morganstern were two of the children swept up in the NAZI Holocaust. There weee at the age that they were just beginning to understand events around them. But even adults could not understand, so we can not know what was in the minds of these children. They by chance were selected for some of the most odious NAZI attrocities--medical experiments on children. And the tragic story is even more distrssing because Georges and his family were on the last transport to leave Drancy, just as the Allies approached Paris. It is remarkable that in this terrible situation, these two children were able to become friends and develop a friendship that lasted throughout their captivity. It only ended with their death on an April day in 1945 just before the British reached them.
The salvation of the French Jews who managed to evade the Gestapo and Vichy French police was in the end only possible because of D-Day (June 6, 1944) and subsequent liberation of France (July-August 1944). For several weeks, the Germans bottled the Allies up in Normady and the Bockage country. With the breakout throuh Operation Cobra, the major units of the Wehrmact wee destroyed at Falaise or in full retreat. The landings along the southern coast introduced more Allied units into France. Paris was liberated (August 25). About 60,000 Jews were still in the city, half of them in hiding. The Allied armies pushed north, persuing the Wehrmacht toward the borders of the Reich.
The Gauallist Myth that there was wide-spread ressistance in France to the Germans also included a reluctance to explore the extent to which the French collaborated in the Holocaust. That has finally changed. Beginning in 1995, President Jacques Chirac as well as important institutions like the Church, the police, several professional associations as well mas the National Assembley have acknowledged the extent to which Vichy and French citizens collaborated with the NAZIs in the destruction of French and foreign Jews.
Prosecution of collaborationists and those who persued the Holacaust have continued in France. The latest was Maurice Papon who was convicted of signing arrest warrants for large numbers of French Jews. His prosecution may be the last one.
Of all the occupied countries, France's role in the Holocaust is perhaps the most disappointing. There is no doubt that Vichy persued a "complictious, pro-active role in Nazi projects, above all the Final Solution." [Judt} The whole idea of Vichy was that the NAZIs had won the War and thus there was no choice but to work out the best deal for France by cooperating with the NAZIs. The very word "colasboration" was a French creation. Other occupied countries in the West had military rule imposed on them. Only France was left with a degree of self government and Vichy chose to cooperate with the NAZIs in the Holocaust. One historian writes, "It is not that France behave the worst. It is that France mattered most." [Judt]
Bernard, Ariane, "Railway Fined For Holocaust Deportations." New York Times (June 7, 2006).
Cohn, Marthe with Windy Cohn. Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany (Harmony), 282p.
Curtis, Michael. Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime (Arcade, 2003), 419p.
Eizenstat, Stuart. Imperfect Justice.
Heim, Susanne. "Jewish emmigration and international refugee policy: The situation of children," Children and the Holocaust: Symposium, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, April 3, 2003.
Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin Press, 2005), 878p.
Tangy, Jacques. "Freed by the bravery of others," The Washington Post May 28, 2004, p. W13.
Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 447 p.
Winnik, Jannette. E-mail message, April 8, 2003.
Zuccotti, Susan. The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews.
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