Figure 1.--Here male Jews that have been rounded up are being moved into an internment camp on the outskirts of a French town. They are being marched from arain station to the camp. Note that there is not a German in sight. Only Vichy police. This solved a major problem for the Germans, significantly reducing the manpower needed tonhunt diwn and arrest Jews.

The Vichy Police played a central role in the French Holocaust. It was the French police not the Germans that conduct most of the round-ups of Jews. This was the most difficult aspect of the Holocaust requiring the most manpower and the French police provided it. Without the Vichy police cooperation, the Germans would have had much more difficulty pursuing the Holocaust in France. It would have been much easier for Jews to hide. Notably the small French Army permitted under German occupation adamantly refused to cooperate. There was no such reluctance on the part of the police. There were some reluctance on the part of local officials to pick up French Jews, as opposed to the large numbers of foreign Jews who had sought refuge in France. Laval raised the issue of 'cosmopolitan' Jews. The involvement of the Vichy police is well-established because of the surviving documents. And this cooperation began well before the Germans moved into the Unoccupied Zone after Operation Torch (November 1942). Some of the police were even enthusiastic about the undertaking as the documentation shows. Soon after the Polish death camps were operational and prepared to receive large-scale transport, the French roundups began in earnest. The first step was to roundup and concentrate the Jews in temporary camps. Once this was done the large scale transports to the death camps could begin. They roundups were based on the addresses compiled in the December 1941 census. Many Hew, mostly men had already been confined in internment camps and labor battalions. Emigration visas were annulled. Laval also moved to prevent Jewish emigration which was already very difficult. Instructions came from the very top. Vichy Secretary General for the Police René Bousquet and Associate Director Henry Cado were at the center of the roundups. Bousquet ordered regional prefects to proceed with transfers to the occupied zone for deportation (August 22, 1942). Their orders were to 'liberate' their regions of foreign Jews. 【Curtis, p. 192.】 Caldo ordered the arrests and transfers to take place before September 15 (August 5). At first there were some exceptions: the elderly over 60 years old, children under 2 years, pregnant women, veterans, those wounded in the War, half Aryans, or Jews with an Aryan spouce. Shortly after these exemptions were cancelled and the police roundups commenced. A HBC reader writes to tell us that he believes that many policemen disliked these orderes. This is probably true, but we are unable to quantify this. It is also clear that many police officers did not object. Documentation shows how individual officers bragged about finding cash and valuables on the Jews being deported. Official police reports clinically reported on daily deportation counts, detailing men, women, and children. While assessing attitudes toward the orders received is difficult to assess with any precission, there is not doubt that the French police dutifully followed the orders received from Vichy and the German occupation authorities. We have not found accounts of police officials refusing to obey the roundup orders.

Sources

Curtis, Michael. Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime (Arcade, 2003), 419p.

Created: 5:43 AM 5/22/2024
Last updated: 5:43 AM 5/22/2024