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Vichy France and the Jews

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Vichy France and the Jews VICHY FRANCE AND THE JEWS MICHAEL R. MARRUS AND ROBERT 0. PAXTON Originally published as Vichy et les juifs by Calmann-Levy 1981 Basic Books, Inc., Publishers New York Contents Introduction Chapter 1 / First Steps Chapter 2 / The Roots o f Vichy Antisemitism Traditional Images of the Jews 27 Second Wave: The Crises of the 1930s and the Revival of Antisemitism 34 The Reach of Antisemitism: How Influential Was It? 45 The Administrative Response 54 The Refugee Crisis, 1938-41 58 Chapter 3 / The Strategy o f Xavier Vallat, i 9 4 !-4 2 The Beginnings of German Pressure 77 Vichy Defines the Jewish Issue, 1941 83 Vallat: An Activist at Work 96 The Emigration Deadlock 112 Vallat’s Fall 115 Chapter 4 / The System at Work, 1040-42 The CGQJ and Other State Agencies: Rivalries and Border Disputes 128 Business as Usual 144 Aryanization 152 Emigration 161 The Camps 165 Chapter 5 / Public Opinion, 1040-42 The Climax of Popular Antisemitism 181 The DistriBution of Popular Antisemitism 186 A Special Case: Algeria 191 The Churches and the Jews 197 X C ontents The Opposition 203 An Indifferent Majority 209 Chapter 6 / The Turning Point: Summer 1Q42 215 New Men, New Measures 218 The Final Solution 220 Laval and the Final Solution 228 The Effort to Segregate: The Jewish Star 234 Preparing the Deportation 241 The Vel d’Hiv Roundup 250 Drancy 252 Roundups in the Unoccupied Zone 255 The Massacre of the Innocents 263 The Turn in PuBlic Opinion 270 Chapter 7 / The Darquier Period, 1942-44 281 Darquier’s CGQJ and Its Place in the Regime 286 Darquier’s CGQJ in Action 294 Total Occupation and the Resumption of Deportations 302 Vichy, the ABBé Catry, and the Massada Zionists 310 The Italian Interlude 315 Denaturalization, August 1943: Laval’s Refusal 321 Last Days 329 Chapter 8 / Conclusions: The Holocaust in France . 341 What Did Vichy Know aBout the Final Solution? 346 A Comparative View 356 Principal Occupation Authorities Dealing with Jews, 1940-44 (chart) 373 List of ABBreviations 376 Notes 377 Index 415 Introduction URING the four years it ruled from Vichy, in the shadow of Nazism, the French government energetically persecuted Jews living in France. Persecution Began in the summer of 1940 when the Vichy regime, Born of defeat at the hands of the Nazis and Dof a policy of collaBoration urged By many Frenchmen, introduced a series of antisemitic measures. After defining who was By law a Jew, and excluding Jews from various private and puBlic spheres of life, Vichy imposed specifically discriminatory measures: confiscating property Be­ longing to Jews, restricting their movements, and interning many Jews in special camps. Then, during the summer of 1942, the Germans, on their side, Began to implement the “final solution” on the Jewish proB­ lem in France. Arrests, internments, and deportations to Auschwitz in Poland occurred with increasing frequency, often with the direct com­ plicity of the French government and administration. Ultimately, close to seventy-six thousand Jews left France in cattle cars— “to the East,” the Germans said; of these Jews only aBout 3 percent returned at the end of the war. Vichy France bears an important part of the responsibility for this disaster, as the records of both French and German governments make clear. The deportations from France from 1942 to 1944 were made possible not only By direct French assistance But also By the course of earlier persecution; there were important links Between the Nazis’ “final solution” and the previous work of French governments— poli­ cies usually supported By French puBlic opinion. Our story Begins at one of the clear dividing points of French history. In the 1930s, under the Third RepuBlic, tolerant and cosmopoli­ tan France had Been a haven for thousands of refugees, many of them Jewish, who fled from Germany and eastern Europe, from fascist Italy, and from the Battleground of the Spanish civil war. Then came France’s Xll Introduction stunning defeat By Nazi Germany in May and June 1940. Three fifths of the country were occupied By the German army; and a new French regime, camped temporarily in the southern hill resort town of Vichy, administered unoccupied France under the terms of an armistice nego­ tiated with the victor. The Vichy regime, reacting against the Third RepuBlic whose legitimacy had vanished in defeat, launched France on what many French people Believed was a permanent new tack, the program called the National Revolution: authoritarian, traditionalist, pious, and neutral in the war Between Hitler and the Allies. Vichy was also puBlicly and conspicuously antisemitic. It has Been customary to assume that what Befell the Jews of France during the German occupation, Beginning with discriminatory legislation in 1940 and culminating with the death of many thousands of French and foreign Jews Between 1942 and 1944, was largely the work of Nazi zealots who imposed their views on a defeated country. That seemed the only possible explanation for so apparently aBrupt a change of climate in June 1940. No occupying power, however, can administer territory By force alone. The most Brutal and determined conqueror needs local guides and informants. Successful occupations depend heavily upon accom­ plices drawn from disaffected, sympathetic, or amBitious elements within the conquered people. In fact, the study of a military occupation may tell one as much aBout the occupied as aBout the conquerors. The interplay Between the two enhances divisions and antagonisms among the former and offers new opportunities for suppressed minorities among them to surface and come to power. When we Began several years ago to look closely at the measures taken against Jews in France during the German occupation, we found that the French had much more leeway than was commonly supposed, and that victor and vanquished had interacted much more intricately than we had expected. We found that, for the first year or so after June 1940, the German occupation authorities were not preoccupied By what happened to Jews in the unoccupied part of France. Short of manpower and concerned aBove all to focus their energies on the war against Britain and later Russia, the Germans preferred to leave to the Vichy authorities as much as possible of the expense and Bother of administra­ tion. Without direct German prompting, a local and indigenous French antisemitism was at work in Vichy— a home-grown program that ri­ valed what the Germans were doing in the occupied north and even, in some respects, went Beyond it. The Vichy regime wanted to solve in its own way what it saw as a “Jewish proBlem” in France. Beyond that, Introduction Xlll it wanted to reassert its administrative control over the Occupied Zone By attempting to suBstitute its own anti-Jewish program for the German antisemitic measures in the north. Vichy’s measures were not intended to kill. The regime initially sought the re-emigration of recently arrived Jews it deemed refractory to French culture, the suBmergence of longer-estaBlished Jews, and their ultimate assimilation into a newly homogeneous French nation. In the long run, the aim was to have few, if any, Jews remaining in France when, in 1942, the Germans launched a new policy of deporting Jews from western Europe to death camps in eastern Europe. Indigenous French restrictive measures against Jews had Been in effect for two years; and Vichy’s urge to expel them dovetailed neatly with the Ger­ man project. Indeed, Vichy France Became in August 1942 the only European country except Bulgaria to hand Jews over to the Nazis for deportation from areas not directly suBject to German military occupa­ tion. Although this complicity aroused the first important protest to Vichy from elite groups, such as church leaders, internal opposition was never strong enough until late 1943 to prevent Vichy from contriButing police support to the deportation operations. Right up to the LiBeration in August 1944, Vichy sustained its own discriminatory measures against Jews. Our Book explores the indigenous French roots for the antisemitic measures adopted By Vichy after 1940, and explains just how these measures were applied, who in France supported them, and how they meshed with the separate and sometimes conflicting German policy. To clarify the situation, we had not only to review the intellectual tradi­ tions of antisemitism in France But to examine the measures taken against refugees By the Third RepuBlic during the 1930s. Unexpectedly we found an important root of Vichy’s anti-Jewish program in the in­ creasingly severe restrictions imposed upon refugees by the RepuBlic, and a hitherto unnoticed continuity Between the anxiety and hostility aroused By refugees in the late 1930s and Vichy’s xenophoBia. Our suBject Belongs, in fact, to the larger history of the worldwide refugee crisis of the Depression years and to the narrowly defensive reaction to it By all Western countries. More generally, our work Belongs to the study of ethnic prejudice within predominantly liberal societies. France had Been the first Euro­ pean nation to extend full civil rights to Jews, in the 1790s; Frenchmen were, however, also among the most influential pioneers of secular antisemitism in the later part of the nineteenth century. Both traditions existed in twentieth-century French society. During the Third Repub- XIV Introduction lie, the tolerant tradition prevailed, almost to the end, against the xeno­ phoBic one. Many outsiders, including Jews and a few cultivated Afri­ cans, managed to live comfortaBly among the French, as long as these outsiders were willing to renounce their own language and culture. Compared with eastern Europe and Russia, France was a liBeral haven; and thousands of Jewish refugees arrived there after the 1880s. By 1940 aBout half of the 300,000 to 350,000 Jews in France were foreign-Born.
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