Holocaust in France

Before the war, about 240,000 Jews lived in France - French citizens. In addition, many German, Austrian, Polish and Czechoslovak Jews fled to France. The total number of Jews in France on the eve of the occupation was about 350 thousand ^[1] .

On May 10, 1940, German troops launched an offensive against France , which declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939 , in connection with its attack on Poland . As a result of the rapid onset of German forces using the blitzkrieg blitzkrieg , the allied forces were routed, and on June 22, France was forced to sign a truce . By this time, most of its territory was occupied , but practically nothing remained of the army.

In July 1940, the National Assembly gathered in Vichy , which decided to transfer the dictatorial power to Marshal Henri Philippe Petenet ; this marked the end of the Third Republic . The government of Pétain continued to stay in Vichy, while the northern part of France and Paris were occupied by German troops. In November 1942 the Germans occupied the whole of France.

After the occupation of France on September 27, 1940, a decree was issued by the occupying authorities to conduct a census of the Jewish population. A total of 287,962 Jews were registered, of which 60% were in the occupied territory and 40% under the jurisdiction of the collaborationist regime of Marshal Petain .

On 2 October 1940, the Vichy regime adopted the first ( fr. Statut de juifs ), restricting their movement, access to public places and professional activities. In June 1941, a second decree was adopted, further worsening the position of the Jews ^[2] . The Vichy authorities actively pursued foreign Jews, but opposed the deportation of French citizens ^[3] .

Many Frenchmen voluntarily and actively engaged in the identification of Jews and their extradition to the Nazis ^[4] .

On March 29, 1941, the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs ( Fr. Commissariat general aux questions juives ) ^{[5] was established} under the leadership of Xavier Vallat , Who was engaged in the transfer of Jewish property in the occupied territory to the Nazis. From May 6, 1942, the Commissariat headed by Luis Darcier de Pellepua , Who engaged in the same activity in the "free zone" ^[2] .

On May 29, 1942, in the occupied zone, the Germans issued an order obliging all Jews over 6 years old to wear a yellow star ^[6] .

At the beginning of 1942, Dovid Knut and Abraham Polonsky with their wives Ariadna Scriabina and Eugene Polonskaya created in Toulouse an underground organization, which was first called Bnei David ("descendants of David" a), but in June 1944 was renamed the Organization Juive de Combat ("Jewish Army ", abbreviated OJC or EA) ^[7] . Ariadna Scriabina, who took for herself the underground nickname Regina, came up with a special ceremony of taking the oath upon joining the organization. In the four years of the EA’s existence, 1,952 people took this oath, including many Jews from Russia ^[8] .

The first EA shares were fairly simple and harmless. For a whole year, EA members brought food to German interned Jewish refugees. The refugees were kept in very harsh conditions, in the Resebed camp, near Toulouse, they had to bribe the guards. In the future, the organization conducted about 2,000 combat operations, including 750 diversions on the railway and 32 explosions at military factories. Ariadne Scriabin died July 22, 1944, being ambushed.

Among the six founders of the Liberation-Sud movement Three were Jews, Fran-Tyerr ( Free Shooter ) was commanded by Jean-Pierre Levy , Joseph Epstein (“Colonel Gilles”) and Z. Gotesman ("Captain Philip") ^[9] . One of the leaders of the Resistance in Lyon was the famous historian and captain of the French army, Mark Blok . He was arrested by the Gestapo and executed after torture on June 16, 1944 ^[10] .

At first, the French Jews believed that the repressions would affect only the refugees and would not affect the citizens of France. Those who held the opposite point of view, already at the end of June 1940, created the organization Amelo to help the Jews. In the German-occupied zone, by the end of 1940, the Jews realized that it was necessary to unite efforts, and in January 1941 the Coordinating Committee of charitable societies of the Paris region was created, which united the activities of both immigrants and French Jews. The Committee, with support from the French Resistance , public figures, the Catholic Church , etc., helped Jews hide from deportations and sent them abroad. In the south of France, in the zone controlled by the Vichy regime, refugees and local Jews never joined forces ^[2] . Rescue Jewish Children was engaged in the Organization of Assistance for Children (OSE) ^[11] .

In the commune of Chambon-sur-Lignon , the locals under the leadership of pastor Andre Trocme rescued from 3 to 5 thousand Jews, who were hidden throughout the district and transported to Switzerland ^[12] . On January 1, 2016, the Israel Institute for Catastrophe and Heroism Yad Vashem for saving Jews during the Holocaust awarded 3925 French the honorary title of " righteous peace " ^[13]

The exact number of French Jews killed during the Holocaust has not been established. According to various sources, the figures range from 75,721 to 120 thousand people. The smallest figure does not take into account the Jews arrested and deported as participants in the resistance movement and the Jews who died in France itself, but only those who were deported to death camps. According to the research results, French Jews and foreigners were affected approximately equally ^[2] .

On July 13, 1990, the French Parliament passed the so-called Geissot Law , Which prohibits public racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic statements, as well as discrimination based on ethnicity, nation, race or religion. The law also prohibits denying the Holocaust and the findings of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg , as well as expressing doubts about the existence of death camps and gas chambers in which the Nazis carried out massacres. On the basis of the Law of Law of Geiso, several convictions were pronounced against the French Holocaust deniers , the most well-known of those convicted of denying the Holocaust in France are Robert Faurisson and Roger Garodi ^[14] .

French historian Jean-Pierre Minodiere writes that the most terrible in the perception of the Holocaust by the French is the fact of betrayal of the ideals of equality and fraternity : extraditing French citizens, part of the French people for racial reasons - treason against France, the whole of French history and the people ^[15] .

On the subject of the Holocaust in France, many films have been shot, in particular, The Round-up , Goodbye, Children , House of Nina and others.

• Mendes, Aristide de Susha
• Klarsfeld, Serge

• Susan S. Zukotti. Survivivng the Holocaust. Situacion in France (Eng.) // Michael Berenbaum, Abraham J. Peck . - Indiana University Press, 2002. - p . 492-509 . - ISBN 9780253215291 .
• André Kaspi. Les juifs pendant l'occupation. - Paris: Points Seuil, 1997. - T. 238. - 442 p. - (Points: Histoire). - ISBN 9782020312103 .
• Michaël R. Marrus, Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs , Calmann-Lévy, éditions Le Livre de Poche, Paris, 1981.
• Serge Klarsfeld . Vichy-Auschwitz, la "solution finale" of the question of France , Fayard, Paris, 3 ^e édition, 2001.
• Adler Jacques. The Conflicts, 1940–1944. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

• Kollaboration in Frankreich (him.) . Der Spiegel (12/22/2009). The appeal date is July 18, 2014.