Introduction

Over the last fifteen years or so, a number of events have served to keep alive debates about Vichy France's complicity with the so-called final solution of the Jewish question. The trials of former SS officer Klaus Barbie in 1987, of the former Vichy militia leader Paul Touvier in 1994 and, more recently still, of Maurice Papon, a senior official with responsability for Jewish affairs in Bordeaux, in 1997-8 have all raised unsettling questions about the degree to which the collaborationalist Vichy régime, as well as ordinary French people, were complicit with the murder of over 73,000 Jews rounded up in France and deported, via French transit camps, like Drancy, to Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz.

The trial of Maurice Papon was the most recent major trial and was different to the trial of Klaus Barbie in 1987 and of Paul Touvier in Versailles in 1994. Before describing Papon's case, it is worth summarising the two earlier trials. Klaus Barbie was a German SS officer who was stationed in Lyon during the Occupation and was accused of the persecution, torture and murder of French Jews. His trial, which took place in Lyon, the city where he was active during the war, was a continuation of the Nuremberg war crimes trials. It raised a number of important moral and political questions, but none really touching on the responsibility or complicity of Vichy.

The trial of Paul Touvier seven years later went closer to home. Touvier was the leader of the Lyon milice, a sort of paramilitary police force created by Vichy to assist the Gestapo in activities such as rounding up Jews and other `undesirables' and in combatting the resistance. Barbie and Touvier both received life sentences and both died in prison.

On 8th October 1997 the six-month trial of Maurice Papon for wartime crimes against humanity began in Bordeaux. Far from being the trial of one elderly man - Papon was then 87 - the trial became the pretext for an interrogation of France's wartime past. More specifically, it revived debate about the complicity of the Vichy régime with the rounding up, deportation and murder of Jews resident on French soil.

The trial of Papon was different from earlier trials insofar as it touched on the question of bureaucratic responsibility. Whereas Barbie and Touvier were killers who had, quite literally at points during the war, blood on their hands, Papon was a a bureaucrat, a pen-pusher not a uniformed man of action. His alleged crime was not of pulling the trigger, but of signing the death warrant of 1,560 French Jews, including 223 children.

Papon's defence was simple: Vichy was a legitimate régime that was voted in by parliament. As a civil servant, Papon owed allegiance to that régime and was obliged to carry out its policies. Papon claimed that he was only a relatively minor civil servant who had no other choice but to order French police to round up 1,560 Jews from the Bordeaux area for deportation to the Drancy transit camp and from there on to Auschwitz. Papon also claimed to be ignorant of the real conditions those sent to such camps experienced and of the Nazi policy of genocide, the so-called `final solution of the Jewish question'. How, Papon's defence claimed, could he be an accomplice to a policy of which he was unaware?

The jury found this defence unconvincing and took 19 hours to deliver a guilty verdict. Papon was found guilty of complicity in crimes against humanity and received a 10-year prison sentence. The Papon case, however, revived questions about Vichy's complicity in the `final solution'.

Vichy and the `Final Solution'

At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, the Third Reich finalized its policy towards the Jews. It abandonned its earlier policy of expulsion and containment, for a new policy of mass extermination - the so-called `final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish question'. France, like other European countries under Nazi occupation, was obliged to carry out this policy, handing over Jews for deportation to Nazi extermination camps.

This the Vichy régime was more than willing to do. Between 1942 and July 1944 nearly 76,000 Jews resident in France were deported to concentration camps in the east via transit camps in France. Of these, only 2,500 returned. The Vichy authorities then, were directly responsible for sending over 73,000 Jews to their deaths.

However, a number of important questions about the actions of the Vichy authorities continue to be debated. Why did the Vichy régime cooperate so willingly? Were those in positions of authority within Vichy aware of the fate to which they were sending so many Jews resident in France? How far did the Vichy régime's attitude to `the Jewish question' overlap with Nazi policy of Endlösung agreed at Wannsee conference? To address these questions we need to consider the actions of the Vichy authorities after the Wannsee conference.

René Bousquet, the General Secretary of the French National Police met with Reinhard Heydrich on the 6th May 1942 to discuss the deportation of Jews from France. The Vichy authorities were happy to negotiate with the Nazis on this matter as it offered a convenient way of getting rid of the `problem' of its stateless Jewish migrants. Moreover, it was another example of a sovereign state dealing with the dominant force in European affairs.

Quickly however, the illusion that Vichy France was negotiating with Nazi Germany as an equal was shattered. On 25 June, Theodor Dannecker, a high- ranking SS officer informed the French authorities that 40% of the Jews deported shold be of French nationality and not the apatrides or stateless Jewish migrants that they were more than happy to surrender. Worse was to come as on 13 August 1942, the French authorities were told of Germany's intention to deport all Jews. However, the French authorities were not told of their intention to exterminate them rather than send them to work camps.

The Vichy authorities were horrified at this new development in Nazi policy. Their horror, however, was not in response to Nazi antisemitism but to the perceived threat to the sovereignty of Vichy and to the prospect of Vichy having to act against French citizens. How could public order be maintained and, more importantly in the the eyes of the Vichy authorities, how could the régime survive if it was seen to be meekly acquiesing to German orders? The Vichy authorities, and Pierre Laval foremost amongst them, resisted German pressure and, by early July 1942, the Germans were obliged to accept the offer made by Vichy.

Laval offered to hand over 10,000 Jews from the unoccupied zone in exchange for protecting Jews of French nationality. Only if there was a shortfall, would these French nationals from the occupied zone be handed over. Laval did not act out of altruism but, rather, as later historians have argued, to preserve Vichy's autonomy and authority over French nationals. It was thus out of a desire to safeguard the independance of Vichy that the French police became involved in the mass arrest and deportation of thousands of Jews resident on French soil. These took place all over the occupied zone and those arrested were held in transit camps - many historians now consider them to be antichambres de la mort - like Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande and, most famous of all, Drancy.

Co-operating with Nazi antisemitism was not new to Vichy. As early as October 1940 it introduced the infamous `statut des Juifs', that produced a new legal definition of Jewishness and which barred Jews from certain public offices. Worse still, in May 1941 the Parisian police force had collaborated in the internment of foreign Jews. As a means of identifying Jews, the German authorities required all Jews in the occupied zone to wear the Star of David on their clothing. On the 11th June, they demanded that 100, 000 Jews be handed over for deportation.

The most infamous of these mass arrests was the so-called grande rafle du Vél' d'Hiv' which took place in Paris on the 16th and 17th July 1942. The Vélodrome d'Hiver was a large indoor sports arena situated on the rue Nélaton near the Quai de Grenelle in the 15th arrondissment of Paris. In a vast operation codenamed vent printanier, the French police rounded up 12, 884 Jews from Paris and its surrounding suburbs. These were mostly adult men and women but there were around 4,000 children amongst them. The rounding up was made easier by the large number of files on Jews complied and held by Vichy authorities since 1940. The French police, headed by René Bousquet, were entirely resonsible for this operation and not one German soldier assisted.

The Nazi policy of extermination Bousquet agreed Himmler made clear the Nazi aim of exterminate Jews to his subordinates on the 23 June 1942. John Fox has argued that "... there was never any unity of purpose between the two sides because each pursued different objectives." (p.198) Fox argues that:

"It is incorrect, ... to assume that Vichy France, consciously and deliberately, pursued its own policy of annihilating Jews through such forms of cooperation with the Nazis. One may certainly accuse the Vichy authorities of callousmess and inhumanity in this respect, but not of mass murder." (p.198)

The first deportation from France took place as early as 27 March 1942 when a convoy of 1,112 Jews left Drancy vers l'est, i.e. towards concentration camps in Poland and Germany. According to Serge Klarsfeld's research, a further 75 convoys left France between that date and the 31st July 1944. His research has uncovered the following statistics:

in 1940 there were approximately 330, 000 Jews living in France;

during the period of the Occupation 75,721 Jews were deported;

around 23,000 of those deported had French nationality - the so-called bons vieux juifs de France - the vast majority were apatrides or stateless Jews;

around 3,000 Jews died in internment camps on French soil;

another 1,000 Jews were executed or murdered in France during the Occupation;

only 2,500 Jews - 3% of those deported - returned from the concentration camps.

The total number of Jews resident in France during the Occupation who were killed as a result of Nazi policy and French collaboration is estimated at around 75,000- 80,000.

Nearly 25% of the total Jewish community in France then, died in Hitler's `final solution'.

And what of Vichy's and Pétain's role in this? Despite Pétain's generally reactionary convictions, he was no antisemite. Indeed, he is known to have protected Jewish World War I veterans and personal acquaintances. He claimed at his trial in 1945 to be ignorant of the extent of antisemitic persecution in France. However, letters from prominent clergymen informing him of deportations and conditions in transit camps like Drancy are on record. Much more credible is the argument Nicholas Atkin makes that Pétain tacitly suported Laval's defence of Vichy autonomy and French nationals at the expense of its foreign Jews (p.163). Even the Vatican made an official protest in September 1942. The argument that he protected France from the worst excesses of Nazi barbarity is unfounded. The `polonization' of certain sections of the French community took place and took place with the complicity and full support of the French authorities.

Without any encouragement from Nazi Germany, the Vichy régime encouraged anti- semitic propaganda and introduced anti-semitic legislation. Jews had, for example, to report their status as Jews at the local police station. In October 1940 the notorious `statut des juifs' was introduced stripping them of rights and citizenship:

Le `statut des Juifs'

Est regardé comme juif, pour l'application de la présente loi, toute personne issue de trois grands-parents de race juive ou de deux grands-parents de la même race, si son conjoint lui-même est juif.

L'accès et l'exercise des fonctions publiques sonts interdits aux Juifs.
(3 octobre 1940)

It is important not to assume that those in power at the time had the same knowledge as we have now of the horrors of the `Final Solution'. However, form 1942 onwards, stories of the atrocities of the concentration camps began to circulate. There were a number of clandestine Resistance publications as well as broadcasts from BBC Radio about the camps of which the Vichy authorities were probably aware. The degree to which they were believed is a matter for conjecture.

Yves Durand claims that the real culpability of Vichy resides in the way in which it persuaded many ordinary French men and women that their patriotic duty was to obey orders - however repugnant - and accept the reality of Nazi dominance throughout Europe (p.96).

Mitterand was unwilling to openly condemn the Vichy régime. The evasions that generations of French politicians has resorted to since 1945 came to an end in May 1995 when Jacques Chirac made a speech denouncing Vichy as a criminal régime.

La Cité de la Muette council estate in Drancy some 7 km from the centre of Paris. La Cité de la Muette was originally planned as a vast public housing estate, the first of its kind in the Parisian suburbs if not in France. It was part of the `modern movement' in architecture and was influenced by the Bauhaus, the important German architectural school. The architects were Marcel Lods and Eugène Beaudoin and work on the estate they designed started in the mid-1930s. Like the council estates built in the postwar years, and in spite of the disturbing political situation in Europe, it was constructed in an era of optimism to provide low cost housing to those on low incomes. However, it was not yet completed when war began.

By 1941 Drancy, including La Cité de la Muette, was turned into a transit camp for `undesirables' including communists, Spanish republicans fleeing Franco and, of course, Jews. The transformation was an easy one as in 1939, at the start of the war it had been used as an internment camp for German nationals, many of whom, by a cruel twist of fate, were German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. There were many such camps all over France and they were run by the French police. Despite being run by the French police between August 1941 and July 1943, living conditions in what was still a building site were predicably poor. There was little water, no electricity, no toilets, no privacy and the food rations were inadequate. Drancy was planned to provide housing for 700 but at its peak in the 1940s as a transit camp it held 7,000. It now houses just 400. Deaths there were inevitable. And yet this was not the worst: Drancy became the stopping off point for thousands of Jews resident in France on their way to Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Eastern Europe, the most notorious being Auschwitz. Jews from all over France were rounded up, arrested and sent to various transit camps - some call them concentration camps - of which the most infamous was Drancy. From there they were sent by train - or rather, by cattle truck (wagons à bestiaux) east to Auschwitz. From 1942 onwards, more and more Jews were rounded up in summary raids, sent to Drancy and from there on to the Nazi death camps.

D. Cesarani (ed.), The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation(London & New York: Routledge, 1994)

L. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews 1933-45 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975)

A. Grynberg, La Shoah: l'impossible oubli (Paris: Gallimard, 1995)

A. Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l'occupation (Paris: Seuil, 1997) 2nd edition

L.D. Kritzman (ed.), Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture and `the Jewish Question' in France (London & New York: Routledge, 1995)

M. Marrus, The Holocaust in History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987)

M. Marrus & R.O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995)

More Web Sites

A very useful set of linked web pages on deportation/the final solution has been produced by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Déportation (in French only).

There is also a web page of details on the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation (official pictures and text are available on the Mémorial web page).

The Lycée Raymond Loewy has an excellent page on Le sauvetage des enfants juifs en Creuse durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale that contains many useful texts (in French) and images. Although the page is devoted to a study of regional attempts to rescue Jewish children, it has links to many other pages on the historical context of anti-semitism and its manifestations in the France of les années noires.

Another web page with a rich set of links is Michel Fingerhut's Ressources documentaires sur le génocide nazi et sa négation/Documentary Resources on the Nazi Genocide and its Denial (in both French and English).

Other web pages on a number of concentration camps can be found at:

KZ.

The Forgotten Camps by Vincent Châtel & Chuck Ferree (English or French)

Le Struthof (Tony McNeill: University of Sunerland)

Mémorial national du Struthof, haut-lieu du souvenir de la Déportation (official French website)

Le camp de concentration de Struthof (Bas-Rhin) (recommended - French only)

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Concept & Text: Tony McNeill
The University of Sunderland
Last Update 3-Sept-98