Richard H. Weisberg - Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France

Series Editor Yehuda Bauer
Chairman, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Studies in Antisemitism brings together in one series major worldwide research on this complex phenomenon from which the student and decision-maker as well as the general public may learn. The studies cover antisemitism, ancient and modern, from a broad range of perspectives: historical, religious, political, cultural, social, psychological and economic.

Volume 1
The Catholic Church and Antisemitism
Poland, 1933-1939
Ronald Modras

Volume 2
Russian Antisemitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism
William Korey

Volume 3
Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France
Richard H. Weisberg

ISSN 1023 6163

First published by Harwood Academic Publishers

This edition published 2013 by Routledge

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Copyright 1996 by OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V.
Published in The Netherlands by Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Weisberg, Richard H. 1944-

Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. - (Studies in Antisemitism; v. 3)
1. Jews - Legal status, law, etc. - France - History - 20th century 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) - France 3. France - History - German occupation 1940-1945
I. Title
940.53180944
ISBN 3-7186-5892-5

COVER

Jews BHVP/Keystone/SYGMA

EDITING AND COMPOSITION

Alifa Saadya

ALL Alliance Israelite universelle, Paris

AN Archives National

Bar Association of the City of Paris: Memorandum, On the Attitude of Attorneys Inscribed at the Court of Appeals of Paris Concerning the Authorities of the French State from 1940-1944, Bar Association archivist, Palais de Justice

CDJC Centre de Documentation juive contemporaine, Paris

YV Yad Vashem, Jerusalem: file 0/9; IV-VI (Documents of the CDJC); 98-d;
Leo Israelowicz file; Klarsfeld notebook; Kurt Schendel file

Nearly twenty years ago, while researching Vichy France and the Jews, Robert Paxton and I were struck by the degree to which the murders of Jews from France during 1942-44 were facilitated by two years of aggressive persecution of the Jewish minority, initiated and implemented by the collaborationist rgime at Vichy. That persecution stigmatized the Jews in French society, stripped them of their property and livelihood, turned them into fugitives, and, we argued, facilitated the Nazis deportation of some 75,000 of them to death camps in the east. Many factors contributed to the isolation and victimization of the Jews. But among them, we noted, was a veritable cascade of French laws regulating their situation specificallyno fewer than 143 laws and actes rglementaires generated by the Vichy government. Remarkable as these laws were, so also was the rigor with which they were enforced by the French courts. Even when taking account of local variation, their severity in dealing with Jews seemed outstanding. We noted, for example, that over 650 Jews were convicted for having violated anti-Jewish laws between June 1941 and the middle of 1944, with the overwhelming majority of these being in the period extending through the massive deportations of 1942. Taking the lead from the Conseil dtat, at the very pinnacle of the French legal system, lower courts doggedly worked away at enforcing the anti-Jewish lawsalmost until the very endin what may seem to us a stunning habituation to a sordid routine. In addition, an army of legal practitioners looked up the laws, furnished opinion, filled out forms, and otherwise had untroubled recourse to the legal machinery of Vichys antisemitic enterprise.

We also thought it noteworthy that the anti-Jewish laws slipped into the canon of legal disputation. Working energetically within the system, learned jurists published their opinions on technical and interpretive issues concerning the instruments of persecution. Academics did their part, lending the name of distinguished institutions to their writings on anti-Jewish laws. Careers were enhanced by learned publications on these themes. In reading this material, one should not forget that when it was being written and when some of it was read Jews were being cast into destitution, tom loose from their families, thrown into camps and in some cased deported to their deaths. Elle est pourtant la loi. Obissance lui est due (The law is the law. It must be obeyed), one high official recalled having told head of state Philippe Ptain about the Statut des Juifs a claim that may be taken as emblematic of the entire process.