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Dr Julian Jackson examines the position and treatment of Jews in Occupied France
When in 1945 France came to try those who had 'collaborated' during the war, the fate of the Jews was not central. It was even possible for Xavier Vallat, Vichy's Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, to defend himself against the accusation of collaboration by arguing that he had not acted at the bidding of the Germans, since his own anti-Semitism was authentically French and `inspired by the teaching of the Church'. That it was conceivable to offer antiSemitism as a defence is striking evidence of the degree to which in 1945 anti-Semitism was viewed as less important than the crime of collaboration.
Even those who were not so ready to overlook the fate of the Jews were prepared to accept that the primary responsibility for wartime anti-Semitism lay with the Germans. This reassuring idea was also accepted by many Jews who wanted only to put the nightmare behind them and fit back into French society. When in 1954 Alain Resnais made a film about the concentration camps, he was obliged by the censors to cut a photograph of a French policeman helping to load people on to deportation trains: the official mythology could not accept the idea that the French had been involved in such actions.
In the 1970s, this mythology started to come under attack. More and more was written about Vichy's anti-Semitism, and there were calls for those who had committed crimes against the Jews to be brought to account. Emotion was particularly intense in 1992 which was the fiftieth anniversary of the infamous raid when almost 13,000 Jews were rounded up by French police in Paris on 16/17 July 1942 and subsequently deported to Auschwitz. In 1993, under public pressure, the government conceded that 16 July would permanently be designated a national day of commemoration of the persecution of the"Jews in France.1997 saw the opening of the trial of the 83 year old Maurice Papon who had, during the Occupation, been an official in the Prefecture of Bordeaux involved in organising the deportation of Jews to Germany. In April 1998 Papon was found guilty of crimes against humanity: this was the first time a Vichy official had been convicted...