BlackRain
06-19-2005, 09:31 AM
Revealed: Paris police war files
Archives detail betrayal of French Jews by collaborators
Jon Henley in Paris
Saturday June 18, 2005
The Guardian
The Paris police HQ is to open its second world war archives and allow the public to see for the first time the full extent of the force's collaboration with the Nazis.
"At last, everyone will be able to research the history of their parents and families, calmly and in an appropriate place," the Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said after Pierre Mutz, the police chief, signed an agreement to transfer the archives to the Paris Holocaust memorial museum.
"Everyone will be able to consult the original documents, discern the individual stories that are part of a bigger history. It will help us get closer to the truth about what happened during those dark years."
Soon after Paris was liberated in October 1944, the French leader, General Charles de Gaulle, cited the Paris police for their courage, saying they had "set a fine example of patriotism and solidarity".
The entire force was awarded the Légion d'Honneur and the Croix de Guerre.
But in the months that followed, more than 20% of its members - some 15,000 men in all - were dismissed in disgrace, and dozens were shot, for collaboration.
The police archives were sealed and watched over for years by the widow of the officer who composed the first comprehensive list of Paris's Jewish residents.
"The Paris police was at the heart of those arrests and confiscations," said Jacques Fredj, the memorial museum's manager. "They acted as the chief enforcers of the Vichy government's policy of persecution. Then, after the war, Paris police HQ did not exactly have a reputation for openness and transparency."
Tonnes of wartime statements and charge sheets were deliberately destroyed in 1948. They included most of the operational details of the notorious Vel d'Hiv raids of July 1942, in which some 4,500 over-zealous French officers rounded up 13,152 Jews, including 4,050 children.
But Mr Klarsfeld, who with a handful of other researchers gained access to a small part of the remaining archives in the mid-1980s, said they contained "tens of thousands" of priceless documents, including arrest warrants classifying Jews by name, address, profession and nationality.
There are also chilling records of the day-to-day running and accounts of the Drancy transit camp through which most of the 76,000 Jews deported from France to Nazi death camps passed; long lists of confiscated possessions; and the plans and reports relating to many other police operations, including further mass round-ups of Jews.
"I don't think we'll find anything huge and completely unheard-of in these archives," said Mr Klarsfeld, a lawyer whose association, Sons and Daughters of France's Deported Jews, has been instrumental in revealing the extent of French officialdom's collaboration.
"But what we may find, for example, is photos of the kids who were held at the Vel d'Hiv velodrome before being sent to Drancy and then to Auschwitz - none of those are known to exist elsewhere. And we should find important details about the running of Drancy, as well as the accounts drawn up for all its inmates."
Rachel Jedinak, who was twice arrested but never deported and who lost all her family in the Paris roundups, said she was "delighted" at the idea of studying fresh documents.
"I've devoted my whole life to finding out about my parents' final days," she told Le Parisien. "Today is a big day; it's extraordinary to know all this extra material exists and will soon be open to the public."
Officials stressed yesterday that the aim of the operation was not to "cast opprobrium on an entire profession".
Eric de Rothschild, president of the Holocaust memorial, said the documents should "help us understand, by drawing on the lessons of history, that such terrible events can never be allowed to occur again."
Mr de Rothschild also stressed that many families owed their lives to the genuine courage of Paris policemen who consistently pretended not to have found the Jews they were sent to arrest, or turned a blind eye while they escaped.
One such officer turned his head on the day of the Vel d'Hiv round-up when Mrs Jedinak ran for safety after having watched, aged eight, her parents being seized.
Mr Mutz said that all new Paris police recruits would visit the Memorial centre and archives as part of their training. The decision was "a strong act, full of symbolism", he said, and part of a policy of openness initiated in the wake of President Jacques Chirac's historic if belated admission, in 1995, that Vichy did indeed bear a heavy responsibility in the deportation of France's Jews.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1509317,00.html
Archives detail betrayal of French Jews by collaborators
Jon Henley in Paris
Saturday June 18, 2005
The Guardian
The Paris police HQ is to open its second world war archives and allow the public to see for the first time the full extent of the force's collaboration with the Nazis.
"At last, everyone will be able to research the history of their parents and families, calmly and in an appropriate place," the Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said after Pierre Mutz, the police chief, signed an agreement to transfer the archives to the Paris Holocaust memorial museum.
"Everyone will be able to consult the original documents, discern the individual stories that are part of a bigger history. It will help us get closer to the truth about what happened during those dark years."
Soon after Paris was liberated in October 1944, the French leader, General Charles de Gaulle, cited the Paris police for their courage, saying they had "set a fine example of patriotism and solidarity".
The entire force was awarded the Légion d'Honneur and the Croix de Guerre.
But in the months that followed, more than 20% of its members - some 15,000 men in all - were dismissed in disgrace, and dozens were shot, for collaboration.
The police archives were sealed and watched over for years by the widow of the officer who composed the first comprehensive list of Paris's Jewish residents.
"The Paris police was at the heart of those arrests and confiscations," said Jacques Fredj, the memorial museum's manager. "They acted as the chief enforcers of the Vichy government's policy of persecution. Then, after the war, Paris police HQ did not exactly have a reputation for openness and transparency."
Tonnes of wartime statements and charge sheets were deliberately destroyed in 1948. They included most of the operational details of the notorious Vel d'Hiv raids of July 1942, in which some 4,500 over-zealous French officers rounded up 13,152 Jews, including 4,050 children.
But Mr Klarsfeld, who with a handful of other researchers gained access to a small part of the remaining archives in the mid-1980s, said they contained "tens of thousands" of priceless documents, including arrest warrants classifying Jews by name, address, profession and nationality.
There are also chilling records of the day-to-day running and accounts of the Drancy transit camp through which most of the 76,000 Jews deported from France to Nazi death camps passed; long lists of confiscated possessions; and the plans and reports relating to many other police operations, including further mass round-ups of Jews.
"I don't think we'll find anything huge and completely unheard-of in these archives," said Mr Klarsfeld, a lawyer whose association, Sons and Daughters of France's Deported Jews, has been instrumental in revealing the extent of French officialdom's collaboration.
"But what we may find, for example, is photos of the kids who were held at the Vel d'Hiv velodrome before being sent to Drancy and then to Auschwitz - none of those are known to exist elsewhere. And we should find important details about the running of Drancy, as well as the accounts drawn up for all its inmates."
Rachel Jedinak, who was twice arrested but never deported and who lost all her family in the Paris roundups, said she was "delighted" at the idea of studying fresh documents.
"I've devoted my whole life to finding out about my parents' final days," she told Le Parisien. "Today is a big day; it's extraordinary to know all this extra material exists and will soon be open to the public."
Officials stressed yesterday that the aim of the operation was not to "cast opprobrium on an entire profession".
Eric de Rothschild, president of the Holocaust memorial, said the documents should "help us understand, by drawing on the lessons of history, that such terrible events can never be allowed to occur again."
Mr de Rothschild also stressed that many families owed their lives to the genuine courage of Paris policemen who consistently pretended not to have found the Jews they were sent to arrest, or turned a blind eye while they escaped.
One such officer turned his head on the day of the Vel d'Hiv round-up when Mrs Jedinak ran for safety after having watched, aged eight, her parents being seized.
Mr Mutz said that all new Paris police recruits would visit the Memorial centre and archives as part of their training. The decision was "a strong act, full of symbolism", he said, and part of a policy of openness initiated in the wake of President Jacques Chirac's historic if belated admission, in 1995, that Vichy did indeed bear a heavy responsibility in the deportation of France's Jews.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1509317,00.html