France Acknowledges Vichy Government Deported Jews To Their Deaths

The acknowledgement comes as a response to the request by the daughter of a deportee who died at Auschwitz. She is asking for reparations from the French state while also asking for damages for her own personal suffering during and after the occupation.

France's top judicial body on Monday recognized the French government's responsibility for the deportation of Jews during World War II, the clearest such recognition of the state's role in the Holocaust.

The Council of State found that the government of Nazi-occupied France at the time held the "responsibility" for deportations that led to anti-Semitic persecution.

The decision released Monday also found that the deportation had been "compensated for" since 1945, apparently ruling out any reparations for deportees or their families.

Thousands of Jews were deported from France to Nazi death camps during the occupation. After the war, subsequent French governments took decades to acknowledge any role by the collaborationist Vichy regime in the Holocaust.[emphasis added]

This is happening while anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. As Roger L. Simon points out in Holocaust Oxymoron, quoting from The Writing on the Synagogue Wall:

“The Pope embraces a Holocaust-denying Winchester and Cambridge-educated bishop; slogans such as ‘Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas’ are chanted in Amsterdam;”

These few words embody the irrationality of anti-Semitism. How can there be no Holocaust and Jews being gassed at the same time? Perhaps Richard Willamson, the “Holocaust-denying Winchester and Cambridge-educated bishop” above, who says “there were no gas chambers” can explain that to us?

In this environment, France's acknowledgement will create barely a ripple.

Technorati Tag: Holocaust and Anti-Semitism and Vichy France.