On July 16th 1995, President Jacques Chirac officially recognized for the first time, the responsibility of the Vichy regime in the genocide of the Jews. This statement was heralded as a break from the past as it had been traditionally asserted that no French governmental authorities had taken part in the Final Solution. The difficulty to acknowledge the accountability of a French regime leads to question the specificity of the Holocaust in France. The Vichy regime was the regime instituted after the defeat of the France of the Third Republic. At that time, France was the only country to sign an armistice with the Nazis. Thus, the new French State benefited from a larger autonomy than its European counterparts. It had some means to limit the attacks against the Jews, 'the French government energetically persecuted Jews living in France', as Paxton and Marrus revealed. One could thus wonder whether France's responsibility in the Final Solution means the failure of the integration of the Jews and the total contamination of antisemitism or whether it was only the product of a few, made possible by an unprecedented historical context. In fact, if one can observe a revival of antisemitism during the 1930s, prejudice against the Jews was not prevalent.
[...] Whereas the conclusions of the Dreyfus affair and the first World War seemed to have confirmed the integration of the Jews to the French fabric, the thirties saw “a wake up of antisemitism from its half-sleep, under the blows of the international economic crisis”[2]. Michel Winock argues that this situation can be explained by five factors[3]. First, the economic crisis that started affecting France by 1931. Indeed, the poor state of the economy was denounced as the work of the so-called Jewish finance. [...]
[...] MARRUS Michael R. and PAXTON Robert O., Vichy France and the Jews. POZNANSKI Renée, Les Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. LAFFITTE Michel, Juif dans la France allemande. POZNANSKI Renée, Les Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. POZNANSKI Renée, Les Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. [...]
[...] This involvement in the assassinations of Jews reveal that segments of the French society had still not accepted the integration of the Jews to the French nation. On this matter, Paxton observes[21] that villages and rural areas tended to be more hostile to the Jews than towns. Nonetheless, before 1942, the French, in their majority, demonstrated indifference to the fate of their Jewish counterparts. As Steinberg observes[22], the 1940-laws did not provoke any major reactions. This lack of attention can notably be observed in the objectives of the French Resistance as it did not mention countering Vichy's antisemit measures. [...]
[...] As such, the stakes of the integration of the Jews to the French nation took on a new significance in the fifties. Bibliography MARRUS Michael R. and PAXTON Robert O., Vichy France and the Jews, Calmann- Lévy LAFFITTE Michel, Juif dans la France allemande, Tallandier POZNANSKI Renée, Les Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Hachette WINOCK Michel, La France et les Juifs, de 1789 à nos jours, Editions du Seuil LABORIE Pierre, « 1942 et le sort des Juifs : quel tournant dans l'opinion ? [...]
[...] The préfet is the representant of the State in the districts named départements. WINOCK Michel, La France et les Juifs, de 1789 à nos jours. PAXTON Robert O., “La spécificité de la persécution des Juifs en France en 1942”. WINOCK Michel, La France et les Juifs, de 1789 à nos jours. PAXTON Robert O., “La spécificité de la persécution des Juifs en France en 1942”. PAXTON Robert O., “La spécificité de la persécution des Juifs en France en 1942”. MARRUS Michael R. [...]
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