Hello, as a french, I’ve often seen this rhetoric being use to defend the vichy regime, I want to know your thought on it and how you’d debunk it. For me, I’d say that more fench jew surviving the war doesn’t mean vichy had the intention to protect them, I’d say if the german won, french jews would’ve been willingly deported and send to extermination/concentration camp by the vichy government and they’d be denaturalised too. It doesn’t make vichy more sympathetic either since you still got pierre laval speech “je souhaite la victoire de l’allemagne” wich is basially wishing for a french jew holocaust, the STO, the crime against free french, the antisemitism and vichy would still participate in the holocaust with the deportation of the foreign jews.
Thanks for your answers!
Maybe it is interesting to look at from a Dutch perspective, which is very different from the French. The Anne Frank Museum posted a great in-depth analysis of why so many jews were deported from the Netherlands. It’s a great read. Here is a link
The thing that really sticks out to me is the line about the proportion of deported jews that was arrested and handed over by the local police. In France, this was every 2 in 3. In the Netherlands it was 1 out of 4 and in Belgium only 1 in 6 jews was arrested by the local police.
In college, I read a brand new book (1981, yes I’m old) called “Vichy France and the Jews” by Michael Marrus. It definitely made me think that. france did not defend their Jewish members.
Still in Ebook. There may be better but it’s one I remember 40 years later.
something that really bother me about those using statistic to show vichy france intention is that I don’t think they show said intention, more french jews surviving the war doesn’t mean vichy wanted to protect them Vichy et la Shoah. Enquête sur le paradoxe français | lhistoire.fr
The countries you mentioned (Belgium,Netherlands, France) were under the Nazi occupation. and the nazis had launched their final solution to the jewish question by now. So why was their no consistency in the amount of Jews arrested in the countries you mentioned? Was it because the defiance of the local governments or people in sending Jews to their deaths?
I got it from the link that I posted with that original comment. Worth a read if you are interested. The main reason they mention here is the nature of the Vichy regime which had a much more dominant role in anti-jewish policy compared to its northern neighbours.