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Before World War II there were about 300,000 - 330,000 Jews in France. Most of them had emigrated to France, most commonly to Paris, from Eastern Europe to escape the Nazi Regime. The majority of Parisian Jews lived in the 4th, 11th, 18th, and 20th districts. By late September 1940, a German census registered 150,000 Jews in Paris, including 64,000 foreigners.

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Before World War II there were about 300,000 - 330,000 Jews in France. Most of them had emigrated to France, most commonly to Paris, from Eastern Europe to escape the Nazi Regime. The majority of Parisian Jews lived in the 4th, 11th, 18th, and 20th districts. By late September 1940, a German census registered 150,000 Jews in Paris, including 64,000 foreigners.

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Most of the Jews wanted to and tried to assimilate to French society. May of the children attended French school. There was also a network of vocational schools specifically for Jews to learn skills such as agriculture. Some immigrants did manual labor, while others who had a higher education and studied French. There was some opportunity of “upward mobility” among Jewish immigrants before the Nazis invaded. There were Jewish newspapers and immigrant organizations that worked alongside French Jewish organizations to organize events.

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The Feeling of French-Jews Towards Other Jews

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The Feeling of French-Jews Towards Other Jews

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Although, Jewish immigrants had some opportunities the French Jews had some reservation about the immigrants. One reason was that Polish, Jewish immigrants preferred to go to Eastern European synagogues which caused exclusion. During the 1930’s French Jews thought that the Jewish immigrants were adding to the workforce problem in a time when there was already an unemployment problem. Another suspicion was that the French Jews thought that the immigrants would get France into another world war because they would want revenge on the Nazis.

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After the German invasion France was split into two zones, the Occupied Zone and Vichy. Vichy France was ruled by a nationalists and anti semitic government known as the “Vichy Regime”
This government closely collaborated with the Nazi’s and was partly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews. The Vichy Regime governed France from 1940 to 1944, with Marshall Philippe Pétain as the President.
President Pétain:

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One day after France signed an armistice with Germany in June 1940, Adolf Hitler celebrated the German victory over France with a tour of Paris. Here, Hitler's train arrives in Paris. Hitler's tour included the Paris opera, the Champs-Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower.

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“My parents, my daughter started this company called armenia,and it went very well, it went very well he had almost all the Grand Magasins, the big department stores, bought household articles from him and there as reilly no problem whatsoever and he didn’t suffer from the fact that he came from Germany accept being accepted by the french Jews, the French Jew looked down on German Jews.... I enjoyed high school very much where I suffered very much was that I was called a bosch, a bush is a slang name for a bad German, and nobody was in any way concerned that I was Jewish in France, I was a bosch.”

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Beginning of Persecution in the Vichy Regime 

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Beginning of Persecution in the Vichy Regime 

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In October, 1940, the Vichy Regime established a “Jewish Statute” which revoked the citizenship of all French Jews; the “Crémieux Decree” of 1870, which had granted French citizenship to 118,000 Algerian Jews, was revoked. They were deprived of their property, fired from the civil service, many Jewish doctors had their licenses taken away, and many were forced to close their businesses. Tens of thousands of businesses and homes were taken from Jews. Theodor Dannecker, the SS "Jewish expert," ordered the centralization of Jewish organizations, "Aryanization" or transfer to non-Jewish ownership of Jewish businesses, and several other anti-Jewish measures. This “Jewish Statute” was more harsh and rigid than the laws passed by the Germans in the Occupied zone a week earlier.

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“The Germans came into Paris and then there was a quick succession of things that started to happen, we were asked to register and then we had to turn in our radios.. register as Jews at the police station, and that was really the first inkling that I had that there was something special, difficult, or bad about being a Jew.”

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Jews in France Under the German Occupation

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Holocaust survivor testimonies about Jewish life in France under the German occupation: Having to register with the police, wear a yellow star on their clothing, turning in their radios, decrees against conducting business and living in hiding.

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Following many other arrests there was one specifically horrible one called Vel d"HIv.
This took place on the 16th and 17th of July, 1942. 11,000 jews were arrested and put into the Winter Stadium or the Velodrome d’HIver. Within a week there were 13,000 Jews and over 4,000 children.The German officials had agreed that children under the age of 26 are exempt from this roundup, Pierre Laval, French Prime minister, proposed that children should be arrested with their parents for “humanitarian” reason unless there was a family member to take care of them leading to the arrest of 4,000 children. There was no water, food, or sanitary conditions. Only two physicians were allowed in to treat the detainees. The glass ceiling of the arena and the sealing of all ventilation prevent escape contributed to an extremely hot environment during the day, and extremely cold temperatures at night.

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Jews were taken from the stadium to concentration camps such as Pithiviers an Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loriet region south of Paris and to Drancy near Pairs. The Vel d’HIv Roundups were organized by French Policemen not the Germans. This event has become a symbol of the responsibility of the French nation and government for the Holocaust of Jews in France. On July, 1995, the 53rd anniversary of the Vel D’Hiv roundup the French President Jacques Chirac recognized that the state of France and its police had played a huge role in the persecution of the Jews and other victims during the German Occupation. Chirac said, “France, land of the Enlightenment and of Human Rights, land of hospitality and asylum, France, on that day, committed an irreparable act. It failed to keep its word and delivered those under its protection to their executioners.”

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There were 26 concentration camps operating in the Occupied Zone and 15 in France. Some examples of the concentration camps in France are Gurs, Le mIlles, Rivesaltes, Saint. Cyprien, and the most well known Drancy. In the beginning of 1941, around 40,00 jews had already been arrested. People that were not arrested were forced to be in the ”Labor Corps” or “Compagnies de Travail”.  35,00 Jewish men were forced into the Labor Corps and all foreign Jewish men were either put into the Labor Corps or concentration camps. The conditions in the camps were extremely brutal and unfathomable. There was little to no food and no sanitation. Hundreds died from cold, starvation, and disease, and thousands were malnourished and emaciated. Jews were forced to administrate the camps as well.

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The main camp was Drancy which was just out of Paris.  Starting in March 1942 Drancy became a transit camps for Jews being deported East to extermination camps. 65,000 people passed through Drancy, while being taken by bus to the nearest railway station of Le Bourget- Drancy to death camps in Poland. There were additional camps in Paris and northeastern France that were run by the Vichy Regime, such as Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande, Besançon, Compiègne and others. 50,000 out of 54,00 Jews who passed through Compiegne were deported to extermination camps where they were killed. Thousands of Jews were deported from all of these camps to Auschwitz where they were murdered. Concentration camps in France operated until the end of the summer of 1944 right before the Allied liberated France.

Aerial View of Drancy:

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Holocaust survivor testimonies about deportation to concentration camps in France and conditions in the camps of Pithiviers and Drancy.

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Before jews were deported again from the camps they were separated from their children, had their head shaved, and were subjected to a violent search. The transports took two days to arrive at their destination, which was most commonly the death/extermination camps Auschwitz. Many people died in transit due to the horrendous conditions. The ones who survived the journey were murdered. Pierre Laval, for the same reasons he wanted children be arrested with their families sent the children to the East with their families, but the violent arrests and deportations often separated families, and 3,000 babies/ children were left alone in the camps.Once the Trains arrived in Auschwitz, everyone was evaluated and the people deemed fit enough for labor, usually men, were forced to do labor. The others, mostly women and children were immediately taken to the gas chamber. Because the people who were immediately taken to the Gas Chambers were not registered there is no exact number of how many people were killed in the Gas Chambers. They were told they were going to be getting a shower and were forced to strip, then tons of people were packed into a chamber where they were gassed using Zyklon-B

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Jewish reporter, Jacques Bielinsky wrote that what was going on was, “A cruel destruction of Jewish families”. He also wrote on the 18th of August 1942, “The deportations are creating tremendous pressures in the concentration camps and wreaking havoc within the Jewish families, To date, nothing is known about the fate of those who have been deported.”

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In total around 76,000 Jews from France (mostly Paris) were deported to the east by Train, and among them were 11,000 children. About 1,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz everyday.  In the end of September 1942, 38,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz and in 1945 there were only 780 Jews alive. The deportations continued even as the Allies had begun to liberate France. The last transport left France in August 1944, while the battle for Paris was being fought. Of all the Jews deported from France to the extermination camps in the East, a total of some 2,500 survived.

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French Resistance:

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6,000 small villages and towns had tons of Jews in hiding. German and French authorities organized rural areas to be raided to find the Jews in hiding. Activists also helped children and distributed fake documents. Parisian Jews were aided by a variety of Jewish clandestine and semi-clandestine organizations, including the Communist "Solidarite," the Bundist "Amelot," the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants; Children's Aid Society), and various underground Zionist groups. The UGIF (l'Union Générale des Israélites de France) which was an organization for French Jews. They were able to save 14,000 Jewish children who were French citizens from being deported but could not save their parents. Other Jewish organizations helped children, provided social welfare, opened shelters and sent the children to remote villages in order to save them. There was the Jewish Resistance in France and the French Resistance, which many jews joined. Some jews converted to catholicism to not be deported. Many frenchmen risked their lives to help Jews from being deported, and some even died while trying to help. Since 1962 a total of 3,512 French men and women have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among The Nations (as of January 2012).

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Allied forces liberated Paris on August 25, 1944. At least 50,000 Parisian Jews, most of them foreign-born, had been deported and murdered.

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Allied forces liberated Paris on August 25, 1944. At least 50,000 Parisian Jews, most of them foreign-born, had been deported and murdered.

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Names of all Jews Killed:

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Pierre Laval, former French Prime Minister, was arrested and tried after the liberation of France for his role in the arrests and deportations of the Jews. He was shot on October 15, 1945 by a firing squad.

Theodor Dannecker, one of two German officials, most involved with Vel d’HIv, was arrested by American officials in Bad Tölz, Bavaria, in December 1945, and committed suicide while in custody.

Helmut Knochen, another official involved with the Vel d’Hiv roundup, was sentenced by a British court to 21 years in prison for a separate offense, and then was sentenced to death by a French court in 1954. The sentence was changed to life imprisonment, and Knochen was released on orders of French President Charles de Gaulle in November 1962.

In 1949, THe secretary general of the French police, René Bousquet, was found guilty for his role in the complicit Vichy government, but his sentence was immediately commuted for "having actively and sustainably participated in the resistance against the occupier." In 1991, French justice authorities in Paris indicted Bousquet for his participation in the deportation of Jews from France. Christian Didier, a mentally ill person, assassinated Bousquet in his home in Paris on June 8, 1993, before anything could take place.

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Around 72,500 Jews died. 75% of the approximately 330,000 Jews in metropolitan France, and 72,500 out of the 75,000 Jews deported died. This is one of the highest survival rates in Europe. At least 50,000 Jews in Paris specifically had been deported and murdered.
Holocaust Memorial in Paris: