French bestseller says Vichy regime ‘tried to save French Jews’
For Paxton, the fact that a quarter of Jews living in France during the war perished was part of a wide-ranging and deliberately anti-Semitic collaborationist policy.
But Zemmour leaps to the Vichy leadership’s defence – insisting that the surviving 75 percent were “saved by the strategy of [Vichy leader] Philippe Pétain and [wartime Prime Minister] Pierre Laval in the face of German demands”.
Specifically, he says they deliberately “sacrificed foreign Jews (living in France) in order to save French Jews”.
While stopping short of praising Pétain and Laval, Zemmour wants his readers to understand that there is a “difference between morality...and political efficiency” when making their judgement on the Vichy regime.
Zemmour’s arguments are ‘absurd’
Contacted by Rue89’s Pascal Riché, Paxton hit back at Zemmour’s “empty arguments”.
“It is absurd to argue that Vichy sought to protect French Jews,” he said. “Vichy’s anti-Jewish laws of 1940-1942 attacked all Jews living in France, including those with French nationality.
“Their removal from public service, their exclusion from universities, the ‘Aryanisation’ of their property, were targeted at all Jews, French or not.”
Paxton goes on to say that the removal of foreign Jews first was a German decision, and that France would have understood very clearly that “we’ll take the foreign ones first, but understand that we will take the French Jews later on”.
“There is no reason at all for me to alter my conviction that Vichy committed terrible acts against all Jews, including those of French nationality.”
Of the approximately 330,000 Jews living in France at the beginning of the war (around 150,000 were French citizens, the others refugees), some 75,000 were deported –French and foreign alike – to the east. The vast majority did not survive the camps.
