the choice of the jews undervichy - university of …undpress/tocs/p00978-toc.pdf · 3. holocaust,...

THE CHOICEof the JEWSUNDER VICHY

© 2015 UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

THE CHOICEof the JEWSUNDER VICHYBetween Submission and Resistance

ADAM RAYSKIForeword by François Bédarida

Translated by William Sayers

Published in association with the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

University of Notre Dame Press • Notre Dame, Indiana


English Language Edition Copyright © 2005 University of Notre DameNotre Dame, Indiana 46556All Rights Reservedundpress.nd.edu

Paperback edition published in 2015

Manufactured in the United States of America

Translated by William Sayers from Adam Rayski, Le choix des Juifs sous Vichy: Entre soumission et résistance, published by Éditions La Découverte, Paris. © Éditions La Découverte, 1992

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The assertions, arguments, and conclusions contained herein are those of the author or other contributors. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataRayski, Adam.

[Choix des juifs sous Vichy. English]The choice of the Jews under Vichy : between submission and resistance /

Adam Rayski ; forward by François Bédarida ; translated by William Sayers.p. cm.

Includes index.isbn 0-268-04021-4 (alk. paper)1. Jews—Persecutions—France. 2. Jews—France—Politics and government.

3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939 –1945)—France. 4. World War, 1939 –1945—Jewishresistance—France. 5. France—Ethnic relations. I. Title.ds135.f83r3913 2005940.53'18'0944—dc22

2005043066∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.


C O N T E N T S

Foreword François Bédarida ix

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

Prologue 5

P A R T O N E . 1940–1942: The Logic of Persecution

C H A P T E R O N E . The First Anti-Jewish Measures: Dark Forebodings 11

“Who Is a Jew?” • Who Went Back to Paris? • A Shattered Community

The First Internments • The Question of Final Objective (Endziel)

C H A P T E R T W O . The Consistory between Religion and Politics 25

First Message of Allegiance • Helbronner’s Counter-Proposal

How to Manage Misfortune? • Confronting the Second Anti-Jewish Law

The Census and the Honor of Being Jewish • The Experience of the Belgian Consistory

Pétain and the “Huge Jewish Fortune” • De Gaulle to Cassin: “You’ve come at just the right time”

C H A P T E R T H R E E . Preliminaries to a Massacre 41

A Ghetto without Walls • First Refusal of the Directive • Nazi Propaganda Exploits Address Lists

Concentrate and Isolate • Social Assistance and Resistance

Protests by the Wives of the Interned • The Appeal from Moscow

C H A P T E R F O U R . The Creation of the UGIF, the “Compulsory Community” 56

Vallat’s “Worst Case Scenario”: Blackmail • Marc Bloch and the Letter of the Twenty-Nine

Must We Break with Pétain? • “They are ruining the Jews” • How to Save Honor?


vi | Contents

C H A P T E R F I V E . The Yellow Star: Stigmatize, Humiliate, and Isolate the Jews 72

“Support the wearers of the yellow badge!” • Protestants and Catholics Begin to Question

Reactions and Exemptions • Deport 1,000 to 5,000 Jews per Month

The Eve of the Great Roundup

C H A P T E R S I X . July 1942: The Great Roundup and the First Acts of Resistance 84

A Difficult Secret • Resonance of the Appeal against the Raids

Communications from Headquarters • The Hidden Face of the Raids • Röthke’s Deficient Numbers

A Double Turning Point • A Letter to the Marshal from a Jewish Child

C H A P T E R S E V E N . The Inhuman Hunt in the Southern Zone 102

Collecting the Trash • Playing the American Card • “Shades of Melancholy” in the Skies of France

Rabbi Hirschler in the Field • The Law of Numbers, or “Screening”

The Perverse Effects of Social Action • Laval Washes His Hands

File under “Vichy, Responsibility of” • Bishops’ Crosses Are Raised

The Secret Letter from de Gaulle to Saliège • The Children of Vénissieux

C H A P T E R E I G H T . Drancy: The Last Circle before Hell 125

The Lawyers Take Charge • “News” from Drancy • A Life That Was Vanishing

A Bundle of Yellowed Letters • The Spiral of Anguish • Escape: The Tunnel

The Jewish Administration • Attack the Convoys of Deportees?

The “Reserves” in the Camp Annexes

P A R T T W O . 1942–1944: To Resist or Submit?

C H A P T E R N I N E . “Night and Fog”: The Battle against Silence 147

Evidence from the Red Cross • The Consistory Knew, But . . . • The Chief Rabbi’s About-Face

Revelations of a German Industrialist • Should We Talk about the Gas Chambers?

To Know: A Moral Obligation • Writing: The Beginning of Memory

In Gestapo and Vichy Archives

C H A P T E R T E N . People of the Shadows 162

Clandestinity: The Condition of Survival • The Hidden Face of Daily Life

An Unknown Page from the Life of Isaac Schneerson

The Void around Legal Organizations • The Strange Underground Universe of Children

Keeping the Faith • Real and False Baptisms


Contents | vii

C H A P T E R E L E V E N . Do Not Forget the Children 176

The Inevitable Turning Point • Formal Notice by Vaad Hatsala • Memories of . . . Childhood

The Protestant Plateau • A Sanctuary for the Persecuted?

Other Rescue Organizations • An Assessment of the War on Children

C H A P T E R T W E L V E . “Intermezzo,” or the Italian Reprieve 193

From Refuge into Trap • Berlin and Vichy Take Aim at Count Ciano

Twenty Thousand Jews To Be Evacuated • The Brunner Commando in Action

The Agencies Caught Unprepared • Jewish Youth React

Testimony of the First Escapee from Auschwitz

C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N . Jewish Perceptions of the War 208

A Jewish State without Territory • A “Greater Israel” with the Aid of Nazi Germany

Vichy and the Zionist Cause • For a “Christian Antisemitism”

Polemics on the Nature of the War • Translating Perceptions into Strategy

C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N . 1943: By the Light of Flames from the Ghetto 221

The Raid on Rue Sainte-Catherine in Lyon • The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Uprisings in Jewish History • Reorganization of the “Jewish Section”

The UGIF: To Be or Not to Be • Recognition of Failure • Vichy’s Last Hope: The Milice

New Methods for Jew-Hunting • Himmler: Put an End to the “Foreign Jewish Resistance”

From the Perspective of the End of the War • The Marcel Langer Brigade • Combat Groups in Lyon

C H A P T E R F I F T E E N . Jews, French and Resistant 242

Vichy’s Intentional Ambivalence • Abandoned by Their Brothers? • From Mistrust to Resistance

Lucien Vidal-Naquet: A Bourgeois Republican • The Jewish Identity of Marc Bloch

Georges Friedmann: The Shock of October 1940 • “Israelite” and Jew: Denise Baumann and Other Rebels

The MOI: A Hand Outstretched to French Jews • How Vichy Is Ruining French Jews

Days of Joy and Sadness in Algiers • History’s Lesson

C H A P T E R S I X T E E N . The Jewish Scouts Take Up Arms 259

The Origins of the Jewish Army • The “Blue and White” Squadron • “Cooperate and Infiltrate”

The Visionaries of the Jewish Army • The Collapse of the MLN • Why Go to London?

C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N . The Jewish Resistance in All Its Variety 272

The Common Ground of the Jewish Resistance • Rewriting the History of the Resistance?

The Various Functions of Armed Struggle • The Weight of the Past

Portrait of a Jew in the Resistance: Vladimir Jankélévitch


viii | Contents

C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N . CRIF: Constructing the Future in the Shadow of Death 286

Vichy Does Not Respond • Orders from Berlin: Arrest Helbronner

The Outline of the Postwar Community • Seven Versions of the “Charter”

The Transformation of Israelite into Jew • The New Face of the Community

C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N . A Time for All Fears and All Hopes 300

The Crime at Rillieux • The Massacre at Guerry • The Testament of Samy Klein

The Charnel Pits of Bron • In Paris, Brunner Liquidates the UGIF Children’s Centers

Inquest into the Drama • Suicidal Behavior • The End: “Remove your stars!”

C O N C L U S I O N . The Weight of the Present and of the Future 313

A F T E R W O R D . The Twenty-First Century 317

Interviews and Testimony 321

Acronyms of Agencies, Organizations, and Movements 323

Notes 327

Index 375


F O R E W O R D

It would be an overstatement to assert that the history of the Jews of Francehas been obscured or repressed for years, but it is true that it was long rele -gated to the second rank of historical inquiry and that there is a striking con-trast with the eminent place it occupies today. Testifying to this ubiquity—which reflects the fluctuations and ongoing questioning of the Frenchconscience—is the abundance of books and studies devoted to per se -cution and genocide, and the constant media attention focused on thetragic past.

In fact, the present situation is above all the result of two phenomena.The first—and by far the more interesting—is the revival of Jewish memorythat has been in progress for the past quarter century. The affirmation ofJewish identity that accompanies this revival has led to a process of recon-quering history and of reinterpreting the destiny of a people dispersed andscattered over the centuries. Yet, how can we not accord a privileged posi-tion to an exceptional era, that of the Shoah, marked by a brutal rupture inthe continuity of Jewish life under the effects of an implacable policy of ex-termination, in order to follow the unfolding of Jewish history and under-stand its significance—all the more so in that this recent past marked a de-cisive turning point in a bimillennial history?

The second phenomenon, more conjectural, relates to dates. Between1990 and 1995 we had a round of fiftieth anniversaries, and one commemo-ration succeeded another: that of the anti-Jewish legislation, the roundupat the Vélodrome d’Hiver and the deportations, even the liberation of thecamps. The memory of Vichy and of the Occupation assails the French, be-sieges them, lashes them, the process further driven by notorious “affairs”(Bousquet, Papon, Touvier). From all this comes a will to know even more, tocomprehend the components and mechanics of such a controversial past,to explain the great transformation of Jewry in France that occurred in the

ix© 2015 UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

space of a few years. It is to this task that Adam Rayski has passionately sethimself, at the heart of a historiography in full development, and with theaid of a vast body of documentation, quite often unpublished.

Rayski himself belongs to the rare and invaluable category of witness-turned-historian. After having been a privileged actor in this past, as the headof the Jewish section of the Main-d’oeuvre immigrée (MOI—ImmigrantLabor Association), whose extraordinary adventure he has retraced as co-author of the fine book Sang de l’étranger (Blood of the Foreigner), he haselected to present a more probing and reasoned synthesis of the destiny ofthe Jews in France from 1940 to 1944, while conforming scrupulously to therules and canons of historical method. This allows us a double vision anddouble reading: a view from the interior but, as well, a distanced view, a criti-cal but also engaged reading.

From this comes the breath of life that permeates the book, challeng-ing the reader, recalling to life the Jewish tragedy in all its intensity, trans-lating the author’s will to understand the indelible trauma at whatever cost.But in following the unfolding of events—the French defeat in World War II,the occupation of France, the policies of the Vichy regime, the “Final Solu-tion”; in following the accounts of the trials overcome, the suffering, thefear, the raids; in following the drama of the hunts, the arrests, and the de-portations, the camps, the hideouts, the false papers—in all this the authormaintains a remarkable concern for weighing the evidence, forcing himselfto balanced and equitable judgment. It is thus that after illuminating theparadox and the specific nature of the “Jewish Question” in France, whichunlike other European states was characterized by a double persecution—by both the Nazis and Vichy—supported by a solid tradition of native anti-semitism, Adam Rayski devotes his analysis to the rescue of the Jews, whetherof French or foreign nationality, arguing that those who escaped death owedtheir salvation above all to the solidarity, mutual aid, and sympathy of theFrench. Admittedly, it happens that here and there his indignation comes tothe fore (and why, for that matter, should we be surprised?), but most often itis contained, while the work as a whole is informed by ethical rigor and isvibrant in its appeal to honor, respect for life, the dignity of every humanbeing, through which we sense the very soul of the Jewish struggle.

The focal point of this work is the relationship between French Jews andforeign Jews. Even if this relationship long took the form of radical diver-gence in mentality and conduct, entailing endless stereotyping, multipleconflicts, and constant mutual recrimination from 1940 to 1943, a major

x | Foreword


Foreword | xi

evolution was also generated by the pressure of events. In the face of acommon persecution, not only the awareness of a common fate but a rap-prochement evolved among groups that had hitherto been competitors orantagonists, with a view to bringing together the whole of “Jewry in France.”

Yet, initially, this divide between Jews “of French stock” and those con-sidered foreign appeared immense, even unbridgeable, as Rayski illustratesin numerous examples, with great candor and without sparing anyone’s feel -ings. Two cultures confronted each other, each founded in a different con-ception of Jewish identity. On the one hand, French citizens of Jewish faith,assimilated citizens, tended to define themselves half by religion and half byculture, however vague the definition may have been in the minds of some.On the other hand, Jews who had come from Central or Eastern Europeiden tified rather, and often very strongly, as a community at once ethnic, na-tional, and religious. Between the two, incomprehension was profound. Thus,we find the chief rabbi of Nancy speaking out against the use of Yiddish,which he characterized as a “jargon.”

Among members of the first group, with a strong tradition of obedienceto the laws and regulations of the country, there was a great tendency to givein to illusion and to place trust in the authorities, in a respect for legality,while trying to manage misfortune as well as they could. Suffer and endure:so might we characterize their line of conduct. Rayski offers a merciless analy -sis of the strategy of the religious leadership of the Consistoire central desIsraélites de France (CC—Central Consistory of the Jews of France) in thisrespect, and of the path taken by the Union générale des israélites de France(UGIF—General Union of the Jews of France) from the last months of 1941onward. With document after document from trustworthy sources, the au-thor exposes the mechanism of Vichy allegiance that hid the trap set by oc-cupation authorities: exploiting the legal and superficially legitimate powerof the French state and its instruments, both the police and the administra-tive apparatus, in order to mount and implacably execute the German policyof annihilation.

The behavior of foreign Jews was quite different, and understandablyso in the light of their historical experience—at least among the best or-ganized of them, starting with the communists and Zionists of the left. Re-fusing to be isolated and turn inward, the equivalent of entering a “ghettowithout walls” in Rayski’s telling phrase, they found means of resistance tothe Vichy state and to their fierce enemy, the Occupation. For them the verycondition of survival was clandestinity, an underground existence. Insteadof accepting misfortune to the point of martyrdom, the order was simple:


stand up, fight rather than submit. “Everywhere Present, Face the Enemy!”exhorts the slogan of the Jewish Scouts, which became the Organisation juivede combat (the Jewish Fighting Organization).

Throughout their common trial, the two constituents of Jewry in France,instead of continuing to follow separate paths, effected a movement of con-vergence. While official Judaism, from whose eyes the scales finally dropped,moved toward an underground mode of operation, the Jewish resistanceorganizations, composed for the most part of foreigners, came to adopta strategy of unification, with the communists taking the lead. The resultof this transformation of cultures and mentalities was the creation, in thespring of 1944, of the Conseil représentatif des Juifs de France (CRIF—Representative Council of the Jews of France) recognized by both camps asthe interpreter and representative of French Jewry in its totality.

Here, then, under the threat of extinction, we see a community reconsti-tuted, reestablishing its links—moving beyond a recent generation marredby contradictions and misunderstandings—to a more distant past. Here toowe see how the drama of genocide led many native French “Israelites” toshed their skin and become “Jews.” In the striking words of Robert Badin-ter, the anti-Jewish legislation of 1940 had “a conceptual victim: it killed theFrench Israelite; the Jew took his place.” Among foreign Jews, combat andthe struggle to rescue community members generated a sense of belonging,of integration into the national French community. In short, at the end ofa dramatic itinerary of persecution and death, Jewish consciousness and na-tional consciousness—the one and the other revitalized—found themselvesreunited and reconciled.

Another original feature of this book is the light thrown on the Jewish re-sistance, taken in its broadest sense, by closely associating armed action andrescue. For the struggle to survive was one and indivisible. René Mayer sum-marized this in a lapidary phrase: “To safeguard French Jewry, it is necessaryfirst of all to save the Jews.” Far from limiting himself to a specious distinc-tion between active and passive resistance, Adam Rayski shows with perti-nent facts the interdependence of the different forms of the battle that waswaged—the armed struggle, urban guerrilla activity, escape networks, par-ticipation in other resistance movements, and in intelligence networks suchas that of “Free France,” the forgery of identity papers, the hiding of chil-dren, and various social services. Differentiating their times, rhythms, andspaces, the author takes as his point of departure the separation of the twozones of France, which accentuated even more the rift between French Jew

xii | Foreword


and foreign Jew, the consequences of which would not be totally effaced untilthe last months of the Occupation and the very eve of the Liberation. Herewe find an opposition between two basic behaviors: the position of compro-mise and resignation—“that great school of cowardice” for an intransigentactivist such as David Knout—and the resolute will to wage the battle for sur-vival by any and all means outside the law.

Those who made the latter choice had a precious trump card in theirhand: the prewar community organizations that served as structures ready-made for undercover activity (while the Jews who joined resistance move-ments, instead of benefiting from this same framework, engaged themselvesindividually). This is certainly the case for the MOI in the communist campbut also for the Éclaireurs israélites ( Jewish Scouts), the Oeuvre de secours àl’enfance (Children’s Relief Agency), the Organisation reconstruction travail(ORT—Organization for Reconstruction and Labor), and the Armée juive,linked with the Zionist movement.

In the final analysis, what Adam Rayski seeks in his book, what consti-tutes its informing purpose and its strength, is to liberate historiography ofthe cliché of the Jew as victim. Instead of permitting learned memory asrepresented by historians to stay fixated on an image of Jewish passivity, hismission is to illustrate the emergence of a collective consciousness of self-affirmation, growing over the course of events and through the history ofterrible suffering: the consciousness of an absolute, congenital adaptabilityin the face of mortal danger, but one that opens onto a consciousness of iden-tity and of fidelity through a common historical destiny; a consciousness thatfinds expression in individuals as well as in families, and that voluntarily as-sumes the option of defending its identity, along with all the consequencesthat such a choice entails; the consciousness of a founding experience that,once the time of grief was over, would renew the sense of bond with theFrench nation and forge new modes for the integration of identities. Forthis horrible experience caused the proscribed Jews to encounter the sym-pathy and support, active or passive, of a major portion of the French popu la -tion, indignant over the inhumanity of their persecution. From this stemmedthe success of the politics of rescue, which permitted three-quarters of theJews of France to escape the “Final Solution.”

The fact remains that the Jewish tragedy wears at one and the same timetwo faces. On the one hand, the bold combat against the beast for survival,a combat in darkness that long remained obscured but is today restoredand projected in full light, a combat moreover bearing within it a new fu-ture. On the other hand, suffering, sorrow, the death of dozens and dozens

Foreword | xiii


of thousands of innocents. But did the latter allow themselves to be passivelyexterminated, as there has been too great a tendency to claim, under theweight of a debilitating secular tradition? Or did this happen only under theblows of a mortal enemy vastly better organized and armed? Without anydoubt, the heroes of the resistance saved Jewish honor, even if one may stillask what dishonor might reside in being the victims of a massive and system-atic operation of extermination. Can one think of reproaching the hostageskilled in reprisal for armed resistance to the Germans for having been shot?Or the victims of Oradour-sur-Glane, or of the Ardeatine Caves, for lettingthemselves be massacred?

On such a controversial subject it is naturally permissible not to share to-tally the argumentation and judgments of Rayski. One might debate, for ex-ample, the severity of his accusations against the Jewish notables of the Con-sistory: after all, they were deeply influenced by their own memories of WorldWar I, and its effect on the nation as a whole, and they acted accordingly (onthis subject, think of a man like Marc Bloch, who, however, was hardly a no-table!). Contrast those whose Jewish self-identity was disappearing due to as-similation, on the one hand, with the lucidity of leaders of the various or-ganizations of foreign Jews in France, on the other. And indeed, outsidenarrow and closed circles, was so much known about the “Final Solution”and its unfolding? As Pierre Vidal-Naquet states in his timely reminder, “inorder to understand historical reality it is sometimes necessary not to knowits outcome.”

From this we see how interesting this book is, devoted to the “choice of theJews” and from beginning to end resting upon the dialectic of submission/refusal; legality/clandestine illegality; turning inward and opening to exterioralliances. Rich in insight and reflection, the book not only contributes tothe understanding of a tragic period but illuminates today’s debate on Jewishiden tity and its integration in the French community.

François Bédarida

xiv | Foreword


A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

I would like to express my gratitude to all those whose counsel has assistedme in better penetrating the complex reality of an era that is so intenselystudied but nonetheless poorly known. My particular thanks are due to Alex -andre Adler and Henry Bulawko (who were kind enough to read the manu -script), Jacques Adler, Lucie and Raymond Aubrac, Jean-Pierre Azéma, GabyCohen, Jean Laloum, Denis Peschanski, Claude Urman, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.

I spent almost a year and a half in various archives in France and abroad,where I met curators and archivists who do honor to their calling and whosecooperation gave me access to collections that have been little or not at allexplored. My thanks go to Jean Favier, director general, Chantal de Tourtier-Bonazzi, head curator, and archivist Jean Pouessel at the French NationalArchives; Sarah Alperine, Sarah Mimoun, and Vidar Jacobsen at the Centrede documentation juive contemporaine (CDJC); Yvonne Lévyne and Jean-Claude Kupferminc of the Alliance israélite universelle (AIU) Library; Ber -nard Garnier, executive director, and Isabelle Sauvé-Astruc of the HistoricalArchives of the Prefecture of Police; Jean Astruc and Anne-Marie Pathé ofthe Library of the Institut de l’Histoire du temps présent (IHTP); MoniqueCohen of the Municipal Library of Toulouse; Bronia Klibanski and Shim -shon Eden at the Yad Vashem; archivists at the YIVO and the Jewish Theo-logical Seminary in New York; Norman N. Eden at the Hebrew Union Col-lege, Cincinnati; and lastly the student of political science Nicolas Offenstadt.

François Bédarida was kind enough to write a foreword to this book, andI have benefited from his most valuable comments on the manuscript. I hopethat I may be permitted to see in his acceptance of that task not only a markof sympathy but perhaps equally a mark of recognition that my nearly ten-year long participation in the seminars of the IHTP has not been in vain. Imust also pay homage to François Géze, executive director of La Découverte

xv© 2015 UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

publishers, who has kept company with this undertaking from one end tothe other. In him I discovered an editor overwhelmed by the history of theHolocaust, one who has proved himself an attentive, collegial, and passion-ate reader.

I owe particular thanks to Benoit, my son, who, although he has nomemory of that time, bears deep imprints in his subconscious of the huntfor children, for reading and correcting the manuscript as it progressed; tomy grandchildren Jean-Marc and Yaël, who sacrificed much of their freetime to provide technical assistance; and to Annie, my wife, whose presenceat every stage of my work, intelligent collaboration, remarkable sense of or-ganization, and encouragement at critical moments, permitted me to com-plete a book whose scope, as time passed, became ever broader.

Finally for their help with the English-language edition, let me thankMichael Gelb and Benton Arnovitz of the United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum, and Brewster Chamberlin, previously of the same institution. Myappreciation goes, too, to the staff of the University of Notre Dame Press.

xvi | Acknowledgments


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