Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France

The involvement of Vichy France with Nazi Germany's efforts to exterminate Europe's Jews has long been a source of debate and contention. At a time when France is taking more responsibility for its role in the deportation and murder of 75,000 of its Jewish citizens, Richard Weisberg here provides a comprehensive and devastating account of the French legal system's complicity with Hitler's genocidal campaign during the dark period known as Vichy. As in Germany, the exclusionary laws passed during the Vichy period formalized institutional anti-semitism. In Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France, Weisberg pulls back the curtain on the ways in which the legal community responded to these laws. Private lawyers quickly absorbed the discourse of religious exclusion into the conventional legal framework, expanding the laws beyond their simple intentions, their literal sense, and even their German precedents. Anti-Jewish laws slipped easily and with little resistance into the legal canon and French lawyers often enlisted the laws as a means of career advancement. Examining the work of lawyers and judges, policy makers and administrators, prosecutors and defenders, reporters and academics, Weisberg reveals how legalized persecution actually operated on a practical level. For a discussion about this book at the Amgot web site, please go tohttp://www.amgot.org/weisberg.htm