frenchchevalierblanc

frenchchevalierblanc t1_j5ssoxk wrote

French didn't slaughtered those jews though nor asked to.

Vichy France was a racist dictatorial regime, that became a fascist one after 1943, people were bad.

France doesn't try to whitewash anything, French student learn everything about the collaboration, what Vichy France did, etc.. the horror in colonies, the racist state there, the racist state of Vichy.

No problem talking about resistance fighters murdered or political prisoners.

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frenchchevalierblanc t1_j5src8d wrote

75% of jews in France survived though, including 70,000 hidden children.

It's true that France before 1943 was still struggling to act as if the French Police (essentially in the northern part of France officially "occupied" area where Vichy didn't have much control) was still in control, so they were responsible to arrest jews (they literally asked for it to the germans). There was no really way to know what would become of them though, jews didn't really know either. Quota asked by the germans were never fulfilled though. Lots of french policemen could help some families still pretending to arrest, some policemen just did as asked. Even in places like the Vel d'Hiv were jews where regrouped some people just "walk away" while policemen were looking the other way.

Things like "also arresting the children" was seen as they would go to work camps with families, people thought that if you keep families together with children it would mean they wouldn't kill everyone, why bother? That's all those subtle decisions and the dilution of responsibilities that makes things like shoah possible in the end.

Some people though understood exactly what the horror mean and did everything they can to hide / go out of camps.

1 million french soldiers were emprisonned in Germany and the germans used them as bargaining chips.

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frenchchevalierblanc t1_j5sr7yb wrote

70,000 children from jewish families were hidden by french people, you can imagine how many people needs to be kept in secret and not tell anything to the authorities.

There were 350,000 jewish people on French territory in 1940, 100,000 of them were "foreign" jews that were not born French. France deported 75,000 of them (2,000 survived), mostly "foreign jews".

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frenchchevalierblanc t1_izirvtg wrote

She is "Madame" because she was married to the brother of the king still in line for succession, which was addressed usually as "Monsieur".

She was apparently feeling "miserable" because Monsieur didn't care much about her, from the text.

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