Talk:The Holocaust in France

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 February 2021 and 16 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): SarahKBW.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:11, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Definition of Death camps necessary?
Regarding this edit. Why do we need to define "Death camps" in this article when a link to the dedicated article is just fine? Is it really necessary to define every concept in this article? Do we have to make a paragraph to define what Holocaust is or what France is ? I think we need to stop that "Ilha das Flores" absurdity. Blaue Max (talk) 07:54, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * There's is a difference between concentration camps and death camps and properly defining here avoids potential for confusion.Volunteer Marek (talk) 05:14, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * French Jews were sent both to concentration camps AND death camps, thanks for pointing out this mistake in the article. Links to both articles are just fine. No need to define in this article what a concentration camp is and what a death camp is. Blaue Max (talk) 06:45, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, if you look at the source, it does show that the vast majority, 73k out of 75k, were sent to death camps, not concentration camps.Volunteer Marek (talk) 08:13, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe the majority were sent to death camps but a significant number were sent to concentration camps (Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Sachsenhausen...), according to Serge and Beate Klarsfeld's Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France (1979). So your last edit is misleading and will be undone. I suggest to define concentration camps in this article to avoid any confusion. I suggest also to define Nazi Germany, as we can not take the risk that one reader may confused it with current Germany. Ok, I was ironic, but that Ilha das Flores non-sense must stop. Blaue Max (talk) 08:25, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * My edit is based on the very source you provided - out of 75K, 73K were sent to death camps. Please stop edit warring, you've broken 3RR on this article already.Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:51, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes and about 2,000 were sent to concentration camps, it deserves to be noted. Now, do we need to define concentration camps as well? What about defining in this article what Nazi Germany was? Have you any argument in favour of this nonsense? Blaue Max (talk) 20:06, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

French citizens vs aliens
The vast majority of French Jews survived WWII. Most of the Jews who were deported from France and murdered in the extermination camps were foreign nationals living in France. This fact should be noted in the article. Steeletrap (talk) 06:06, 18 December 2015 (UTC)


 * You are quite right about that. I mean this as no criticism of other editors who have worked hard on this article, but if I just like to make a few suggestions here. The first thing is that in the French language there are two words for Jews. The French Jews who were assimilated into the French language and culture were called Israelités, which is a polite and respectful term in French. The immigrant Jews to France were called Juifs, which is a little bit insulting and rude term in French. In France, the prevailing ideology at the time was the mission civilisatrice under France would "civilize" the people in its colonies by assimilating them into the French language and culture. In this way of thinking, the people in the colonies who assimilated were considered to be "civilized" by becoming French while the ones who refused to assimilated were considered to be "uncivilized" and "barbarians". This mission civilisatrice viewpoint would considered to be rather offensive today and even at the time was seen as such by some of the people selected for being "civilized", most notably the Vietnamese, but in France, this was considered to be enlightened and anti-racist thinking. Anyone who was willing to accept the French culture and language was as their own was considered, regardless of their race, ethnicity or religion, to be French and hence "civilized". This sort of thinking also applied to minorities in France. A Jew who assimilated into the French culture and language was considered to be Israelité who had become "civilized" by becoming French. And if a Jew was perceived to be either unwilling and/or unable to assimilate, then the general thinking was that there was something wrong with that person, and that he or she did not belong in France. I suppose there is a certain antisemitism here with this distinction between Israelités who had assimilated and Juifs who had not as it seems to imply that the only good Jews were assimilated Jews. But with the same way that the  mission civilisatrice ideology was perceived to be an anti-racist ideology at the time, most French people did not see this distinction in that manner at the time. The Jews who considered to be  Israelités had a much, much better chance of surviving than the immigrant Jews who were considered to be Juifs. The French police were far likely to hand over immigrant Jews who not considered to be properly French than the Israelités.
 * In this regard, I think the article should began in the 1930s rather with the German occupation in 1940. There was a perception in France in the 1930s that France was taking in far too many immigrants from Eastern Europe and illegal immigration from Eastern Europe was totally out of control. This xenophobia was directed against people from Eastern Europe (just read the articles in Action Française that mocked Polish and Romanian immigrants as "oddballs" who could not speak French properly as an example), but as many of the Eastern European immigrants were Jews, there was a specific anti-Semitism to this campaign against immigrants. A number of French newspapers painted a lucid picture of France being overrun by millions and millions of illegal Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who were spreading diseases, engaging in crime, supporting Communism and refusing to assimilate. This explains much about the way that people acted during the occupation. Michael Marrus and and Robert Paxton in their book made the very important point that until 1942, the French people generally regarded the anti-Semitic laws in France as an attempt to tackle a problem with illegal immigration and once it was understood that this was a part of a program for genocide, the French public opinion changed quite drastically from indifference to support.
 * And finally, Raul Hilberg-who was regarded as the dean of Holocaust historians-in his 1979 book Perpetrators, Victims and By-standers argued to properly understand the Shoah that historians to look equally at his triad of perpetrators, victims and by-standers. Hilberg's system has been widely accepted by historians. The British historian E.P. Thompson in a different context once wrote it was wrong to try to dissemble the time machine and to properly have the time machine work all of its parts needed to be seen interacting. By what Thompson meant was the history is best written as a narrative that brings that looks at different people in societies interacted. Hilberg certainly took up that point, arguing that needed to explain the Holocaust was a narrative that brought showed how perpetrators, victims and by-standers interacted. Applied to France, the by-standers are the Gentile population of France, whose indifference or alternatively support for the Jewish communities did so much to determine who lived and who died. Hilberg had a further distinction between "by-standers nearby" and "by-standers far away". The "by-standers nearby" would be the French population while the "by-standers far away" would be the Free French. Starting in 1941, the Allies promised to trial perpetrators of crime against humanity after they won the war. In 1941 and 1942 when an Axis victory these warnings had little effect, but by 1944 they most certainly did. For an example, Admiral Horthy in Hungary stopped the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in July 1944 after President Roosevelt warned in a radio broadcast that he might face trial. The same applied to France. A French prefect was more likely to go along with the "Final Solution" in 1942 than in 1944 for very obvious reasons. It would helpful to bring in the attitude of de Gaulle and the other Free French leaders, and how it impacted in France.
 * Likewise, the actions of the Jewish communities needed to be considered. I'm not arguing that the Jews brought this down upon themselves-that is so horribly wrong on so many levels. But following Hilberg, one should give agency to the people in the Jewish communities, who very far from the popular image of passive victims. The people in the Jewish communities had a very limited sort of options under the occupation, but they did have options. One could try to comply with the demands of the Nazis out of the hope that they just might leave one alone, or one could try to resist. The reality was a bit more complicated than the simple dichotomy of submission vs. resistance, but broadly speaking that was the choice for Jews under Nazi rule, not just in France, but in all of occupied Europe. For an example, the leaders of the Dutch Jewish community followed a policy of "saving the best" by handing over Jews who not the "best" to be deported in order to buy time out of the hope the Allies might win the war while keeping the "best" Jews in the Netherlands. This policy of "saving the best" was and still is very controversial. A number of Dutch Jews both at the time and after felt that this policy of "saving the best" was deeply amoral and it would had been better to chose resistance. I would like to suggest that this article should look at the response of the Jewish communities. At least part of the reason why Jews survived was because of the Jewish resistance group Solidarité, which was founded in 1940 and served as a sort of early warning system. In 1942, Solidarité sent out warnings about the round-ups, which did allow a number of Jews to go into hiding and survive. At present, this article does not mention Solidarité, but I believe that it should. I'm not arguing that the Jews were responsible for their persecution and genocide-which is both offensive and wrong- but they did have choices and options under the occupation to either comply or resist.
 * In this regard, it is probably helpful to explain the cover story for the Shoah was always that the Jews were being sent for "resettlement in the East" as the Nazis claimed that they had created an utopian homeland for the Jews somewhere in Eastern Europe. The Nazis were always rather vague about this place was supposed to be except it was "in the East". At least in the spring of 1942, the existence of this Jewish homeland was widely believed in France, even by most French Jews, despite the fact that nobody had ever actually seen this homeland and the people who went there were never heard or seen from again. To be fair, most French people did not believe this homeland was quite the paradise the Nazis were promising as that seemed very, very out of character for the Nazis, but the existence of the supposed homeland was widely believed in at first. The truth filtered out over the course of 1942-43. In terms of the response of both French by-standers and Jewish victims, it would be helpful to bring in more about this aspect of "who knew what" and when.
 * Finally, under Hilberg's system of classification, the perpetrators would be Vichy, the German occupation authorities and the Italian occupation authorities. The German and Italian occupation authorities followed very different policies towards the Jews, which this article does note, but it could expand on that a little bit. Marrus and Paxton in their book quite conclusively establish that Vichy antisemitism was not imposed by the Germans, but rather was indigenous. And they also made the point that this article should note that on 21 June 1940 the Petain government signed an armistice with Germany. The armistice was supposed to be followed up by a final peace treaty, which Hitler never got around to. But the point is that Petain and Vichy leaders did not know that Hitler was too lazy to draft a peace treaty and expected a peace treaty would be signed. As might be expected, Petain was hoping to get the best possible terms for France. It was conceded that France was to lose Alsace-Lorraine and all of the former German colonies in Africa that the French administered as mandates for League of Nations such as Togoland and Cameroon. But it was hoped that the French might keep their colonies in Africa that the Germans were interested in like French Morocco, Gabon, Senegal, French Central Africa and Madagascar. Admiral Raeder of the Kriegsmarine was most interested in taking over the French African colonies with excellent ports in order to give the Kriegsmarine bases to dominate the Atlantic and Indian oceans. And it was known in Vichy that Admiral Raeder was lobbying Hitler to annex quite few of France's African colonies. And it was hoped that if Vichy could be sufficiently accommodating to the Third Reich that Hitler might support Vichy against the Italian demands for Nice, Corsica and Tunisia. A number of Vichy leaders, most notably Pierre Laval, saw the Jews in France as a card to be played in the negotiations for the final peace treaty, namely that if Vichy played its part in the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", then maybe Hitler would let France keep its African colonies that did not belong to German colonial empire prior to 1914. This article should mention that aspect of Vichy decision-making. I'm sorry for the length here, but these suggestions to make a good article even better. Best wishes all! --A.S. Brown (talk) 23:47, 17 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Collapsed per WP:NOTFORUM Hi, A.S. Brown. Not sure why you're responding to a 6-year old thread, but in any case, you've wandered far and wide here, without really providing concrete steps for improvement, which, after all is what this page is about. Also, tbh, a lot of this is original research and frankly, it's a kindness (to you) to collapse it. If you need more particulars on the whys and wherefores, please stop by my Talk page. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 02:46, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Editing the number of Jews in the Metropole or continental France
I think I understand now what is the talk page. I would like to respond to Rich who reversee my editing regarding the number of Jews in France, where I specified "Metropolitan France" or "mainland France". Here what I wrote to him, which may be of interest to everybody:

In fact, it would be more correct to write: About 300,000 Jews lived in continental France. ... 77,000 ...

1. Why "about:" As Poznanski stated the French republic didn't do census based on religion/ethnicity; so most historians write "about ...)

2. I know that many historians write that there were about 300,000 Jews in France. But, as Charles de Gaulle and others specified in books about history of France and Holocaust:

France is the Third Republic, comprised of la Metropole/Metropolitan France, and France d'Outre-mer (over-seas).

Poznanski specifies that, when she uses the term Vichy metropolitaine, which leads to "Vichy Tunisia" (as used by the historical Tunisian archives), Vichy Algeria and Vichy Morocco. The three departments, 91, 92, 93, in French Algerianwere an integral part of the French Republic or "France" - term more familiar.

In fact, I read a source that counts the about 100,000 Jews in French Algeria, where, unlike in continental France, all its Jews were French citizens, which provides a total of about 400,000 Jews.

Kaspi states that there were 700,000 Jews in the French soil.

Wiki does not have to promote false views of "France" limited to the Metropole, especially when Poznanski, Berg, Petain and the Nazi regime didn't think so, and it does not reflect the historical realities of the period.

Do I make sense? Thank you.Henia Perlman (talk) 21:16, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

See Also Section
There were other mass killing events that occured in French territories in around this time period. Tho not fitting the description of "holocaust in france", I believe a link to those pages would paint a whole picture of the state of affairs during this period in history. Those edits seem to have received negative reception Yule Msee (talk) 13:22, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Yule Msee, thanks for finally engaging on talk. I explained my own objections to your edits before. However, to summarise:
 * MOS:SEEALSO permits only articles that "should reflect the links that would be present in a comprehensive article on the topic" in the See also section and personally I do not think this is the case;
 * Your use of the term "genocide" in the edits to characterise the two events is WP:FRINGE at best and probably WP:POV;
 * Their choice to include these articles appears to draw a comparison or connection with the Holocaust which is also WP:POV and WP:UNDUE.
 * I hope that makes my objection clear. —Brigade Piron (talk) 16:36, 9 May 2020 (UTC)