Apr 9, 2025 | By June 1940, Nazi Germany had already attacked Norway and Denmark, invaded Belgium and the Netherlands, crossed the Maginot Line and occupied Paris. France was cut in two: north of the demarcation line was the German-occupied zone, to the south was a zone headed by Marshal Pétain, whose seat of government was in the central spa town of Vichy. The Vichy regime very quickly – as early as October 1940 and without pressure from the Germans – passed the first Jewish laws. With the first of these, prefects in the southern zone had the right to lock up foreign Jews and Jewish refugees in camps, to which the Nazi regime deported Jews from the Rhineland and Westphalia. The German minister of foreign affairs had at first planned to deport German Jews to Madagascar, and Heydrich had instructed Eichmann to draw up a plan, but this was rapidly abandoned.
After the French capitulation, Nazi propaganda in which Jews were likened to rats was shown in all cinemas across the continent, from Poland to the English Channel, from Norway to Italy. Winston Churchill’s Britain was still holding out. For the Third Reich, the territories to be conquered lay to the east, in the USSR, which had been its ally since the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939. According to the German plans, Moscow would fall in a matter of weeks and the Jews would then be deported to Siberia. For Hitler, it was an ideological war. On 21 June 1941, the German armies entered Soviet soil, through the Baltic states and into Ukraine. A series of pogroms followed, like in Kaunas in July 1941. And the Einsatzgruppen, who in 1939 had eliminated the Polish elite, were sent in to hunt down Jews and Communists in the wake of the Wehrmacht, which was advancing at lightning speed. The conquered lands fell under the Nazi jackboot right along the front, and Jewish men aged between 16 and 40 were shot. They had the backing of the army, the military and civilian administrations in the occupied zones. From August 1941, Jewish women and children were also targeted by the Einsatzgruppen and its local collaborators. On 29 and 30 September 1941, they methodically shot 33,000 Jewish men, women and children in the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev.
Documentary: Annihilation
EP3 : Nazi Machine (2014)
Directed by William Karel & Blanche Finger
Production: ZADIG Productions
Jul 28, 2024 | Summer 1942: A real manhunt took place in Paris, then in occupied France, and even in the ‘zone libre’ (free zone). Close to 80 000 Jews were rounded-up and deported to the concentration camps. Almost none of them ever returned. Without the help of the French authorities and police, these operations carefully planned by the Nazis would never have existed.
How did the Vichy regime collaborate with the Nazi dictatorship in order to send it 79 convoys of men, women and children? Thanks to immersive re-enactments and archives footage for some unpublished, this film delves into the last elements revealed by historical research to make us live, from the inside, these waves of massive and violent arrests. One of the darkest episodes in history that still remains little-known.
Documentary: Vichy and the Nazis: a deal with the devil Directed by Pauline Legrand & François Pomès
Production: Label News
Jul 15, 2025 | Summer 1942. A real manhunt took place in Paris, then in occupied France, and even in the ‘zone libre’ (free zone). Close to 80 000 Jews were rounded-up and deported to the concentration camps. Almost none of them ever returned. Without the help of the French authorities and police, these operations carefully planned by the Nazis would never have existed. How did the Vichy regime collaborate with the Nazi dictatorship in order to send it 79 convoys of men, women and children? Thanks to immersive re-enactments and archives footage for some unpublished, this film delves into the last elements revealed by historical research to make us live, from the inside, these waves of massive and violent arrests. One of the darkest episodes in history that still remains little-known.
Title : Vichy and the Nazis: a deal with the devil
Directed by : Pauline Legrand & François Pomès
Production : Label News for RMC Découverte
Oct 30, 2024 | When the people of Vichy recount the memory of the ephemeral capital of the "French State" from 1940 to 1944, the unsuspected force of the Pétain myth is revealed.
The new "French State" was born on July 10, 1940, in Vichy, in the Grand Casino theater. In a few days, the Hôtel du Parc, the Majestic, the Portugal, luxury establishments typical of pre-war Vichy, became the headquarters of a regime to which the small spa town would give its name. The terms of collaboration with the Nazi regime had been established as early as June. The hotels became ministries and parliamentary residences, before the Gestapo and its auxiliary, the Milice, set up their dungeons in Portugal and the Petit Casino.
On site, the filmmakers met men and women who, in their youth, were able to watch this sticky little world of the "National Revolution" live. Two of these witnesses, because they were Jewish, lived there as outlaws; one joined the resistance, another was among Laval's lawyers at his trial, a fifth was the daughter of a parliamentarian of the regime. Through their words, it is the history of collaboration and resistance that is written, with its ambiguities and its commitments.
Walks, greetings, hugs from chubby children… Pétain remains in the memory of many Vichy residents as a father and this documentary reveals the unsuspected strength of his myth in French memories. Remembering Vichy is mixing dreams, nightmares and reality, in the same way that Last Year at Marienbad, by Alain Resnais, makes us lose our footing in the troubled waters of memory. With this past that seems to await us in the peaceful alleys of the city, Bertrand de Solliers brings out the palpable unease caused by the era.
Last year in Vichy
Directors: Bertrand de Solliers, Paule Muxel
Producers: JULIANTO, ARTE FRANCE
All rights reserved ARTE
Jan 17, 2022 • Algerien, im Juni 1940: Während in Frankreich die Wehrmacht einmarschiert, nimmt in Algier alles seinen gewohnt friedlichen Gang. Darauf bedacht, sich auch künftig aus dem Konflikt herauszuhalten, schließt sich Französisch-Algerien dem Vichy-Régime unter Marschall Pétain an. Pétain sorgt bald für die Wiederherstellung der kolonialen Ordnung im Lande ...
Algier, im Juni 1940: Während Frankreich kurz vor dem militärischen Aus stand und die Pariser Bevölkerung vor der vorrückenden deutschen Wehrmacht floh, blieb die algerische Hauptstadt von Luftangriffen und deutscher Besatzung verschont. Das von Frankreich beherrschte Algerien schloss sich vom Sommer 1940 bis zum Sommer 1943 mit großer Begeisterung der vom Vichy-Regime unter Marschall Philippe Pétain propagierten „Révolution nationale“ an. Dieses Frankreich sollte General Maxime Weygand repräsentieren, während des deutschen Vormarschs Oberbefehlshaber der französischen Armee, dann Verteidigungsminister unter Pétain. Anfang Oktober 1940 wurde er zum obersten Vertreter der Pétain-Regierung in Nordafrika ernannt. Er sollte die Politik von Vichy umsetzen, angefangen bei der strengen Anwendung des sogenannten „Judenstatuts“, dem in Algerien die Aufhebung des Décret Crémieux vorausging. 1870 hatte dieses Gesetz, benannt nach Adolphe Crémieux, die algerischen „eingeborenen Israeliten“, wie es hieß, zu französischen Staatsbürgern erklärt.
Durch die Aufhebung wurden die Juden aus der Armee und von öffentlichen Ämtern ausgeschlossen: Lehrer, Richter, aber auch Journalisten und Filmschaffende. Neue Gesetze legten Quoten für Ärzte und Rechtsanwälte fest. 3.500 jüdische Beamte wurden entlassen. Auch jüdische Schüler und Studenten waren von erniedrigenden und diskriminierenden Maßnahmen betroffen. Immer wieder wurden Aktionen „zur Säuberung der nationalen Gemeinschaft“ gefordert. Nach der erbarmungslosen Logik, Juden vom gesellschaftlichen Leben auszuschließen, organisierte Algier – genau wie die Vichy-Regierung – die Beschlagnahmung und „Arisierung“ von Unternehmen, Vermögen und Wertgegenständen der Juden.
Zudem errichtete die Vichy-Regierung mehrere Konzentrationslager in Algerien. In Bedeau, südlich von Sidi Bel Abbès, wurden die ersten jüdischen Zwangsarbeiter interniert. Nach der Landung der Amerikaner im November 1942 erwarteten viele die Abschaffung des sogenannten „Judenstatuts“, doch dies geschah zunächst nicht. Erst knapp ein Jahr später, im Oktober 1943, annullierte Charles de Gaulle schließlich die Abschaffung des Crémieux-Dekrets. Gegen den hartnäckigen Widerstand seitens der europäischen Bevölkerung, die weiterhin auf ihren Privilegien beharrte.
Dokumentation von Stéphane Benhamou (F 2020, 53 Min)
Ce documentaire est disponible en français ici. – Mark
