Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives
The Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (CGQJ, German: "Generalkommissariat für Judenfragen ") was an authority of the Vichy regime that was entrusted with the planning and implementation of the official policy of disenfranchisement, imprisonment and extermination against all Jews in France .
The CGQJ was founded in the spring of 1941. The motives of the French politicians for the establishment were partly anti-Semitism , partly the endeavor to maintain the sovereignty of France also in the parts of the country occupied by the armed forces through a policy of the anticipatory implementation of German intentions . Due to the lack of staff in the local RSHA offices and in the German occupation authorities, the CGQJ employees were essential helpers in the implementation of the Holocaust in France. The CGQJ was dissolved after the end of the German occupation of France in the summer of 1944, and some of the employees were prosecuted.
history
The CGQJ was founded on March 29, 1941 on the instructions of Admiral F. Darlan , who followed a request from the German authorities. Even before that, in the second half of 1940, the Vichy regime had passed a number of anti-Jewish laws and ordinances, including the First Jewish Statute in October 1940 .
The CGQJ had up to 2,500 employees. The CGQJ included the anti-Jewish police Police aux Questions Juives (PQJ), which was renamed Section d'Enquête et Contrôle (SEC) in 1942 . The task of the CGQJ was to identify, isolate and imprison the approx. 75,000 Jews living in France, who were then handed over to the Germans, who deported them to the concentration and extermination camps in the east .
The first chairman of the CGQJ was from March 29, 1941 the MP Xavier Vallat , who was replaced on May 5, 1942 by Louis Darquier . Darquier, he called himself D. de Pellepoix, was head of the CGQJ for almost two years until he was replaced by Charles du Paty de Clam in February 1944 . This held the post until the dissolution of the CGQJ in June 1944. In June 1944, Joseph Antignac was the general secretary of the CGQH, the second most senior official in the agency. He was arrested on November 6, 1944 and released on May 28, 1946, whereupon he went into hiding. Antignac was sentenced to death in absentia on July 9, 1946. Other well-known employees of the CGQJ were Armand Bernardini , George Montandon and Auguste Mudry .
The institutional forerunner of the anti-Jewish police was the Service d'inspection du CGQJ (German: "Investigation Service of the CGQJ"), which was founded on October 19, 1941 at the insistence of SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker . Dannecker was currently head of the Jewish department of the SD office in Paris . The Service d'inspection du CGQJ was subordinate to the State Secretariat for the Interior. In the Vichy regime there were no ministries, only state secretariats, so this corresponded to the French interior ministry. At the beginning of its existence, the service staff mainly carried out investigations in connection with the " Aryanization " of Jewish property and officially had no police powers. Nevertheless, their investigations and recommendations for action had a stimulating effect on the local police authorities and thus promoted the extensive implementation of anti-Semitic legislation. Competence disputes with the police and the Ministry of the Interior, as well as excesses of authority and corruption led to a power struggle at the top, which the police initially won.
In January 1942 the service was renamed Police aux Questions Juives (PQJ) and subordinated to the Secrétariat Général de la Police . Among other things, the PQJ employees were responsible for searching the Jews interned in the Drancy assembly camp upon their arrival (under French management until July 1, 1943, then German concentration camp) and before their deportation to the German extermination camps. All money, jewelry and securities were taken away from the internees by the PQJ employees and deposited into the CDC accounts . 10% of the deposits were officially transferred to the CGQJ. In addition to official expropriation and enrichment, many PQJ employees in the camp were involved in theft, corruption and personal enrichment. In August 1942 the PQJ was renamed again, and as Section d'Enquête et Contrôle (SEC) subordinated to the CGQJ.
Processes
The former head of the "Jewish Department" of the Political Police in Paris, Louis Sadosky, was sentenced to life-long forced labor in 1946. In 1949 the sentence was reduced to ten years in prison; In 1952 Sadosky was pardoned. In 1954, a residence ban ('interdiction de séjour') was issued against him.
literature
- Joseph Billig: Le commissariat général aux questions juives 1941–1944. Vol. 1 - 3rd ed. du Center, Paris 1955-1960
- Laurent Joly:
- Vichy in the “Solution Finale”. Histoire du Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives 1941–1944 . Bernard Grasset, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-246-63841-0 .
- "Berlin 1942. Le voyage d'un collabo au coeur de la Gestapo" CNRS Editions, Paris 2009
- Martin Jungius: The Managed Robbery. The “Aryanization” of the French economy 1940–1944. Edited by the German Historical Institute Paris DHI. Series: Beiheft der Francia , 67. Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2008, ISBN 978-3-7995-7292-7 .
- Serge Klarsfeld : Vichy - Auschwitz , from the Franz. Von Ahlrich Meyer , Nördlingen 1989; New edition 2007 by WBG , Darmstadt, ISBN 978-3-534-20793-0 .
Web links
- Review of Laurent Joly's book at H-France (English; PDF file; 119 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kathrin Engel: German cultural policy in occupied Paris 1940–1944 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2003, pp. 173–175. ISBN 3-486-56739-X . ( Online in Google Book Search)
- ↑ Using the example of Marseille: Donna F. Ryan: The Holocaust & the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France . University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1996, pp. 53-79. ISBN 0-252-06530-1 .
- ↑ Michael Curtis: Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime . Arcade Publishing, New York 2002, pp. 152f. ISBN 1-55970-689-9 .
- ↑ a b spiegel.de: Report on the book