It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
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La poignée de main entre Philippe Pétain et Adolf Hitler le 24 octobre 1940 à Montoire. À l’arrière plan, le Dr. Schmidt, interprète de Hitler et sur la droite, von Ribbentrop, ministre des Affaires étrangères.
State collaboration was illustrated by the Montoire (Loir-et-Cher) interview in Hitler’s train on 24 October 1940, during which Pétain and Hitler shook hands and agreed on this cooperation between the two states. Organized by Laval, a strong proponent of collaboration, the interview and the handshake were photographed, and Nazi propaganda made strong use of this photo to gain support from the civilian population. On 30 October 1940, Pétain officialized state collaboration, declaring on the radio: “I enter today on the path of collaboration….”
1941 Le Juif et la France
Le Juif et la France (Jew and France) was a racist and antisemit exhibition held between the 5th of September 1941 and the 15th of January 1942 by the Institut d’études des questions juives (the Jewish questions study institute). It was meant to be “scientifical”, and was based on the book of an anthropology teacher of Paris : “How to recognise a Jew”
The exhibition was about the supposed corruption of the society by the Jews in key sectors (corruption of the army, the economy, the traditions…).
Around 200 000 persons visited the exhibition.
Le camp de concentration pour Tsiganes de Montreuil-Bellay
After becoming a stalag in 1940, Vichy transformed the site into a concentration camp for “people without a fixed residence” - in the great majority Romani people (even though homeless people from Nantes were also deported in 1942). The first Romani people arrived in November 1941. The camp welcomed around 3000 people until 1945 when the prisonners were transfered to Angoulême or the concentration camp of Jargeau.
La rafle du Vel’ D’Hiv, Document tiré de la référence Rafle du Vélodrome d’Hiver, fichier Tulard .
The Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup (French: Rafle du Vélodrome d’Hiver, commonly called the Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv: “Vel’ d’Hiv Police Roundup / Raid”), was a Nazi decreed raid and mass arrest in Paris by the French police on 16 and 17 July 1942, code named Opération Vent printanier (“Operation Spring Breeze”). The name for the event is derived from the nickname of the Vélodrome d’Hiver (“Winter Velodrome”), a bicycle velodrome and stadium where many of the victims were temporarily confined. The roundup was one of several aimed at reducing the Jewish population in occupied France. According to records of the Préfecture de Police, 13,152 victims were arrested and held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver and the Drancy internment camp nearby, then shipped by railway transports to Auschwitz for extermination.
Statut des Juifs dans le métro parisien
Jewish passagers or identified as such (wearing the Yellow badge) were only allowed in the 2nd class of the subway after May 1942.
French police arrest French Jews on the orders of the German occupying force, Aug 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)
À Paris, l’armée d’occupation sélectionne les futurs travailleurs du STO.
The Service du travail obligatoire (English: Compulsory Work Service; STO) was the forced enlistment and deportation of hundreds of thousands of French workers to Nazi Germany in order to work as forced labour for the German war effort during World War II.
Formally created under laws and regulations of Vichy France, Nazi Germany set up the STO to compensate for its loss of manpower as it enlisted more and more soldiers for the Eastern Front. The German government promised that for every three French workers sent over, they would release one French prisoner of war. Those requisitioned under the STO were accommodated in work camps on German soil.
Vue générale du camp d’internement des israélites étrangers à Pithiviers
Pithiviers camp was an internment camp for ‘Foreign Jews’ (those who didn’t have the French nationality, either they weren’t naturalised, either Vichy simply deprived them of their citizenship because they arrived in France too ‘recently’), children, elderly people included.
After being arrested, Jews were sent and hold in camps such as Pithiviers before being deported to Auschwitz.
Georges Claude
Georges Claude was a French engineer and inventor. He is noted for his early work on the industrial liquefaction of air, for the invention and commercialization of neon lighting, and for a large experiment on generating energy by pumping cold seawater up from the depths. He was an active collaborator with the German occupiers of France during the Second World War, for which he was imprisoned in 1945 and stripped of his honors.
