Union générale des israélites de France

UGIF was created by decree on 29 November 1941 following a German request, for the express purpose of enabling the discovery and classification of Jews in France and isolating them both morally and materially from the rest of the French population.

[3] The administrators of this body mostly belonged to the French-Jewish bourgeoisie, and were appointed by the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs (CGQJ), the structure which had been initiated by the Vichy government at the instigation of the Nazis to reinforce antisemitic persecution.

[5] The role of the organisation is controversial, particularly due to its legalism, which had transformed the offices of the association of children's homes, which it sponsored, into traps particularly vulnerable to Gestapo raids.

However, from 1943 and the acceleration of the Final Solution in Europe, this fiction collapsed and the collaborationist policy of the UGIF leaders led directly to their deportation to Auschwitz.

[10] They were established in all the cities and were completely assimilated into French culture, whereas foreign Jews lived mainly in Paris, were refugees from Eastern Europe who were mostly at the bottom of the social ladder, who often came from or were involved in revolutionary movements, and generally remained attached to Yiddishkeit, the symbol of fidelity to ancestral customs.

[13] Jews who were agnostic, even anti-religious, did not recognize themselves in this official institution that was created to administer and maintain their worship, based on the centralized model of the Catholic Church in France, by strictly reducing Judaism to a religious denomination.

The political parties in which immigrant Jews were involved were the Bund, which allied with the French Section of the Workers' International and which encouraged the Yiddish language and the Main-d'œuvre immigrée (MOI) trade union.

In the summer of 1940, the JDC director decided to distribute the bulk of French aid through the CAR rather than the FSJF, which did not improve relations between the leaders of the two organisations.

In October 1940, the Nîmes Committee was established to coordinate Jewish and Christian relief efforts to the interned, under the chairmanship of American Donald Lowry.

[37] In the months following its creation, the Committee remained under the predominant leadership of the men of the ACIP, but in March, Dannecker imposed Israël Israelowicz and Wilhelm Biberstein, who had come from Vienna to be his proxies.

[38] At the request of German authorities,[40] the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs (CGQJ, Commissariat général aux questions juives) was created by the Vichy French Council of Ministers.

[57] The law of 1941, like all the legislative measures taken by Vichy against the Jews since the first antisemitic statute of October 1940, marks a break with republican and secular traditions.

[59] In order to establish the compulsory organisation, Vallat consulted Jewish leaders from both zones such as Jacques Helbronner, president of the Consistoire, and Raymond-Raoul Lambert, director of the Refugee Aid Committee (CAR, Comité d'aide aux réfugiés).

[60] On the immigrants' side, Marc Jarblum, president of the FSJF, was categorically opposed to the UGIF, but some OSE leaders did not see any incompatibility between the honour of the Jews and compromise with an imposed law.

Fifty-three Jewish hostages were shot at Mont-Valérien and the Nazi military commander (MBF, Militärbefehlshaber) announced the deportation of "Judeo-Bolshevik criminals" to the East.

[65] The French law of 16 January 1942, an instrument of Nazi repression, called upon the UGIF to pay the fine by establishing a special account in its own name at the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, the state bank.

[67] In the southern zone, the various social welfare agencies were grouped together by the UGIF to retain their autonomy and the resources they received from the United States.

[68] After the Vel' d'Hiv round-up on 28 July, Lambert obtained confirmation from the national police of the rumours circulating about imminent deportations to the southern zone.

The leading members of the UGIF did not meet until 31 August, and when Lambert met Laval on 31 July, by chance, he did not take the opportunity to ask him the question.

On 2 August, he had the opportunity to explain his position to Helbronner, who was part of the Jewish high bourgeoisie, whereas Lambert appeared as a simple ambitious social technician.

[66] Raul Hilberg described Helbronner's words as criminal: "If Mr. Laval wants to see me, all he has to do is summon me, but tell him that from August 8 to September, I'm going on holiday and nothing in the world can make me come back.

[68] When, on 3 August, the Camp des Milles was cordoned off by 170 mobile guards, the various Jewish and Christian social aid organisations reinforced their presence.

Lambert, who was not yet aware of the nature of Auschwitz and the Final Solution, wrote in his notebook:[72] Monday 10 August: a terrible day, a heartbreaking spectacle.

[72]In January 1943, the Marseille roundup provoked a protest signed by Salzer, Rabbi René Hirschler, [fr] the Chaplain General, and Lambert on behalf of the UGIF of the southern zone.

In 1943, the OSE, which practised illegal actions on a large scale, retained its legal cover and hesitated to proceed to a hasty dissolution of its children's homes, which risked becoming a trap.

The virulently antisemitic Louis Darquier de Pellepoix,[82] Vallat's successor since May 1942, and cabinet director Antignac had contacts in this regard with Baur and Lambert, respectively.

In Lyon in February 1943, Klaus Barbie led local Gestapo in the Rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup, arresting 84 people at the UGIF offices including members of OSE, CAR and FSJF.

In Paris, the financial situation of the UGIF was much worse than in the southern zone even after March 1943, when Baur succeeded in convincing Lambert to transfer funds.

[81] In the southern zone, in 1944, the offices of the UGIF became traps, as they were the easiest source for the German regional commanders to collect Jews when required.

[81] In the first three months of 1943, despite the determination of the Nazis to continue the deportations, and the opportunity created by the invasion of the former free zone, it appeared that France was lagging behind other European countries in the implementation of the Final Solution.