How three-quarters of French Jews survived the Holocaust, despite the Vichy regime

Children looked after by the Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), a charity that saved thousands of Jewish children during the war. © Courtesy of the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC) and the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris

The fate of France’s Jews during World War II has become an unlikely topic of debate in the run-up to the French presidential election, exhumed by a revisionist candidate’s widely debunked claims that the Nazi-allied Vichy regime offered them protection. FRANCE 24 spoke to historian Jacques Sémelin, whose latest book sheds light on the real reasons some 200,000 French Jews survived the Holocaust.

Sémelin’s quest began more than a decade ago, following an interview with the late Simone Veil, the revered politician and Holocaust survivor who was recently inducted into the Panthéon of French heroes. During their conversation, back in 2008, Sémelin found he could offer no easy answer to the following question: “How is it that so many Jews were able to survive in spite of the Vichy government and the Nazis?”