Trudy Gold
The Shoah in France, Part 1
Summary
After the fall of France, there were about 350,000 Jews living there. More than half were not French citizens, including refugees from Belgium and Holland. Persecutions began almost immediately, both in the occupied zone and in Vichy France, which had a considerable degree of autonomy.
The French story is paradoxical. The final solution was a Nazi plan, but deportations were helped by the French authorities. Yet the final death toll, though appalling at 77,000, was much less than in other countries’ in terms of percentages. Yet there was no huge German presence in France, only three battalions in the occupied zone. For a long period the French saw themselves as the great resisters- what is the real story?
Trudy Gold
Trudy Gold was the CEO of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and a founding member of the British delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Throughout her career she taught modern Jewish history at schools, universities, and to adult groups and ran seminars on Holocaust education in the UK, Eastern Europe, and China. She also led Jewish educational tours all over the world. Trudy was the educational director of the student resources “Understanding the Holocaust” and “Holocaust Explained” and the author of The Timechart History of Jewish Civilization.
Leon Blum was imprisoned in Buchenwald. His wife was allowed to join him. He was deported to Dachau with the orders to kill him, but it didn’t happen. And his brother was murdered, and his brother, who was a great choreographer, he was murdered in Auschwitz, terribly murdered, tortured. That was reported by Rudy Vrba, who in ‘44 escaped, and he actually reported that story. Now, one of the Rothschilds was caught, and don’t forget the case of the Camondos. The Camondos, one of the richest families in France who gave so much, so much of the art in the Louvre and in the Quai d'Orsay is from that family. Nobody protected them. Some of the important Jews were protected by Vichy, yes, true, true, but not the Camondos. They got one, I think they got one of the Rothschild women.
Well, that’s an interesting story, isn’t it? Deportations, betrayals, and hiding, and some, and heroes, okay? It was very similar to France.
There’s something even more complicated than that. 90% of the physicists at Los Alamos were of Jewish birth. If Hitler hadn’t expelled his Jews, would he have achieved the bomb earlier? It’s the, you know, the ifs and buts of history.