Trudy Gold
The Shoah in France, Part 2
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.
There were some but there were others who kept lists of Jewish children so they could be returned. There was a problem with Pius XII. Pius XII. If children had been converted and there were surviving relatives, he made it very difficult for the children to be returned.
77,000 out of a population of about 350,000. You see that’s the point. That’s one of the other issues of France. Although 77,000 is an obscene number, if you compare it to the percentages in other countries, it’s much less. So that’s why we’ve got so many difficulties with France.