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are both radical and optimistic; the report asserts
that the Occupied Zone presents no problems in supplying Jews and that the
Unoccupied Zone will follow suit, thanks to pressures that will overcome the
reticence of the French government. The report is immediately transmitted to
Knochen, for whom it is really intended, and who probably has assured Eichmann
at a meeting the evening before that he will exert whatever pressure is needed.
The prior evening's meeting brings together the heads of SiPo-SD and
the Jewish Affairs offices in the Occupied Zone outside Paris to discuss
"unifying their work and giving them policy directives." The meeting's minutes,
attached to the Eichmann report, declare that their goal is "to purge the
country of all Jews, in an absolute way, so that they only remain in Paris,
where their final deportation will take place."
July 2, 1942.
René Bousquet, the Vichy chief of National Police, meets with the SS and
Gestapo chiefs in Paris; present on the German side are SS commander General
Karl Oberg; Knochen; Kurt Lischka, Knochen's deputy; and Herbert Hagen, Oberg's
personal aide, who prepares the meeting's minutes. The meeting is intended to
set the course of Franco-German police cooperation for the coming roundup.
As soon as the meeting begins, Oberg announces that Bousquet's
suggestions "for an agreement between the German and French security police
have been read with interest. They are, however, still being studied." In other
words, we will see later on; in the mean-time, both sides know that the abscess
of the Jewish Question must be lanced.
Faced with Knochen's insistence,
Bousquet concedes to Darquier de Pellepoix the right to make proposals for the
coming anti-Jewish action and says that to carry it out "he [Bousquet] will,
recognizing the need, put his police at the disposal of Pellepoix." It is
decided that Bousquet, Darquier de Pellepoix, and Knochen will meet on July 4
to settle the details.
Bousquet also takes the opportunity to clarify
the Vichy position. He asserts that "following questions from the Marshal
[Pétain], Laval proposed that the French police not make the arrests in
the Occupied Zone. On the contrary, he wishes to leave this task to the
[German] occupation forces. In the Unoccupied Territory, Laval proposed ... to
arrest and transfer only Jews of foreign nationality." The Vichy position is
doubtless extremely embarrassing for Knochen, who wants at all cost to avoid
using German police; their presence in the streets of Paris would provoke
intensified anti-German feelings among the French public. Further, only a few
hundred German police are available and the raids will require thousands.
Bousquet makes it clear that "on the French side we have nothing against the
arrests themselves, and it is only their execution by French police in Paris
that would be embarrassing. This was the personal wish of the Marshal."
Knochen does not want to provoke a crisis with Vichy that will
undermine his efforts to create an effective Franco-German police
collaboration, but he needs the Paris police to carry out the raids. Matching
Bousquet's invocation of Pétain, Knochen invokes Hitler. "In all of his
latest speeches," Knochen asserts, "the Führer has insisted on nothing so
much as the absolute necessity for a definitive solution of the Jewish
Question. That is why this principle alone will determine the measures we
intend to take here, and not the posi […tion]
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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