The Role of French Banks During WWII and its Aftermath

Written Testimony of Prof. Richard Weisberg

BEFORE THE U.S HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: THE COMMITTEE
ON BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES, 14 Sept., 1999

I. Background of Witness: I am a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University, and current holder there of the Walter Floersheimer Chair in Constitutional Law. I have held that position for 22 years, having previously been associated with the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York City. My knowledge of France, its history and its customs is informed by two other facts: a brief stint in Paris as a summer associate at a law firm, and my prior academic position as assistant professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. I have a J.D. from Columbia Law School (editor, Law Review); an M.A. (French Literature) and a Ph.D. (Comparative Literature) from Cornell.

In 1982, I began work in the archives in France on what was at the time a little-researched topic: the behavior of the French towards Jewish people on French soil during the dark period known as "Vichy": 1940-44. At that time -- although 38 years had passed since the liberation of their country, the French themselves had preferred to leave the Vichy period largely unexamined, relying on various myths about the War years: the myth of "universal resistance" and (as to the Jewish population) the myth that the Vichy government -- led by Marshal Petain and Pierre Laval -- had somehow cleverly managed to save most of the "French" Jews by bartering foreign or stateless Jews to the Nazi overlords.

I went into the research with few preconceptions different from those held by my many French friends. As an admirer of France and its people -- an admiration I continue to feel strongly today -- I was conversant with a small group of films and stories that provoked my curiousity about those otherwise obfuscated war years.

Although unknown to me when I first entered the archives, there were already two or three books in 1982 on the subject. These suggested a less rosy history than that created and sustained by everyone from Charles de Gaulle to Francois Mitterrand. A three-volume work by a French historian named Joseph Billig used documents courageously compiled during the Occupation by the beleaguered Jewish community and stored in a superb Parisian documentary center called the Centre de Documentation juive contemporaine ("CDJC"); Billig's work, completed in 1960, indicated how pervasive was the responsibility of French governmental and non-governmental institutions for the victimization of the Jewish population on French soil. Furthermore, in his still comprehensive third volume, Billig meticulously studied the process of "aryanization" -- the legalized looting of Jewish property by the combined force of Nazi power and French public and private institutional initiative.

If any self-serving myths could have persisted into 1982 about French "resistance" or "protectiveness", they were definitively quashed by the contemporary work of two North American historians, Michael Marrus (U. of Toronto) and Robert Paxton (Columbia U.). Their book, Vichy France and the Jews (1981), buttressed the findings of an earlier classic by Paxton: France did the dirty work pretty much on its own, often anticipating and even out-doing the Nazis at the job of anti-semitism.

My work eventually benefited from extensive new archival opportunities. My focus was on the institutions of law during Vichy. Over the next 12 years, through this study, I entered into the nitty-gritty of everyday antisemitism in the courts and the agencies, in the government ministries and the halls of academia, in private lawfirms and corporatioons, and in the public records of French jurisprudence, a remarkably extensive, detailed and largely indigenous tapestry of French behavior. Inevitably, the study of Vichy law touched on almost every quotidian activity of the corporate and banking world; of landlord and tenant relations; of quotas against Jews in the liberal professions; of victimizers creating and victims trying to negotiate the detailed rules and regulations of institutional anti-semitism, rules that gradually squeezed the lifeblood out of France's Jews. The French, almost from the outset, wanted to do this their own way, in document after document almost pridefully challenging the Nazis' dominion over persons and property. They did it legalistically, with a logic that might seem "rational" in its thoroughness were it not for the terrible injustice toward which this logic was bound.

In 1996, my book was published. Entitled Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France, its publishers were the NYU Press in North America and Gordon & Breach in the UK and worldwide. In October, 1998, the book was published in French translation, Vichy, la Justice et les Juifs (Paris: éditions des archives).⁽¹⁾

II. Basic Findings from my Study of Vichy Law

Anyone focussing on the behavior of French banks must first understand the basic system of French and German laws and regulations regarding Jews; how those two systems interwove and sometimes conflicted; how everyday participation from private as well as public individuals made the anti-semitic system "work"; and how Jewish property, including banking assets, were stripped from their original owners and -- to use the word that gained currency during Vichy -- "aryanized".⁽²⁾

My book sets forth data about the role of law, lawyers and powerful institutions in France between 1940 and 1944. During these years, some 75,000 Jews were sent from French soil to death camps "in the East." The vast majority of these deportations occurred under color of French law, for as early as September and October of 1940, an independent French government, with its seat of operations in Vichy, had promulgated a widespread series of laws, regulations, and decrees about the Jews. These laws and rules at first applied only to the so-called "free" or "unoccupied" zone of France; but Vichy's autonomous approach to anti-semitism eventually proved sufficiently thorough in their application and effect that the Germans largely imported them for use in the occupied zone of France as well.

Legal activity during the full four years of Vichy was pervasive. It is impossible to separate out the legislative program of the government from the manner of acceptance and implementation of that program by the individuals and communities charged with understanding and employing the statutory materials. This reception involved thousands of public and private sector actors. The vast majority of them were working within essentially traditional French patterns of institutional behavior. Courts functioned much as they had always functioned, although bound by an unusual oath to Vichy's leader, Marshal Pétain; administrative actors fought for jurisdictional space and increasing power under the Marshal's authoritarian brand of leadership; private legal practitioners -- avocats, avoués, notaires -- with greater autonomy from their government, took up the new materials of racial, religious and ethnic ostracism and worked with them in volume and without substantial protest. Legal academicians wrote doctoral theses and had them published on the subject of the anti-Jewish laws, made their reputations as young law professors by discussing "neutrally" the stuff of exclusion, tried to explain how French constitutional norms could co-exist with laws designed to persecute people ex post facto and because of immutable traits or private beliefs.

The data reveals that all this French activity occurred largely without German Diktat. While many legal actors (and far more ordinary French men and women) assisted individual Jews, their pervasive acceptance of the laws made possible the exclusion of a thousand Jews for every one that was saved. Much too often, judicial doctrine or individual advocacy worked to expand the scope of the laws beyond what either their literal sense, or even the German precedents, demanded. More than once, the Nazis formally asked the French to slow the pace of definitional or evidentiary decisions that had the effect of encompassing categories of individuals that German law itself had never considered Jewish. All of this occurred because of the "rich" debate that involved French legal actors in increasingly thick volumes of prose related to "the Jewish question."

Two broad "Jewish questions" pre-occupied French courts and agencies, both in the occupied and unoccupied zones of France. The first was the question, "Who is a Jew?" -- the definitional springboard from which all penalties would follow. The second was: "How to Eliminate Jewish 'influence' from the French economy?" Both questions were pursued aggressively by the French. As early as October 3, 1940, Vichy promulgated completely on its own initiative a definitional law that was more inclusive than the cursory Nazi equivalent for the Occupied Zone. Jewishness under the German ordinance was defined by having at least three Jewish grandparents. Vichy included a person with only two Jewish grandparents if he or she was also married to a Jew. There were many mixed marriages in France, and the effect of this definitional broadening in scope was far from trivial. People defined as Jew were to be stripped, in many cases, of career options and eventually property.

And there was worse still: The next day, October 4, Vichy established by law "special camps" into which could be herded -- on the sole decision of the police administration of the district -- "foreigners of the Jewish race". (As Marrus and Paxton point out, p. 167, the French understood arrest and encampment to be applicable to "any Jew", and my own findings indicate old-line French Jews whose ancestors fought with Napoleon being sent by the hundreds as early as mid-1941 to the French-administered camp of Drancy, near Paris, some of these to be sent from there to Auschwitz on the first train eastward in March, 1942.) Eventually, 3000 Jews died in such camps, which in the unoccupied zone included such places as Gurs, Rivesaltes, and Vernet -- without ever "needing" to be deported. These unsanitary and dehumanizing camps, including those in the unoccupied zone of mainland France and others in North Africa under Vichy administration, numbered at any given time around 50-55,000 men, women and children.

By June 2, 1941, the definition of Jew was ready for further expansion. Under the signature of a pre-war liberal and anti-fascist, Justice Minister Joseph Barthelemy, the second and authoritative statute seemed to require even a mixed-heritage Jew who had not married a Jew to prove his or her "non-Jewishness". And this had to be by reference to belonging to established Christian faiths, as opposed say to "proving" agnosticism or non-adherence to Judaism itself.

By that time, a new agency exclusively devoted to Jewish questions had been established by Vichy. Called the "Commissariat général aux questions juives" (CGQJ), this agency quickly set up its main office in Paris, with branches everywhere else under French and German formal administration. CGQJ attempted to control the legalistic process of interpreting the two statutes, but it had to vie with the ordinary French magistrates on definitional issues such as who had the burden of proof on "Jewishness", what means of proof can be proferred on the issue, is a baptismal certificate dispositive or only one piece of evidence, etc?

As to definition, the approach of French statute writers, administrators, courts and everyday practice was so appealing to the Nazis that they imported it fully into the Occupied Zone. Pragmatically aware of the manpower and political capital he was saving by letting the French "do it their way", SS Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker alerts all Germans in France on July 1, 1942 to the following reality: "The French definition [of Jew] being broader, it will now serve as a basis in all doubtful cases" (Vichy Law, p. 48).

As to the second broad line of inquiry, the one relating to what was formally called the aryanization of Jewish wealth in France, the Germans were less willing to yield authority to the French. Yet, here, too, the most important statute regarding porperty was promulgated by Vichy on July 22, 1941. By then, however, the competition between Nazi occupier and autonomous French government had already produced widescale looting and its attendant dehumanization and impoverishment of the victimized population.

The term itself -- "aryanization" -- speaks on its face to a specially racist impulse in the takeover of property, and the desire by both Berlin and Vichy to rid the economy of a so-called "influence" they variously defined as "Jewish". Once Vichy law (adopted, as we have seen, by the Nazis, too) managed to define an individual as "Jewish" -- whether or not that individual thought of himself as such -- his property had to be taken over by "aryan trustees". And "aryan" meant someone not so defined, whose "skills" or political or industrial connections made him an apt candidate to assist in stripping Jewish "influence" from the economy.

Eventually, under an uneasy combination of French law and German regulation, billions of francs of Jewish property were pillaged. The process was rational, bureaucratic, and "lawful." Many Jews consulted with lawyers and found ways to protect their property through transfer, estate planning, corporate maneuvering, or finding arguments as to their non-Jewishness.⁽³⁾ The courts and agencies heard many hundreds of cases dealing with the new figure of the "administrateur provisoire" (a.p.), the aryan "trustee" who was charged with dealing with any property not so protected. CGQJ worked closely with the banks and their professional organizations, with lawyers and notaries, and (in the Occupied Zone) with the Nazis, on the complex task of stripping Jews of their wealth.

So, eventually, in both realms -- racial definition and "eliminating Jewish influence from the economy -- French law and regulation provided a modern-day example of the prophet Elijah's inquiry to the biblical king, Ahab: "Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?" (First Kings, 21:19). The politics of inevitable German defeat did not substantially deflate the rhetoric of religious definition, economic aryanization, denationalization, arrest, and deportation.

III.

A. The Turf Struggle: France vs. Germany

1. German and French Legal Leapfrogging on Property: from the Defeat of France to the formation of the "CGQJ"

As we have seen, the French autonomously pursued a legalistic approach to the racial laws that set Jews apart from the rest of the population. Their efforts, eventually including almost 200 laws, decrees and regulations on the subject, gained ascendancy over the far more meagre regulatory approach of the Nazis, who saw the immense benefits to themselves of relying on French anti-semitism, even though the French approach often differed from their own. So, throughout France and in the North African and other venues Vichy controlled, it was French law, French lawyers and judges, French administrators and even French law professors, who produced the complex four-year definitional discourse about "Jewishness" and its punitive consequences.

On the question of property, France proved no less desirous of dominating the conversation with the Germans. Here, too, the Germans started the process with early decrees as to certain takeovers of property in the Occupied Zone. As early as May 20, 1940, the High Command was empowered to appoint a trustee -- German: kommissarische Verwalter -- for any property (with no specific mention of Jews) left empty by fleeing owners, many of whom had joined the mass "exodus" from Paris of 14 May previous.⁽⁴⁾ On 18 October and on 26 April, 1941 -- in ordinances themselves influenced by the Vichy law of 3 October, 1940 -- the Germans explicitly targeted Jews. The 18 October ordinance -- against Vichy protestations that their own turf was thereby illegally invaded⁽⁵⁾ -- aryanized "Jewish enterprises," and the 1941 ordinance both denied to Jews even the fruits of the sales of their lost property and forbade them to exercise numerous careers. This latter brought on increased aryanizations and the associated dehumanization that are exemplified in dozens of landlord ejectment cases, where people sought to throw Jews out of their own houses and apartments for non-payment of rent.⁽⁶⁾

Thus the Germans moved quickly (and in far greater detail than they did as to actual religious definition) to seize property in the Occupied Zone. But the French did not intend to take a back seat, certainly not in their own zone, not even in the Occupied Zone. The stakes, in booty, were simply too high.

As early as September 10, 1940, Vichy statutes contrived to seize legally the property of newly denaturalized individuals.⁽⁷⁾On the same day, Vichy introduced the notion of the "administrateur provisoire" -- the a.p. whose specific function would be to manage the property and businesses of all individuals who might become legally incompetent to own or run such enterprises.⁽⁸⁾

Explicit Vichy statutory mention of Jewish enterprises awaited the comprehensive French law of 22 July, 1941.⁽⁹⁾ By that time, however, other decrees and regulations had paved the way for an already massive takeover of Jewish property, including bank accounts.⁽¹⁰⁾

The early phase was epitomized by the establishment of a special agency, the Service de Contrôle des Administrateurs provisoires ("SCAP") in December, 1940. Created under the direction of the Vichy Ministry of Industrial Production, as extended to Occupied France through the offices of the "General Delegation of the French Government to the Occupied Territories," SCAP applied the German ordinances while appointing French a.p.'s. The Germans were largely delighted with this collaborative effort -- particularly at first. It saved them manpower while costing them little, since they had ultimate veto power over the nominations of the a.p.'s.⁽¹¹⁾ Indeed, the Germans largely relied on French prefects to identify Jewish enterprises in the Occupied Zone; they aryanized on their own initiative only 31 businesses between November, 1940 and March, 1941; and they left to the French the seizure of thousands of other Jewish enterprises during this period.⁽¹²⁾

Both to protect their self-interest in the Occupied Zone, and to define the administrative, ministerial, and judicial responsibilities for the seizure of property, Vichy sought better to regulate the process of property transfer. A key January 16, 1941 decree, later perfected by changes made in August of that year, was signed by Marshal Pétain and first Justice Minister Alibert, among others. It set forth the manner of choosing the a.p.,⁽¹³⁾ a task that was pervasive and vital to French economic activity during the war. One prominent documentary center has been able to amass a file of some 45,000 individual Jewish enterprises and properties that were aryanized;⁽¹⁴⁾ well into 1944, this process of locating and appointing a.p.'s was to continue undaunted.⁽¹⁵⁾ Central to the task of appointing the a.p., and relevant also to the banking industry, was the mention -- in Articles 2 and 4 of the decree -- of the comités d'organisation (industry-wide groups, or CO's). The CO's were to assist the government of Vichy, eventually especially through CGQJ, to identify likely candidates with sufficient expertise and other qualities commending him or her to the industry group as fit to "aryanize" Jewish enterprises. The CO's also -- as we shall see in section (B) (5) below -- sometimes actually made the choice of which of their competitors should have their businesses liquidated.

The January 16, 1941 decree broadened over the German regulatory base the kinds of enterprises that were ripe for a takeover. Thus its Article I included not only absentee-ism or force majeure but also "for any reason that might make [the actual owner] unfit to exercise his functions"; that "any reason", of course, included legal incapacity as a Jew under Alibert's statutes of 3-4 October, 1940.

Article I also explicitly mentions banks and says that nominations for a.p.'s over banks and insurance companies must be cleared with Vichy's Finance Minister.

This seminal decree goes on to describe the scope of the a.p.'s discretion:

Article 2. The powers of the a.p. can extend to the totality of the enterprise or only to a part thereof, depending on the instructions accompanying the nomination;

Article 3. According to the limits fixed by the nomination decree, the a.p. exercises the broadest powers for the account of the owners [des ayants droits]. [These may include:]

1. All operations tending to modify the principal purposes of the enterprise;

2. All operations tending to raise or lower considerably the production or sales capacity of the enterprise;

3. All operations that might lead to the liquidation of the enterprise.

Article 4 requires the a.p.'s to submit interim and final reports to the CO's of the given industry group. Why were these comités d'organisation -- private industrial groups, after all, so important to Vichy's scheme? As I discuss below (Section B (1)) regarding the banks themselves, the massive activity of stripping and then transferring Jewish wealth had such an effect on the economy that whole industries had to be involved, to control market changes in their field. "Aryanization" was far more than an enterprise-by-enterprise economic "cleansing".

Article 5 created the "commissaire aux comptes",⁽¹⁶⁾ a figure attached to the court of appeals of the district in which the aryanized property was located. This functionary would gather the a.p.'s data and other information on the property and report to the Minister of Finance or other relevant cabinet ministry. By the following August, CGQJ was in place, and the role of supervision phad passed to that agency's SCAP, which by then had been subsumed into the CGQJ. But Article 9 gave ultimate supervisory responsibility over the a.p.'s to the Minister of Justice, the Finance Minister, the Secretary of State for industry and labor, and several other ministerial authorities if the enterprise in question was associated with their portfolios. The Finance Minister still helped, in some cases, to supervise the banking industry.

The CGQJ officially took over the direction of the a.p.'s in the Occupied Zone under the law of 22 July, 1941.⁽¹⁷⁾

2. Vichy cites "Human Rights" and the Hague Convention to Vouchsafe its own Dominion over Jewish Property

Throughout 1941, Vichy made clear its view that the "Occupying Authority" had no right, under the Hague Convention of 1907, to regulate property matters at all! In a remarkable inter-ministerial document dated January 14, 1941, for example, Vichy's foreign minister alerts his colleague in the Ministry of Finance, to an alleged breach of international law by the Germans in their insistence on interfering with the process of aryanization in the Occupied Zone. [See EXHIBIT 3.] Vichy had apparently decided that section 43 of the Hague Convention, which restricts the authority of occupying forces by requiring them to respect local law, empowered Vichy and not the German occupier to aryanize Jewish property. For Vichy, it became a matter of "human rights" violations each time the Germans sought to appoint their own "administrative commisar" to manage Jewish businesses; Vichy insisted that their own "administrateurs provisoires" uniquely had the right to control Jewish wealth.

A German ordinance of 20 May, 1940, prescribes the appointment of a.p.'s over any entity threatened by a lapse of management, either because of the absence of the person authorized to manage it, or because of force majeure.

This ordinance, as its prefix indicates, reponds to the need to maintain economic life in the Occupied Territory.

But in so doing the ordinance touches on a subject not ceded to the German authorities by the Armistice Convention [signed on June 22, 1940 by the German Supreme Commander and the acting French government] and which, according to human rights [!] would only become a matter for the occupier if the legal authorities were not capable of handling it themselves. In all the territories where the French administration has been established, it is to them and not to the German occupier that the task of regulating economic life descends; therefore, in those territories, the ordinance must no longer apply because it goes beyond the power of the occupier.

This surprising memo goes on to analyze the Hague Convention, making the claim that the Germans' right even to protect German property in France by placing it under seal is sharply limited by the Convention's article 46, since article 43 "makes it incumbent upon the occupier to respect French law unless there is an absolute need." The memo writer is now positioned to comment directly on the basic conflict between the German 1940 ordinances relating to Jews and the French laws relating to the same subject:

The second ordinance relating to measures taken against the Jews on 18 October 1940 exceeds the limits of the occupier's power. The measures it requires are not necessitated by any security need of the occupying army; they trample on an area left exclusively to the French authorities; they conflict with French laws that the occupier should wish to respect except in extraordinary situations. The appointment of administrative commissars, by the ordinance of 18 October, consitutes therefore an abuse of power on the part of the occupying authority.

Thus, French administrators must refuse to recognize the validity of any a.p. named under the terms of this ordinance.

This strong position, maintained by the Vichy government with some consistency throughout the occupation, was therefore of early origin and authoritative belief.

Meanwhile, in Belgium (which had no government of its own), the identical provision 43 was cited by prominent members of the bench and bar to protest any German incursion on the Jewish population. The Belgians cited provisions of their own domestic constitutional law to deny the occupier any right of persecution over minorities. Upon promulgation of the first German racial ordinance (similar to the one issued in the Occupied Zone of France on 27 September, 1940), three of that small nation's most distinguished lawyers issued a strong letter of protest directly to the Military Field Commander for Belgium and the North of France [see EXHIBIT 4]:

The ordinances of 28 October 1940, touching on the Status of Jews in Belgium, have profoundly moved the legal world [ont profondément ému le monde judiciaire].

The undersigned scrupulously avoid discussing the principles that underlie the Institutions of the Reich. But the ordinances as applied to Belgium are in opposition to the principles of our constitutional law and of our laws. Belgium continues to exist as a country. A foreign occupation, under the terms of the Hague Convention of 18 October 1907, does in fact substitute the authority of the occupier for that of the established legal power, but only insofar as this relates to maintaining public order. 
It does not seem that -- in the administration of Justice -- the presence of Jews [Israelites] has in any way troubled the public order. . . .
The ordinance, in excluding Jews from the magistrature, is in opposition to Articles 6, 8, 14 of the Constitution and with Article 100 thereof, under which terms any judge who is appointed for life can only be removed by adjudication. As for lawyers, they can only be removed from the bar by disciplinary action. . . .⁽¹⁸⁾

Like their colleagues in Belgium, French leaders were capable of strong protest. The French, who could have cited similar provisions in their own, still-extant republican constitution, instead dropped down to their newly promulgated racial statutes, and thus reached an interpretive conclusion that itself persecuted, rather than protected, its Jewish population.

The Germans, in fact, realized early that French cooperation was a necessity if their own pillaging of Jewish property was to be legitimized under international law; in a memorandum of August 26, 1940, they state explicitly that "in order to avoid the appearance of international law violations, the transfer of Jewish enterprises into German hands must seem, to the outside world, as following the norms of private law."⁽¹⁹⁾ Aware of Vichy's enthusiastic initiation of many kinds of religious legislation -- and (as always) vitally interested in conserving their own manpower resources by letting Vichy do the work -- the Germans quickly decided to utilize French administrative departments to aryanize Jewish property, under their own as well as under Vichy's laws.⁽²⁰⁾

3. The Definitive Vichy Statute of 22 July, 1941

When it came to aryanization, then, the Germans saw the need to "collaborate" with the French, as they had similarly come to accept the whole complex scheme of Vichy racial definition. The French, at first resisting German regulations as to property, eventually accepted the wisdom -- and the necessity -- of conspiring with the Germans in the Occupied Zone while maintaining dominion over Jewish wealth in Vichy and its territories.

The key statute -- bearing the signatures of Pétain, Barthélemy (Justice) and Bouthillier (Economy and Finance), and amended several times thereafter -- established what already was in place: the broadscale looting of Jewish property. The law also extended to "the free zone" for the first time (except for blockage of bank accounts, which was established in the April 25 decree applicable in Vichy and its territories) the legalized concept of aryanization. It made explicit (as did the voluminous regulations that were promulgated under it) that aryanization aimed "to eliminate all Jewish influence in the national economy." In the face of increasing allegations of corruption among the a.p.'s, it established (by its Article 7) that:

The a.p. must administrate as would a head-of-family ["en bon père de famille"]. He is accountable before judicial tribunals, as a salaried agent, conforming to the rules of the common law.

Nonetheless, although by then various forms of self-dealing and other corrupt practices were well known in Vichy, the statute greatly enhanced the powers of the a.p. over all Jewish property except the individual's own residence and the furniture therein. CGQJ continued to supervise, but decisions as to liquidation of assets, forced sales, and other transfers of property in some ways realistically became even less scrutinized than before. Corruption was not effectively dealt with by the statute. Perhaps people realized the difficulty of limiting greed when the whole superstructure depended on greed.⁽²¹⁾

Much better worked out were the banking arrangements designed to handle the fruits of the sales of Jewish assets, described at length in Title 3 of the new statute. As historians Marrus and Paxton describe the process:

The a.p.'s were supposed not only to take full charge of the Jewish enterprises over which they had been placed, but to transfer them to "aryan" owners. If the enterprises added nothing to the French economy, they were to be liquidated, and the assets auctioned off. If they were important to the economy, they were to be sold to new owners who would operate them. By 1 May, 1944, 42,227 Jewish enterprises had been placed in trusteeship. . . . During the year 1943 alone, over 200,000,000 francs realized by these sales and liquidations were deposited in the blocked accounts numbered 501 and 503 of the Caisse des dépots and Consignations. {A footnote adds that, for 1943, the total number of Jewish accounts held blocked in the CDC was 20,000, representing 3 billion francs in total deposits.}⁽²²⁾

As we shall see in the section below, the transfer of banking assets, specifically, involved: a) the blocking of all Jewish accounts by a factor of at least 50% of the accounts' value; b) the inventory and blocking of safe deposit boxes, excepting only a small category of non-commercially valuable personal items; c) the removal and transfer of a portion of "a" and "b" above to the central accounts at CDC or -- in the case of defined "enemy [of the Reich] assets -- to a special "Treuhand" account in Paris. More generally, the banks participated in the long process of ridding the banking industry of Jewish competition.

Meanwhile, official Vichy continued to legislate. By a decree of 20 October, 1941, CGQJ was re-organized bureaucratically to reflect its increasingly dominant role in aryanization in both zones.⁽²³⁾ Although we have seen how active the agency was in matters relating to Jewish definition, caselaw, and punition, it is hard to argue with Billig's evaluation that CGQJ's aryanization division eventually became its "most developed service."⁽²⁴⁾

Eventually, the infamous "Sections d'Enquête et Contrôle" ("SEC") -- a "para-police organization of the CGQJ . . . that "became a nationally coordinated center for anti-Jewish espionage", increasingly assisted with aryanization.⁽²⁵⁾ The constraints placed on a.p. behavior by the early leaders of SCAP gave way to the condoning of more obvious forms of outright looting.

In the main, then, on property as on religious definition, on aryan "trustees" as on the creation of concentration camps, Vichy legalisms either preceded Nazi intervention or directly assisted the Germans to reduce their own manpower needs on racial policy in France.⁽²⁶⁾ Although the competition for Jewish wealth in France never ceased as between the Germans and Vichy,⁽²⁷⁾  in general aryanization followed a trajectory of French innovation, German manipulation, and prideful Vichy legalization.

B. The Banks

1. Eliminating "Jewish Influence in the Economy": From Public Law to the Private Banking Sector

a. Regrouping After the Defeat

The German "blitzkreig" utterly shattered the French self-image of military ascendancy. Within a few short months, German troops swept across the low countries and northern France; Paris was occupied. Yet the armistice convention gave France autonomy over the part of the country to be known as "Vichy". Who would take the blame for the defeat and its consequent demoralization?

Vichy's leader, the octogenerian "hero of Verdun", had never hidden his political animus against what he considered to be "too much Jewish influence in the Third Republic". Marshal Pétain capitalized, in this respect, on the vague resentment felt by many in France towards such pre-War political leaders as Léon Blum and Georges Mandel; both Jews they, together with other Jewish and non-Jewish republicans (such as Daladier) would be quickly placed on trial by Vichy for their policies from 1936-1940.

Less well-known "Jewish influences" would also be chastised and victimized by Vichy. Those who had (allegedly) come to dominate institutions such as the media, the liberal professions and the banks would be tarred by the same brush as the III Republic's political leaders and implicitly blamed for what was "wrong" with France.

The very first non-governmental career path prohibited to Jews by Justice Minister Barthélemy in his basic Jewish law of June 2, 1941 was that of banking.⁽²⁸⁾ There was preliminary confusion among bankers as to whether this law meant that even Jewish bank tellers had to be dismissed.⁽²⁹⁾ This mild loophole was definitively closed by mid-September, 1941, when the president of the influential syndicated union of bankers, wrote to all his constituents, that "an extremely rigorous interpretation" of the early decree should be adopted. In his view, anyway, "it would be abnormal and inopportune to retain in the branches personnel who have absolutely no possibility of advancement." His view was made into law on November 17, 1941.⁽³⁰⁾ The banks, like the public sector and like other leading private sector professions, industries and trades, would be stripped -- from top to bottom -- of Jewish participation. Contemporaneously, they were employing ever more non-Jewish personnel to abide their growing business; at the Société Générale, for example, 14,260 people were employed by June 30, 1944 compared to 10,321 exactly four years earlier.⁽³¹⁾

b. Resuming Business as Usual: the Banking comités d'organisation

If the banks joined other trades in firing all Jewish employees, they also joined them in providing key advice to both Vichy and the Germans on the related question of "aryanization" of Jewish assets. One of Vichy's top functionaries for economic aryanization was, in fact, Regelsperger, a man chosen from the ranks of the Bank of France.⁽³²⁾

The banks grouped together not only in the Syndicated Union of Bankers, but in their own corporate association (French: Comité d'organisation, or "CO"). Both professional groupings had frequent dealings with the CGQJ. As Marrus and Paxton describe the CO's more generally throughout Vichy:

[T]he semi-public corporatist associations that grouped each trade, profession, and branch of industry in order to regulate the economy . . ., these associations were run, for the most part, by the same interests -- and often by the same individuals -- who had run the various business and professional associations before the war. The leaders of the CO's, not unnaturally, took an intense interest in any development that could alter fundamentally the degree of concentration in their line of work and thus redistribute shares of the market. . . Should a CO seize the occasion to rationalize its branch of the economy or to reduce the total number of enterprises active in that branch?⁽³³⁾

Some 25 of France's major banks were part of the CO relating to their profession during the War, and they met together fairly frequently. Under the leadership of Henri Ardant -- the head of the Société Générale -- a provisional banking CO was established as early as September 30, 1940.⁽³⁴⁾ (It eventually became the "Permanent Committee of Banks", under Ardant's continuing leadership.) By then, as in the legal profession I studied, life at the banks -- even in the Occupied Zone -- had resumed a "business as usual" quality. The predominating difference, of course, was the attitude towards Jews. But in other respects, business resumed its pre-War allure. Thus, while bank withdrawals, for example, increased in June as Parisians temporarily fled, by the Fall of 1940 most people had returned and -- over the next few years -- major banks would see increases in their business.⁽³⁵⁾

Perhaps more so than the CO's of other professions and trades, their expertise was solicited by government authorities on many features of the aryanization process. Ardant and his colleagues as well as the group led by Roger Lehideux (president of the syndicated union of bankers)⁽³⁶⁾ and other leaders were queried as to thorny economic problems created by blockage of Jewish accounts and (later) as to the details of the 1 billion franc fine, which I take up in sub-section 4.

As with other CO's, bankers and their collectivities not only might advise as to who would make an excellent "aryan administrator" over Jewish banking assets but also had a considerable "hands-on" responsibility for Jewish assets at the banks themselves, as we shall see. When not meeting face-to-face with CGQJ, as they did regarding the fine, the bankers were kept apprised of the quickly moving developments relating, among other things, to the treatment of their own Jewish clientele.

Regarding the bank CO specifically, the recent work of de Rochebrune and Hazera, which contains a lengthy chapter called "When the Bankers Make the Law,"⁽³⁷⁾ describes the quick and almost invisibly effortless manner in which the banking CO adapted to and then actively influenced the process of "aryanization", of the manner in which public law and private professional activity merged throughout France:

The abundance of legislation and regulation under Vichy is absolutely astonishing to anyone not familiar with that period. Although one might imagine a fragile power moving frenetically from crisis to crisis, it actually launched fundamental reforms into many areas. . . . The history of the banks under the occupation merits particular attention. It provokes thought about the behavior of a great profession under the specific constraints of the period. But also, it shows us how this crucial sector of powerful interests -- today one would speak of a "lobby" -- was able to profit from the fragile structure of Vichy by organizing itself quite formally into a corporation. Pétain knew nothing about banks; his ministers not much more. . . . Contrary-wise, the Germans seemed at first to want to control the French banking system. . . . In fact, though, they decided very quickly to lean heavily, in this sector perhaps more than in others, on French institutions (the Bank of France, the Comité d'organisation of the banks) and on French authorities. . . .⁽³⁸⁾

The private interests of the banking cooperatives tended more and more to translate into laws and regulations. The culmination of this, perhaps, were the laws of 13-14 June, 1941, creating a Commission on the Management of Banks, which consisted of three permanent members: the governor of the Bank of France; the head of Treasury; and the president of the permanent CO of the banks.⁽³⁹⁾ This self-regulating body was described after the War by Bouthillier, the Finance Minister: the banks under our government were to be administered exclusively by the bankers."⁽⁴⁰⁾

If a result of the banking institutions' self-governance was the aryanizing of Jewish accounts, securities and other banking wealth, a more explicit goal seems to have been the reduction of competition in the banking profession. There follows a brief exploration of both phenomena.

2. Jumping the Gun on Jewish Bank Accounts and Deposit Boxes

The banking industry was one of the few that anticipated the promulgation of laws by instituting anti-Jewish policies before any law required it. Hence, on May 23, 1941, the following "Circular of Syndicated Union of Bankers" [see EXHIBIT 5] was distributed in the Occupied Zone:

By letter dated 21 May, I am informed by the head of the Banking Oversight Office that, according to information he received from the German Military Command, that administration is about to issue an ordinance under which Jews and Jewish companies will retain only limited withdrawal rights at their banks. It is envisioned that only amounts absolutely necessary for subsistence will be withdrawable.
The Oversight Office asks me to let you know this immediately and to inform you that you must act accordingly as of this notice, even if the projected ordinance has not yet been promulgated. In this regard, the Office calls our attention to the second ordinance against the Jews of 18 October, 1940, where the 4th paragraph states that any legal stipulation dealing with Jewish property (individual or corporate) can be annulled.⁽⁴¹⁾

This circular speaks volumes about the wartime attitude of the French banks regarding their Jewish clients. Even in the absence of any actual law requiring the blockage of "Jewish" bank accounts, the association of bankers responds to the prediction of such a law by implementing blockage immediately. Although German regs indirectly affecting certain banking transactions by "Jewish" clients came into effect less than a week later -- and although the banking association could plausibly view the Oversight Office's mere letter as having the force of binding authority -- one gets the impression from the circular of an industry primed to do the business of racist "spoliation". And they had been victimizing their Jewish clients since the prior October, with no law in place that absolutely required blockage;⁽⁴²⁾ thus -- and this is hardly unique in the story of pillage during Vichy -- the banking association at best can be viewed as exercising a "prudent" discretion in favor of the process as a whole. Other responses, less helpful to the German cause, were surely possible -- at least at this stage.

As I mentioned above, the Germans were consistently concerned that aryanization steps not be imposed on the French; rather, particularly as regards their understanding of the Hague Convention (see above), they looked to the French for indigenous approbation and eventually legislation. The German strategy used with the bankers was to be replicated later in 1941 regarding the infamous utlization of French institutions and of French law to facilitate the 1,000,000,000 franc fine against the Jewish community in the Occupied Zone. (See sub-section 4 below.) As historian Joseph Billig relates, considerable discretion was granted to the French to act or not to act in collaboration with German property-related demands.

The occupiers were worried about the Hague Convention. And the French state resolved it for them by legalizing an explicitly racist measure. What is especially grave here is that [the French] did this not under orders but responding to a "request" of the Military High Command.⁽⁴³⁾

Generally, both with blockage and with the fine the French exercised considerable discretion, and it is fair to say in this instance that the bankers did the same. So it is not an exaggeration to conclude that -- for as short a time as it seems in light of the ensuing three years of aggressive pillage of Jewish banking assets -- the first phase of the process was self-started by the organization of bankers.

3. Blockage of accounts and safe deposit boxes: the Increasing Responsibility of French bankers

The first steps towards formal (as opposed to discretionary) interference with the assets of banking clients deemed to be Jewish by the bank are set forth in a German ordinance of May 28, 1941. The ordinance, which is very general on its terms, restricts the alienation by Jews or their corporations of all financial assets, exceptions lying solely for transactions under 5000 francs in value. But even this ordinance does not directly require blockage of accounts. It does sharply limit transactions permitted to those individuals and corporations defined as Jewish and not yet under the control of an aryan administrator. These regs would have affected letters of credit, certain debt transfers and a variety of other banking regulations.

The effect of the latter ordinance on banks, specifically, was elaborated only three months later, in an eight-page memorandum from de Faramond -- head of the CGQJ's "SCAP" -- called "The Circulation of Jewish Capital". Paragraph 2, for example, permits the sale by Jews of securities, but insists that the proceeds go into an account "blocked either by the banker, the broker or the notary . . . who has brought the asset to market". Paragraph 3 prohibited banks even to use moneys held in an account of a Jewish client to purchase any market securities for the bank except French government paper.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Paragraph 4 permits only those affected clients with revenues of less than 6000 francs per annum (approx. $3000) to enjoy interest, dividends, etc.; the key Paragraph 6 formally blocks, for the occupied zone, all Jewish personalty in the hands of third persons, with an exception only for subsidy-level amounts that could be sent to Jews in the unoccupied zone. Paragraph 7 permts the transfer of funds and securities from a blocked account into another account, provided that whoever receives the transfer must keep the assets blocked. Paragraph 9 elaborates on the third section of the 28 May ordinance by permitting up to 15,000 francs monthly withdrawal for personal needs, also permitted specified withdrawals for debts and unexpected illnesses. To avoid "double dipping", Jews were required to have only one account at one bank that will be used for withdrawals; aryan husbands are permitted full use of joint account properties with a Jewish wife (the converse, under long-standing notions of French paternalism, was of course not permitted, the Jewish husband being assumed to exert the "influence" over property held jointly with an aryan spouse); corporate accounts, being either already or proximately in the hands of an aryan trustee, were deemed free of Jewish influence and -- as we have seen -- the process of aryanizing Jewish corporate wealth was already well under way. Paragraph 10 requires that all debts to Jews above 1000 francs must be paid into blocked accounts and not directly to the creditor (with several exceptions, including salaries -- to the extent, of course, that laws like those of 3 October 1940 and 2 June 1941 and many others still vouchsafed to Jews any gainful employment; Paragraph 11, dealing with safe deposit boxes, merits citation in full, even though this delicate subject was to undergo many variations over the next three years:

Jewish renters of safe-deposit boxes can --

a) remove their securities and banknotes, under the direct control and responsibility of the banker;
These assets must be immediately blocked by the banker under the usual conditions.
b) take back possession, after verification and under the responsibility of the banker, of any papers or personal documents having no commercial value.
On the other hand, gold, currency, silverware, and in general any valuable object cannot be taken back until contrary rulings are issued.
Every opening of a safe deposit box must be recorded and reported in a summary manner to the finance office of SCAP (annexed at B*).
Only one such opening is permitted to remove personal papers and documents.
The control envisaged by this article may be exercised by a summary inventory of the items removed, signed by the renter of the box and by a representative of the bank. (**)
If a Jew must, exceptionally, make a return visit,he must first make a request of SCAP.

(*) all emphases in original. Annex "B" is a typical Vichy-ste form requiring detailed identifying information, inluding the number of the "carte de juif" (Jewish ID card) held by the client.

(**) By early September, it was apparently understood that the Jewish client would also be permitted to regain possession of wedding bands of self and spouse; silver bracelets and watches; old silverware (except silver dishes); and silver knick-knacks of less than 1 kilogram in weight,

Finally, paragraph 12 permits payment of checks, money orders and letters of credit for Jews, but only by payment into the blocked account.

Among the many noteworthy features of this memorandum is the aura of French responsibility over Jewish wealth in the Occupied Zone. As noted earlier, the French had been fighting for at least this measure of control, and the Germans recognized that, even if they had the manpower and the diplomatic ability to monopolize the plunder, they nonetheless stood to benefit tremendously from letting the French do most of the work. One index of this is the change regarding safe deposit boxes: 16 months earlier, the German comptroller was insisting that a representative of his office be present whenever any box was opened; now a French banker alone would suffice as responsible even for the surveilling of a Jewish client's assets. (In between, for a brief period, it had to be a representative of SCAP and the banker, but the definitive rules vouchsafed responsibility just to the banker.)

Blockage was a fact of life, affecting all Jews and Jewish companies, great and small. By October, 1941, the CGQJ had confirmed the official Vichy policy that accounts would not be unblocked merely because the Jewish owner had himself (or, in the case of a company, itself) relocated to the unoccupied zone.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Debtors were to pay their Jewish creditors not personally but only into the latters' blocked bank accounts.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Jewish employees, now fired but still owed back wages or commissions, were to be compensated by indirect payments to such blocked accounts.⁽⁴⁷⁾

4. The 1,000,000,000 franc fine

The fine was imposed -- allegedly to punish the Paris-area Jewish community for the deaths of some German soldiers -- by means of a German ordinance of December 17, 1941. But it was implemented through complex Vichy regulation and banking behavior. Thus, if "collaboration" -- as opposed to French autonomy -- on property transfers might ever be the appropriate word, then collaboration existed here. The French quickly promulgated the law of 16 January, 1942,⁽⁴⁸⁾ which called upon UGIF -- the statutorily created "General Union of French Jews" -- to pay the fine by establishing a special account in its own name at the Caisse des Dépots et consignations. Of course, UGIF had no independent funds of its own. Thus the statute authorized it to "borrow" the huge sum in question. This in fact meant that eventually the fine would largely be paid from blocked Jewish bank accounts, the sale of Jewish-owned securities, and other aryanized Jewish wealth. As Billig puts it, "This law is unique in the history of Vichy in that it is explicitly limited to the Occupied Zone and it serves specifically an act of Nazi repression."⁽⁴⁹⁾

The fine would bring to the treasury of the Reich a greater sum than was as yet amassed through the combined blocking of accounts and aryanizing of Jewish businesses and other property (although by the following February, estimates indicated that well over the billion francs for the fine had already been amassed from accounts, securities and other sources of wealth).

As a focussing event, the fine also brought greater statutory and professional "regularity" to the handling of blocked Jewish bank accounts.⁽⁵⁰⁾ Bankers and their organizations⁽⁵¹⁾ were called on to participate in a situation that Yves Bouthillier of the Vichy Treasury associated with "the national interest". They were consulted by Treasury and CGQJ.⁽⁵²⁾

The new regs, French and German, further restricted Jewish withdrawals from banks and permitted blockage towards the payment of the communal fine of at least 50% of existing accounts. This amount would be automatically blocked, quite apart from the individual or corporate need of the depositor.

As Article 7 of the French law put it:

Every bank can participate in the procedures dictated by the present law, any legal or contractual barriers to the contrary notwithstanding.⁽⁵³⁾

A large group of banks helped meet the first German deadline. As Billig describes it:

Vallat [head of CGQJ] had obtained from the Group of Banks a loan of 250 millions, which represented the first slice of the payment of the fine.⁽⁵⁴⁾

The banks apparently balked when asked to fund the payment of the second installment, which was due on February 10. The banks' position was not identical to that of CGQJ, which (according to Billig) objected to the idea of a complete eventual blockage of all Jewish wealth.⁽⁵⁵⁾ The banks were duly repaid for their original 250,000,000 franc loan to UGIF on April 15, 1942. The repayment (with interest),⁽⁵⁶⁾ along with the full payment of 1 billion to the Germans on March 31, came from Jewish accounts, securities, and other aryanized wealth.

The effect on individual account-holders can sometimes be forgotten in view of the vast sums and the institutional politics at work. But for thousands of banking clients like Georges P., the results were catastrophic. An elderly Parisian bachelor of limited means who had hitherto been able to support his two siblings and himself, P. writes to the CGQJ a mere ten days after promulgation of the French law, as follows:

On 2 January 1942, my savings account had 20,000 francs. Due to the regulations in effect, 10,000 francs have been removed. I thus have 10,000 francs at my disposal. Besides a modest pension of 480 francs, I have nothing except those 10,000 francs. Can my case, in view of the extreme modesty of my means, be re-considered?⁽⁵⁷⁾

CGQJ does not respond to M. Paraf. About a month later, he seeks solace from UGIF, but the Jewish agency can hold out little hope that even such small accounts can be unblocked.⁽⁵⁸⁾

Later, CGQJ was taken over by its second (and harsher) director, Darquier de Pellepoix. He announced and implemented yet an additional "fine" on the beleaguered Jewish community throughout France. Using the law of 29 November 1941 that had created UGIF, Vichy declared by a decree of 28 August, 1942, that it was incumbent on the Jewish community to pay -- mostly from already blocked bank accounts -- or to give voluntarily [!] a monthly sum totalling 6,000,000 francs to support the organization and its increasing responsibilities.⁽⁵⁹⁾ But it would be wrong to conclude that UGIF officials themselves ever had control over this sum, which was less a reality benefiting the agency than a liability to the "Jewish families" that the decree explicitly extorted. Indeed, UGIF's considered response to the new decree mixed amazement with concern, wondering how such a sum could be raised rapidly and then in each successive month and finally suggesting that every Jew above the age of 18 be "taxed" 120 francs annually and that 5% of every withdrawal from a blocked account go towards the payment of the newly announced obligation.⁽⁶⁰⁾

As Marrus and Paxton aptly put the effect of these fines:

All concerned, except those Jews whose blocked assets had been used to pay the fine, managed to save something.⁽⁶¹⁾

5. Eliminating the Competition By Eliminating Jewish Banks

As we have seen, the Comité d'organisation (CO) of French Banks exerted a powerful influence on events almost from the outset of the return to normalcy that first autumn following the fall of France. According to historians de Rochebrune and Hazera, the CO had as one of its primary aims the elimination of its Jewish banking competition:

For the top bankers the ideal, even if economic activity diminished, and so as not to stop the large institutions from prospering, would certainly be the capacity to eliminate certain houses [quelques établissements]. From that project to its realization, there will be only one step. The victims, after all, are already identifiable. We know the important role played in the "aryanization" process by the desire to eliminate competitors, particularly in the commercial sector. Banking was no exception -- far from it. In the CO (provisional at the time), the rubric "Jewish banks" was opened in January, 1941. It does not speak of the big banks -- Rothschild, Lazard, Louis-Dreyfus, for these are already dormant or in the process of liquidation. But it does focus on the smaller ones. So we can read in the minutes of a meeting of the CO, for example, that "liquidation is being imposed" regarding the "Société Parisienne de Banque", or that the Banque de Gérance mobilière "is not indispensable to the Paris markets" or that the "aryanization" of the Banque Hirsch having become complex, "there is no reason not to liquidate it."⁽⁶²⁾

Not only were competitor banks at risk, but all institutions bearing on the financial markets. Thus a sub-committee of the banking CO focussed on the stock market and moved to eliminate the group we would call "day traders" -- coulissiers; these were non-establishment traders, many of them Jewish, who, "on the margins of the monopoly of the brokers, had the right to deal in small trades."⁽⁶³⁾ In an operation labeled "OFEPAR", Paribas, the B.U.P., and the Banque des pays du Nord collaborated to acquire and then re-deploy liquidated Jewish business assets.⁽⁶⁴⁾ And this is not to open at all the big page linking CO's and collaborative corporate banking ventures to German banks, economic interests, swaps of assets in various European zones, etc.⁽⁶⁵⁾

As with the legal profession I studied at length, so with the somewhat less-well studied profession of banking, all archival and scholarly indications point to big-scale profits through largely franco-French, indigenous laws, regulations and private corporatist conduct. Much more work, drawing on the enormous range of still-undiscovered or unproduced documentation, will need to be done before the scope of the enormity can be comprehended. ALL potential means of discovering (or at least working towards) the full truth should be encouraged, not only in France but elsewhere.

________________________

1. The book received good notices in such disparate journals as The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Partisan Review. In France, the translated version has been the subject of a symposium at the Sorbonne. I have also published preliminarily two French-language articles on this subject, one in D-Gros, ed., Le Droit anti-sémite de Vichy (Paris: du Seuil, "Le genre humain", 1996), pp. 401-413.

In late 1996, my work came to the attention of the legal team representing Holocaust survivors in what has become known as the "Swiss Bank" case, which I worked on in a limited manner, as I am doing for the plaintiffs in the "Insurance Company" cases. More recently, I have been "of counsel" for the plaintiffs in litigation more directly concerning the subject-matter of this memo, the "French Bank" cases.

All of the findings in this Report are of a scholarly and historical nature. Most draw on my own published work, culminating in the book, which was of course published prior to the onset of any U.S. litigation connected to restitution issues and WWII.

2. For the wartime origin of the word, which was used more than any other to describe the elimination, both as to all assets and as to the economy generally, of any "taint" of "Jewishness", see Marguerite Blocaille-Boutelet, "L' 'aryanisation des biens'", in D-Gros, ed. Le Droit antisemite de Vichy, cited ibid., p. 243.

3. Vital to everything in this analysis is the recognition that Vichy law defined "Jew" in such a way that many hundreds if not thousands of people who never practiced the religion would be defined as such. Thus every time the word "Jew" or, for example, "Jewish client" or "Jewish" safety box owner, etc., is used, it

includes many atheists, Christians, and others who satisfied -- through grandparental heritage or inter-marriage or simple inability to prove "non-Jewishness" -- Vichy's definition. See Weisberg, Vichy Law, chapters 2-8.

4. Sarraute and Tager, "Les Juifs sous l'Occupation," p. 15. See also Marrus and Paxton, "Vichy France," p. 7.

5. Between May of 1940 and July of 1942, the Germans retained their formal right to mark with the status "nullité" any transaction involving Jewish property, even if it had met with French approbation, and even involving the unoccupied zone. There were many such nullifications. See French National Archives, AJ38 #80. Although, as we shall see, the bulk of the booty wound up in a special account in the occupied zone -- the caisse des dépots et consignations -- and although that account was largely controlled over time by the CGQJ, the Germans also insisted that the fruits of sales of property held by Jews of certain nationalities (those countries in the Reich or annexed to it) be kept in a separate German account, that of the Deutscher Generalkommisar für das jüdische Vermögen at several banks in Paris, including the Barclay's Bank. On July 22, 1942, Dr. Elmar Michel of the German High Command signed an order turning over to the CGQJ most of the final aryanization decisions not relating to Jews of these nationalities. Ibid. As we shall see, this hardly marked an end for keen German interest in the aryanization of Jewish property, however.

6. In a decree of 13 June, 1941, a Neuilly-sur-Seine court specifically cites the German ordinance of the prior April as the causal impetus for the rent reduction it then permits the Jewish tenant. Archives of CDJC CDXXIX-2.

7. Rémy, "Lois," p. 79: Law of 10 September, 1940, Article 2.

8. Sarraute and Tager, "Les juifs sous l'Occupation," p. 17.

9. Ibid,. P. 62 et seg.

10. See, for example, the Matteoli Report (English translation) [EXHIBIT 1 to the report] pp. 180-182, about frenetic blocking activity among French banks starting in the Fall, 1940. See also, the Vichy decree of April 16, 1941, Sarraute and Tager, p. 41, which blocked bank accounts in unoccupied France, in Algeria, and in the colonies.

11. See Billig, III, p. 77; Marrus and Paxton, "Vichy France and the Jews," p.8.

12. Ibid., p. 80. Billig supplies an excellent "Annex of Aryanized Businesses" at the end of ibid., III. Documentation at AN, especially AJ38 #592-596 also gives a flavor for the vast numbers of Jewish enterprises assigned (or awaiting) an a.p. As late as September of 1941, CGQJ's judicial bureau notes over 2000 such enterprises then awaiting appointment of the a.p. AN AJ38 #592, memo of September 25, 1941. Global figures, probably still provisional, are provided by the Matteoli preliminary report, which sets the total number of aryanized enterprises at 62,460.

13. The Vichy Secretary of State, advised by other ministers and by industry committees familiar with the business being seized, made the appointment by decree. Article I of the decree of 16 January, 1941. See this report, Section B below, for the prevasive influence of the banking committees over aryanization policies.

14. CDJC, "Un Fichier des spoliés et des administrateurs," located at the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, Paris. The Archives nationales, AJ38 #528, offers numerous examples of 5-8" slips of paper, each one representing a Jewish enterprise either aryanized or awaiting aryanization.(See EXHIBIT 2) For May-June, 1941 alone, there are collected some 550 of these cards, most involving businesses still needing an a.p. But this collection represented only a tiny fraction of the real number of nominations, deriving from the towns of Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande and Romanville; for the full dimension of French activity in this regard, see above, note 12.

15. From January to June, 1944, in Montpellier, Toulouse, and Pau, for example, 11 private and corporate a.p.'s were newly decreed to manage 26 separate Jewish properties. CDJC XVII-10 (41).

16. Sarraute and Tager, "Les juifs sous l'Occupation," p. 35. See also "Inventory" to A.N. AJ 38 collection.

17. Sarraute and Tager, "Les Juifs sous l'Occupation," p. 62.

18. COJC IV - 20

19.   See Billig, III, 62-63.

20. See Ibid, p. 75 for the key memorandum to this effect of November 1, 1940 from Dr. Elmar Michel of the Economic Bureau of the Military High Command. Michel notes that "First, we must do what is necessary to eliminate Jews [from the economy] even after the Occupation. More important, we cannot from our side provide sufficient manpower to deal with the great number of Jewish enterprises. These two factors have led us to have the French authorities participate in the elimination of Jews. We thereby gain shared responsibility by the French and we have at our disposal the French administrative apparatus." Ibid. Accord on the analysis here A. Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l'Occupation (Paris: du Seuil, 1991) pp. 114-121.

21. See the account in Marrus and Paxton, p. 156. The a.p. assigned to the publishing house Calmann-Lévy, for example, "had served two terms of imprisonment as a convicted burglar and pimp." Ibid. By May, 1944, an independent examiner of the thousands of pieces of aryanized Jewish property found "innumerable and incredible abuses" in the work of "a good many a.p.'s". Ibid., p. 157.

22. Marrus and Paxton, p. 153. The Matteoli Report current figures amount to over 8 billion francs of assets blocked from 1940 - 1944. (English version, p. 140).

23. See Billig, "Le CGQJ," I, p. 77; see also Sarraute and Tager, "Les Juifs sous l'Occupation," p. 55. Eventually the CGQJ would have eight sections and its own police arm, the "Police aux questions juives."

24. Ibid, p. 79.

25. Marrus and Paxton, "Vichy France and the Jews," p. 296-97.

26. Accord Marrus and Paxton, ibid.

27. See, e.g., the German ordinance of 9 December, 1942, claiming for the Reich property once held in France by "Jews holding or once having held German nationality," a category that they defined very broadly. YV IV-209, Memorandum of German High Command dated January 16, 1943.

28. 2 June, 1941, Article 5. Sarraute and Tager, Les Juifs sous l'Occupation, p. 50.

29. French national archives, AN AJ38 # 58.

30. Sarraute and Tager, p. 56.

31. See, e.g., Renaud de Rochebrune and Jean-Claude Hazera, Les Patrons sous l'Occupation (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1997), vol 2, p 245.

32. Billig, Le commissariat général, III, p. 103 and Marrus and Paxton, p. 288.

33. Marrus and Paxton, 157-58.

34. See, e.g., Renaud de Rochebrune and Jean-Claude Hazera, Les Patrons sous l'Occupation, vol 2, pp. 233 et. seq ("When Bankers Make the Law"), p. 249.

35. Deposits in the five biggest French banks, for example, rose by a factor of 26% in 1941; at the Société Générale, they rose by 27.5% that year, by 25.7% in 1943 and by 17.8% in the final year of the occupation, 1944. (Société Générale's accretions were always slightly higher than the average for the other major banks.) See Renaud de Rochebrune and Jean-Claude Hazera, Les Patrons sous l'Occupation (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1997), II., p. 244.

36. Marrus and Paxton, p. 154.

37. Volume II at pages 233 et seq.

38. Ibid, II, pp. 233, 240-41.

39. Michel Redon and Denis Besnard, La Banque de France (Paris: PUF, 1996, 3d ed.), p. 49.

40. de Rochebrune and Hazera, II., p. 255.

41. Sarraute and Tager, Les Juifs sous l'Occupation, p. 47. The bankers' citation to Article 4 of the German ordinance of 18 October, 1940, is correct. See ibid., p. 25. On the curious ex ante imposition of this French view of forthcoming German regulations, accord, Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution, p. 22.

42. See the bankers' behavior described generally in Exhibit 1 to this Report.

43. Billig, III, p, 224.

44. Billig's thorough account of the August,1941 memo states that, in the Occupied Zone, government paper was also blocked. Billig, III, 109-112.

45. Financial Bureau memo of October 11, 1941. French National Archives, AJ38 #596.

46. Ibid.,AJ 38 #594. Memo of de Faramond of September 27, 1941. Accord, a few years later, the CGQJ's response to an inquiry about a Jewish doctor: if still practicing, he can be paid directly, but if prevented from doing so and owed more than 1000 francs, the doctor can only be paid into a blocked account and the payment must be reported to the agency's financial bureau. AN AJ38 #596.

47. Ibid., memo of March 20, 1942.

48. Sarraute and Tager, p. 134.

49. Billig, III, p. 112.

50. See also Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution, pp. 25-26. Adler observes that the fine "was finally paid by 15 April, 1942." Ibid.

51. See, e.g., Lubetzki, Les Juifs sous l'Occupation (eds. CDJC, 1945), p. 109; Billig, III, 218-19.

52. Ibid.

53. Sarraute and Tager, p. 135. It is interesting that even the statutory wording is discretionary: "Art. 7. Toute banque pourra participer . . ."

54. Billig III, p. 218.

55. Ibid.

56. See the Matteoli report, p.206. Interest, "which was 3%. Commissions amounted to 1.6 million francs." Ibid.

57. CDJC CDXXIX-1. Letter of January 27, 1942.

58. Ibid., letter to Paraf of March 5, 1942. By September of the same year, UGIF estimated to CGQJ that in excess of 60% of the average bank account had already been turned over to the Caisse des dépots et consignations. Letter of September 18, 1942 from André Baur to Darquier de Pellepoix, p. 2. YV09-40c-3.

59.     UGIF memorandum of September 10, 1942, attaching the decree, which was published in the Journal officiel of 5 September. YV 09-28. For the decree itself, see Sarraute and Tager, Les Juifs sous l'Occupation, p. 166. The monthly figure is considerably in excess of UGIF's recent monthly expenses, deemed by the agency to have risen in March to 771,662 francs. Minutes of April 15, 1942 meeting of UGIF's Finance Committee. YV 09-28.

60. Memorandum of September 18, 1942 from Baur to Darquier, see note 117 above.

61. Marrus and Paxton, p. 111.

62. de Rochebrune and Hazera, II, p. 256.

63. Ibid., p. 257. Interestingly, the stock market has refused to this day to open the archives of its wartime operation.

64. Hubert Bonin, Histoire de Bannques: Crédit du Nord (Paris: Éditions Hervas, 1998), p. 136.

65. See all French sources mentioned above.