France opening up archives from Vichy regime that worked with Nazi

PanARMENIAN.Net - France is opening up police and ministerial archives from the Vichy regime which collaborated with Nazi occupation forces in World War Two, BBC News reoprts.

More than 200,000 declassified documents are being made public on Monday, December 28. They date from the 1940-1944 regime of Marshal Philippe Petain.

During the war the Vichy regime helped Nazi Germany to deport 76,000 Jews from France, including many children. France is also opening files from its post-liberation provisional government.

The Vichy documents come from the wartime ministries of the interior, foreign affairs and justice, as well as the police.

Some of the archives relate to war crimes investigations conducted by the French liberation authorities after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The current mayor of Vichy, in central France, told The New York Times that he was concerned about the enduring stigma attached to his city. It was where Petain - a World War One hero - established his collaborationist regime.

"There are many stories about this city, and then there's the truth," he said, "because that period was very complicated and has been incorrectly defining this city for too long."

Former French Resistance fighter Lucien Guyot told the paper that the Petain government "went far beyond the Germans' expectations, in particular with the deportation of 'foreign' Jews, including children, to concentration camps, and they chased us down with a vengeance".

"But it was the government's actions that were unforgivable, not this city's," he added.

In 1995, former French President Jacques Chirac officially recognised the French state's responsibility in the deportation of Jews.