France's role in Holocaust officially recognized

PanARMENIAN.Net - France's top judicial body on Monday formally recognized the nation's role in deporting Jews to Nazi death camps during the Holocaust - but effectively ruled out any more reparations for the deportees or their families.



Jewish groups welcomed the ruling by the Council of State, the clearest legal acknowledgment to date of France's role in the Holocaust.



Nearly 70 years ago, the Vichy government helped deport some 76,000 people - including 11,000 children - from Nazi-occupied France to concentration camps during the war. Fewer than 3,000 returned alive.



The council said that the French government of the time "allowed or facilitated the deportation from France of victims of anti-Semitic persecution."



"In an absolute rupture with the values and principles notably of the dignity of the human person ... these anti-Semitic persecutions provoked exceptional damage of extreme gravity," it said, the AP reports.