Petain's Crime: The Complete Story of French Collaboration in the Holocaust - Hardcover

Webster, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0929587553 ISBN 13: 9780929587554

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1991

Synopsis

A controversial best-seller in Paris, this shocking history of French collaboration in the Holocaust accuses Petain and the Vichy government of independently and enthusiastically seeing to the extermination of French Jews.

About this title

About the Author:

Paul Webster is the Paris correspondent of the Guardian. He is a regular contributor to BBC and RTE radio news programmes. His previous books include Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Life and Death of the Little Prince. He lives in Paris.

From Publishers Weekly:

A controversial bestseller in France, this shocking book by the London Guardian 's Paris correspondent charges that French complicity in the Holocaust ran far deeper than previously known. Webster traces the history of French anti-Semitism to its climax in 1940, when Marshal Philippe Petain, head of the collaborationist Vichy government, signed into law a statute declaring French Jews enemies of the state. Petain then launched a program of arrest and deportation that resulted in the deaths of 72,000 French, foreign and stateless Jews in the extermination camps of the East. Purportedly, four thousand others were killed in a gas chamber on French soil. The book presents evidence indicating that the program was conceived, organized and carried out independently of the Germans. In addition to providing details on what he calls "the most shameful period in French history," Webster exposes the postwar coverup based on the false impression that Vichy resisted German demands to assist in the "final solution." Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0929587553
• ISBN 13: 9780929587554
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 239