The General Union of French Israelites (, UGIF) was a body created by the antisemitic French politician Xavier Vallat under the Vichy regime after the Fall of France in World War II. UGIF was created by decree on 29 November 1941 following a German request, for the express purpose of enabling the discovery and classification of Jews in France and isolating them both morally and materially from the rest of the French population. It operated in two zones: the northern zone, chaired by , and the southern zone, under the chairmanship of .
The mission of the UGIF was to represent Jews before the public authorities, particularly in matters of assistance, welfare and social reintegration. All other Jewish associations in France were dissolved and their assets donated to the UGIF and all Jews living in France were required to join the UGIF. The administrators of this body mostly belonged to the French-Jewish bourgeoisie, and were appointed by the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs (CGQJ), the structure which had been initiated by the Vichy government at the instigation of the Nazis to reinforce antisemitic persecution. In order to finance its activities, the UGIF drew on a solidarity fund whose income was generated using the proceeds from the confiscation of Jewish property, as well as contributions from its members and from funds allocated from the CGQJ.
The role of the organisation is controversial, particularly due to its legalism, which had transformed the offices of the association of children's homes, which it sponsored, into traps particularly vulnerable to Gestapo raids. Composed essentially of conservative elements of the assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie, it has been accused by authors from left-wing Jewish groups of being a forum for collaboration with the Vichy regime, both ideologically and administratively. Its action was based on the reasoning that the Jewish question in France was a problem of immigration of refugees from Eastern and Central Europe, and that French Jews, who were assimilated to the French bourgeoisie, could benefit from a certain ambiguity on the part of the Vichy regime. However, from 1943 and the acceleration of the Final Solution in Europe, this fiction collapsed and the collaborationist policy of the UGIF leaders led directly to their deportation to Auschwitz. After the war, a jury of honour was established, in relative secrecy, without really deciding whether or not the UGIF was collaborationist. The late publication of the notebooks of one of the leaders of the UGIF, by an Israeli historian, makes it possible to understand, according to Claude Levy, resistance fighter brother, that one of the sources of the collaboration of the UGIF and its leading members came from their personal attachment to Marshal Pétain and their confidence in Xavier Vallat.
Background
Demographics In 1940 there were about 300,000–330,000 Jews living in metropolitan France (0.7% of the population), among them 150,000 French citizens and 150,000 immigrants. Two-thirds of them lived in the provinces, but the overwhelming majority of foreign Jews lived within the Paris region. Of the 150,000 French Jews, 90,000 were of old stock and of the 60,000 foreign Jews, they were often immigrants from Eastern Europe of whom half had been naturalized in the 1930s.
At the beginning of World War II, French Jews formed a wealthy and cultured milieu. They belonged overwhelmingly to the bourgeoisie, often even to the French high bourgeoisie which made them conservative of the social order. They were established in all the cities and were completely assimilated into French culture, whereas foreign Jews lived mainly in Paris, were refugees from Eastern Europe who were mostly at the bottom of the social ladder, who often came from or were involved in revolutionary movements, and generally remained attached to Yiddishkeit, the symbol of fidelity to ancestral customs.
Nomenclature Since 1808 and the creation of the Israelite Central Consistory of France, French people of Jewish origin have never been referred to as "Jews", an expression that designates a race or a nation, but as "Israelites", i.e. as citizens practising one of the four official religions and belonging entirely to the French Nation. Jews who were agnostic, even anti-religious, did not recognize themselves in this official institution that was created to administer and maintain their worship, based on the centralized model of the Catholic Church in France, by strictly reducing Judaism to a religious denomination.
Jewish aid organisations
Immigrants and refugees
French Jews created philanthropic aid organisations for refugees, such as the ( [CBIP]) founded in 1809 and the (CAR) in 1938. The Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs israélites de France (EIF, Jewish Guides and Scouts of France), was founded in 1923 by Robert Gamzon, grandson of the Chief Rabbi of France Alfred Lévy, and had been involved since 1930 in the integration of Jewish immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe. From the perspective of the refugees, the French were, at best, bad Jews, and at worst, traitors to their religion and their people. The Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe organised themselves, especially in Paris, by origin and political tendency.
Landsmanschaften
The landsmanschaften, organisations of Jewish immigrants by country or region of origin, organised into a federation, the (FSJF, ) that was founded in Paris in 1913. From the 1930s it was known as the main representative of Jews immigrating to France. As well as providing sustenance and legal aid, it offered access to social and cultural activities. Its president, , was a leader of the Zionist movement. The political parties in which immigrant Jews were involved were the Bund, which allied with the French Section of the Workers' International and which encouraged the Yiddish language and the Main-d'œuvre immigrée (MOI) trade union. It integrated into Communist International and various socialist-Zionist parties.
Children The Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE, Children's Relief Society) was founded in 1912 in Tsarist St Petersburg by Jewish physicians to help underprivileged Jewish populations. In 1922, the OSE created an international network of groups that had its headquarters in Berlin, under the name Union-OSE, with Albert Einstein its first president. The OSE moved its headquarters to Paris in 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution within Germany. It opened houses in the Paris region to take in Jewish children fleeing from Germany and Austria, then very soon afterwards to take in children living in France. The Jewish association Colonie Scolaire at 36 rue Amelot in Paris is known for the June 1940 meeting of Jewish immigrant organisations which formed the Amelot Street Committee (Comité de la rue Amelot), an underground organisation that provided aid to refugees, internees and children.
National coordination and distribution The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC or Joint) distributed grants to local philanthropic institutions. In June 1940, the JDC established its offices in Marseilles. In 1941, the JDC distributed nearly US$800,000, or about 65 million francs, which then represented more than 70% of the aid distributed as social assistance. In the summer of 1940, the JDC director decided to distribute the bulk of French aid through the CAR rather than the FSJF, which did not improve relations between the leaders of the two organisations. Following the internment of a large number of foreign Jews to camps, Christian and Jewish charities developed a network of aid to these camps. In October 1940, the Nîmes Committee was established to coordinate Jewish and Christian relief efforts to the interned, under the chairmanship of American Donald Lowry. The CAR settled in Marseille in August 1940. At the end of 1940, the communists of the MOI created a self-help organisation, Solidarity (Solidarité), which aimed to help the needy, especially the wives of prisoners, and later the wives and families of internees. Solidarity was better organised than the Amelot Street Committee, whose activities were similar, but was a clandestine organisation due to communism and communists being outlawed.
The Coordinating Committee After the occupation of Paris in June 1940 and installation of the Vichy France government, the Consistory withdrew to Lyon, leaving the Association consistoriale des israélites de Paris (ACIP) to provide aid in Paris. In August 1940, the ACIP was approached by Theodor Dannecker, a Sicherheitsdienst officer who was the representative of the Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs in France, who declared himself the official representative for French Jewry. Dannecker demanded that Jewish Consistoire be converted into a Judenrat, essentially a Jewish administrative body that was controlled by the Nazis. As the Consistory's administration was limited to worship alone, the ACIP had initially recused themselves but under German pressure agreed to establish a coordination committee. The Coordinating Committee of Charities of Greater Paris (Comité de Coordination des Oeuvres de Bienfaisance du Grand Paris) was established on 30 January 1941 in the northern zone, incorporating the ACIP's benevolent committee, representatives of the Amelot Street Committee, and the OSE. Most other French and immigrant Jewish relief committees affiliated with it to avoid dissolution.
In the months following its creation, the Committee remained under the predominant leadership of the men of the ACIP, but in March, Dannecker imposed Israël Israelowicz and Wilhelm Biberstein, who had come from Vienna to be his proxies. nephew of Chief Rabbi became Secretary General of the committee. From July 1941, strong tensions appeared between the committee and the immigrant populations: on 20 July, in order to confront a demonstration by 500 women internees, Léo Israélowicz asked Dannecker for protection. The Committee succeeded in obtaining the release of a certain number of internees, but the immigrants became increasingly distant from the committee. On 18 August 1941, Dannecker demanded 6,000 Jews for "agricultural work" in the Ardennes. The Committee then asked for volunteers exclusively from among the immigrants. The volunteers were few in number and as a retaliatory measure, the Germans organised a round-up of 3,200 foreign Jews and 1,000 French Jews who were interned in Drancy internment camp. At the end of August, the ACIP officially joined the committee.
The Office of the Commissioner General for Jewish Affairs
At the request of German authorities, the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs (CGQJ, ) was created by the Vichy French Council of Ministers. The enforcement decree implementing the law dates from 29 March 1941. The CGQJ was initially under the authority of Secretary of State for the Interior Pierre Pucheu and then, from 6 May 1942, directly under that of the head of government, at that time Pierre Laval. According to the Dannecker report of 1 July 1941, the CGQJ was created at the "repeated insistence" of the Jewish service of the embassy. Dannecker was suspicious of the first commissioner, the antisemitic Xavier Vallat, a former deputy of right-wing monarchist Action Française party.