A French lawyer, accused by an Israeli group yesterday of having been a Nazi collaborator during World War II, denied the charge vehemently today and cited his record as an anti-Nazi resistance fighter for which he was decorated after the war. The record of Johannes Ambre was also defended by Pierre Levy, president of the Lyons region of the International League Against Anti-Semitism (LICA) who told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that Ambre was in fact responsible for the escape of countless French Jews from deportation by the Nazis.
Ambre is the attorney for Claude Lipsky, a French-Jewish financier who fled to Israel last year to avoid arrest in connection with his alleged role in a major financial scandal here. Yesterday the Association of Anti-Nazi Fighters and Victims of Nazism in Tel Aviv lodged a criminal complaint with Israeli police charging Ambre with collaboration with the Nazis and the Vichy regime. They demanded that he be arrested if he sets foot on Israeli soil.
The anti-Nazi group submitted copies of a legal document Ambre allegedly co-authored in 1942 which they said provided the legal basis for introducing the notorious Nuremberg racial laws into occupied France. Ambre told the JTA today that “these accusations are completely mad.” He said he was active in the French resistance for which he was awarded the Resistance Medal, the War Cross and a Knighthood in the Legion of Honor. After the war, he said, he was elected an honorary member of LICA.
Ambre admitted that he had contributed to a legal compilation titled “The Judicial and Public Status of Jews in France” in 1942, but only to gain access to the police authorities and the Commission on Jewish Affairs. A co-contributor was Dr. Henri Boudry, then the Commissar for Police. “At that time I was already a member of the Alliance resistance network and I undertook this task with their knowledge,” Ambre told the JTA. Levy confirmed Ambre’s statement.
He said the attorney had indeed been a member of the Vichy government’s Commission for Jewish Affairs but kept the Jewish community informed of all forthcoming Nazi measures, especially deportation orders, thereby enabling countless French Jews to escape deportation and certain death. In 1943 Ambre fled to London where he joined Gen. De Gaulle’s Free French Air Force, was attached to a British RAF squadron and helped drop French resistance fighters behind Nazi lines.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
