Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, notorious French anti-Semite who the pre-Nazi Paris press frequently charged was financed by the German Ministry of Propaganda, is reported today from Vichy to have been appointed by Laval to the post of Commissar for Jewish Affairs, replacing Xavier Vallat.
The appointment is taken to mean that more perilous days are ahead for the Jews in France and in the French possessions. Darquier de Pellepoix, speaking in 1938 at a session of the Paris municipal council, of which he was a member, publicly urged that “the Jews in France be sent back to the ghetto and to the Orient.” The pre-war Paris press termed him “the Hitler of France” because of his bitter anti-Jewish articles in the newspaper “France Enchainee” of which he was the editor.
When a law forbidding anti-Jewish propaganda was issued by the French Government in the summer of 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the present war, Darquier de Pellepoix was the first Frenchmen to violate it. He was placed under arrest on charges of conducting propaganda financed from abroad following a police raid on his home and the editorial offices of his newspaper, during which incriminating documents were confiscated. Sentenced in July 1939 to a three-month jail term and a 500-franc fine for anti-Semitic agitation, he was indicted a second time at the end of the same month for another inciting anti-Jewish article carried in his paper soon after the sentence was issued, and for sending secret instructions to his followers urging them to use more subtle tactics in spreading anti-Semitism in France.
The instructions provided among other things for the establishment in France of a central organization for anti-Jewish propaganda headed by a “Fuehrer” authorized to issue orders to all organized anti-Semites in the country. The instructions also gave detailed directions to the anti-Semitic followers of Darquier de Pellepoix on how anti-Jewish propaganda was to be conducted on the street, in restaurants and coffee-houses, in stores and in society.
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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.
