The Vichy Government was ordered by Nazi Germany to surrender Jews for deportation to the East and at that point the French collaborationist government was forced to choose between sending to their death French Jews or Jews of other nationalities residing in France, Jacques Bousquet, onetime Secretary-General of Interior and Chief of Police in the Vichy Government, testified yesterday at the trial of Nazi Gen. H. Oberg, the notorious “Butcher of Paris, ” and his side, Col. Helmuth Knochen.
M. Bousquet told the military tribunal trying the Nazis for war crimes that Vichy had not desired and had attempted to delay the deportation of Jews to the “new state” in Poland which the Nazis told Vichy they were creating for Jews. He asserted that under the treaty of peace between France and Hitler Germany, Vichy could not protect non-French Jews.
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