Jean Leguay, a Vichy regime police official believed responsible for rounding up Jewish children for deportation to Nazi death camps, died of liver cancer during the weekend of July 1, at the age of 79.
Leguay managed to evade justice and had a successful business career in France and the United States after World War II.
According to Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld, he offered his services to the Gestapo to arrest every Jewish child over 2, along with adults.
He was said to be responsible for arresting 12,000 foreign Jews, 4,000 of them children, and confining them to the Paris stadium in July 1942.
They were kept there for several days in sweltering heat, awaiting deportation. Eventually all were sent to death camps in Eastern Europe. Only a handful survived.
But Leguay was never tried. A decree against him for collaboration was revoked after the war. He went into business and for a year represented French industries in the United States. He stayed on in America until 1957, working for major perfume manufacturers.
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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.
