Video: Sale of things confiscated from Jews and other hard-hitting facts during the Nazi occupation of France
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
In during the Nazi occupation in France controversial events took place: the French police carried out the orders of the Nazis, shops sold items and furniture taken from Jews, the Louvre collection was replenished with paintings seized from Jewish homes, and the local authorities pursued a policy of collaboration. Cooperation with the enemy to the detriment of French citizens receives different assessments in the international community. Is it necessary to condemn only the actions of the Nazi occupiers, or is the problem of complicity with Nazism an equally grave crime?
When Paris was liberated from the Nazis in 1944, an album of 85 photographs was found in a shop selling items from Jewish homes, documenting the "Furniture Operation", as the campaign to sell items from looted apartments was officially called. A Parisian department store called Levitan sold furniture, dishes, clothes, household items, tools, bed linen, and toys that belonged to French Jews.
The department store was not only a place for the Nazis to acquire stolen goods before being sent to Germany, the former furniture store was also one of several Nazi labor camps in occupied Paris, known as Camp Levitan. The same building accommodated 795 Jewish prisoners who worked there in 1940-1944, before being sent to the death camp. Mostly, the store was occupied by women who were forced to sort, repair and pack furniture and items taken from their own homes.
All goods entering the store were photographed for inventory. Thanks to the album with these photos, which has survived to this day, we can judge the scale of the Furniture Operation. These photos were recently published in a book by the sociologist Sarah Gensburger. Commenting on the photo, the author notes that the main goal of the Nazis was not to make a profit - they stole not only valuable things, but the most ordinary, everyday things - the main task was to destroy the Jews not only physically, but also morally.
This album also contains several unique photographs from the Louvre, which depict paintings stolen from Jewish homes. These works of art were exhibited at auction, the proceeds from the sale went to the French government. The Louvre, with the help of the occupiers, replenished its collections. Hitler bought 262 paintings by paying the French for them. More than 100 cafes and brothels in Paris have been opened specifically to serve the Germans. The theaters' box office tripled in 1943.
Even representatives of the intellectual elite in France have often openly supported the policy of collaboration. For example, Sorbonne professor Maurice Bardesh said: “From the bottom of my heart I approved of collaboration as a way to restore friendship between our two countries, and as the only way of Europe's self-defense from the USSR. Our conviction was that the Jews were seeking the war. Contrary to what was claimed after 1945, most of the French were indifferent to what was happening to the Jews for almost the entire time of the occupation.
Of the 795 Jewish prisoners who were forced to work in the Nazi Levitan, 164 were deported to death camps. An advertising agency is now located on the site of the former department store on rue Faubourg Saint-Martin. A small plaque on the facade of the building reminds of what happened there.
How many terrible mysteries about crimes against humanity remain unsolved? Such, for example, which are stored Salaspils - children's death camp near Riga
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