After defeating the French during the Blitzkrieg in May 1940, the nazi's left large parts of France unoccupied. The South Eastern part stayed under the control of the French Vichy regime loyal to the Nazis and Italian fascists. The leader of the regime was French marshal Petain. Petain came into power after the nazi attack. He signed a treaty with the enemy, ordered to stop all resistance and promised full cooperation. Next to obaying german orders Vichy authorities started to prosecute jews even before German orders. When the allied invasion of France started in June 1944, the Vichy government got detained by the nazis untill the end of the war. After the war petain was sentenced to dead. However Charles De Gaulle, the future leader of France, changed this to a life time scentence. The French collaboration and the role in the jewish prosecution have long been taboo in France. In 2009 the highest court in France, ruled that vichy france authorities were responsible for the dead of at least 76,000 jews.

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