A Police Unit for Jewish Affairs (PQJ) was established in mid-October in both the occupied zone and the so-called free zone. By the end of October 1941, it had arrested several members of the Youth Battalions, including a few young Jews.
New laws enacted in November 1941 further restricted Jews’ access to employment. On November 27, all Jewish members of parliament, regardless of their political affiliation, were removed from office (the Communists had already been removed in 1940).
The state-sponsored anti-Jewish campaign isgaining momentum with the continuation of the exhibition “The Jew and France,” which opened in September.
In response, the Communist Party published, in November 1941, an underground pamphlet—distributed in thousands of copies—titled “Anti-Semitism, Racism, and the Jewish Question,” written by Louis Gronowski, national director of the M.O.I. In November, attacks against Germans increased. New measures were to be taken against the Jews.
On the orders of the Germans,the General Union of French Jews(UGIF) was founded on November 29, 1941. French Jews were appointed to its leadership.
Xavier Vallat, a notorious anti-Semite, oversaw this organization, which was controlled by the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, established a few months earlier by the Vichy government.
All assets of Jewish organizations are automatically transferred to the UGIF.
While a second registry of Jews was being compiled by the collaborationist administration, the General Union of French Jews (UGIF) was conducting its own census of Jews seeking its assistance. In fact, the UGIF chose to pursue a strategy of the lesser evil, which it believed consisted of making concessions to the occupiers and sacrificing foreign Jews to protect French Jews…
For the Germans, the goal is to place all Jews under surveillance and make them participate in their own extermination.
From the outset, the underground Jewish section of the M.O.I. advocated going underground and taking defensive action. It accused the UGIF of “paving the way for the isolation of the Jewish masses in a ghetto.”
As early as the beginning of 1941, the three still-legal entities of the Jewish section of the M.O.I.—the clinic, headed by Alfred Grant, the soup kitchens, and Arbeter Orden (the mutual aid society) had already ceased operations. The Jewish section wanted to avoid any association with the occupying forces and feared potential traps leading to arrests.
Some Jews outside the M.O.I. began to see through the Nazis’ plans. They then joined its Resistance organizations such as “ “Solidarity ” orthe Union of Jewish Women. Other Jewish organizations, such asthe Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) and the Éclaireurs Israélites de France (EIF), established clandestine Resistance cells within the UGIF, unbeknownst to its leadership.
