VICHY’S NEW GHETTO LAW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1941, Page 6

VICHY’S NEW GHETTO LAW

SUBSERVIENCE TO GERMANY. Vichy’s increased subservience to Germany is vividly shown by the enactment of a new anti-Semitic law for Unoccupied France. Partly from Axis pressure, and partly because some of the men who brought about the Bordeaux capitulation were anti-Semites, a law in this sense was enacted last October, notes the Spectator. But the new measure is much more severe; indeed it is not easy to see how its severity could be increased, save by diminishing the number of Jewish grandparents (at present three) required to bring a person within the prescribed pale. Jews, so defined, are shut out from the Bar, the Stock Exchange and the medical profession; they may not be employed in journalism, in the film industry, or in the theatre; they may 'not be land or estate agents, or act as trustees; they may not hold the posts of administrator, director or secretary in any company or bank, or in any enterprise benefiting from State concessions or subventions. In short, they are debarred from practically all but proletarian occupations. In a country with the liberal traditions of France such a wholesale adoption of Hitler’s code must come as a profound shock to nearly all educated opinion. Nothing in the armistice conditions implied it, or entitled the Germans to insist on it. It represents Vichy’s aspiration after the replacement of military surrender by spiritual—that is by “collaboration.” Note that the signature which makes it law is Marshal Petain’s.