1-276-826 - Art Media/Heritage Images

Xavier Vallat, Vichy French Commissioner-General for Jewish Questions, France, April, 1941. Vallat was appointed head of the Commissariat-General for Jewish Questions, the body responsible for implementing the Vichy regime's anti-semitic laws, in March 1941. Vichy France co-operated enthusiastically with the Nazis plans for the extermination of the Jews. Some 76,000 French Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps between 1942 and 1944, with only 2500 surviving. Vallat himself was not directly involved, having been dismissed as Commissioner-General in May 1942 for his criticism of the refusal of the Nazis to release France's prisoners of war. He remained a supporter of the Vichy government however, and regularly made anti-semitic broadcasts on Vichy radio. After the war he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for his part in the persecution of France's Jews. The leniency of the sentence took into account Vallat's service in the First World War, in which he lost his left leg and eye.