Well the Nazis directly occupied the northern portion of France, including Paris, and they certainly pursued their murderous racist agenda in France as elsewhere. And some French officials no doubt fully participated in these crimes. But there are lots of indications that many French people, including some of the police, avoiding cooperating in this program, and indeed some people in France, as elsewhere in occupied Europe, harbored Jews at great risk to themselves. Hard to believe that Singer, who had already been arrested and escaped, could have carried on a successful business virtually under the noses of the Germans in occupied Paris without some of the local police at least turning the blind eye.
Regards & happy New Year,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA
> From: Leonard Diamond <leonarddiamond@verizon.net>
\r?\n> Subject: Re: [CR] Parisian cyclocross footage from 1945
\r?\n> To: "'Jerome & Elizabeth Moos'" <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net>, classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Thursday, December 31, 2009, 3:55 PM
\r?\n> Jerry Moos said amongst other
\r?\n> things:
\r?\n>
\r?\n> "In general, the French attitude to Nazi persecution of
\r?\n> Jews, if not one of
\r?\n> open resistance, seems at least to have been one of
\r?\n> noncooperation."
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Firstly although the bulk of his post was on topic, trying
\r?\n> to
\r?\n> summarize/analyze history in one or two sentences is
\r?\n> something not easily
\r?\n> done and also probably not advisable in this forum.
\r?\n> In any case here is a
\r?\n> link to a short article from Time that speaks to the topic
\r?\n> of jews in France
\r?\n> during WWII:
\r?\n> http://www.time.com/
\r?\n>
\r?\n>
\r?\n> On July 15-16, 1942 the arrests of 13,000 Jews by French
\r?\n> police is known as
\r?\n> the "Vel d'Hiv roundup" - after the name of the winter
\r?\n> cycling stadium in
\r?\n> Paris the deportees were held in.
\r?\n> 75,000 deported and killed doesn't sound like
\r?\n> noncooperation to me.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> My apologies but I felt compelled to respond.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Len Diamond
\r?\n> Ridgewood, New Jersey USA