Le fichier

Recounts the history of the card index compiled by the "Préfecture de police" in October 1940 which was based on the German-imposed census of the Jews in the Paris region. It included some 150,000 names, systematically classified according to address, profession, and nationality. It was to be the most important tool for the roundup and arrest of the Jews in France, by the French police, between 1941-44. (Another card-index of the Jews in the Free Zone was set up in 1941.) At the end of the war the card-index disappeared and, ever since, French authorities have maintained that it was destroyed during the liberation. A "small index" was discovered by Serge Klarsfeld in September 1991 in the French Ministry for War Veterans archives. It includes 66,500 names of Jews who were arrested and deported; the rest of the card-index is either not available or is lost forever. States that the index is an embarrassment for France as it is proof of collaboration with the Nazi antisemitic policy. also describes the arrest and deportation of the Jews.