Yahoo – AFP,
December 27, 2015
Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856-1951), the former French chief-of-state during Nazi occupation of France, sits at his trial in July 1945 in Paris (AFP Photo) |
Paris (AFP)
- France will throw open access to police and legal archives drawn from one of
the country's darkest hours, when the Vichy regime collaborated with Nazi
occupiers during World War II, authorities said Sunday.
Starting
Monday the archives can be "freely consulted" by the civil service,
citizens and researchers "subject to the declassification of documents
covered by national defence secrecy rules," according to a decree.
The Vichy
regime, led by World War I hero Philippe Petain, collaborated with the invading
German army from 1940-1944.
France has
a painful relationship with this portion of its past, when the government
helped the Nazis deport 76,000 Jews from its territory during the war.
The
archives include documents from the foreign, justice and interior ministries as
well as from France's provisional government after liberation.
Documents
dating from as late as December 31, 1960 are also covered by the new rule, as
long as the files relate to matters that happened between September 1939 and
May 1945.
Under the
new rules, documents related to the prosecution of war criminals in France,
Germany and Austria as well as cases taken before military and maritime
tribunals.
It will be
up to top defence and security heads to decide whether classified documents in
the archive will be made public.
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