France Removes Jewish Citizens From WWII Death Statistics

It is in keeping with France’s newfound – which is to say, rediscovered – honesty over how the society feels about Jews.

Paris, August 1 – Following the omission of Jews from the litanies of terrorist attack victims in France over the last several years, the country’s official historians have similarly revised downward the tally of World War Two dead among French citizens so as not to include Jews.

French State Historian J’hais Lesjuifs released a memo to his staff today saying that as a result of the reorientation toward Jews as not worthy of being listed among other French victims, his office decided to decrease the official French death toll in the Second World War from approximately 600,000 to less than 530,000, to reflect the deletion of Jews from the statistics.

“In keeping with our newfound – which is to say, rediscovered – honesty over how this society feels about Jews, my office has elected to revise downward the tally of dead French citizens in World War Two,” the memo read, in part. “A footnote, the location and prominence of which has yet to be determined, will advise the reader where to look for information on Jews in France at that time who died as a result of the war.”

More than 300,000 Jews lived in France at the outbreak of hostilities with Nazi Germany in 1940. The Wehrmacht overran France in a matter of days during the winter of that year, and began instituting anti-Jewish discrimination policies aimed at separating the Jews from the rest of French society – both in the Nazi-occupied north half of France and the collaborationist-governed south. Eventually more than 70,000 Jews from France met their deaths at the hands of the Nazis and  their collaborators, mostly as a result of being deported to extermination camps in Poland. The sense, however, that the Jews have never really been French enough did not abate in the decades since, and that sensibility has begun to reemerge, say commentators.

“It’s not just France – it’s Western media and governments in general,” explained journalist Tim Willcox of Sky News. “There’s always a reason you can find to justify violence against, or murder of, Jews, and that’s only gotten easier with Israel as a convenient scapegoat. The upshot is that Jews aren’t really victims, so their suffering or death can’t truly be counted with everyone else’s.”

The State Historian’s Office has been considering a number of reclassification methods for Jews killed during the Holocaust. US Ambassador to France Jane Hartley, an Obama appointee, suggested in a phone call to M. Lesjuifs this afternoon that a new category be created, called “random folks.”