61

The question of who implemented the deportation of Jews during the Occupation of France is still hotly debated. Revisiting this question from the perspective of the MbF’s security strategy in its larger European context allows us to gain new insight. Recently unearthed documents invite us to reconsider the logic behind the outsourcing of repression that governed the retaliatory deportation of Jews and communists to Eastern Europe, a practice officially adopted in December 1941. Closely intertwined, the MbF’s repressive policies and the methods of the SiPo (Security Police)-SD jointly led to the persecution of the Jewish population, setting off the genocide in France earlier than in the rest of Western Europe.