The documentation center archives have over 30 million documents, including many originals bearing the signatures of Nazi leaders and those responsible for deporting Jews from France. List of the Shoah Memorial’s archival collections.
– The Lian Agency in France (MBF). The MBF—the German general staff in France—was divided into two main sections: the command general staff and the administrative general staff.
The command general staff archives include files on general collaboration between the occupation authorities and Pétain’s government, the persecution of the Jews and the overall policy of reprisals.
The administrative general staff archives include documents on the occupation authorities’ control of the French economy (interference, spoliations and economic Aryanizations).
Many telegrams and letters sent several times a day by Abetz and Schleier (Plenipotentiary Minister of the German embassy and Paris) to Berlin attest to the German embassy’s very deep involvement in anti-Jewish measures.
– The Gestapo in occupied France. The largest part of the collection analyzed so far comprises the archives of the Paris Gestapo’s anti-Jewish department.
It includes letters, telegrams and reports on internment, deportation and other anti-Jewish measures, such as the requirement to wear the yellow star, stripping of citizenship and reprisals in general. There are also documents regarding pressure on Italy in the Italian occupation zone.
The German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv Koblenz) has documents on the Gestapo in France that complement the collection. They provide an accurate picture of the Gestapo’s structure and activity in France, especially the anti-Jewish department headed first by Dannecker, then by Rothke.
These archives include some of the documentation assembled for the prosecution at Nuremberg as well as for trials conducted by the American military authorities.
This important mass of archives has a specific system of classification. The main subdivisions are:
– Archives of the General Commissariat for Jewish Questions. The CDJC possesses more than 20,000 documents from the General Commissariat for Jewish Questions (CGQJ) as well as the deliberations of its leaders' trials.
– Professor Montandon’s archives. Montandon was an ethnologist and "expert on racial issues" at the CGQJ. This fragmentary collection spans the period 1924 to 1944. Most of the documents concern his scientific research as an ethnologist, followed by his anti-Jewish propaganda activities starting in 1938.
– Institute for Jewish Affairs. The CDJC has most of the papers from this organization set up by Dannecker in 1941. The collection includes the general secretary’s correspondence and describes the institution’s activities.
Other collections. The CDJC archives have many other documents, in particular from the Armistice Department, the Prefecture of Police and Jewish organizations such as the Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE), Éclaireurs Israélites de France (EIF) Fédération des Sociétés Juives de France (FSJF), Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), Work for the Protection of Jewish Children (OPEJ) and Central Commission on Childhood (CCE).
An abridged version of the catalogue, without private information on the persons mentioned, is available here:
