multiple murders of Jews during the summer of 1944, including Georges Mandel and Jean Zay, shot by Vichy deputies both because they are Jews and because they represent the Republic and the Popular Front. This phase corresponds to the return of war to national soil, but this radicalization also affects the civilian population and the Resistance. In France, the summer of 1944 was marked not only by the departure of the last convoys for the deportation of Jews; the last left Drancy on August 15, but also by the summary executions of resistance fighters or Jews as part of a "French state." doubled as a fully proxy militia state for the Germans. The conflict experienced an extension to the West of extreme practices of war, more known until then in the Eastern and Balkan theaters of operation. In the foothills of the Vosges, mass deportations of populations take place. In the Natzweiler camp, 106 members of the Alliance network were massacred. At the same time, in the "great Germany", the exploitation of forced labor is pushed to its limits, especially for the benefit of the arms industry, in ultimate attempts to reverse the course of things.

THE "FINAL SOLUTION"

Regarding the European dimension of the issue, the Holocaust continued in 1944-1945, but did not intensify or culminate either. It is therefore its continuation that must be suppressed despite the many military setbacks and, above all, because of the considerable ideological importance of Nazi racism. Some "tech-nocrates" of the regime, notably in the anger of the Minister of Armaments Albert Speer, emphasize that it might be more profitable, while setbacks are accumulating, to use Jewish deportees as a labor force in arms factories rather than exterminating them. Nevertheless, the Nazi leaders maintained the "Final Solution" until the end. There was no intensification or acme of crime in 1944. The Nazis seek to annihilate the last great communities, the last ghettos, the last camps, but the Shoah culminated in 1942 with an appalling intensity: by the summer of 1944, 90% of the Jews who were victims of the Shoah had already been assassinated12: 5.4 million of them had been massacred, mostly from the Yiddish world, executed or gassed by the Germans between 1941 and 1943, killed due to the concentration camp system, civilians executed by the occupiers in retaliation. A singular space thus emerges, an area of Europe whose "populations suffered from three waves of occupation during the Second World War: first Soviet, then German, and again Soviet". What remains of this hotbed of Jewish culture in eastern Europe, from Yiddishland in 1945?

THE END OF THE WAR, THE OPERATIONS, THE REPRESSIONS, THE DEPORTATIONS, AND THE END OF THE Third REICH (1944-1945)

The Shoah leaves its mark across most of the countries still or recently under German occupation. The convoys continue to shoot until the last wagon, sometimes even taking precedence over trains loaded with retreating soldiers from the German armies. Hungary was invaded in March 1944. In the spring and summer of 1944, the many Jewish communities in Hungary were exterminated, except for that of Budapest, whose fatal fate was largely halted. Until November, gassing operations continue in Birkenau. Deportation logics are assertive and, sometimes, contradictory. In Germany and towards Germany, Jews were still deported until the beginning of 1945. In Budapest, during the siege of the city in January 1945, the pro-German Arrow Cross party led by Ferenc Szalasi executed nearly 25,000 Jews. In the final months of the conflict, the survivors of the concentration camp system and d-exterminated tion are evacuated to Germany and to regions still under German influence during "death marches" murders14, during which the local populations contribute (often voluntarily) to erase this evidence of a repressive and murderous apparatus in the midst of its denigration,15 while the Nazi authorities order to erase the traces of sacrosanct men, both human and material. As Ian Kershaw has shown, if most of the Wehrmacht’s general officers know that the war is lost, it is nevertheless necessary to emphasize that, until the beginning of 1945, the Germans, clubbed by propaganda and/or blinded by their convictions, We are not clearly aware of this, despite the civilian and military deaths, the bombardments, the destruction, given that up to now German territory has been almost devoid of Allied troops. They then continue to support the regime and its warlike actions until bot18. After the discovery of Maidanek (Lublin) by the Soviets on July 23, 1944, the first contact of the Western Allies with the world of concentration camps dates from November 25, 1944, with the arrival at Struthof camp. The date of January 27, 1945 is that of the discovery of Auschwitz. These camps were indeed discovered and not "liberated." They are not military objectives, either in the East or in the West. From April 1945, as a result of the military operations, the main concentration camps of the Reich were evacuated, entirely for some (Mittelbau-Dora, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen), partially for others (Buchenwald, Flossenbürg). In fact, the majority of survivors are released outside the camps. Pushing the irrational to the extreme, as the Reich collapses, the SS seeks to preserve by all means this labor force supposed to allow it to win the war. This date of January 27, 1945 also marks the arrival of the Red Army in the eastern tip of Germany, since Auschwitz is the easternmost city in "greater Germany",

at least in its southern part, and illustrates the consequences of what is not only a military deployment. A few weeks later, the Battle of Berlin, which took place from 16 April to 2 May, precipitated the fall of the Reich and brought about the end of the Second World War in Europe. Tristan Lecoq Inspector General of National Education President of the National Competition for Resistance and Deportation

1 Final year history programs for general and technological series, special report no. 8 of July 25, 2019. 2 Jean Lopez, Opération Bagration: la revanche de Staline (1944), Paris, Economica, 2014. 3 Anthony Beevor, Ardennes 1944. Le va-tout d Hitler, translated from the English by Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, Paris, Calmann-Levy, 2015 (reprinted in Le Livre de Poche, 2017). 4 Jean Lopez and Lasha Otkhmezuri, Barbarossa. 1941, la guerre absolue, Paris, Passé composé, 2019. 5 Philippe Richardot, Hitler face à Staline. Le front de l Est 1941-1945, Paris, Belin, 2013. 6 Nicolas Aubin, La course au Rhin (25 July - 15 December 1944). Pourquoi la guerre n'est pas finie à Noël, Paris, Economica, 2018. 7 Daniel Feldmann and Cédric Mas, La campagne du Rhin. The Allies enter Germany (January-May 1945), Paris, Economica, 2016. 8 Sarah B. Farmer, Oradour: June 10, 1944, translated from the English by Pierre Guglielmina, Paris, Perrin, 2007; Fabrice Grenard, Tulle: investigation into a massacre, Paris, Tallandier, 2014; Max Hastings, La Division Das Reich: Tulle, Oradour-sur-Glane, Normandy, June 8 - June 20, 1944, translated from the English by René Brest, Paris, Tallandier, coll. Texto, 2014. 9 Steffen Prauser, "Les crimes de guerre allemands en Italie, 1943-1945," in Gaël Eismann and Stefan Martens, Occupation et répression militaire alle- mande: la politique du "maintien de l'ordre" en Europe occupée 1939-1945, Paris, Autrement/Institut historique allemand, 2007. 10 The departure of the last large deportation convoy of Jews dates from 31 July, but 51 Jews were still deported by Brunner on 15 August 1944 from Drancy. This date is even more symbolic to show that the deportation works until the last days of the Occupation. 11 Johann Chapoutot, La Loi du sang. Penser et agir en nazi, Paris: Gallimard, 2014. 12 Tal Brutmann Auschwitz, Paris: La Découverte, coll. Repères, 2015. 13 Timothy Snyder, Terres de sang. Europe between Hitler and Stalin, translated from English by Pierre- Emmanuel Dauzat, Paris, Gallimard, 2012, p. 617. 14 Daniel Blatman, The death marches. The last stage of the Nazi genocide, summer 1944-spring 1945, translated from the Hebrew by Nicolas Weill, Paris, Fayard, 2009. 15 Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL. A history of the Nazi concentration camps, translated from English by Jean-François Sené, Paris, Gallimard, 2017. 16 Andrej Angrick, "Aktion 1005." Spurenøti- gung von NS-Massensouffle 1942-1945. Eine “sack Reichssache” im–epifeldvon Kriegswende und Propaganda, Göttingen, Walls-tein, 2018. 17 Ian Kershaw, The End. Allemagne (1944-1945), translated from English by Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, Paris, Seuil, 2012. 18 Nicholas Stargardt, La Guerre allemande. Portrait d'un peuple en guerre 1939-1945, translated from English by Aude de Saint-Loup and Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, Paris, La Librairie Vuibert, 2017.