Language:
English
Year of publication:
2015
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Contemporary History
Angaben zur Quelle:
50,2 (2015) 234-258
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Jews Legal status, laws, etc.
Abstract:
During the trial in March 1945 of the wartime Résident Général of Tunisia, Jean-Pierre Estéva, the defense tried to depict him as a "reluctant perpetrator" of Vichy's racial policies, who deliberately delayed the application of Vichy's antisemitic laws and then applied them only partially. Although the French colonial administration in Tunisia indeed re-formulated some Vichy decrees, like the Jewish Statute of 1940, in a milder and less racist form, and procrastinated with the implementation of the Aryanization policy of the regime, to the chagrin of Vichy's Commissariat général aux questions juives, its motives were far from humanitarian. Tunisia was an area of French colonial rivalry with Italy, and a hasty Aryanization of Jewish property (e.g. the property of numerous Livornese Jews who were subjects of Italy) could have undermined the Tunisian economy, weakened the French economic position there, and provoked Italian intervention. Thus, in Tunisia, the "Jewish question" became a question of control.
DOI:
10.1177/0022009414542537
URL:
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