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Vichy France

French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir's painting, "Madame Alphonse Daudet," left, is seen at the Musée d'Orsay museum's new permanent gallery dedicated artworks recovered after World War II whose ownership remains uncertain, in Paris on May 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
May 6, 2026, 6:47 am
New gallery at Paris museum reckons with French role in Nazi art looting
Musée d’Orsay displays works that have been unclaimed since the Nazis obtained them during WWII, when the art market in Paris grew rich on the looted property of slaughtered Jews
By Thomas Adamson
French artist Henri Matisse works on his 'Grand Intérieur Rouge' canvas in his Villa le Rêve studio in Vence, circa April 1948. (Louis FOUCHERAND / AFP)
April 18, 2026, 7:52 am
Was Henri Matisse’s sojourn in Vichy France de facto collaboration or quiet resistance?
In his new book ‘Matisse at War,’ Christopher C. Gorham explores the renowned artist’s troubled but prolific life under the Nazis during WWII, and his family’s role in the French underground
By Rich Tenorio
Artem 'Alfred' Nakache (inset), a Jew who swam for France at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, is depicted in lane 4 in the animated short film 'Papillon.' (Wikimedia Commons; Sacrebleu Productions and XBO Films via JTA)
February 25, 2026, 9:48 am
The real Holocaust history behind Oscar-nominated short animation ‘Papillon’
Film is based on extraordinary life of Jewish star swimmer Alfred Nakache, who competed for France at 1936 Berlin Olympics, fought with the resistance and survived Auschwitz
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
Ninette (left) and Viviane Dreyfus with Edgar outside the Martinez Hotel in Marseille, where ‘Tout Paris’ exiles gathered to exchange wartime gossip. (Courtesy of John Jay and Lady Swaythling and her family)
January 31, 2026, 7:33 am
Nazi-era teen girl’s diary charts unraveling of France — and her prominent Jewish family
Released in the UK on Jan. 22, ‘Ninette’s War’ by journalist John Jay examines darkest chapter in French history through a Dreyfus scion’s diary entries, family papers and interviews
By Robert Philpot
Marshal Philippe Petain and Prime Minister Pierre Laval in the Sevigne Pavillion park in Vichy France In 1942. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images/ public domain)
November 16, 2025, 4:24 am
In France, praise for Nazi collaborator Petain prompts legal action, condemnation
Jewish umbrella group CRIF slams event honoring Philippe Petain, who led Vichy France and presided over the deportation of some 75,000 Jews
By AFP and ToI Staff
Marthe Cohn greets well-wishers during a car parade celebrating her 100th birthday, April 13, 2020. (Courtesy via JTA)
July 1, 2025, 12:16 am
Marthe Cohn, Holocaust survivor and nurse who spied for the French, dies at 105
Cohn, who lived in US for last seven decades, crossed into German territory as World War II was winding down, pinpointing the location of a Nazi ambush
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
Holocaust survivor Ester Senot, 97, attends a commemorative ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the return of death camp deportees, in Paris, France, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
May 4, 2025, 1:58 pm
Death camp survivors recall horrors as France marks 80 years since Nazi surrender
Ester Senot survived over a year at Auschwitz; when she returned to France weighing 32 kilograms, neighbors reacted with disbelief at her stories, said she was ‘talking nonsense’
By Sylvie Corbet
Left to right: Huguette Müller, and Marion Müller at the French resort village of Théoule-sur-Mer in 1943. (Courtesy of Tim Judah)
March 25, 2025, 5:44 am
In Nazi-occupied French Alps, a doctor risked death to save a Jewish girl. Why didn’t others?
Newly published ‘Two Sisters’ is a family memoir that goes back and forth in time to examine motivations for resistance and questions of morality in Vichy France
By Renee Ghert-Zand
The portrait of Missak Manouchian is projected on the facade of the Pantheon monument in Paris, France, Feb. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
February 22, 2024, 9:09 am
In first, France honors foreign communist WWII resistance fighter
Armenian poet Missak Manouchian, who led dozens of anti-Nazi attacks in Vichy France before he was executed, also first foreigner recognized as having ‘died for France’
By Sylvie Corbet
Philippe Pétain sits at his trial in July 1945 in Paris. (Photo by PIGISTE / AFP)
January 1, 2024, 8:04 am
History has confirmed guilt of Vichy leader Petain – so why do some question it?
Regime helped deport 75,000 Jews to Nazi death camps, but as ‘France on Trial’ – a best book of the year by UK media – details, this got barely a mention when its leader went on trial
By Robert Philpot
A worker takes part during a demonstration of the equipment that will be used during the search campaign to find the remains of 47 German soldiers and a French woman accused of collaboration, executed in June 1944 by the local resistance, in Meymac western France, on June 27, 2023. (Pascal Lachenaud/AFP)
June 27, 2023, 8:33 pm
France searches for remains of German soldiers said executed by resistance in WWII
Dig sparked by claims of French Resistance veteran Edmond Reveil, who has said that 46 Nazi prisoners of war were shot dead in a wooded hillside in 1944
By Thomas SAINT-CRICQ
Netflix miniseries creator 'Transatlantic' creator Anna Winger (Courtesy)
April 17, 2023, 10:01 am
Not ‘Holocaust distortion’ but creativity, says creator of Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’
Anna Winger’s series is based on Varian Fry’s real-life rescue of thousands of European artists and intellectuals; critics warn of historical inaccuracies caused by dramatization
By Renee Ghert-Zand
Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, right, shakes hands with head of Vichy France Philippe Petain, in occupied France, October 24, 1940. (AP)
February 1, 2023, 2:47 am
New York community leaders call to remove Nazi collaborators from ‘Canyon of heroes’
Manhattan borough president says leaders of French Vichy regime, which helped deport tens of thousands of Jews to concentration camps, ’embody the worst of humanity’
By Luke Tress
Infantrymen of the British Eighth Army advance through a gap in Nazi minefield in front of the Mareth Line in Tunisia on March 25, 1943. (AP Photo/British Official Photo)
November 17, 2022, 8:41 pm
Eighty years later, the little known story of the Nazi occupation of Tunisia
Between November 1942 to May 1943, the SS imprisoned 5,000 Jewish men in roughly 40 forced labor and detention camps on the front lines and in cities like Tunis
By Sarah Abrevaya Stein
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, right, talks to Jacques Fredj, head of the Shoah Memorial ,as they leave the train car symbolizing the Drancy camp, July 12, 2022 in Drancy, outside Paris (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
July 17, 2022, 2:13 pm
French Holocaust survivors mark 80 years since mass Vel d’Hiv roundup of Jews
Over 2 days in 1942, police herded 13,152 people, including 4,115 children, into the Winter Velodrome of Paris before they were sent on to Nazi camps; very few survived
By Angela Charlton and jade le deley
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