[orieleye]

Darquier de Pellepoix was Commissioner for Jewish Affairs under Pétain from 1942 to 1944. He was interviewed in Spain in 1978.

L'Express: Sir, it is barely thirty-six years since you handed over seventy-five thousand men, women and children to the Germans. You are the French Eichmann.
Louis Darquier: Where did you get those figures?
LE: Everyone knows them. They are official. You can see them in this document too. (I show him, open at the right page, Serge Klarsfeld's book)
LD: Just as I guessed. A Jewish document. Here we go again with Jewish propaganda! Of course, you can show me nothing but Jewish documents. And why? Because no other exist.
LE: Is that so? There are hundreds, thousands of others, ones that do not come from Jewish organisations. That said, perhaps you would admit that Jews might be interested in the disappearance of six million of their own people.
LD: That figure is an invention, pure and simple. A Jewish invention, of course. Jews are like that: they're ready to do anything to get publicity.
LE: Do you really believe what you just said? Could you repeat it?
LD: Oh, I see. You're intoxicated like the rest of them. You're all blind...You don't want to face up to the fact that Jews have only one idea in their heads: to wreak havoc everywhere. And why? You know perfectly well: to make Jerusalem the capital of the world. Even today you only need to open any newspaper to realise it. You have come here to accuse me, but...
LE: No, I'm not a prosecutor. And I'm not a Nazi-hunter. I have come to see you to try to understand what goes on in a mind like yours after thirty-six years. That's all I'm after.
LD: You are an agent of Tel Aviv.
LE: An agent of Tel Aviv, should he be interested in you, would not waste time asking you these questions.
LD: Anyway, you're the one who is wasting time. I've nothing to tell you.
LE: You've still got it wrong. You have already taught me something essential: you are a rather unique case. You don't say: 'I had my orders. I carried them out.' Your position doesn't seem to have changed one iota since 1942.
LD: You think the Jewish question dates from 1942! No, the Jewish question has been a problem for a thousand years...Since the Middle Ages, the West and Christianity have fought against the creeping stranglehold of the Jews. The yellow star - we didn't invent it. If it proved necessary as far back as the twelfth century to make Jews eat pork, it was for a good reason. As for our recent history, it was entirely governed by the search for a solution to the Jewish problem.
Look, here is a question: Have you ever wondered why we had to wait so long for the application of the Balfour Declaration? Have you counted the wars, counted the deaths that have got us to the position we are in today: the settling of the Jews on disputed territory? When the Marshal put me in charge of the Commission for Jewish Affairs, I determined on one fixed end. A humanitarian end, please note: to make the situation of French Jews as comfortable as possible.
LE: You're not serious. Who do you hope will believe that?
LD: I forgot that you are one of those unhappy victims of Jewish propaganda. And Jewish propaganda has always been based on lies. Always...Always...I tell you again, that during the months when I was minister, I spent most of my time trying to protect Jews from trouble. I'm talking of French Jews, that goes without saying.
[...]
LE: It is certainly true that in the month of February 1943, you proposed to the Vichy government a certain number of measures which the Germans themselves had not even dreamt of. [eg. wearing of the yellow star in the Non-Occupied Zone]
LD: I don't remember anything about this story of the yellow star in the free zone. It must be another example of your Jewish propaganda...
LE: Absolutely not. It is there in black and white in Le Petit Parisien of 1 February 1943.
LD: Perhaps...perhaps...In any event it was a mistake. Because you know, contrary to what has been so often said, the yellow star was not popular.
LE: and was the denaturalisation of the Jews an error?
LD: That, oh no! That was definitely my responsibility...
LE: Your predecessor at the commission, Xavier Vallat, otherwise considered too soft by the German authorities, had fixed upon 1932 as the final date for naturalisation; before that date - in principle - no one could be affected by the racial laws. You put that back to 1927.
LD: But of course. There had to be more!
LE: More deported Jews, is that it?
LD: Of course. We had to get rid of those foreigners, those wogs, at any price, and of the thousands of stateless persons who were the source of all our problems. They wanted the war. They led us into it. It was vital to get rid of them. As quickly as possible, as far away as possible. I fixed upon that as my second aim when I took up my responsibilities: to send all those people back to their own country to do the damage there that they had tried to do to our country!
LE: What do you mean, their own country? In 1942, Jews did not have a fatherland.
LD: I mean - over there, I don't know where, in Poland. The idea was to give them land somewhere over there. Then they would no longer be stateless people! That is what I wanted: the end of the wandering Jew. So that at last, after two thousand years, those people would no longer be foreigners wherever they were.
LE: This is stupefying. You are not far short of telling me that Auschwitz is in line with the Balfour Declaration!
LD: Auschwitz...Auschwitz...You know, there have been too many stories about Auschwitz! It's time to begin to face up to what really happened there.
LE: A million dead. Amongst them, innumerable children. All gassed.
LD: No, no, no...You'll never make me believe that. Here we are again with the satanic Jewish propaganda which has spread and encouraged this myth. I tell you again, Jews are always ready to do anything to get themselves talked about, to make themselves interesting, to complain. I'll tell you exactly what happened at Auschwitz. They used gas. Yes. That's true. But they gassed the lice.
LE: What are you trying to say?
LD: I am saying that when the Jews arrived at the camp, they were made to take their clothes off, as is normal, before being taken to shower. During that time, their clothes were disinfected. After the war, the Jews circulated photographs everywhere, showing piles of dirty linen in shreds. And they wailed...'Look', they said, 'there are the clothes of our brothers who have been exterminated.' That was a lie, absolutely. But what do you expect; the Jews are like that. They just have to tell lies.
LE: I was right in saying that you are a one-off. Even Eichmann did not deny the existence of the Final Solution. You do. Nonetheless, you were well aware of it. [reads from a transportation order to Auschwitz]
LE: You don't find that this simple text, which automatically landed in your office, is a barely veiled implication of the Final Solution?
LD: No. I repeat. The Final Solution is an invention, pure and simple. Do you know anyone who has ever seen what they call a gas chamber?
LE: The millions of survivors of Auschwitz. Not to mention the Allied Commissions of Inquiry after the war, and all the visitors to the museum at Auschwitz. Myself, amongst them.
LD: Your gas chamber was invented after the event. You won't get me to change my mind.
LE: That's true. You won't change your mind. Now, these photos. You've already seen them?
(I try to make him look at photographs showing the bodies of women and children that have just come out of the gas chamber. He turns away.)
LD: I don't even want to look at them. They're fakes.
LE: Good. Now, could you tell me where these people came from? What became of the one thousand deportees of the convoy no. 33 - I take this example from among others - who left the station at Drancy on 11 September 1942?
LD: How do you think I know? It wasn't my job to know what happened to Jews afterwards. My work was exclusively administrative. I was a senior French civil servant. I always made sure that the Jewish problem in France should be resolved by the French. And, believe me, it wasn't easy. You had always to navigate between Pierre Laval and that raving idiot Dannecker. Between these two, it was almost impossible to do one's job well. If I had to do it again, I tell you straight, I would refuse.
LE: Your reply raises several questions. Here is the first: what exactly do you mean by doing one's job well?
LD: To separate the wheat from the chaff. To protect French Jews, as I have already said. Apart from that, I shall surprise you. Do you know that I had many Jewish friends? Later, they thought it better to cut me dead. That's life. I don't hold it against them. All the more so because some of them helped me: I'll tell you about that later. To return to your question, to do my job well consisted in preventing the Germans from interfering in Jewish affairs. If they had done so it would have been a catastrophe.
LE: Second question: Pierre Laval. What were your relations with him?
LD: Very cordial.
LE: Nevertheless, he had you arrested on 26 February 1944, for 'irregularities in the administration of sequestered estates'.
LD: No! Not at all! Where did you get hold of that? Laval never had me arrested. We had words sometimes, that is true, but Laval was a splendid fellow, he did his job very well. They tell many stories about Laval. One recent account was that he was a Portuguese Jew. What a lie! He was ugly, that's true. Good Lord, that man was ugly! But he wasn't Jewish for a minute. He had the ugly head of the typical Auvergnat, that's the truth of it. Besides, I often called him 'ugly old Auvergnat', and he wasn't offended by it. It was the same with Pétain. They say everywhere that Pétain opposed my actions, that he hated me. But, first, it was he who nominated me to the commissariat, and secondly, he never disapproved of me. Each time I went to see him, as soon as he saw me in the distance he would calld out: 'Look, here comes my torturer!' But that was a joke. What's more, he laughed. And that did not prevent me from shaking his hand. As for Laval, he was a good man, very hard-working, very competent. Unfortunately, one must be frank, he knew nothing about the Jewish question.
[...]
LE: And during all this time you were even in the Madrid phone book under your own name, no? You had better luck than Laval. The Spanish extradited him.
LD: Not at all. If he had remained in Madrid, perfectly quietly, as I did, nothing would have happened to him. But one fine day his wife said: 'Let's go back. You've done nothing. They won't dare touch you.' And he went back, to please his wife. You know what followed. They shot him, the poor old thing. Poor ugly od Auvergnat...
LE: In thirty-four years, no one came to see you, no one tried to stop you, no one threatened you!
LD: Not a soul...Oh yes...Three years ago, someone, a French voice, phoned to abuse me. 'Bastard. We're coming to get you.' I was afraid. Not only for me. For my family. I immediately called upon my military friends to ask for their special protection. They immediately gave it. Since then, nothing!
LE: And do you sometimes have regrets? Remorse?
LD: Regrets for what? I don't understand your question.