Collection of the Union Général des Israélites de France (UGIF) (22 P 3065-3078)

UGIF was created on November 29, 1941 by Xavier Vallat to serve as an agency representing the Jews of France. It was basically created so the 1 million franc fine that the Nazi regime imposed on the Jewish community could be collected. Respected figures of the Jewish community were reluctant to be associated with UGIF (considered by some as a type of Judenrat) and the Consistoire Central kept its distance, remaining in charge of religious practices. Copyright Holder: Service historique de la défense. Bureau des archives des victimes des conflits contemporains Consits of an alphabetical card file listing names of Jews deported from France.. The collection was reconstituted from dispersed documents in individual name files used to support claims in the SHD Archives in Caen. Originally, it was a card file transmitted to the French Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs after WW II to provide information on deported Jewish victims. Since the documents in the individual files are no longer in use to back individual claims by survivors or their heirs against the Nazi regime or the Vichy government, it was decided that the Union Général des Israélites de France (UGIF) documents could be reunited as a historical collection. 22 P 3065-3078. Note: It is not clear from these documents when it was decided that correspondence from Jews deported from France could be addressed to, or sent from, the UGIF offices. The Nazis allowed prisoners from France, Belgium, and The Netherlands to send short notes to their families saying they were in good health and working, for propaganda purposes. The date that correspondence was received by UGIF, responsible for delivering the correspondence to the families in France, indicated on the card, was in one column. The letters came from Birkenau,Theresienstadt, and other camps, which were indicated in the upper right-hand corner. A small numbered voucher shows that an official card that was allowed to be used to respond had been given to the relatives and had to be used within 8 days of receiving the voucher. The date that a response was sent by the relatives is listed in a second column. Often, only one letter was received, but many were sent in return.