France will throw open access to police and legal archives drawn from one of the country’s darkest hours, when the Vichy regime collaborated with Nazi occupiers during the second world war, authorities said on Sunday.
From Monday the archives can be “freely consulted” by the civil service, citizens and researchers “subject to the declassification of documents covered by national defence secrecy rules”, it has been decreed.
The Vichy regime, led by the first world war hero Philippe Pétain, collaborated with the invading German army from 1940-44.
France has a painful relationship with this portion of its past, when the government helped the Nazis deport 76,000 Jews during the war.
The archives include documents from the foreign, justice and interior ministries as well as from France’s provisional government after liberation.
Documents dating from as late as 31 December 1960 are also covered by the new rule, as long as the files relate to matters that happened between September 1939 and May 1945.
Under the new rules, documents related to the prosecution of war criminals in France, Germany and Austria, as well as cases taken before military and maritime tribunals, will be accessible.
It will be up to top defence and security heads to decide whether classified documents will be made public.
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