France admits it sent Jews to the gas chambers during Second World War



France's Council of State yesterday recognised that the country was responsible for deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps.



The judicial body - effectively the French supreme court - found that the government of Nazi-occupied France at the time held the 'responsibility' for the deportations.



It is the clearest recognition yet of French involvement in the Holocaust.



France's President Nicolas Sarkozy walks past the Wall of Names during his visit to the Holocaust Memorial in Paris in 2007. The names of the 76,000 Jews deported from France are engraved on the wall.

After the war, subsequent governments took decades to acknowledge any role by the collaborationist Vichy regime in the massacre of millions of Jews.



However, the Council appeared to rule out any reparations for deportees or their families. It said that the Vichy regime's actions had been 'compensated for' since 1945.



The Council is part of the French national government and its members are largely high-level lawyers.



It gives the executive legal advice and acts as the supreme court for administrative justice.



The Council's ruling came after a Paris court sought its opinion on a request by the daughter of a deportee who died at Auschwitz for reparations from the French state.



The woman was also asking for damages for her own personal suffering during and after the occupation.



The Council left it up to the Paris court to rule on her request, but said the 'acts and actions of the State led to the deportation of people considered Jews by the Vichy regime' adding that France should take responsibility for this.



It also called for a 'solemn recognition of the state's responsibility and of collective prejudice suffered' by the deportees.



Today, France has western Europe's largest Jewish community at approximately 500,000.