French public get access to archives of WWII regime

[brooklynite]

Source: AP

Hundreds of thousands of files on members of the French resistance, communists and Jews hunted by the collaborationist Vichy government in France during World War II are now accessible to the public.

The French government has opened police and legal archives, allowing free access to documents from the regime that collaborated with the Nazi German occupiers between 1940 and 1944, as well as to investigative documents from the post-liberation government.

The order, which was signed on Dec. 24 and came into force Monday, will not only help the work of historians. It will also bring more citizens into the archives' lecture rooms to learn about what happened to their ancestors during World War II.

For instance, families of people arrested under the Vichy regime as well as descendants of collaborationists prosecuted after the war will be able to consult police investigation documents and proceedings of military courts.

Read more: http://hosted2.ap.org/NYBDE/72176e0b011741669af5e117805060a5/Article_2015-12-29/id-567bdc6a84154105910605a5b85f654f

[secondvariety]

1. Why does

it take 70 years for stuff like this to be released? Our government is just as bad when it comes to releasing information that may be uncomfortable to hear.

[Skittles]

3. so anyone you want to sue is dead

[PeoViejo]

5. Just protecting their own

as a professional courtesy.

[burrowowl]

2. About time!

I had a friend who was in the Resistance and received a Croix de Guerre, she and her mother went to a reunion once and the woman who ratted on them was there pretending to have been in the resistance.

[Ellen Forradalom]

4. Incroyable n/t

[dembotoz]

6. i anticipate some wonderful books and movies to come out of this

Is ken burns busy?