Battle of Marseille

The Battle of Marseille took place in the Old Port of Marseille, under the Vichy regime, on 22, 23 and 24 January 1943. Assisted by the French police, which was directed by René Bousquet, the Nazis organized a raid in order to arrest Jewish people. The police controlled the identity of 40,000 people, and the operation succeeded in sending 2,000 Marseillese people first to Fréjus, then to the camp of Royallieu near Compiègne, in the Northern Zone of France, and then to Drancy internment camp, last stop before the extermination camps. The operation also encompassed the expulsion of an entire neighborhood (30,000 persons) before its destruction. Located in the Old Port, the 1st arrondissement was considered by the Germans as a "terrorist nest" because of its small, windy and curvy streets [ Maurice Rajsfus, 1995, "La Police de Vichy. Les forces de l’ordre françaises au service de la Gestapo", Le Cherche Midi éditeur, 1995, p.210 ] For this occasion, SS Karl Oberg, in charge of the German Police in France, made the trip from Paris, and transmitted to Bousquet orders directly received from Himmler himself. It is a notable case of the French police's willful collaboration with the Nazis.

The Destruction of the Old Port

The operation had as aim to reshape the neighborhood of the Old Port, a popular neighborhood which small, curvy and windy streets were considered as dangerous by the German authorities. The German used for this an urbanist plan prepared by French architects who supported the ideology of the "National Revolution" ("Révolution nationale") supported by Vichy. They decided the quasi-total destruction of the 1st arrondissement of Marseille. Furthermore, according to Himmler's orders, the arrested population was to be evacuated to the concentration camps in the Northern Zone of France, in particular Compiègne. The Old Port itself was to be searched house by house by the German police, assisted by their French homologues, and then the buildings dynamited.

Mandated by the head of Vichy, Pierre Laval, Bousquet demanded on 14 January 1943 that the operation be postponed for a week, in order to better organize it and have reinforcement from police force. Furthermore, while the Nazis were about to limit themselves to the 1st arrondissement of Marseille, Bousquet spontaneously proposed to extend the operation to the entire city. According to historian Maurice Rajsfus, he also requested complete freedom of action for the French police, which he obtained from SS Karl Oberg.

According to historian Jacques Delarue, who was a witness of the operation, 200 police inspectors from Paris and elsewhere, 15 compagnies of GMR (the ancestors of the current CRS anti-riot police), and squads of constabularies ("Gendarmerie") and of mobile guards ("guardes mobiles)" were brought to Marseille for the operation. In total, "approximatively 12,000 police men found themselves concentrated in Marseille.". [Jacques Delarue, "Trafics et Crimes sous l’Occupation" (Livre de Poche, 1971), p.262] On 22 January 1943, the Old Port was completely locked-out. The city was searched house by house, apart of the more wealthy, residential, neighborhoods, during 36 hours. "In total, following tens of thousands of controls, nearly 2,000 Marseillese... found themselves in the death trains." wrote historian Maurice Rajsfus. 1,500 buildings were destroyed.

The Prefecture of the Bouches-du-Rhône published a public statement on 24 January 1943:

"Because of military reasons, and in order to guarantee the security of the population, the German military authorities have notified to the French administration the order to immediately proceed to the evacuation of the North neighborhood of the Old Port. Because of motives of interior security, the French administration had decided, on its side, to effectuate a vast police operation in order to get rid, for Marseille, of certain elements whose activities endangered the population. The French administration did its best to avoid that the two operations be confused. A very important number of police forces have proceeded in the city to multiple searches. Entire neighborhoods have been surrounded, and identity verifications done. More than 6,000 individuals have been arrested, and 40,000 identities checked." [ Quoted by Maurice Rajsfus, 1995, p.213. French: " _fr. « Pour des raisons d’ordre militaire et afin de garantir la sécurité de la population, les autorités militaires allemandes ont notifié à l’administration française l’ordre de procéder immédiatement à l’évacuation du quartier Nord du Vieux-Port. Pour des motifs de sécurité intérieure, l’administration française avait, de son côté, décidé d’effectuer une vaste opération de police afin de débarrasser Marseille de certains éléments dont l’activité faisait peser de grands risques sur la population. L’administration française s’est efforcée d’éviter que puissent être confondues ces deux opérations. De très importantes forces de police ont procédé dans la ville à de multiples perquisitions. Des quartiers entiers ont été cernés et des vérifications d’identité ont été faites. Plus de 6 000 individus ont été arrêtés et 40 000 identités ont été vérifiées.»"]

The newspaper "Le Petit Marseillais" of 30 January 1943 added:

"We precise that the evacuation operations of the North neighborhood of the Old Port have been exclusively done by the French police and that they did not let place to any incident." [ French: " _fr. « Précisons que les opérations d’évacuation du quartier Nord du Vieux-Port ont été effectuées exclusivement par la police française et qu’elles n’ont donné lieu à aucun incident.»" (ibid.)]

On the other hand, German newspapers also acclaimed the operation. Walther Kiaulehn wrote in "Signal", a German military newspaper:

"In the future, when we shall write the history of Marseille, we will underline this remarkable feat that by having evacuated the old patrician neighborhood, which had been dishonoured by the 20th century, the organisator had used French and German policemen, as a group of engineers and physicians." [ Quoted by Rajsfus, p.213. French: " _fr. "Dans l'avenir, lorsque l'on écrira l'histoire de Marseille, on soulignera ce fait remarquable qu'en faisant évacuer le vieux quartier patricien déshonoré par le XXe siècle, l'organisateur avait utlisé des policiers français et allemands, comme un groupe d'ingénieurs et de médecins.""]

A photo taken during this operation, and known since the beginning of the 1980s, show head of the French police René Bousquet posing alongside the SS Bernhard Griese, head of the German police in that region, of Totenkopf, a high level officer, of Marcel Lemoine, regional prefect, and of Pierre Barraud, delegate prefect to the prefectoral administration of Marseille. [Rajsfus, p.215]

While 30,000 were expelled from their neighborhood, people from the criminal underground, such as Paul Carbone, had voluntarily surrendered in the beginning of the week, in order to be jailed while the "horrible show" happened [Jean Bazal, "Marseille Galante" (Tacussel, 1989), quoted by Jean-Louis Parisi in "Une ville en fuite, Marseille" (éditions de l'Aube, 1992), p.132, himself quoted by Rajsfus, 1995, p.216] Several hundreds of Jews of Marseille, whether French citizens or foreign, were first sent to Fréjus, than to the camp of Royallieu near Compiègne, and finally to Drancy interment camp, from where they were sent to the extermination camps. In total, 2,000 Jews founded themselves on the death trains. On 23 March 1943, SS Röthke note that the French Jews arrested in Marseille were almost all "criminal scoundrels" (" _la. "canaille criminelle""), "as the French police repeatedly told me without being asked for", and that "when they were transferred from Compiègne to Drancy, they first had to be submitted to a special cleaning operation because they were so dirty and flea-bitten that the French direction of the camp judged an immediate intervention necessary in order to avoid epidemics in the camp" [ Quoted by Rajsfus, 1995, p.212 ]

References

Source

*Maurice Rajsfus, "La Police de Vichy. Les forces de l’ordre françaises au service de la Gestapo, 1940/44" (Le Cherche Midi éditeur, 1995 - in particular chapter XIV, "La Bataille de Marseille", pp.209-217)

Further reading

*"Le Patriote résistant", n°578 et 579 (janvier 1988)
*Jacques Delarue, "Trafficks et Crimes sous l’Occupation" (Livre de poche, 1971)
*Gérard Guicheteau, "Marseille 1943, la fin du Vieux-Port" (éditions Le Provençal, 1973 - quotes from "Le Petit Marseillais" and "Signal" are page 19 and page 49 of this book)
* Simon Kitson, 'The Marseille Police in their context from Popular Front to Liberation', "D Phil thesis", University of Sussex, 1995

*Anne Sportiolo, « Le Vieux-Port de Marseille », in "L’Histoire", n°16, octobre 1979

See also

*Vichy France
*Collaborationism
*René Bousquet