André Tulard

André Tulard (1899–1967) was a French civil administrator and police inspector. He is known for having created the "Tulard files," which censused Jewish people during Vichy. Tulard was head of the Service of Foreigners and Jewish Affairs at the Prefecture of Police of Paris.

Although Tullard was an active collaborator with the Germans he received no punishment after the war, and even retained his title as Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'Honneur.

The Tulard files (fichier Tulard)

Tulard created the first files, censusing members of the French Communist Party (PCF), for the Prefecture of Police under the Third Republic (1871–1940). He created another one, under Vichy, which listed Jewish people. These files were then handed over to Theodor Dannecker, head of the Gestapo in Paris.

Following a Nazi ordinance dated 21 September 1940, which forced Jewish of the "occupied zone" to declare themselves as such in police office or sub-prefectures (sous-préfectures), Vichy promulgated on 3 October 1940 the first Jewish Status. In the sole department of the Seine, encompassing Paris and its immediate suburbs, nearly 150,000 persons presented themselves to the police offices. The registrations were then centralized by the French police, who constituted, under the direction of inspector Tulard, a central filing system. According to the Dannecker report, "this filing system subdivised it into files alphabetically classed, Jewish with French nationality and foreign Jewish having files of different colours, and the files were also classed, according to profession, nationality and street" (of residency ^[1]). These files were then handed over to section IV J of the Gestapo, in charge of the "Jewish problem." They were then used by the Gestapo on various raids, among them the August 1941 raid in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, during which 3,200 foreign Jews and 1,000 French Jews were interned in various camps, including Drancy.

Along with many French police officers, André Tulard was present on the day of the inauguration of Drancy internment camp, which would be the last stop before Auschwitz for the Jewish people captured in France, in the huge majority by the French police itself. Tulard also participated to the logistics concerning the attribution of the yellow badges, made mandatory by the Vichy status on Jewish people.^[2]

After the collapse of Vichy France and the end of the War, Tulard was one of the active collaborators with the Germans who received no punishment,^[3] and even retained his title as Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'Honneur.

See also

• Drancy internment camp
• Theodor Dannecker
• IBM during World War II

References

1. French: « ce fichier se subdivise en fichier simplement alphabétique, les Juifs de nationalité française et étrangère ayant respectivement des fiches de couleur différentes, et des fichiers professionnels par nationalité et par rue. »
2. Maurice Rajsfus, La Police de Vichy — Les forces de l'ordre françaises au service de la Gestapo, 1940/1944, Le Cherche Midi éditeurs, 1995 (page 106-107) (French)
3. Michael Curtis, Verdict on Vichy: power and prejudice in the Vichy France regime, p. 356: "André Tulard (1899-1967): No punishment."

Sources

• Maurice Rajsfus, La Police de Vichy — Les forces de l'ordre françaises au service de la Gestapo, 1940/1944, Le Cherche Midi éditeurs, 1995 (French) (Rajsfus is a French historian, specialist of the history of the police. He was called for during the trial of Maurice Papon).
• Sonia Combe, Les fichiers de juifs. De la dissimulation à la désinformation in la revue Lignes, n°23, octobre 1994, pp. 93–127

External links

• France 5 (French)
• PDF, cf. « Le numéro INSEE: de la mobilisation clandestine (1940) au projet Safari (1974) », article by Michel Louis Lévy published in issue n°86 of the Dossiers et recherches of the INED statistics institute (French)