First, this:

CHIRAC PAYS TRIBUTE TO FRENCH WWII DEPORTEES

[Chirac] said the Holocaust "means we must fight without mercy against all forms of racism and anti-Semitism, against any kind of revisionism, against all those who proclaim the inequality of men."

Now check out the AFP lede on this report:

President Jacques Chirac led his nation's tribute Sunday to the tens of thousands of French men and women deported by the German occupiers in World War II and called for a ceaseless fight against racial and religious prejudice.

So much for scotching revisionism "without mercy". Here are the stubborn facts:

1. France was the only belligerent among the Allies whose sitting government did not go into exile when her army was beaten in the field. Instead the government signed an armistice, formally surrendering to Germany on German terms.

2. Collaboration was the the official policy of the reconstituted French government. That it was not more effective was due to the disdain in which the Germans held the obsequious French.

3. The French government stripped many national and naturalized Jews of their citizenship before deportation to technically avoid the embarrassing charge of being complicit in the murder of its own citizens.

4. The enormity of French deportations was not circumscribed by reluctance or moral quibbles, but by the logistics of transport.

5. French deportations were French affairs in whole or in part.

On to the modern French fight "against all forms of racism and anti-Semitism":

ANTI-JEWISH ACTS IN FRANCE HIT 15-YEAR HIGH

But then this is ongoing bad old news. Others have taken noticed.

France was the only belligerent among the Allies whose sitting government did not go into exile when her army was beaten in the field. Instead the government signed an armistice, formally surrendering to Germany on German terms.

French cooperation in rounding up those jews into boxcars earned them a few privileges with the Nazis