France permits digitization of WWII archives

France has signed an accord that will permit the Holocaust museums in Paris and Washington to digitize the vast French World War II archives. The accord paves the way for museums to more easily display information on the collaborationist Vichy regime. The Vichy-based government collaborated with the Nazis to deport Jews to concentration camps.

According to an Associated Press report, Radu Ioanid, the acquisitions curator of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the digitalization project will facilitate the discovery of information related to war criminals in France. Previously, the documents were only partially accessible to researchers, will make "information such as the activities of the special police, who hunted resistants, communists and Jews accessible to the public,” reported French radio station RFI. According to the Associated Press, these archives will "show the extra-legal prosecution of members of the French Resistance, as well as proceedings against French Jews."