Among the reasons that the accusation of despoliation spread so fast and so powerfully is probably the fact that this topic had been left untouched until the recent controversy. The real estate of Paris, and in particular the real estate of the City of Paris during the war, has been subjected to very little analysis. Despoliation has been analyzed even less.

Another reason is probably that there was no real attempt to define the notion of despoliation. The Conseil du Patrimoine Privé and the Group of Experts found this absence of definition unsatisfactory. Indeed, they believed that no serious research could be conducted without prior clarification of its parameters.

I - Despoliation must first be defined from a material and geographical point of view

One thing must be abundantly clear for all: each to his own profession. The Conseil du Patrimoine Privé de la Ville de Paris has neither the moral duty nor the legal power to undertake all the research on all the despoliations that took place in France during World War II. Research on despoliation at a national level, and specifically anything relating to despoliation that individuals might have profited from, is the task of the Matteoli Mission, set up by France's previous Prime Minister. The present Prime Minister has confirmed this task.

Nevertheless, however strange it may seem, it is worth stressing the fact that the scope of the research of the Conseil du Patrimoine Privé can logically and legally cover only Paris, only real estate, and exclusively that real estate belonging to the City of Paris.

• Why Paris? Because the role of the Conseil du Patrimoine Privé is not to deal with other cities, contrary to what certain correspondents writing about despoliation in Nantes, Clermont Ferrand, or southern France might believe.

However, as some of the property of the City of Paris is now located in other cities - due to acquisitions made for the benefit of water services and social projects - in exceptional instances the research included buildings outside Paris.

• Why real estate? Because furniture and personal belongings found inside the buildings and apartments acquired are within the scope of the Matteoli Mission.

• Why real estate belonging to the City of Paris? Because the City and the Conseil du Patrimoine - to which the City assigned the investigatory mission - has no authority over property belonging to individuals. Although the City may ask the State (which was its legal guardian) and itself for explanations, it has absolutely no authority to proceed in the same way for others, whether they be individuals or legal entities.

Now that this matter has been clarified, we may consider several concepts for the scope of the investigation.

With respect to dates of acquisition, the first concept is a restricted one. It includes only property acquired by the Prefecture of the Seine on behalf of the City of Paris during the Occupation and currently belonging to the private real estate of the City of Paris, i.e. that real estate of the City managed by the State Private Real Estate Department.⁽¹⁾

It seemed essential to go further than this, and to broaden the research to all property acquired by the Prefecture of the Seine during the War. This concept of investigation thus encompasses all properties acquired during this period that were later sold by the City or transferred on the basis of a long lease to leasing companies.

Thus, regarding the southern part of the Marais district, which had long been described as "substandard Subsector no. 16" the investigations were not limited to the 12 rented buildings acquired during World War II and still managed by the Private Real Estate Service of the City of Paris, but included all the 224 buildings acquired during that period.

The word "real estate," however, does not apply only in the narrow sense: it also means all rights deriving from ownership of property.

Indeed, the right to own property is not the only right of which victims of discrimination were deprived during the Occupation. When a piece of property is acquired through expropriation for reasons of public usefulness - and only in this case - the law requires the acquirer to indemnify the tenants evicted from dwellings or commercial sites because of the expropriation. As the Prefecture of the Seine used this acquisition procedure almost exclusively, especially in the Marais, it seemed indispensable not to limit investigations to despoliation affecting only property owners. This broader concept of research parameters was all the more justified since, as we shall see, very few property owners in Subsector no.16 were considered as "Jewish" according to the definition of Vichy's anti-Semitic laws, although at that time this district was inhabited by a substantial Jewish community.

For reasons of convenience and for the sake of carrying out research efficiently, it was decided to focus research first of all on the owners, and the present report is devoted entirely to them. Other research will be treated in subsequent works.

II - Next, what are the historical boundaries of the study of despoliation?

The date of 10 July 1940 was chosen as a starting point - the date on which the law granting full powers to Marshal Pétain was passed - because it seemed that even if the first German order (issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army) on measures against the Jews was dated 27 September 1940⁽²⁾, and even if the first anti-Semitic Act or so-called "Law" was dated 3 October 1940, the clear break marked by the establishment of the Vichy Regime was more significant.

As for the end of the period, the date of the Liberation of Paris, 25 August 1944, was chosen for the sake of realism. Indeed, it was deemed improbable that after that date discriminatory measures could have been implemented in the capital. In other words, it was decided not to use other dates that might have seemed appropriate as reference points: the date of the Order of 9 August 1944 on the reestablishment of Republican laws, or the date of the total Liberation of French territory, or that of the end of hostilities. With respect to specific instances of discrimination in Paris, these dates did not seem relevant.

III - But what precisely does the concept of despoliation cover?

To define this concept, we did not refer to precedents of famous despoliations in our history (Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Emigrés at the time of the Revolution, Algerians after the conquest of Algeria), or in the history of other countries (Indians in the 19th century in the United States, for example).

We have limited ourselves to France and to the period under consideration, but we have gone further than what had been estimated at the end of the War, and we have given the word "despoliation" the broadest conceivable meaning. On the one hand, we did not confine the meaning to intentional despoliation, but also took into account purely de facto despoliation, appearing on the basis of a discrepancy in value. This was not initially sought in our research. On the other hand, we enriched the concept of despoliation by attempting to identify all its imaginable dimensions.

1 - Firstly, a legal analysis of the concept.

Despoliation is first of all the deprivation through fraud or violence of a piece of property or its financial equivalent, it being understood that in this context we are discussing despoliation motivated by discrimination. More precisely, we shall say that there was despoliation when, for reasons based on the category of the persons concerned in the framework of the laws of the time (leading to discrimination against them), there was deprivation of property at their expense outside the laws of the time applicable to all citizens.

Thus we can speak of despoliation if there was pure and simple confiscation because the person concerned was "Jewish" according to the definition established by anti-Semitic laws, outside the procedure under ordinary law for purposes of public usefulness. We can also speak of despoliation if, outside the procedure for reasons of public usefulness, transfers of property of "Jewish" owners were carried out freely by third parties (like the German administrators or administrators chosen by the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs).

2 - Secondly, despoliation can be considered from an economic point of view.

We can speak of despoliation when - even if in legal terms everything was conducted normally on the formal level - the amount decided on for the compensation for a transfer was not what the normal market price would have been because of the desire to discriminate, or even because of objective discrimination.

It must be understood at this stage that by "market" we mean the price in value usually offered at the time for inherently comparable pieces of property. In other words, we absolutely cannot refer to present values or to the present state of the piece of property. Such an approach would be an anachronistic.

So - to give a specific example concerning Subsector no. 16 - at least five factors affecting prices distinguish property in the Marais generally offered for sale today from property offered for sale in the past. This excludes comparisons that some thought possible. The property in question consisted of buildings (and not apartments), of occupied premises (not of unoccupied dwellings), of generally dilapidated and substandard property (not renovated and not of good quality), located in a very poorly rated neighborhood (and not one of the most desirable and expensive ones). Moreover, this was at a time when real estate in general did not reach present prices and when the Paris market was sluggish.

So to make a useful comparison we would have to consider property in the same neighborhood, transferred under the same conditions in terms of market segment and methods (by mutual consent or expropriation), characterized by comparable quality and/or income, and belonging to owners who had not been subjected to discrimination ("Jews" according to the definition of the anti-Semitic laws or apt to be considered as such).

3 - Thirdly, despoliation can be considered from a purely financial point of view.

Even if the law was formally complied with, even if the price paid does not seem to have been unfair, after comparison with comparable property in the same market segment, was the price actually paid, and was it paid in full? We can speak of financial despoliation when the persons concerned (or their heirs or rightful claimants) did not receive the amount due.

In this connection, however, we must distinguish between two levels of analysis: the first aims at determining whether the City of Paris itself settled its debt through the Prefecture of the Seine. If it did, no financial despoliation could be attributed to the City of Paris. At this point we can apply a second level of analysis, entailing the study of the fate of the amounts in question after settlement, by the City of Paris, of its debt.

IV - In 1998, can the persistence of a situation of despoliation be evaluated?

When seeking the existence, in 1998, of harm resulting from despoliations committed during the period defined above (10 July 1940 - 25 August 1944 - , we must analyze the compensation measures carried out after the War. Indeed, only the "residual" despoliations, i.e. not entirely terminated, might result in compensation today.

The procedures followed after the Liberation, through laws or jurisprudence, aimed at returning property and rights to despoiled persons will be analyzed in detail in this report. However, it seems necessary at this stage to define the three types of reparation applied in the cases of real estate acquisitions.

• The first type is returning the property, i.e. the simple annulment of the transfer of the property. However, this type of reparation was not possible when the property had been acquired through expropriation for purposes of public usefulness except after notification by the ministry of jurisdiction, and confirmation of the Conseil d'Etat, that the reason of public usefulness justifying the acquisition no longer exists.

• The second type is compensation after the despoiled owner and the acquirer of the property have reached an agreement concerning the assessment of the harm suffered by the despoiled owner and the amount and the compensation due from the acquirer. In this case, the property is not returned, but compensation is carried out on the basis of equivalent values. If necessary, cash payment compensates for the value due.

• The third type is resuming the transfer according to the procedures of ordinary law. This was the case for acquisitions through expropriation for purposes of public usefulness, when the compensation had been initially set on the basis of a mutual agreement between the expropriating public body and the person in charge of managing the property of an owner no longing allowed free administration of his property due measures outside ordinary law taken by the Vichy government or the occupying power.

V - If the despoliation was initially based on discrimination, who are the targets of discrimination?

The questions raised in autumn 1996 related only to possible despoliations committed on the occasion of real estate acquisitions made on behalf of the City of Paris from owners considered as "Jews" by the Vichy Regime, and the first investigations conducted were related only to these owners.

The Conseil du Patrimoine Privé nonetheless deemed that on the basis of both the principles of equality and of fairness research could not be limited to possible despoliations committed with regard to property owners considered as "Jews" by the Vichy Regime. Indeed, other categories of persons may have been despoiled of their real estate either "by extension" or in application of specific measures of ostracism applied against them by the Vichy Regime or by the occupation authorities.

1 - The question of the definition of "Jewish owners" is one of those that raised the greatest difficulties at the Conseil du Patrimoine Privé, both from a moral and a practical point of view. Let us stress from the outset that the notion of "Jewish owner" does not exist in law. The texts defining a "Jewish owner" - namely the Acts, so-called "Laws" of 3 October 1940 and 2 July 1941 called "the status of the Jews" - are among the first acts eliminated from our legal system by the Order of 9 August 1944 reestablishing Republican legality. It was inconceivable that the Conseil du Patrimoine use the criteria decreed by these discriminatory texts to identify "Jewish owners."

The Conseil, in agreement with the Group of Experts attached to it, thus chose to replace the morally shocking and in practice unusable notion of "Jewish owner" by "owner considered to be '"Jewish"' by the Vichy Regime." This is an objective notion that refers to owners who appear to be have been considered as "Jewish" - as attested by the presence on the occasion of the transfer of a temporary administrator appointed by the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs or by indications in legal decision, a notarized document or any other document related to the acquisition - according to the definition of Vichy laws. The owners whose names are listed in the Directory of Despoiled Persons established by the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation were also viewed as persons "considered as ‘Jews’ by the Vichy Regime."

As morally satisfying as this approach may be, it had a serious flaw in the opinion of the Group of Experts. Indeed, it was based on the hypothesis that every despoliation committed during the Occupation had been carried out openly and explicitly, and it did not make it possible to detect despoliations that may have been committed when, for one reason or another, no indication that an owner was considered to be "Jewish" by the Vichy Regime appears in the file that has reached us. In other words, this method could not detect possible despoliations committed in a hidden fashion by the administration with regard to victims of anti-Semitism.

On the face of it, to be sure, it might seem difficult to imagine that discrimination could be perpetrated unacknowledged by a regime that made anti-Semitism and Aryanization of the economy one of the components of its policy, and that created a specific legal arsenal for this purpose. But the desire to go all the way in studying the possible consequences of anti-Semitism used by the State forced us to go beyond the limits of organized and official manifestations of ostracism and the traces remaining in archives.

A method remained to be defined to discover the property owners who, although not officially identified as "Jews" by the Vichy administration, may nonetheless have been victims of discriminatory administrative practices.

The Conseil du Patrimoine Privé and the Group of Experts first realized the legal impossibility of communicating the names of the persons concerned to third parties, and thus of resorting to a foreign institution like the Beth Hatefutsoth Museum in Tel Aviv. The conclusion was that the only possible method - although morally debatable and imperfect in practice - consisted in examining the names of owners in terms of onomastics.

It was nonetheless inconceivable to impose such a method on all the members of the Group of Experts: each member could rightly believe that the aim pursued - namely the search for possible despoliations and their reparation - did not sufficiently justify participation in an investigation of this type. Was it not true that this investigation was resorting to methods not very far from those used at another time in history for other purposes for the first identifications?⁽³⁾ This is why an ad hoc sub-group was created within the Group of Experts, made up exclusively of persons who volunteered to work on this basis.

This task was carried out in two stages.

During the first stage, the sub-group prepared a list of all the property owners that may have been considered as "Jews" by the Vichy Regime on the basis of their names. Meticulous research was then carried out concerning the property owners in all the available collections of archives so as to gather evidence making it possible to confirm - or on the contrary disprove - presumptions resulting from mere examination of names. Information on the geographical origin of these persons was thus collected, on the names and first names of other members of their family or their professional activities.⁽⁴⁾ With these elements, the sub-group then made a list of the owners that might "on the face of it" have been considered as "Jews" by the Vichy Regime, even if no proof existed in the files that they in fact had been considered as such, and even if there remained a wide margin of uncertainty.

Indeed, the sub-group noted that the contours of this category were unclear. In certain regions of France or in certain religions, for example, first names of Biblical origin are common. In other regions, endings of last names in "ec", "ic", or "ac" might lead to confusing them with names of Central European origin. In the event of doubt, the broadest possibilities were considered.

The Group of Experts - and afterwards the Conseil du Patrimoine - deplored this ultimate revenge of Vichy anti-Semitism, which forced those in charge of repairing its consequences to resort to methods that may have been used at the time to identify victims of anti-Semitic ostracism. But they believed that in the last analysis there was no other choice, unless they were willing to accept the risk of inaccuracy, and therefore of injustice.

2 - The second category of persons discriminated against or who may have been discriminated against during the Vichy period is less known to public opinion. This category in fact includes three groups.

• First of all, the Act or so-called the "Law" of 23 July 1940, completed by the Acts or so-called "Laws" of 10 September 1940 and 8 March 1941 stipulated that French citizens who left the national territory between 10 March and 30 June 1940 would be deprived of their citizenship and that their property would be sequestered and then liquidated. In practice, these texts were aimed at persons who had left to join the Free French forces.

• The Act called the "Law" of 11 August 1941 provided for the publication in the Journal Officiel of the French State of the names of the dignitaries of "secret associations" - mainly Masonic Lodges - dissolved in application of the Act called the "Law" of 13 August 1940. No provision of these texts was aimed at the personal property of members of these "secret associations," the Act called the "Law" of 13 August 1940 only provided for the sequestration and liquidation of the movable and real estate property belonging to the associations themselves. However, the publication of the names of dignitaries and officers of Masonic lodges led to the belief that the persons thus stigmatized by the Vichy Regime might have been victims of discriminatory treatment by the administration in real estate transactions.

Lastly - even if no legal text made it "legally" possible to seize their personal property - the members of the Communist Party may also have been victims of discrimination as the Party itself was banned and its property sequestered and liquidated.

The Group of Experts suggested, for reasons of fairness and the legal principle of equality, broadening the investigation to three types of potential victims. As this research was impossible without the creation of a file and the cross-indexing with those property owners whose property was acquired during World War II, a decree proposed by the Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés (CNIL) is necessary. The draft proposal prepared for this purpose by the CNIL on 29 September 1998 was submitted to the Prime Minister. If the Prime Minister agrees to sign, before this formality the draft proposal will be submitted to the Conseil d'Etat, whose opinion is also indispensable.

In the immediate future, therefore, research has covered only property owners considered as "Jewish" by the Vichy authorities and those who, although not identified as such, might have been victims of anti-Semitic discrimination at the time. The present report therefore concerns only that group of property owners.

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⁽¹⁾ Now the Building Administration Department (Service d'Administration d'Immeubles - S.A.D.I.)

⁽²⁾ An earlier decree (20 May 1940) concerns management of businesses and the administration of businesses, but was not aimed specifically at "Jews", and in fact concerns property with no identifiable heirs.

⁽³⁾ Under Vichy's anti-Semitic laws, the definition of "Jewish" was based on criteria combining family origin and religious practice.

(4) Indeed, some professions were forbidden to "Jews" by the anti-Semitic laws of the Vichy authorities.

I - What resources were used?

1 - The Conseil du Patrimoine Privé first of all had to request the necessary authorization to carry out its mission.

Two laws had to be taken into consideration.

• The first is the law on archives protecting archived documents not yet accessible to the public for a period of 60 to 100 years depending on the type of archive.

The Conseil du Patrimoine requested special permission from the Director of the Archives of France to have access to collection 1900 W - Archives of the Acquisition Services of the Prefecture of the Seine, and AJ38 - the Archives of the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs. These exceptions were obtained provided that appropriate precautions were taken. In particular, it was forbidden to disclose names and to reproduce certain documents.

Similar exceptions were requested and obtained from the Vice-Chairman of the Conseil d'Etat for the archives of the Conseil concerning expropriation for reasons of public usefulness, and from the First Chairman of the Cour des Comptes for archives of this jurisdiction concerning the accounts of the Prefecture of the Seine. As for the archives of the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC), they were largely accessible to persons working with the Conseil du Patrimoine Privé.

• The second law with respect to which research had to be authorized was the law concerning lists of names, computer technology, and freedom. The Law of 6 January 1978 forbids - except for duly authorized, special cases - the creation of lists of names containing religious, philosophical, or political indications.

The Conseil du Patrimoine Privé thus had to request permission from the Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés (CNIL) to create a file of properties acquired by the City of Paris during the Occupation showing for each piece of property whether or not its owner was considered as "Jewish" by the Vichy Regime. In application of Article 31 of the Law of 1978, the CNIL, after deliberation on 8 July 1997, proposed to the Prime Minister to authorize the City of Paris by decree to create a list of this type. The permission requested was granted to the City of Paris by a Decree on 13 September 1997, after the Conseil d'Etat gave its approval.

2 - The Conseil du Patrimoine Privé, a consultative body with limited personnel, did not have a team allowing it to conduct a large-scale, complex investigation.

The Conseil du Patrimoine Privé therefore requested the Mayor of Paris to increase its investigative capacity while making sure to mobilize only limited resources so as to guarantee consistency in research and to make the execution of this research more dynamic. In this way the Conseil obtained the collaboration of five persons on a temporary or permanent basis, including an archivist-paleographer ⁽¹⁾ in charge of supervising the research carried out in the various collections of archives used.

Moreover, the Conseil sought the occasional help of municipal employees, in particular architect-assessors, whose expertise was especially useful in estimating the value of a piece of property.

The Conseil also used a firm specialized in estimating market values during the War period, and it also received precious help from an administrator from the INSEE (French National Bureau of Statistics) to create a statistical model suited to detecting possible despoliations through price levels.

The following figures provide an idea of the work accomplished:

- 2,500 investigations concerning the origins of ownership were conducted by notaries present at the Conseil du Patrimoine Privé in cooperation with the notaries of the City of Paris;

- 4,000 acquisition files were used;

- 100,000 names were examined in the archives of the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations;

- 7,000 hours of research were spent on files by the team of archivists, and over 600 linear meters of archives were examined;

- 36 hours were spent by the Group of Experts at work meetings.

II - What methods were used?

The observation made at the beginning - and not subsequently disproved - was that certain mistakes and approximative assertions made in various publications and press articles were mainly due either to the absence of a serious method of investigation and insufficient analysis of basic data, or at the least, to hasty statements based on partial or fragmentary information, on general and definitive conclusions. In view of the gravity of the subject, such an approach should have been eschewed.

As for the method, several phases were defined.

1 - The first is the research method, which itself includes three stages: first, identifying the archive collection; second, identifying buildings; third, cross-indexing the data collected.

a. The search for and identification of public and private archive collections was a priority.

This stage entailed, first of all, the search for and identification of archive collections (archives of Paris, national administrative bodies, various public bodies like the Conseil d'Etat, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, etc).

b. Then there was the step of identifying buildings whose ownership changed following payment during the period studied (between 10 July 1940, date of the law giving full powers to Marshal Pétain, and 25 August 1944, date of the Liberation of Paris).

Two distinct techniques were used for this purpose:

• For property still belonging to the private real estate of the City of Paris, difficult research and use of two types of documents representing two possible types of acquisition was necessary. These two types were: notarized contracts signed in the case of transfer by mutual consent, and expropriation orders in the case of forced transfer for reasons of public usefulness.

• To identify other property - which no longer belongs to the private real estate of the City of Paris (because of demolition to make way for streets, reconstruction, or transfer to other entities, to mixed public and private companies, or other reasons) - was more complex.

An initial inventory of property acquired during the War was provided by the City of Paris from a computerized data base of the real estate documentation service. It soon became obvious that this data base was insufficient in terms of the purpose of the investigation. In particular, property acquired during the Occupation and transferred before this data base was created. A second inventory was thus made through an exhaustive examination of 250 linear meters of archives of the real estate documentation service, stored at the administrative center on Boulevard Morland. A third list was drawn up using the Official Municipal Bulletin of the War period. In principle, this publication provided elements concerning all acquisitions, whether by mutual consent or expropriation.

Lastly, an examination of the archives of the decrees of the Prefecture concerning city planning and organization between 1940 and 1964 made it possible to identify several undetected acquisitions using the methods described above. The existence of a decree ordering payment of the compensation granted to an expropriated property owner makes it possible to identify the acquisition itself.

c. Once the buildings to be included in the investigation were determined, another investigation was necessary, namely of property which, among the buildings identified, was owned by persons who were subjected to discriminatory measures, in particular those considered as "Jews" by the anti-Semitic laws of Vichy, or who might have been subjected to discrimination due to the racist ideology that inspired those laws.

This investigation first entailed examination of the files including the necessary indications ("racial declarations", correspondence of temporary administrators, etc), then the cross-indexing of this information with the archives of the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (AJ38) and the Directory of Despoiled Persons (CDJC).

2 - The second phase of the work was devoted to analysis.

At this stage, it was necessary to answer the following question: in view of the information collected during the examination and cross-indexing of the archives, in what case could we say that during the War there was despoliation that went uncompensated after the War? Later in this report we shall discuss the methods used to answer this question.

3 - As for the third phase of the work, it was to be devoted, if necessary, to all the proposals for reparations to be made to municipal authorities.

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⁽¹⁾ The Conseil du Patrimoine Privé and its Group of Experts would like to pay special homage to Miss Francoise Janin, a graduate of the Ecole Nationale des Chartes, whose intelligence and determination made it possible to complete the investigations.

SECOND PART : QUESTIONS OF SUBSTANCE

Public interest in autumn 1996 concerning the private real estate of the City of Paris focused specifically on Subsector no. 16; then the conclusions put forward about that matter were extended to all the private real estate of the City of Paris. This real estate was said to be the result of acquisitions made during the War, at a time when it was possible to "find real bargains."

In fact, the private real estate of the City of Paris is not limited to Subsector no. 16, nor are the acquisitions made during the War. The present composition of this property is for the most part not a result of the War period.

Generally speaking, the constitution of rental properties managed by the municipal administration - either directly or through managing agents - is more the result of the vicissitudes of city planning operations set up by municipal councilmen than the result of a deliberate policy.

Indeed, every city must acquire real estate when carrying out its city development plan. For this purpose, cities may expropriate property from individual owners when the public usefulness of the project so requires. The properties acquired in this way are to be turned into public roads or sidewalks, or into buildings used for public services. They thus become part of city property, or after being renovated in the case of absorption of substandard, they are transferred to rental companies or resold.

It may happen, however, that the project for which the acquisitions were made is finally cancelled. The city finds itself the owner of property which is more or less durably part of city property. This partially explains how the "private real estate domain" of the City of Paris was constituted. Major examples are some fifty buildings located between the Abbey of Saint-Germain des Prés and the Institut de France, in the 6th arrondissement, acquired at the beginning of the century for the purpose of extending the Rue de Rennes to the Seine, and some 75 buildings in the 5th arrondissement acquired for unimplemented plans to broaden Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue Mouffetard.

This being said, it must be stressed that the policy of real estate acquisition pursued by the Prefecture of the Seine on behalf of the City of Paris during the Occupation had two distinct aspects.

- The first aspect consists of occasional acquisition carried out throughout Paris, or sometimes in the rest of France, so as to proceed to the construction of roads or public buildings. 217 acquisitions were carried out for this reason during the Occupation. The purpose of most of them was the creation, widening, or extension of streets. Twelve acquisitions were prior to the construction of schools. The properties acquired in other parts of France were mainly for the construction of water supply networks to provide Paris with water.

- The second aspect consists of pursuit of two vast expropriation operations for purposes of public interest which were started at the end of the period between World War I and World War II in Subsector no. 16 and in the Fortification Zone.

At this point it is appropriate to summarize the history of these two operations, without, of course, seeking to be exhaustive,⁽¹⁾ so as to determine the accuracy of the widely-held idea that these two operations were due solely to the Vichy Regime.

• The first operation concerned substandard Subsector no. 16, which constitutes the southern part of the Marais, delimited by Rue Saint-Antoine, Rue François Miron, Rue de Brosse, and the Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville, the Quai des Céléstins, and Rue Saint Paul.

The source of this acquisition operation dates back far before the Occupation. The City wanted to renovate a certain number of neighborhoods in Paris in which the dilapidated state of dwellings (humidity, poor ventilation and lighting) was considered to be the cause of the persistence of certain illnesses, mainly tuberculosis. As of 1905 six groups of streets, including one that was to constitute the future Subsector no. 16, had been identified. In those streets the mortality rate due to tuberculosis was two or three times as great as the rest of Paris. In 1921 eleven new "substandard subsectors" had been identified, bringing the total to 17.

In view of the sanitary situation of these neighborhoods, the municipal authorities wanted to react rapidly and proceed to mass demolitions so as to replace the old buildings with new ones built according to the latest standards of sanitation and comfort. The demolition and reconstruction work on Subsector no. 5 (les Epinettes) began in 1922. One year later, the Municipal Council and Prefect tackled Subsector no. 1 (Plateau Beaubourg). These operations lasted until 1937.

In 1923 the decision to renovate Subsector no. 9 was taken as an emergency measure because a case of the plague had been identified. The name of this illness was never mentioned publicly, and was referred to through a euphemism: "the illness of Subsector no. 9."

Financial constraints prevented the City of Paris from pursuing these projects, and the lawmakers were asked to change the rules for expropriation. At that time expropriation was governed by the Law of 3 May 1841, which was very favorable to property owners as the compensation for expropriation was determined by a jury of 16 persons chosen from among registered voters. Since any voter was a potential property owner, the expropriation juries tended to overestimate the value of properties expropriated at the expense of the finances of the expropriating body.

In any case, a Decree enacted on 8 August 1935 changed the method for establishing compensation by setting up a Arbitration Board (Commission Arbitrale d'Evaluation - CAE), a legal authority chaired by a judge and made up of two civil servants, a notary and a taxpayer. The role of this Board was to arbitrate between claims of the expropriated party and the offer made by the expropriating body. This Board naturally made more balanced proposals than the expropriation juries.

A new Decree was enacted in 1938. It stipulated that in the case of buildings declared totally substandard, the compensation for expropriation would no longer be calculated on the basis of rental income generated by the building, but rather on the basis of the value of the undeveloped land and construction materials.

As for Subsector no. 16, although it appears on the list of substandard blocks - initially rated on the basis of the mortality rate observed there - it became a major concern for the prefectoral administration, which viewed it as an ideal location (near the City Hall) to construct a huge administrative center. Starting that year, procedures were begun concerning the 64 buildings located on the Quai des Céléstins, Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, Rue des Nonnains d'Hyères, Rue de Jouy, and Rue du Figuier, which were declared to be substandard. The first acquisitions took place in the late 1930s.

The War and the Occupation did not put an end to this city planning project - quite the contrary. Vichy continued the project and gave it a more conservative content. The renovation of old buildings was now given priority over replacing them by more modern ones. The Fourth Republic maintained this operation, which seemed reasonable, and the acquisitions were continued until the mid-1960s. Overall, even though three-quarters of the acquisitions were made under the Vichy Regime - compared to 8% before the War and 18% after the Liberation - it seems that this renovation of Subsector no. 16 is not specific to the Vichy Regime. In fact, it is also a project shared by three Republics.

As for the doubts expressed about the substandard character of the buildings of the neighborhood - the prefectoral administration being suspected of using a pretext to justify expropriation and then to acquire the buildings cheaply - they seem to be groundless. Indeed, their substandard character was real judging by the reports of the commission on substandard buildings, descriptions in files and photos from that period.

• The development program for the commonly called "old fortifications" zone shows, as for Subsector no. 16, that the expropriation operation carried out by the Prefecture of the Seine on behalf of the City of Paris during the Occupation was not planned by the Vichy authorities, but began long before the War, ending only in the 1970s.

A brief historical overview is appropriate at this point.

The Law of 3 April 1841 provided Paris with a huge enclosure, which became the City's boundary when certain suburban towns were annexed in 1860. This enclosure, built between 1841 and 1845 at the initiative of Thiers, was made up of an interior military road (the future "Boulevards des Maréchaux" surrounding Paris), and a fortified outer wall, outside of which was a buffer strip 250 meters wide, all constituting a military zone. The land making up this zone did not belong to the State. Indeed, it had not been expropriated under Louis-Philippe, but had been simply declared as "non aedificandi," i.e. not to be built upon. This rule penalized the owners of this land. At the end of the 19th century, when the fortifications had already been condemned, they obtained the right to build temporary structures on it. These structures, surrounded by small vegetable gardens, must have formed a picturesque and yet shabby sight. It was called "la zone", which then was home to 40,000 inhabitants, including the famous "apaches" ("ruffians").

Considered as totally outmoded from a military point of view, Thiers' fortifications were decommissioned after World War I by the Law of 19 April 1919. This law stipulated that the State would transfer to the City of Paris all the land around the fortifications themselves, except for certain constructions (barracks, railroads, etc.). The City was asked to acquire the zone in order to complete the development of the belt around Paris. Suggestions were made to create a "green belt" on this land including stadiums, parks, and a road parallel to the "Boulevards des Maréchaux", the proportion of these different elements varying according to the projects of the city planners. The surfaces that the City were to acquire from the owners of property in "the zone" represented a little over 400 hectares.

The acquisition of the zone was a long and difficult operation, partly for budgetary reasons, partly because of the resistance of the property owners of "the zone," organized in associations and defended by deputies in Parliament from the Seine - in particular Pierre Laval, ironic from a historical point of view - who demanded that the legal framework of the operation be de jure expropriation on the basis of ordinary law. A Law of 10 April 1930 modified the Law of 19 April 1919. The City of Paris had 15 years to acquire this land - either through mutual consent or expropriation - and a period of 25 years was fixed for the tenants to leave.

On the eve of the War, the City of Paris had thus acquired about 195 hectares, mostly consisting of land located in the part of the zone closest to Paris. These acquisitions made it possible to broaden and systematize the "Boulevards des Maréchaux", and to construct public housing along these boulevards, the famous red brick "HBM" ⁽²⁾ (low-cost public housing units). This operation continued during the Occupation. 3,253 plots of land were acquired, totaling a surface area of about one hundred hectares. These plots of land were located in the outer part of the zone. In the initial plans they had been reserved for the "green belt", and as of 1943 the Vichy authorities contemplated a plan to construct a "Boulevard Péripherique" (peripheral boulevard, i.e. beltway) aimed at solving the problems of automobile traffic. This project was taken up again and completed during the first thirty years following the War.

Here again, therefore, we find a project begun under the Third Republic, pursued under Vichy, and completed under the Fourth and Fifth Republics.

In any case, the real estate that became the property of the City during the Occupation was not intended to remain part of the private real estate of the City of Paris, any more than property acquired before or after that period. Out of the 224 buildings acquired in Subsector no. 16 during the Occupation, only 12 still belong to the private real estate of the City of Paris. The others were either sold after neighborhood renovation projects, or were transferred to rental companies. Similarly, only about twenty of the 3,253 pieces of property acquired between 1940 and 1944 in the Fortification Zone are now part of the private real estate of the City for the simple reason that these properties are either part of the lands of the Boulevard Péripherique or those around the public housing projects of the belt around Paris, which are managed by rental companies which are legal entities distinct from the City.

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Overall, only a very small proportion of property now constituting the private real estate of the City of Paris was acquired for the City during World War II. Indeed, this proportion is lower than 2% of all property acquired.⁽³⁾

We may conclude that Vichy was not the period chosen by the City to acquire private real estate cheaply. Not only was the City of Paris in no way responsible for the choices made by the administration of the State at that time, but above all, most of the property of the City was acquired before or after that period. In other words, although it is true that large-scale expropriations were carried out during the War, this fact must not lead us to forget a different overall situation.

Moreover, it is fair to stress the fact that the large-scale operations carried out during the War (Subsector no. 16 and the Fortification Zone) were part of a policy begun before the war and pursued after it.

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⁽¹⁾ It is useful to consult the main works on this subject, in particular:

⁽²⁾ This type of housing is now called "HLM."

⁽³⁾ It is nevertheless obvious that the research carried out by the Conseil du Patrimoine Privé about the conditions under which the City of Paris became the owner of real estate during this period concerned, as was mentioned above, all acquisitions, and not just property now part of the private real estate of the City of Paris. If we calculated the percentage of acquisitions dating from the World War II period of the private real estate of the City of Paris, it would also be extremely small.