France opens archives on second world war's Vichy regime

Files on the French resistance, communists and Jews hunted by the collaborationist Vichy government in France during the Second World War are now accessible to the public.

The French government has opened police and legal archives, allowing free access to hundred of thousands of documents from the regime that collaborated with the Nazi German occupiers between 1940 and 1944, as well as to investigative documents from the post-liberation government.

The order, which was signed on December 24 and came into force on Monday, will not only help the work of historians. It will also bring more citizens into the archives' lecture rooms to learn about what happened to their ancestors during the Second World War.

For instance, families of people arrested under the Vichy regime as well as descendants of collaborationists prosecuted after the war will be able to consult police investigation documents and proceedings of military courts.

War archives are kept in different places all around France, depending on their geographical and administrative origin. Many were already available to researchers, but they first had to file complex request forms and it could take months before they got an...