An excellent and harrowing description of how a nation that prided itself on its support for the rights of man not only collaborated with Nazi persecution of Jews, but even anticipated such repression in advance, drawing up anti-Jewish statutes and paving the way for later deportation of thousands of French and foreign Jews to Auschwitz. The existence of transit camps and even an extermination camp on French soil are particularly shocking, even more so the sufferings of children as young as toddler age at Drancy. The decades of collective national denial until the 1990s are also well covered, as are the shocking revelations about links between Vichy figures and Mitterrand. ( )