Diary of a Witness, 1940-1943

For years, the Diary of Raymond-Raoul Lambert has been among the most important untranslated records of the experience of the Jews of France in the Holocaust. It covers three years of the war, terminating on the day before Lambert's arrest in August 1943 and his shipment to Draney. Four months later he and his wife and their four children were deported to Auschwitz, where they all perished.
Lambert's Diary provides an intimate encounter with One of French Jewry's important leaders from the 1930S into the war years. From the end of 1941 until his arrest, he served as general director of the General Union of the Jews of France (UGIF), established by the Vichy government in the unoccupied zone under the Nazi occupation. Although written with the circumspection necessary under stressful and dangerous conditions, Lambert's Diary reveals his efforts to aid and protect the Jews of France. His actions and those of the UGIF provoked fierce debate and controversy which find authentic expression in the Diary.

Raymond-Raoul Lambert, a French army officer in World War II, headed the UGIF under the German occupation. Richard Cohen, an historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the author of The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership During the Holocaust. He lives in Jerusalem.