Appointment of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix as commissaire-général of CGQJ

On 6 May 1942 Pierre Laval appointed Louis Darquier de Pellepoix a former Paris city council member and Action Française activist, to serve as “commissaire-général” of the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (CGQJ), succeeding Xavier Vallat in that position. A fervent anti-Semite, he acted on his beliefs with militant zeal. He collaborated closely with Nazi agencies and implemented aggressive measures to expropriate all Jewish-owned assets for the benefit of Vichy France. Aryanization became his favorite economic weapon which the CGQJ wielded to dispossess all Jews in France and strip them of all of their assets.