Raymond-Raoul Lambert

A veteran of the French army, Raymond-Raoul Lambert was a high-ranking official in the French Jewish community and one of the main intermediaries between it and the Vichy government during World War II. Secretary-general of the Committee for Refugee Assistance (Comité d’assistance aux réfugiés, CAR) and then of the General Union of the Jews of France (Union générale des israélites de France, UGIF), Lambert is remembered as a controversial figure who worked closely with French and German officials but probably saved numerous lives in the process. His diary is considered a valuable testimony, a record of events from the rare perspective of an influential Jewish leader and bureaucrat. Lambert and his family were arrested and sent to the internment camp at Drancy and from there to their deaths at Auschwitz.