Social democrats turned over to Germany

© Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin Rudolf Breitscheid

© Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin Rudolf Hilferding

The police of the „Vichy Regime“, which under the leadership of the aged Marshall Henri Philippe Pétain has ruled the part of southern France still not occupied by the Wehrmacht, turn over the German politicians Rudolf Hilferding and Rudolf Breitscheid to the German secret state police (Gestapo) on 9 February 1941. These social democrats had emigrated from Germany after Hitler’s coming to power in 1933. Shortly afterward Hilferding will die in a Paris prison under mysterious circumstances. Breitscheid will lose his life in August of 1944 in the Buchenwald concentration camp – according to official reports during an air raid. Pétain’s authoritarian government cooperates with Hitler’s Germany and excels particularly at pursuing foreigners, Jews and free masons, many of whom fled from the Nazis to France.