Archival Records :

National Archives (Archives Nationales), Centre d'Accueil et de Recherche des Archives Nationales (CARAN)


Title

National Archives (Archives Nationales)
Centre d'Accueil et de Recherche des Archives Nationales (CARAN)

Subject
The Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (CGQJ) and
the Service de Restitution.

Location
Record Group AJ38

Description
The National Archives retain the records of two agencies important in the research of art looting and restitution: the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (CGQJ) which administered the confiscation of Jewish property in France between 1941 and 1944, and the Service de Restitution which coordinated the restitution of property to individuals or their heirs from 1944-1951.

In order to find a particular box or file, researchers can consult microfilm copies of indexes created by the CGQJ as well as a name index to the individual files (AJ38.6414-6415). The files are organised by business address rather than by name of individuals. These files include lists of property or art and family genealogies.

Series AJ40 includes records of art deposited for safekeeping in French museums and bank vaults and later confiscated by the Germans. This series is organized alphabetically by establishment and contains the names and addresses of each depositor, the contents of the vault, and the date of confiscation.

Series F12 includes records of the Comité National Interprofessionnel d'Epuration, Marchands de Tableaux containing material of art dealers selling objects to Germans during the Occupation including some object lists. To gain access to these records permission must be obtained up to three months in advance. Written requests should be addressed to:
Directeur des Archives de France
56, rue des Francs-Bourgeois
75141 Paris cedex 03, France

Series F21 includes records of the Directeurs and Sous-secretaires d'Etat des Beaux-Arts containing material of the exportation of art between 1941 and 1969. It also deals with art looted under the Vichy Regime between 1940 and 1944. The records of the Salon exhibitions held during the Occupation are also included in this series.

Full details of these records are described in Marie-Thérèse Chabord and Jean Pouessell, Inventaire des Archives du Commissariate General aux Juives et du Service de Restitution des Biens desVictims des Lois et Measures de Spoliation, Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris, 1998. In May 1998, a law was passed that opened the records of AJ38 to researchers.

Contact Information
National Archives (Archives Nationales)
Centre d'Accueil et de Recherche des Archives Nationales (CARAN)
60, rue des Francs-Bourgeois
75141 Paris cedex 03, France

Entrance for researchers:
11, rue des Quatre-Fils
75005 Paris, France
Tel.: +33 1 41 27 64 19
<http://www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/chan/>

Source
N. H. Yeide, K. Akinsha, A. L. Walsh (eds), AAM Guide to Provenance Research, Washington 2001, pp. 118-119.