without adequate food or sanitation. In the meantime, the Germans began deportations of Jews from France to the death camps in eastern Europe. The first trains left on 27 March 1942. Deportations continued until 17 August 1944, by which time nearly 76,000 Jews (including those from Vichy France) were deported, of whom only 2,500 survived. (see Timeline of deportations of French Jews to death camps.) The majority of Jews deported were non-French Jews. One quarter of the pre-war Jewish population of France was killed in that process. Antisemitism was particularly virulent in Vichy France, which controlled a third of France from 1940 to 1942, at which point the Germans took over that southern area. Vichy's Jewish policy was a mixture of 1930s antiforeigner legislation with the virulent antisemitism of the Action Française movement. The Vichy government openly collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to identify Jews for deportation and transportation to the death camps. As early as October 1940, without any request from the Germans, the Vichy government passed anti-Jewish measures (the Vichy laws on the status of Jews), prohibiting them from moving, and limiting their access to public places and most professional activities, especially the practice of medicine. The Vichy government also implemented those anti-Jewish laws in the colonies of Vichy North Africa. In 1941, the Vichy government established a Commissariat général aux questions juives (1941-1944), which in 1942 worked with the Gestapo to round-up Jews. They participated in the Vel' d'Hiv roundup on 16 and 17 July 1942. On the other hand, France is recognised as the nation with the third highest number of Righteous Among the Nations (according to the Yad Vashem museum, 2006). This award is given to "non-Jews who acted according to the most noble principles of humanity by risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust." In 1995 French President Jacques Chirac formally apologized to the Jewish community for the complicit role that French policemen and civil servants played in the roundups. He said: "These black hours will stain our history for ever and are an injury to our past and our traditions. Yes, the criminal madness of the occupant was assisted ('secondée') by the French, by the French state. Fifty-three years ago, on 16 July 1942, 450 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders, obeyed the demands of the Nazis. That day, in the capital and the Paris region, nearly