classifications. Earlier contracted marriages between spouses of different classifications (so-called mixed marriages; Mischehe) provided the Jewish-classified spouse with uncertain protection from some discriminations and atrocities. There were very few Karaites in Europe during the Nazi era; most of them lived in Turkey, Greece, and the Crimea. Karaites were not considered Jewish for the purpose of the Holocaust extermination policy; according to SS Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, writing on November 24, 1944, discrimination against the Karaites had been prohibited due to their proximity to the Crimean Tatars, to whom Berger views the Karaites as being related. Nazis still retained hostility towards the Karaites, on grounds of their religion; and there were a number of small scale massacres of Karaites. In German-occupied France, an ordinance defined a Jew as an individual who belonged to the Jewish religion or who had more than two Jewish grandparents. The Vichy régime in southern France defined a Jew as an individual with three Jewish grandparents or two grandparents if his/her spouse was Jewish. Richard Weisberg points out that this was a potentially broader classification than the one used in Occupied France, for example, a Mischling could not be classified a Jew under the Nazi dictate, by her/his spouse's classification if the marriage was contracted before the imposition of anti-Semitic marriage laws there, but would be deemed one under the Vichy act if he/she had married a Jew, regardless when. Israelite identity loss claims There are various groups besides Jews which have claimed to be descended from the biblical Israelites. The question nowadays arises in relation to Israel's Law of Return, with various groups seeking to migrate there. Some claims have been accepted, some are under consideration, while others have been rejected by Israel's rabbinate. Cochin Jews (Indian Jews) Some sources say that the earliest Jews of Cochin, India, were those who settled in the Malabar Coast during the times of King Solomon of Israel, and after the Kingdom of Israel split into two. There is historical documentation of the Jews being in Cochin after the fall of the Second Temple, from around the first century CE. Later additions were smaller immigration of Sephardic Jews from Europe in the sixteenth century after the expulsion from Spain, and Baghdadi Jews, Arabic-speaking Jews who arrived in the late eighteenth century, at the beginning of the British colonial era. Following the independence of India and the establishment of Israel, most Cochin