PARIS, France (CNN) -- France bears responsibility for deporting
Jews to their deaths in concentration camps during World War II,
the country's highest court ruled Monday. Jews and foreigners
are rounded up in Paris in May 1941. But, the Council of State
said, "measures taken since the end of the Second World War have
compensated for the damage." Northern France was directly
occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II while the south of
the country was ruled by the Vichy government that collaborated
with Adolf Hitler. France's role in the deportation of its Jews
was a taboo subject for decades after the war. The trial of
Maurice Papon, a civil servant in the collaborationist Vichy
government, for deporting Jews, forced the country to confront
its role in the Holocaust. Papon was convicted in 1998 by a
French court for complicity in crimes against humanity for his
role in the deportation of 1,590 Jews from the city of Bordeaux.
Most of the deportees later perished at the concentration camp
at Auschwitz in mod