LAMBERT, RAYMOND RAOUL

LAMBERT, RAYMOND RAOUL (1894–1943), community leader in France under the Vichy regime. Born in Montmorency, Lambert served in both world wars and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He acted as secretary-general of the Comité d'Assistance aux Réfugiés (CAR) and was chief editor of Univers Israélite. In 1941 he was nominated director-general of the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) in the then unoccupied zone. Lambert afterward became chief of the UGIF for the whole of France. He clandestinely made contact with Jewish underground resistance groups and with Catholic circles that helped Jews to avoid the persecutions. He was arrested on Aug. 20, 1943, after having protested to pierre laval against the excesses of the German and French Nazis in confiscating Jewish property. He, his wife, their four children, and his mother-in-law were immediately deported to auschwitz and gassed on arrival. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, Activité des organisations juives en France sous l'occupation (1947), passim; Z. Szajkowski, in: JSOS, 9 (1947), 239–56; idem, Analytical Franco-Jewish Gazeteer 1939–1945 (1966), index. (Yehuda Reshef)