Bad Faith

Book excerpt: Bad Faith tells the story of one of history’s most despicable villains and con men—Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Nazi collaborator and “Commissioner for Jewish Affairs” in France’s Vichy government.Darquier set about to eliminate Jews in France with brutal efficiency, delivering 75,000 men, women, and children to the Nazis and confiscating Jewish property, which he used for his own gain. Carmen Callil’s riveting and sometimes darkly comic narrative reveals Darquier as a self-obsessed fantasist who found his metier in propagating hatred—a career he denied to his dying day—and traces the heartrending consequences for his daughter Anne of her poisoned family legacy. A brilliant meld of epic sweep and psychological insight, Bad Faith is a startling history of our times.