 For decades the French government declined to apologize for the role of French policemen in the round-up or for any other state complicity.It was argued (by de Gaulle and others) that the French Republic had been dismantled when Philippe Pétain instituted a new French State during the war and that the Republic had been re-established after the war had ended.It was not for the Republic, therefore, to apologise for events that happened while it had not existed and which had been carried out by a state which it did not recognise.