French policeman who commandeers the jewelry from the women

Hi bfp13108 - not quite sure which one you mean. If you mean the tall guy who beats up the girl who hid jewellery and kicks her whilst lying on the floor just before deportation from the Beaune-la-Rolande camp, his name is Nicolas Merlin. He is listed as "Milicien fouille Beaune" (Militiaman at the search in Beaune), and here is a page for him with photos: http://www.agencesartistiques.com/Fiche-Artiste/481584-nicolas-merlin.html

My confusion comes from the fact that you are referring to him as a "policeman", whilst his character is quite different from a policeman, even if militiamen wore uniforms too. "The Militia" ("La Milice", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milice) was, well, a militia, i.e. a paramilitary force, placed under the command of an ultra-collaborationist by the name of Joseph Darnand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Darnand). The task of militiamen was to enforce the dirtiest policies implemented by the Pétain regime, and not particularly "the law", in particular with respect to hunting down members of the French Resistance, Jews, communists, etc. You will see militiamen in other movies taking place in WWII France, e.g. "Goodbye Children" by Louis Malle, expelling a Jewish patron from a restaurant. You may think of them as a French version of SA-men. They were all volunteers, who were, for various reasons, committed collaborationists, anti-Semites, etc. They wore a wide flat cap ("béret"), unlike the regular police (and "gendarmes"), who wore a kepi, and sometimes a cape.

The regular police are the ones you can see in the movie guarding the Vel d'Hiv and the camp at Beaune. Their personal circumstances were quite different, as this (for the most part) was their pre-war jobs, and they were bound to obey the orders they were given. The alternative was to quit (or risk losing) their jobs - the one at Vel d'Hiv trying to chat the nurse up even mentions a risk of being court-martialled. They were not heroes, you may want to call them cowards, but many of them most likely hated what they were ordered to do, and the movie shows (and probably rightly so) how some of them had pangs of conscience and tried to alleviate them by helping in small ways despite their orders (warning of the impending round-up, letting the girl escape from Vel d'Hiv knowing full-well she was not the plumber's wife, etc.). Notwithstanding a range of behaviours and attitudes at individual level (ranging from enthusiasm through to reluctance, secret disobedience and help), it is (in particular) because of the regular police's involvement in events such as the Vel d'Hiv round-up that there has been in recent years a recognition of the French state's shared responsibility and complicity in Nazi Germany's crimes.

Sorry for the long digression - just wasn't sure you were aware of the differences in attitudes and circumstances in occupied France during WWII.