History of The NIR
The NIR (National Identification Repertory) was created by René Carmille (who died at the Dachau concentration camp in 1944) who realized between April and August 1941, under the Vichy regime, the first general repertory to secretly prepare the mobilization of a French army. This codification was then taken back by general Marie in Algeria, in order to recense Jews, Muslims and others categories. The aim was to file the whole of the French population and to discriminate them according ethnical or statutory criteria, in the frame of the racial policies of Vichy. Thus, the first digit which today is used to distinguish males and females then had other purposes: 3 or 4 for Algerian non-Jews indigenous people, 5 or 6 for indigenous Jews, 7 or 8 for foreigners, and 9 or 0 for miscellaneous and ill-defined statutes.
This discriminatory categorization used in Algeria was abolished in 1944, and has never been used in metropolitan France where, during the whole of the war, only "1" and "2" (for male and female) was used. The gestion of the NIR was given in 1946 to the new Statistical Institute, the INSEE. This institution is also in charged of the RNIPP (répertoire national d'identification des personnes physiques, National Repertory of Identification of Physical Persons), which contains for each individual: the NIR, last name, first name, sex, date and place of birth, reference of the Act of Birth (Acte de naissance).
Read more about this topic: INSEE Code
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