PARIS (AFP-EJP)---France’s Legion of Honour, the country’s highest civilian award, will be conferred on about 1,000 people including some who helped save Jews from Nazi death camps, the government announced Sunday.

The list of the honoured people was published in the «Journal Officiel», the State's Official Gazette at the occasion of the Easter holiday.

Besides the 153 "Righteous of France" who kept Jews from being deported to concentration camps during World War II, others included billionaire businessman Francois Pinault, actor Jean-Paul Belmondo but also «Nazi hunter» Beate Klarsfeld.

The 153 are among those recognised by Israel as "righteous among the nations" for their role in saving Jews from the Holocaust.

They helped save 75 percent of the 330,000 Jews in France under the Nazi occupation.

Some 2,725 have been recognised in France, the largest number after Poland and the Netherlands, and 16,000 in Europe as a whole.

«Nazi hunter» Beate Klarsfeld

"By contributing, during one of the darkest hours of our history, to saving three quarters of the Jews of France from deportation, these men and women embody the values upon which the nation and the republic are based," said a statement from the French president’s office.

The "Righteous" are nominated by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Israel according to strict criteria.

Entire village

Among French bearers of the title is the entire village of
Chambon-sur-Lignon in the mountains of the Massif Central, whose Protestant pastor organised shelter for scores of Jewish refugees.

Shortly after taking office in 1995, Jacques Chirac was the first president to recognise the role of the French state in the war-time deportation of Jews, almost all of them to their deaths in Nazi extermination camps.

In January this year, Chirac, whose second and final term in office ends next month, led a ceremony in Paris honouring France’s "Righteous among the nations."

The ceremony was held in the Pantheon, the converted church in the Latin Quarter that serves as a mausoleum for France’s national heroes.