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HICEM's European headquarters were in Paris.<ref name="findingaids">{{cite web |title=Guide to the Records of the HIAS-HICEM Offices in Europe 1924–1953 |work=[[YIVO]] Institute for Jewish Research |url=http://findingaids.cjh.org/?pID=1309366 |accessdate=December 17, 2013}}</ref> After Germany invaded and conquered France in mid-1940, HICEM closed its Paris offices. On June 26, 1940, two days after France capitulation the main HIAS-HICEM Paris Office was authorized by Portuguese ruler [[António de Oliveira Salazar]] to be transferred from Paris to Lisbon. According to the Lisbon Jewish community, Salazar held [[Moisés Bensabat Amzalak]], the leader of the [[Lisbon Jewish community]] in high esteem and that allowed Amzalak to play an important role in getting Salazar's permission to transfer from Paris to Lisbon the main HIAS European Office in June 1940.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.cilisboa.org/sections/tikva_04/bu_4_35_hist.htm |title= Moses Bensabat Amzalak |last1= Levy |first1= Samuel |language= pt |publisher= Israeli Community in Lisbon |accessdate= August 6, 2014 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150923203440/http://www.cilisboa.org/sections/tikva_04/bu_4_35_hist.htm |archive-date= September 23, 2015 |url-status= dead }}</ref>{{sfn|Goldstein|1984}}
The French office reopened in October 1940, first in Bordeaux, for a week, and finally in Marseilles in the so-called "free zone" of [[Vichy France]].{{r|findingaids}} Until November 11, 1942, when the Germans [[Case Anton|occupied]] all of France, HICEM employees were at work in [[Internment camp|French internment camps]], such as the infamous [[Gurs internment camp|Gurs]]. HIAS looked for Jews who met [[US State Department|U.S. State Department]] immigration requirements, and were ready to leave France. At the time of the German invasion of France, there were approximately 300,000 native and foreign Jews living in France; however, the State Department's policies curbing immigration meant that the number of applicants to America far exceeded the number allowed to leave.{{citation needed|date=December 2013}}
When all legal emigration of Jews from France ceased, HICEM began to operate clandestinely from the town of [[Brive la Gaillarde]].{{sfn|Marrus|1995|p=310}} It had an office in the upper level of the building of the Synagogue led by Rabbi [[David Feuerwerker]], the Rabbi of Brive. Here a small group of HICEM employees – establishing contact and cooperation with the local underground forces of the French resistance – succeeded in smuggling Jews out of France to [[Spain]] and [[Switzerland]]. Twenty-one HICEM employees were deported and killed in the [[Concentration camp#Concentration camp|concentration camps]]; others were killed in direct combat with the [[Nazis]].{{citation needed|date=June 2012}}
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