THE SURVIVAL OF THE JEWS IN FRANCE 1940-44
DRAWING ON GERMAN AND VICHY GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS, PERSONAL DIARIES, PUBLISHED MEMOIRS AND ORAL TESTIMONIES, THIS STUDY FOLLOWS THE TRAJECTORIES OF FRENCH AND FOREIGN JEWS ON THEIR PATHS FROM THE PRE-WAR PERIOD THROUGH TO THE OCCUPATION
Between the French defeat in 1940 and liberation in 1944 the Nazis killed almost 80,000 of France’s Jews, both French and foreign nationals. There can be no dispute that this amounted to a tragedy on a staggering scale. That said some 75 per cent of France’s Jewish population survived the war, a far greater proportion than in other countries that suffered the extermination policies of the Hitler regime. Only 20 per cent of Dutch Jews and 45 per cent in Belgium survived the war. However, it must not be forgotten that only about 2,500 of the 75,000 French Jews deported to Nazi concentration and death camps came out alive.
Jacques Semelin’s book sheds light on the enigma of this French exception, a story until now largely neglected by historians. The author paints a radically different and unfamiliar view of Vichy France, in what amounts to a scholarly and even-handed account of a complex and changing society. Occupied France was a place where helping and informing on one’s neighbours went hand-in-hand, and where small gestures of solidarity sat comfortably with broader anti-semitism.
The book is rich in illustrations of the everyday tactics that allowed the persecuted to escape raids and deportation. Beyond the international context and geographical, political and cultural factors, the author shows that the Jews found in France a degree of empathy, particularly from the summer of 1942, despite widespread anti-semitism and denunciation.
Until now, comparatively little research has been directed at the question of why so many Jews survived in France, since most published works have been devoted to their persecution. Semelin looks at how Jews themselves reacted to their persecution and were forced to devise endurance tactics, once they became aware of the threat that was hanging over them.
The Jews became agents of their own survival through everyday acts of microresistance, performed by individuals who attempted to escape the oppression.
The author points out several factors that contributed to the high rate of survival. One that has been overlooked is the sheer size of France, compared with other countries under Nazi domination. This enabled people to flee from the Occupied to the Free Zone, or even across the border to Switzerland or Spain.
The author could perhaps have made more of the sinister Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, the Vichy government’s Commissioner for Jewish Affairs. It was Darquier who, when the ‘free zone’ was occupied by Nazi forces in 1942, supported the application of the notorious Nuremberg Laws to all French Jews. This meant that race and not religion would be the touchstone, and that 1.5 million Jews, in Darquier’s estimation, would be deprived of all civic rights. Darquier escaped to Franco’s Spain after the war, where he worked as a Spanish government translator. In casual conversation, he always referred to the Nazis as “the gentlemen of the other side” and maintained that French Jews “like other foreigners” should be required to carry passports. He died peacefully and with impunity in Madrid in 1980, five years after the country’s return to democracy.