being Jewish in Paris under the Occupation

The tragic question of the persecution of the Jews of France seems today amply documented. Unlike other countries directly dominated by the Nazis, where only the force of the occupier prevailed, France found itself in a unique situation, particularly in Paris, where a large Jewish community lived before the war (around 150,000 people). Half of the French Jews deported (35,609 out of 74,133) were in this department of the Seine which was in the occupied zone, precisely where French laws and German ordinances overlapped. However, as historian Johanna Lehr notes, “despite the intensity of the persecutions, 27,000 Jews still lived in Paris on the eve of the Liberation (…). For comparison, there were only 2,000 Jews left at the same time in Berlin out of the 150,000 living there in 1937.».

But the questions that Johanna Lehr asks in this fascinating and painful investigation into the persecution of the Jews in Paris do not hold…