La Résistance Individuelle:

The Survival of Foreign Jews in France During World War II

By

Krista Miller May 2013

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Dual-Degree Program in History and Archives Management

Simmons College Boston, Massachusetts

The author grants Simmons College permission to include this thesis in its Library and to make it available to the academic community for scholarly purposes.

Submitted by

_________________________

Krista Miller

Approved by:

___________________________ _____________________________ Sarah Leonard (thesis advisor) John Trevor Coates (second reader)

© 2013, Krista Miller

Table of Contents Introduction.......................................................................................................................................................1JewsinFrance................................................................................................................................................ 16LifeattheBeginningoftheWar ............................................................................................................ 29TheTurningPoint ........................................................................................................................................ 39Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................... 58

1

Introduction

The study of France and its Jewish population in the Second World War has many

facets. Over the years, the historical literature has covered various aspects of the issue,

but there are many holes to fill. There is still much debate over French sentiment towards

the Jews, both native and foreign. What does the fact that over 75% of Jews in France

survived the war say about the attitudes of the French population?1 Taking into

consideration suggestions of xenophobia, how does the survival of just over half of the

foreign Jewish population affect the conclusions drawn about the French attitude towards

Jews in the war? This thesis will look at the relationship between the non-Jewish French

population and their foreign Jewish counterparts during the war in an attempt to answer

some of these questions. By looking at the survival of the foreign Jewish population of

France, who was persecuted for both being foreign and Jewish, some preliminary

conclusions can be drawn about what contributed to the high survival rate for Jews in

France. For comparison, Jews in France had a better chance for survival than those in

Poland, of whom less than 10% survived, but also the Netherlands (only 25% survival

rate), and Belgium (58% survival rate).2 Though there are many reasons for these

differences that will not be discussed in this thesis, the people of France played an

important role in the Jewish survival rate, despite the anti-Semitic mood of the nation in

the 1930s.

1. Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (New York: BasicBooks, 1993), 207.

2. Esther Benbassa, The Jews of France: A History from Antiquity to the Present, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 173; and Susan Zuccotti, “Surviving the Holocaust: The Situation in France,” in The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 492.

2

Often overlooked because of the horrific fate of so many Eastern European Jews,

the story of Jews in France during the Second World War is no less important. France

was in a unique situation during the war because the country retained authority over half

of the nation while Germany occupied the other half. The Vichy government of

unoccupied France was in a difficult position of asserting their independence while also

acquiescing to German requests in order to remain in power. Jews in France suffered

from the effects of this delicate balance of power. Historians have reached a consensus

that Vichy France, in navigating this difficult situation, initiated anti-Semitic legislation

independent of German influence.3 How were so may Jews able to survive in the face of

government regulations that removed them from economic and social life in France? Did

the people of France support and encourage the government’s Jewish policies?

To understand the position in which foreign Jews in France found themselves

during the early years of World War II, it is necessary to understand their place in French

society and the broader political situation in France during these years. The Jewish

community has a long history in France. France was the first nation to grant Jews civil

rights in 1791, and historian Paula Hyman argues that by the late nineteenth century

“French Jews enjoyed the reputation of being the most successfully assimilated and most

3. First argued by Michael Marrus and Robert O. Paxton in Vichy France and the Jews (New York: BasicBooks, 1981). See also Vicki Caron, “Prelude to Vichy: France and the Jewish Refugees in the Era of Appeasement,” Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 157-76; Michael Curtis, Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2002); and Donna Ryan, The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: the Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France (Urbana, Il.: University of Illinois Press, 1996).

3

stable Jewish community in Western Europe.”4 Their status in French society was

marred, however, by the Dreyfus Affair of 1894-1906. In 1894 Army Captain Alfred

Dreyfus, a French Jew, was convicted of treason. Though the conviction was not related

to his Jewish identity, an anti-Semitic passion broke out during the trial and subsequent

appeals.5 This affair left a lasting image, propagated by the press, of Jews as foreigners

and exploitative capitalists that survived in a muted form into the 20th century.6

Interestingly, French Jews were not very concerned by the effects of the Dreyfus Affair.

For them, the affair was a clash between Republican and anti-Republican political forces,

and Dreyfus’s eventual innocence confirmed their love of and confidence in their native

country.7 Nonetheless, the damage to public opinion had been done, and the affair planted

a sliver of anti-Semitism in the public’s mind.

This anti-Semitism was revived in the 1930s and manifested itself during World

War II. France’s participation in the military struggles of World War II was short lived.

France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939 after Germany invaded Poland,

but surrendered to the Germans by June of 1940. This “Phony War” was marked by a

lack of commitment to military engagement by France and their ally, Britain. Thus, on

June 14, 1940, German troops marched down the Champs Élysées in Paris and an

armistice was signed a week later. Historian Susan Zuccotti writes that the ceasefire was

“greeted with widespread approval and relief” from the public who did not want to be

4. Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry 1906-1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 1.

5. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 144. 6. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, 12.

7. Ibid., 11, 34.

4

involved in a war and thought the fighting would be over soon.8 Terms of the armistice

called for France to be divided into two zones: Germany would occupy northern and

western France while a French government would independently control the remaining

southern two fifths of the country. Marshal Pétain, the newly appointed prime minister,

established a French government in Vichy, France. The officials in Vichy decided to

reorganize the government of France’s Third Republic into a newly formed French State

that would collaborate with German authorities. Pétain became the head of this new

government and had sole responsibility to make and execute all laws.9 Not everyone in

France agreed with this decision however; General Charles de Gaulle, exiled in England,

claimed to represent the legitimacy and continuity of the French nation and established

the Free French army. This became the foundation of the French Resistance movement.

The government at Vichy, however, continued to rule unoccupied France and collaborate

with Germany through the end of the war.

The Vichy government acted in concert with Nazi Germany to discriminate

against its Jewish population. Within a month of the armistice, the Vichy government

revoked the citizenship of those who had been naturalized since 1927 and reversed a law

prohibiting anti-Semitic propaganda. In September 1940 the Germans issued a definition

of “Jew” and required all Jews in the occupied zone to register. Vichy France followed a

month later with their own definition of Jewishness in the Statut des Juifs. The French

definition was broader than the German definition and included anyone with “three

grandparents of the Jewish race, or from two grandparents of the same race, if the spouse

8. Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 40.

9. Ibid., 43.

5

was also Jewish.”10 The Statute also excluded Jews from public office, journalism,

cinema, theater, and radio. A second Statut des Juifs was promulgated in June 1941 that

extended the definition of a Jew to include those that belonged to the Jewish religion

prior to 1940 or had two Jewish grandparents. It also took extreme measures to eliminate

Jews from the economy, eventually leading to the “aryanization” of Jewish businesses.

The numerous Vichy statutes forced Jews into a position of second-class citizens in

France and made the eventual transition to deportation easier to achieve.

Turning now to the scholarly literature on France during the Second World War,

the field has been slow to recognize the many issues that plagued the country during that

time, among them the fate of Jews living in France. For many years after the war ended,

the historical literature concentrated on the stories of Jewish survivors and the exploits of

the Resistance heroes. It was only after American historians Michael Marrus and Robert

O. Paxton’s groundbreaking work in 1981 that scholars began to challenge the commonly

held perception of La Resistance in France. It has taken even longer for France to accept

its role. The French government did not acknowledge its complicity in the Holocaust

until 1995 when President Jacques Chirac publically apologized for the role of French

policemen in the roundup of Jews in Paris fifty-three years earlier.11 In looking beyond

the resistance myth, historians have disagreed about France’s attitude towards foreigners

and Jews and about the French population’s support of Vichy and Nazi policies.

10. Adam Rayski, The Choice of the Jews Under Vichy: Between Submission and Resistance (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 13.

11. Marlise Simons, “Chirac Affirms France’s Guilt in Fate of Jews,” New York Times, July 17, 1995.

6

In the years following the war, survivors and resistance members began to tell

their stories while the country looked to memorialize these heroic tales.12 There was a

need to share the suffering that individuals and the nation had just experienced, an

inclination reflected in the postwar literature around Europe. Prominent Holocaust

survivor Primo Levi published his experience in the Italian resistance movement and his

time in Auschwitz in his 1947 memoir If This is a Man.13 In 1950, the cornerstone of the

Tomb of the Unknown Jewish Martyr was laid in Paris to begin the process of

memorializing the Jewish experience in France during the war.14 In 1956, the doors of the

Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC) opened in Paris to invite the

world to read the stories of Jewish survival and resistance contained in their archival

collections.15 Very early on survivors realized the need to preserve their experiences. The

discussion of these difficult events became a way to both share in the pain and move on

from it.

There was also a need to tell these stories in order to document the crimes of Nazi

Germany and Vichy France. It is important to note that immediately after the war the

French considered the Vichy government a break in French history. According to the

logic of the time, the Vichy regime did not represent France of the 1950s and therefore

that government’s actions did not represent French sentiment during the war. It was

12. Jacques Adler, “The Jews and Vichy: Reflections on French Historiography,” Historical Journal 44, no. 4 (Dec. 2001): 1071.

13. Primo Levi, If This is a Man (Torino: De Silva, 1947).

14. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 181-182. 15. “The History of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation,” Shoah

Memorial, 2004, http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/index.php/en/archives-and-documentation/the-cdjc-catalogue/the-history-of-the-center-of-contemporary-jewish-documentation-cdjc.

7

important to separate post-war France from Vichy France. The idea of La Resistance

played a big part in this separation. De Gaulle, as leader of the Free French and the exiled

French government during the war, promoted the idea of France as resistance fighters. He

later became a prominent figure in French politics, helping to found the Fifth Republic

and serving as its president from 1959-1969. Often listed in the pantheon of French

national heroes, French scholar Lawrence D. Kritzman describes de Gaulle’s legacy as

constructing “a messianic view of France’s historic destiny in order to reaffirm its

prestige in the world and transcend the national humiliation [of Vichy].”16 In June 1940

de Gaulle addressed the nation over the radio from England refusing the armistice with

Germany and calling for resistance to Nazi rule. It was the birth of La Resistance, which

became an important part of France’s healing after the war. France’s actions in World

War II threatened French pride and the notion of La Resistance, encouraged by de Gaulle

and reflected in the literature of the time, allowed the country to move on from that

chapter in French history.

As time passed, historians began to question France’s role in the Holocaust.

Starting in the 1970s, scholars suggested that the French government had collaborated

with Nazi Germany. Marrus and Paxton made a groundbreaking argument in their 1981

book Vichy France and the Jews arguing not only that France was complicit in the

Holocaust, but also that France was anti-Semitic without German influence. Their book

begins by asserting that “the French government energetically persecuted Jews living in

16. Lawrence D. Kritzman, “A Certain Idea of de Gaulle,” Yale French Studies, no. 111 (2007): 158.

8

France.”17 They even point out that the Statut des Juifs issued by the Vichy government

in 1940 went further in defining Jewishness than the German policy after which it was

modeled.18 Other historians working in the 1970s and early 1980s, including Paula

Hyman and Vicki Caron, took up a similar theme. They suggested that France, far from

being de Gaulle’s freedom fighters, was actually full of anti-Semitism.19 Thirty years

after the end of the traumatic experience of World War II, historians were finally able to

challenge prevailing notion that France was a bastion of resistance in Nazi dominated

Europe. They pushed back on the notion of La Resistance to suggest that France deserved

some of the blame for what took place on French soil.

In the late 1980s to the 1990s, historians disputed French anti-Semitism,

suggesting instead that Vichy policy was rooted in xenophobia more so than anti-

Semitism. French historian Jacques Adler, himself a Jewish immigrant and resistance

fighter during the war, was the first to suggest that there was more than one community

of Jews in France and that they were treated differently during the war. Taking the

argument further, American historians Susan Zuccotti and Donna Ryan recognized that

many early Vichy laws targeted foreign Jews while leaving French Jews alone. Though

France had long been a safe haven for immigrants in the early twentieth century, the

depression that devastated the country during the 1930s turned many French people

against the immigrant population, whom they blamed for the economic hardship of the

country. The French, Zuccotti argues, were not anti-Semitic, but xenophobic, and it just

17. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, xi. 18. Ibid., 12.

19. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy; and Caron, “Prelude to Vichy,” 157-76.

9

so happened that many immigrants at that time were also Jews escaping persecution in

Eastern Europe.20 Ryan argues differently, asserting that the Vichy government modified

French xenophobia into Germany’s anti-Semitism to comply with German sentiment.21

Regardless, the literature of this time questioned the sentiment behind Vichy laws, but

still advanced French complicity.

Since the 1990s, the focus of historical study has turned to the French people and

their reactions instead of focusing on the action of the French government in Vichy. This

reflects a more general trend in history to focus on society as a whole rather than

prominent individuals and events. Did the French people support the government’s

policies? What actions did people take either for or against Vichy France? Though this

new focus has exposed many holes in the scholarship, it has not yet provided answers to

all of these questions.

There is an ongoing historical debate about whether Vichy France was a

continuation of France’s government before the war, the Third Republic, or something

completely separate. A declaration that Vichy merely carried forward policies of the

Third Republic would have huge implications on the complicity of the French people in

the atrocities of the war and would shatter the image of French resistance. However, this

is just the argument that Vicki Caron put forth in her writings since 1998, culminating in

her book Uneasy Asylum.22 She does this by looking at public opinion in the 1930s and at

20. Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 4. 21. Ryan, The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille. 22. Vicki Caron, “The Antisemitic Revival in France in the 1930s: The

Socioeconomic Dimension Reconsidered,” Journal of Modern History 70, no. 1 (March 1998): 24-73; and Uneasy Asylum: France and the Refugee Crisis of the 1930s (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999).

10

government immigration policies of the same time period to show how public opinion

fueled and encouraged discrimination against recent refugees. She argues that though

Vichy’s anti-Semitic policies were not “the inevitable culmination of the trends in the

1930’s….Vichy’s policies were indeed rooted in the 1930’s” and came to prevail due to

France’s defeat in 1940.23 The French people did not protest the discrimination.

Not all agree with Caron, however, and some recent historians have argued

instead that the French people were not anti-Semitic; at worst, they were indifferent and

uninvolved in the plight of the Jews. Michael Curtis, a political scientist, argues that

France was neither full of collaborators nor full of resisters, but instead was made up of

passive individuals, “uninvolved in the crimes and atrocities in their country.”24 This

characterization seems accurate when one considers the small number of people engaged

in active and coordinated resistance activities like sabotage or collecting intelligence, and

the small number of people involved in carrying out Vichy policies. There were no large

public demonstrations for or against the Vichy regime: people mostly kept to themselves,

trying to survive the occupation. After several decades of debate, the pendulum has

swung from hero to villain and now rests somewhere in the middle, neither celebrating

the French people nor condemning them for their involvement in the Second World War.

A closer examination of the actions of French citizens may show, however, that they

were taking a stand through individual acts of resistance against the anti-Semitism of

Vichy and the German occupiers.

23. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, 354.

24. Curtis, Verdict on Vichy, 13.

11

In recent years historians have attempted to challenge the role of the Jews in

France that has been traditionally presented. Immediately after the war, Jews were

portrayed as passive victims being handed their fate without protest. More recently,

historians like Adler and Adam Rayski, also a Jew who immigrated to France before the

war, maintain that Jews actively fought for their survival, representing a form of

resistance different from the heroes celebrated after the war, but no less important or

courageous.25 In fact, Rayski argues, Jews were faced with a choice every time the Vichy

government passed a piece of legislation, and by choosing to live clandestinely, the Jews

of France created a mass movement of survival and resistance.26 Far from being passive

pawns in the story, Jews were instrumental in their own survival and their actions played

a large role in the fact that the majority of Jews in France survived the war.

Before examining the topic of Jewish survival and French anti-Semitism any

further, it is necessary to point out the differences between those Jews that were native to

France and foreign Jews residing in France, usually recent immigrants from Eastern

European countries or refugees from growing Nazi persecution. As Adler insists, these

two groups of Jews need to be treated separately by historians because they had vastly

different experiences and, until 1942, the two groups were concerned only with their own

defense and survival.27 This separation is highlighted by the fact that while over 75% of

25. Adler, “The Jews and Vichy;” and Rayski, The Choice of the Jews Under Vichy.

26. Rayski, The Choice of Jews Under Vichy, 3. 27. Adler, “The Jews and Vichy,” 1072-1074.

12

all Jews in France survived; only 59% of foreign Jews in France lived through the war.28

The survival rate for native Jews was closer to 90%.29

Native Jews, generally defined as those who had been living in France before

World War I, were highly integrated into French society.30 They defined themselves as

French citizens first, and Jewish second. The community had such strong roots in France

that even anti-Semitic attitudes, like those displayed during the Dreyfus Affair, could not

shake their identity with France. Because of their strong association with France, native

Jews did not generally interact with immigrant Jews. They even referred to themselves

using different terminology. Native French Jews indentified themselves as Israelites,

while foreign Jews went by the more generic term Juif, a distinction that was also

recognized by non-Jewish French individuals. Though their numbers are hard to pin

down, it is estimated that there were 160,000 native Jews in France at the start of the

war.31 They represented only about half of the Jews in France at this time, a fact that may

have contributed to their desire to cling to their French identity and separate themselves

from the Jewish immigrant community.

France was hit with an influx of Jewish immigrants between the two world wars.

This was largely due to the fact that the United States severely limited the number of

immigrants it would accept with the Immigration Act of 1924 and other countries soon

28. Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 207.

29. Zuccotti, “Surviving the Holocaust,” 493. 30. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, 115-116.

31. Adler, The Jews of Paris, 5, 14. Adler sites approximately 300,000 Jews in France in 1939. He finds that 10%, or 16,000, French Jews were deported, meaning that the population of French Jews at the beginning of the war was approximately 160,000.

13

followed.32 France, on the other hand, welcomed these immigrants into the country in

order to replenish a workforce that had been decimated by World War I. Thus, thousands

of people, Jews and non-Jews alike, fleeing eastern European social upheaval and looking

for better economic opportunity found a home in France. Between 1906 and 1939,

175,000 to 200,000 Jews entered France, representing fifteen percent of the total number

of immigrants in that period.33 According to the 1940 census in France, eighty percent of

immigrant Jews came from Eastern Europe, with Poland making up fifty percent of that

number; the remainder came mostly from the Balkans.34 A small number of refugees

from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, totaling approximately 40,000 people,

entered France after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.35 Though these Jewish immigrants

only represented less than 0.4 percent of the 43 million people in France, their presence

was noticed.36

The Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe who arrived in France in the 1920s and

1930s came from a vastly different background than French Jews. In their native

countries these Jews made their own communities centered on the Jewish faith because

they were excluded from society. They brought this culture to France and continued to

live as Jews first, speaking little French (80% of foreign Jews in Paris spoke Yiddish),

and living in separate communities.37 Adler, whose family immigrated to France from

32. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 148.

33. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, 68. 34. Adler, The Jews of Paris, 9.

35. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 148; and Adler, The Jews of Paris, 5. 36. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 154, 166.

37. Ibid., 151.

14

Eastern Europe, “felt more at home in [his] parents’ cultural milieu” and could never

understand the “implacably nationalistic” attitude of his French friends.38 It was possible,

however, for the children of Jewish immigrants to assimilate by the time they were adults

if they attended French schools. In fact, second generation immigrants often abandoned

their family traditions in favor of assimilation, though some were pulled in the opposite

direction and became very politically active. 39 First generation immigrants, however,

were not able, and did not want, to join another cultural community. In the years before

the Second World War, a large divide formed between foreign Jews and those native to

France because there was not enough time for recent immigrants to assimilate.

Further complicating this divide was the status of immigrants in the French

economy. Foreign Jews could often only find work in the manufacturing or artisan trades

so their families were usually quite poor. Some were not able to find legal work because

they did not have their work papers in order.40 Native Jews were more often employed as

bankers, storeowners, managers, and in other liberal professions. A depression that swept

France in the mid 1930s compounded the economic status of foreign Jews. Quite

suddenly in 1935, close to one million French were out of work.41 Reminiscent of the

reaction of the French during an economic downturn in the 1880s, the people blamed

much of the country’s hardships on recent immigrants who, they believed, stole jobs from

natives and engaged in unfair competition. The weakened economies of the 1880s and the

38. Adler, The Jews of Paris, viii.

39. Lucien Lazare, Rescue as Resistance: How Jewish Organizations Fought the Holocaust in France, trans. Jeffrey M. Green, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 13.

40. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 149.

41. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, 16.

15

1930s threatened French national self-confidence so the country found a scapegoat in

foreigners.42 The depression of the 1930s created a significant anti-refugee sentiment that

further divided native and foreign Jews on the eve of World War II.

With these anti-Semitic and anti-refugee attitudes coming to the forefront, this

thesis will explore how Jewish foreigners survived in an unfamiliar country whose

government decided to persecute those of Jewish religion and ethnicity. It is evident that

foreign Jews in France survived with the help of French citizens, both friends and

strangers, because the anti-Semitic attitude of the government did not permeate all of

French society. More than just aiding foreign Jews, French citizens collaborated with

Jews in a form of resistance. A study of four foreign Jewish families living in France will

show how fear of persecution by the French government dictated their every move, but

small acts by French citizens aided their survival and resistance.

42. Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 25.

16

JewsinFrance

In the later half of the 1930s, many refugees entered France looking to escape

persecution from the Nazis in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. In all,

approximately 40,000 refugees from these countries came to France from 1935-1939.1 In

addition to this, it is estimated that 15,000-20,000 Eastern Europeans entered the country

illegally, also looking to escape anti-Semitic regimes.2 This influx of foreign refugees

exacerbated tensions that already existed between fully assimilated Jews and outsiders.

The more recent arrivals were anxiously aware of their unwanted status among the native

Jews of France.

The four families studied in this paper represent this population of recent

immigrants in France, unsure of what they would encounter but hoping for better than

what they had left. The stories of these four foreign Jewish families in France are told

through the personal narratives of a surviving member of each of the families. Personal

narratives are a rich source of information for historians, giving insight into the daily

experience and mood of the people, but they also pose some challenges. Personal

narratives are first and foremost about the individual experience and do not represent the

collective memory of a nation. Additionally, these narratives are all written after the

events about which they are written, so a certain degree of memory is involved.

Individual memory can be influenced by the collective memory and contemporary events.

It is shaped by larger events and cultural currents, yet still reflects the experiences of the

individual. Discovering the motives for remembering and the reasons to forget,

1. Adler, The Jews of Paris, 5.

2. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, 2.

17

intentionally or unintentionally, offers historians as much information as more traditional

sources. Though the limitations of memory need to be acknowledged, there is still great

value in the use of personal narratives.

Historians who have studied the position of Jews in Vichy France in the past have

often used transport lists, government documents, and organizational records for their

research. While these sources provide a vast amount of factual data, they do not provide

insight into the moods and opinions of the French people. Historians can use personal

narratives “as data for understanding social processes and historical contexts,” explains

anthropologist Tristan McConnell.3 It is important to do this when studying attitudes like

anti-Semitism to understand if the feelings were pervasive. Additionally, McConnell

suggests that personal narratives “offer a way for us to problematize accepted notions of

historical processes, and question the veracity and lack of contradiction in impersonal

historical accounts.”4 By looking at the personal narratives of survivors, historians can

challenge the impersonal historical accounts of France during World War II and its

treatment of Jews. Moreover, these personal narratives are some of the only evidence that

exists of the French helping the Jews survive. Those who resisted Nazi and Vichy rule by

assisting Jews generally did not seek recognition for their actions, either during or after

the war. Personal stories from Jewish survivors are one of the only sources historians can

use to examine how the French people reacted to anti-Jewish measures and what aid they

gave to their Jewish neighbors.

3. Mary Patrice Erdmans, “The Personal is Political, but Is It Academic?” Journal of American Ethnic History 26, no. 4 (Summer 2007), 11.

4. Tristan McConnell, “Personal Narratives of Political History: Social Memory and Silences in Namibia,” Dialectical Anthropology 25 (2000), 27.

18

The four narratives used in this paper are found in the collections at the Leo

Baeck Institute in New York City. This research library, named for the last leader of the

German Jewish community under the Nazis, contains a significant amount of material on

the history of German-speaking Jewry dating back 2,000 years all the way up to the

present. Though this paper focuses on the Jewish experience in France, it concentrates on

the experience of foreign Jews, many of whom came from the German-speaking

countries of Germany and Austria and are therefore represented in the collections at the

Leo Baeck Institute. The narratives were selected from a number of memoirs held at the

institute to represent the most common experiences of foreign Jews in France during the

war, ranging from the collective experience of the fall of France to emigration,

internment, deportation, and concealment. This small sample cannot encompass every

foreign Jewish experience, but the four narratives chosen detail how those that did

survive the war were able to do so. Additional experiences not explored in these

narratives include the aid of charity and relief organizations and the Jewish Resistance

movement. Though each narrative describes the collective experiences to a different

extent, one common thread that runs through them all, including narratives not chosen for

this study, is the aid of the non-Jewish French. To be sure, many encounters with the

French were discriminatory, but that was not the case with every non-Jewish French

person. The foreign Jews that survived the war all had some type of assistance from

French citizens. These personal narratives can be considered examples of this behavior

on the part of the French.

To begin, it is necessary to introduce these four cases. The first is the story of

Max Gutmann and his wife, Friedl. Max immigrated to France in 1938. Originally from

19

Germany, he fled the country in 1933 after the Nazis came to power for fear of

persecution for his communist activities, not to mention his Jewish faith.5 After spending

some time in Prague, where he met Friedl, Max eventually left for France, believing it to

be safer if war broke out and an easier place to leave for America if necessary. Friedl,

originally from Austria, followed Max to France in 1939.6 Though France had welcomed

immigrants in the 1920s, immigration laws became more restrictive in the 1930s. In 1934

and 1935, the government placed restrictions on immigration for economic reasons.

Another round of restrictions followed in 1938, this time as a political move to support

the appeasement of Germany.7 Many refugees ended up entering the country illegally,

without permits, to avoid persecution.8 Max does not mention anywhere in his memoirs

whether he and Friedl entered the country legally, but that appears to be the case based on

their way of life in France, including their successful effort to be married under French

law in February 1940 despite being foreigners.9 The couple resided in Paris, a popular

location among foreign Jews in France. Of the approximately 300,000 Jews, both foreign

and native, in France at the outbreak of the Second World War, 200,000 of them lived in

5. George A. Gutman, “Introduction,” Gutman Family Stories, accessed March 13, 2013, http://gutmanfamily.org/intro.html.

6. Max Gutmann, “Avis Favorable,” Gutman Family Stories, accessed March 13, 2013, http://gutmanfamily.org/AvisFavorableD.pdf.

7. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, 4.

8. Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 26. 9. Gutmann, “Avis Favorable.”

20

Paris.10 Foreign Jews were especially attracted to Paris, where foreigners represented

75% of the Jewish population, because of its supportive immigrant communities.11

The Gutmann narrative is pieced together from several short essays written by

Max Gutmann. One snapshot of their life in the middle of the war is kept in the Leo

Baeck Institute. The rest of the stories come from a website created by Max’s son,

George. This website also includes the same essay that is found at the Leo Baeck

Institute. According to the Gutman Family Stories website, Max wrote his short stories

after the war, but before the family’s immigration to the United States in 1947.12 To

support this claim, the Leo Baeck Institute states in its collection information that the

manuscript is a transcript and translation of a German language handwritten account of

the war.13 That the memories were written down so soon after the war means that there is

less interference from time, both for the accuracy of the recollections and from the

influence of outside factors like the myth of La Resistance. In reading Gutmann’s

narrative, the details are abundant and the sentiments are still fresh and real.

The second case presents the Rappart family from Vienna, Austria who fled to

France after the German Anschluss, or annexation of Austria, in 1938.14 Eva Rappart,

only a child of eight at the time, recalls a “change in [her] surroundings” in Vienna and

10. Adler, The Jews of Paris, 5.

11. Ibid., 8. 12. George A. Gutman, Gutman Family Stories, accessed March 13, 2013,

http://gutmanfamily.org/stories/index.htm. 13. MS 711. MSF 67, Leo Baeck Institute, accessed March 13, 2013,

http://www.lbi.org/digibaeck/results/?qtype=pid&term=548925. 14. Eva Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs of World War II,” Leo Baeck

Institute, 1990, 2.

21

witnessed Jews being “subjected to all kinds of indignities.”15 Despite the family’s

relative wealth in Vienna (they lived in a seven-room apartment and had a maid, Mitzi)

and her father’s prominence as a journalist, the Rappart family no longer felt safe

remaining in Austria.16 After a visit from the S.S. and the short imprisonment of her

father, Eva and her parents, Hugo and Ella, boarded a train to Paris. They probably left

before the pogrom of 1938 and Kristallnacht because Eva makes no mention of these

events in her narrative. Her father’s short arrest was enough to cause the family to leave.

In France, the Rapparts moved to a small apartment in the wealthy Parisian

suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Eva recalls that her time in Paris before France declared war

on Germany in 1939 was a “happy time” where she lived a “rich and full” life that

included outings to the Jardin d’Acclimation and the zoo, and playing with friends.17

Though the memoir does not reveal what Hugo did while in Paris, the Rappart family was

part of the lucky group of immigrants who were accepted into French society because of

their wealth and Western European origin. French Jews were far more likely to offer

assistance to Jews from Germany and Austria, who were usually members of the liberal

professions and acculturated in their native lands in the same way French Jews were in

France. Thus, for example, German Jews were far more likely to integrate into the greater

French society than Eastern European Jews who created their own small communities in

France, just as they had been forced to do in their native countries.18 Eastern European

Jews were also more likely to be poor and not well educated, which also contributed to

15. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” 1.

16. Ibid., 1, 3, 19. 17. Ibid., 3.

18. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 164.

22

the divide between Eastern European immigrants and the French. The Rapparts, however,

were accepted into French society and were afforded more comforts than other Jewish

immigrants in France.

The Rappart family narrative comes from a very different time and place than the

Gutmann story. The narrative is written by Eva Rappart, who was a child during the war

and only 14 when it ended. In an “About the Author” section, Eva suggests that she first

wrote the manuscript in French as a teenager; however, the somewhat formal English

manuscript bears the year 1990, and it was not donated to the Leo Baeck Institute until

1997.19 It is certainly possible that Eva wrote down memories soon after the war, but the

manuscript has clearly been edited and polished between when it was first written until its

donation to the Institute. Several agendas are evident in the narrative story. First is Eva’s

desire to convey the story of her family’s savior, Father Claudius Longeray. Father

Longeray served as the curate of St. Martin, a tiny parish in the French Alps, for 30 years,

until his death in 1959. Eva has been an energetic force in promoting his heroic actions,

culminating in Yad Vashem honoring him posthumously as Righteous Among the

Nations.20 Additionally, Eva has been active in sharing her survivor story with local

schools and community groups, and this is evident in her narrative, where she states that

her main objective is “lest we forget.”21 Eva has also donated many photographs and

19. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” ii. Eva wrote an “About the Author” section for herself that she inserted at the beginning of her narrative. It was written in 1990, probably when she completed the memoir and gives a brief overview of her ordeal in Austria and France during World War II.

20. “Longeray Claudius,” Yad Vashem, accessed March 13, 2013, http://db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId=4042876.

21. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” iv.

23

family documents to the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

She is an active survivor with a story to share, and this shapes her memoir.

The third case is that of the Sternheimer family who came to France from

Germany in 1935, relatively early for German Jews to leave the country. According to

Rudolph Sternheimer’s wife, “somebody in town informed the Gestapo that [the family

was] Jewish” but the family was tipped off and left the country in a hurry.22 Rudolph,

who was nine at the time, his parents, and his younger brother moved to a place outside

Lyon and were joined by extended relatives.23 Lyon was one of the many cities in France

that attracted Jewish immigrants because of their tendency to urbanize, though the recent

Jewish immigrant population in Lyon was fewer than 200 families in 1937.24 Because of

their early immigration date, the Sternheimer’s were relatively integrated into French

society, and Rudolph was able to attend the local schools without problems through 1941.

Their ability to blend in with French society probably helped the Sternheimer family

during the war.

Rudolph Sternheimer wrote the story of his family’s survival in 1991, fifty years

after the events he is recollecting, and donated the English manuscript to the Leo Baeck

Institute a year later.25 He had donated other archival material to the Institute in the 1960s

and 1970s and wanted to add an account of his life in France during the war. Though he

22. J. Jioni Palmer, “Obituaries/Rudolph Sternheimer, 73, Physicist at Brookhaven,” Long Island Newsday, February 29, 2000.

23. Rudolph Sternheimer, “Our Life in France (1939-1941),” Leo Baeck Institute, 1991, 1.

24. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, 68, 71. 25. Letter to Ms. Spielmann, dated April 1, 1992, Rudolph Sternheimer

Collection, Leo Baeck Institute.

24

was a teenager during the war and more aware of his surroundings than Eva Rappart

probably was as a child, the passage of time has affected the clarity of his memories.

Most of the dates in the narrative are qualified with “around this time” or “on or about

this date.” In fact, Rudolph admits that there are only two dates in his narrative “of which

[he is] completely sure.”26 Several times he acknowledges that family members related

certain aspects of the story to him after the fact.27 Rudolph’s story comes across as a

timeline with specific memories interjected when he remembers them. At certain points

in the story, he conveys the strength of his memories with “I remember,” “I remember

vividly,” or “one immediate memory.”28 Rudolph’s narrative is also peppered with

opinions and facts from the present. There is a comment about the French being anti-

Semitic before the fall of France in 1940 and a whole page and a half criticizing the U.S.

immigration policy during the 1940s, among other interjections.29 It is clear from the

narrative that Rudolph’s experience during World War II has never left him. Though his

narrative is opinionated and imprecise, the sentiments and basic events of the story are

still valid.

The last family examined in this thesis is that of Andre Weisman-Braunthal. His

parents came to France earlier than any of the other families. Rose Braunthal followed

her sister to Paris from Austria sometime between 1923 and 1931. While in Paris she met

Michel Weisman but they could not marry because Michel was in France illegally,

26. Sternheimer, “Our Life in France,” 13.

27. Ibid., 3, 15 28. Ibid., 2, 9, 12, 15.

29. Ibid., 4, 6-7. See also pages 8-18

25

having escaped from Romania with only his brother’s identification card.30 The

Weisman-Braunthal’s are unique in these case studies in that their three children were

born in France. This gave the children the opportunity to acquire French citizenship.

Under an August 10, 1927 law, France greatly expanded the opportunities for immigrants

to become French citizens.31 The biggest change was the reduction of French residency

requirement from ten years to three years. Additional categories of people were also

granted citizenship under the law, including foreigners married to French citizens and

children born on French soil. As of the 1940 census, three quarters of the children of

Jewish immigrant families had French nationality, comprised largely of those children

who had been born in France over the fifteen years prior.32 Though the Weisman children

were likely included in this statistic, the Vichy government quickly revoked the

citizenship status of those who had acquired it since the law of 1927 with a new law

passed on July 7, 1940.33 Thus, despite their children’s birthplace and the amount of time

the family had been in France, Rose and Michel remained outsiders in French society.

This separation was also partly due to Michel’s illegal status and the family’s

isolation in the Jewish refugee community in the 19th arrondissement, or quarter, of Paris.

This area of Paris, more popularly known as Belleville, included parts of the 11th, 19th

and 20th arrondissements, and was where the majority of recent Eastern European Jewish

30. Andre Weisman-Braunthal, “Le Youpin – The Exodus,” Leo Baeck Institute, 2004, 17.

31. Patrick Weil, How to Be French: Nationality in the Making Since 1789, trans. Catherine Porter, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 225, 256.

32. Rayski, The Choice of Jews Under Vichy, 17; and Adler, The Jews of Paris, 8.

33. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 169.

26

immigrant workers and artisans lived in poverty.34 More than half of these recent

immigrants were, according to historian Esther Benbassa, “peddlers and sellers of bric-a-

brac, just getting by,” often because they were unable to find legal work if their papers

were not in order.35 More established foreign Jews lived in the Pletzl (Yiddish for “little

place”), closer to the center of the city, and native Jews removed themselves to the

wealthy districts in the western part of the city, reluctant to integrate with foreigners.36

This isolation of recent immigrant Jews in Belleville and their poverty reinforced their

separation from native Jews and contributed to the xenophobic attitudes of French

citizens as the war approached.

The story of Weisman-Braunthal family is unique in that it is written by Andre

from the perspective of his mother, Rose. Andre was a young boy during the war and

probably does not have many memories of his own. There were also times when Andre

and his mother had different experiences. Andre’s narrative, however, is still relatively

accurate. He relies on letters his mother wrote during the war, and he includes a transcript

of many of them within the text. He did not read the letters until 1980, years after his

mother’s death and the death of others involved, so the letters and his memory are all he

has to consult. Interestingly, Andre is the only narrative writer who remained in France

after the war. His correspondence with the Leo Baeck Institute and the original transcript

are written in French. An English translation of the manuscript is also available,

translated by a British expatriate who lives in the same French town in which Andre now

34. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, 69. 35. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 149.

36. Ibid., 149.

27

resides.37 His thoughts may be colored by a life in France, but the sentiment of the

narrative is very much a memorial to his mother. Like Eva Rappart Edmand’s quest to

keep the memory of survivors alive, Andre donated his mother’s letters and photographs

to the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaire, an archives in France dedicated to

documenting the experiences of European Jews during World War II. Despite the

attachment Andre and his brothers have for their mother’s letters, they realize that the

letters represent part of the history of the Holocaust that must be shared and preserved to

keep the memory of genocide alive.38 The narrative of this family is unique in that it

relies on letters written during the war instead of the memories of the writer.

Except for Rose Braunthal and Michel Weisman, these families immigrated to

France after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. As such, they had limited time to integrate

into French society before the outbreak of war in 1939. This made these families easily

identifiable as foreign Jews in France once sanctions against foreign Jews began in 1940.

Even the Weisman-Braunthal’s remained isolated from French society due to Michel’s

illegal status and their location in a popular immigrant district in Paris. These families are

representative of the many experiences of foreign Jews who arrived in France just prior to

the start of World War II. However, they cannot tell everyone’s story. Left largely untold

in these narratives are the stories of those who did not survive and the circumstances that

led to their deportations. Did those that were deported ever receive help from non-Jews in

37. Pascal Baudouin, “Judith MacArthur, la France pour deuxième famille,” Charant Libre (Charante, France), Dec. 3, 2011, http://www.charentelibre.fr/2011/12/03/la-france-pour-deuxieme-famille,1068119.php; and MS 721, Leo Baeck Institute, accessed March 18, 2013, http://www.lbi.org/digibaeck/results/?qtype=pid&term=549173.

38. Email to Miriam Intrator, February 16, 2004, AR 25176, Box 1, Folder 2, Leo Baeck Institute. Translated by Krista Miller.

28

France? Was receiving help from non-Jews enough to ensure survival? The narratives

studied here cannot answer these questions. However, these narratives are some of the

only evidence of a community of individuals reaching out to help foreign Jews and

contributing to their survival.

29

LifeattheBeginningoftheWar

Having introduced the scholarly debates about Jews in France during the Second

World War and the case studies being used to analyze the issues, a closer examination of

the sources can provide insight into how foreign Jews and non-Jewish French individuals

responded to growing anti-Semitic persecution. Though everyone in France experienced

the disorder and panic at the outbreak of war, the foreign Jewish experience quickly

diverged. Non-Jews did not involve themselves with the foreigners’ plight until it became

evident that the government was actively persecuting the Jews of France.

On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland and two days later, France and

Britain declared war on Germany. The foreign Jews in France experienced the arrival of

war much like the rest of France. Max Gutmann listened to the radio with his business

associates as Germany invaded Poland. According to Gutmann, they only had “a vague

feeling about the degree of suffering which would descend upon…Europe” but “the

entire war took a totally different course than [their] feeble imaginations could have

foreseen.”1 At this point though, foreign Jews reacted like other French citizens whose

country had just entered a war. Fear and terror filled their minds as they joined the mass

exodus of people fleeing the capital.

One of the immediate reactions to the declaration of war was an emptying out of

Paris. People fled to the countryside to avoid the atrocities that would likely befall Paris

as the major metropolitan area of France. Gutmann and his wife made the decision to

leave for the countryside within a week of France entering the war. They arrived at

1. Max Gutmann, “1 September 1939 Paris,” Gutman Family Stories, accessed December 1, 2012, http://gutmanfamily.org/stories/index.htm.

30

Montparnasse railroad station to find it “full of humanity, all of them trying to leave

Paris.”2 On the train they sat on their suitcases in the aisle and at their destination they

spent the night in the train station lobby because the hotels were full.

Rose Braunthal and her children also fled to the countryside in October of 1939.

Her eldest son had left first with his school, and Rose followed to the village of Semur

with the other two children in tow. Arriving in the middle of the night, Rose and other

refugee families were met with hospitality by the villagers who helped them to find

lodging and organized meals and school for the children.3 These villagers were not

Jewish, just kind French people looking to help. Rose, her kids, and the Gutmanns

returned to Paris after the initial excitement of the outbreak of war died down, as did

many others in France, believing that there was no real danger.

Eva Rappart’s family chose to remain in Paris. Her memories of the start of war

are the same as any French girl’s would be. She remembers that everyone was required to

carry around gas masks and the frequent air raid drills, the first being merely two nights

after the declaration of war.4 Life did not change much for Rudolph Sternheimer and his

family outside of Lyon except that his school evacuated to a suburb of Lyon because of

fear that the German might bomb the city.5 At this point, foreign Jews experienced the

outbreak of war the same way as French citizens. They may have had fears about what

would happen to Jews as the war progressed, but these fears were not expressed in the

narratives. Presumably, they still felt safe as Jews in France and did not expect France to

2. Gutmann, “September 1939.”

3. Weisman-Braunthal, “Le Youpin,” 3-4, 8. 4. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” 3-4.

5. Sternheimer, “Our Life in France,” 1-2.

31

be overrun by Germans within a year. As long as France was fighting a war against the

Germans, the Jews did not fear for their lives in France.

Yet, the experience of foreign Jews quickly diverged from that of native Jews and

French citizens as France entered the war - though not, ostensibly, because of their

Jewish identity. Rather, foreign Jews, especially from Germany and Austria, were in

danger because of their status as “enemy aliens.” It was common at that time for foreign

nationals of enemy nations to be interned at the outbreak of war. Britain began to set up

tribunals to deal with enemy aliens from Germany and Austria less than a week after war

broke out, and the United States interned those of Japanese descent even though most

were American citizens. 6 France took similar internment actions regarding their foreign

nationals from enemy countries, many of who happened to be of the Jewish faith.

With the outbreak of war, Gutmann and his business associates immediately

surmised that as foreign refugees they would be headed for French internment camps

based on their prior experiences in Nazi occupied countries. It is also possible that

Gutmann knew he would be persecuted because of his communist activities, assuming he

continued them in France. Regardless of how they knew, Gutmann and his friends left the

office the day war was declared knowing they would never return to work.7 The irony of

the situation did not escape Gutmann, “we were [the war’s] first victims and its first

prisoners.”8 Indeed, Gutmann was taken to a camp de rassemblement on September 5,

6. “Sifting 50,000 enemy aliens,” Daily Telegraph, September 9, 1939, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6163740/World-War-2-Sifting-50000-enemy-aliens.html.

7. Gutmann, “September 1939.”

8. Ibid.

32

1939. Eva Rappart’s father was also interned for a period of three months after men of

German and Austrian origin in Paris were ordered to assemble at Colombes Stadium in

early September.9 These men were among the 15,000 mostly male immigrants arrested by

the French in the first days of the war. Most of them, like Hugo Rappart, were released

within three months.10 After being shuttled around to various camps and military

hospitals, Rappart returned to Paris on December 1, 1939, having been released for ill

treatment at Damigny because the commander mistook the internees to be prisoners of

war instead of civilians. Such confusion and disorder in the internment process was

widespread at this time.

John Sternheimer, of Lyon, was also interned in Bourg-en-Bresse because he was

from Germany and could be “dangerous to the security of the [region].”11 He remained

there for two weeks before returning home. Later in the year, the Sternheimer’s visited a

non-Jewish German couple and learned that they had not been interned at the beginning

of the war, casting doubt in Rudolph Sternheimer’s mind that the actions of the French

government were only motivated by national security.12 Though Sternheimer’s comment

about motivation is a reflection of the attitude he formed towards the Vichy government

after the war, this anecdote still points to discrimination. Clearly at this point, a

separation between the French and foreigners was taking place and foreign Jews bore the

brunt of it.

9. Rappart Edmands, “ Childhood Memoirs,” 4-5.

10. Lazare, Rescue as Resistance, 9. 11. Sternheimer, “Our Life in France,” 1.

12. Ibid., 4.

33

Similar internment actions took place in early 1940, during the fall of France.

Unlike the arrests in 1939, this round included men and women, and sometimes even

whole families.13 Both Hugo Rappart and John Sternheimer were again detained as

foreign nationals, though their families escaped a similar fate. While Sternheimer was

released back to his family in Lyon, Rappart and Max Gutmann, who had not yet been

released from the first internment action in 1939, escaped detention by volunteering for

the French army. Now that the war was hitting close to home, the French government

realized that many of the interned aliens were actually enemies of Hitler and might be

eager to fight (not to mention that France could use the extra manpower).14 Foreign Jews

were thus given the opportunity in early 1940 to show their patriotism by joining a unit of

the French army. Rappart and Gutmann both took advantage of this option. In addition to

avoiding more time in a camp, joining the army provided an opportunity to gain French

citizenship.15 Michel Weisman may have also joined the army, though it is never stated

outright in the narrative. Andre makes multiple references to his father as a prisoner of

war in Germany and also to the military allowance that Rose Braunthal was granted so it

can be inferred that Michel was captured while serving in the army (as were 10,000 to

15,000 other Jewish soldiers in the French army).16 Although the internment camps

impacted three of the families, those interned were only retained briefly before leaving

13. Curtis, Verdict on Vichy, 61; and Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 33.

14. Regina Delacor, “From Potential Friends to Potential Enemies: The Internment of ‘Hostile Foreigners’ in France at the Beginning of the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 3 (July 2000), 363.

15. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 166. 16. Weisman-Braunthal, “Le Youpin,” 7, 15, 17, 18, 23, 26, 29, 33, 34; and

Benbassa, The Jews of France, 166.

34

the camps in some fashion. France was not yet ready to exclude foreign Jews from

society. Instead, the government focused on foreigners who might threaten national

security. Even this fear was quickly forgotten as France needed soldiers and was willing

to accept foreigners ready to fight. In early 1940, foreign Jews suffered some persecution,

but not yet for religious reasons.

Discrimination by the government eventually progressed from nationality to the

Jewish ethnicity, but the change only took place once France was defeated. In the

meantime, foreign Jews began to notice discrimination based on ethnicity in everyday

life. Andre Weisman, having entered a new school in the autumn of 1940, encountered

discrimination from his classmates and his teacher. Both classmates and the teacher

constantly called him a “dirty youpin,” a “highly derogatory colloquial term for a young

Jew.”17 One Jewish classmate of his was even beaten up on the playground and did not

return to school. This discrimination was not, however, ubiquitous. Andre’s brother had a

caring teacher and a positive experience in his classroom. It is possible that the Weisman

children and their friends experienced this discrimination in part because of their relative

poverty and Eastern European origins, but Eva Rappart, who was living in a middle class

part of the city, also noticed a change once the Germans invaded Paris. Eva’s family

knew not to trust the Germans based on their experience during the Anschluss and they

watched as the attitude towards Jews changed, with posters appearing in the streets

proclaiming “Down with the Jews!”18 Even newspapers asserted that the Jews, both

native and foreign, were to blame for France’s troubles, echoing the government’s desire

17. Weisman-Braunthal, “Le Youpin,” 14-15.

18. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” 7.

35

to find a scapegoat for defeat.19 This was the start of extreme discrimination against the

Jews for their ethnicity, not just for their nationality.

In September 1940 the German occupation forces that governed northern France

required all Jews, both foreign and native, to register as such with the administration.

Jewish registration followed in Vichy France in June of 1941, using the definition that

had been promulgated in the Statut des Juifs. In the meantime, the Vichy government

focused on slowing the immigration of refugees, encouraging emigration out of the

country, and eliminating Jews from the economic life of unoccupied France.20 French

Jews put Vichy in a delicate position. While it was clear that Vichy’s German

collaborators were intent on removing all Jews from society, there were many well-

respected Jews in French society including Marc Bloch, historian and founder of the

Annales school of thought, Claude Levi-Strauss, father of modern anthropology, and even

foreign Jews like literary figure Gertrude Stein. Vichy had an interest in protecting the

rights of these Jews both because some French Jews served necessary roles in business

and because of the negative reaction the French public would have to sanctions against

respected citizens.21 Thus, much of Vichy policy tried to draw distinctions between

French and foreign Jews whenever possible. Registration, for example, was not required

for French Jews with an outstanding military record or whom Vichy deemed important to

the state.22 Vichy even discussed its intentions with regards to the protection of French

19. Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 52.

20. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 13. 21. Adler, The Jews of Paris, 17.

22. Ibid., 17.

36

Jews with the Germans.23 Government officials, however, ultimately knew that the fate of

native Jews would be the same as that of immigrants.24 The xenophobic and, ultimately,

anti-Semitic tone of the Vichy government was set.

Two of the families specifically mention the registration of Jews in their memoirs.

It is unclear if the Weisman-Braunthal and Sternheimer families registered. The call to

register came to the Rapparts first because they were still in Paris when the Germans

occupied the city. Eva and her mother went to the local police station and had their

identification cards stamped with a number by a friendly official.25 A few weeks later the

Germans required all Jews to return to the local police stations to have “Jew” stamped on

their identification cards. This time Ella Rappart ignored the order because she was

thinking of leaving Paris for the unoccupied zone and thought, correctly, that having

“Jew” written on her papers would hinder the family’s movement.

The Gutmanns also registered when the time came in Vichy France. At this point

the Gutmanns had moved to Domme, a small town of less than 1,000 people in

unoccupied France. Max Gutmann used the term “Israelite” on his form and the clerk

happily exclaimed, “Why that’s wonderful, then you’re not Jewish!”26 Gutmann quickly

explained that the term also meant Jew and the registration was filed. Clearly any

“hatred” these villagers had for Jews was in the abstract and when it came to personal

interaction, the Jewish faith was not an issue.

23. Adler, The Jews of Paris, 31. 24. Rayski, The Choice of Jews Under Vichy, 79.

25. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” 7. 26. George A. Gutman, “Why do we do the things we do?” Gutman Family

Stories, accessed December 1, 2012, http://gutmanfamily.org/stories/index.htm.

37

Registration meant that the government now had an index of all the Jews in

France (at least all of those who registered). The index was in the hands of the German

and Vichy governments. French police were in charge of the registration process as the

Jewish organizations of France were still reeling from the German invasion and trying to

reestablish themselves in unoccupied France. According to French historian and member

of the French Jewish Resistance Lucien Lazare, the leaders of most French Jewish

organizations made no comment about registration, and actually went to be counted

themselves.27 Most Jews passively complied with the order to register. Max Gutmann’s

son later asked him why he chose to register with a government that was possibly

complying with the Nazis. For Gutmann, as for many Jews, it was a matter of obeying the

law, of obeying authority.28 Not to do so would have required a significant degree of

awareness and dissociation with Jewish identity. Additionally, the alternative, a hidden

and illegal existence, did not yet seem necessary, nor was it appealing in 1941.

That is not to say all Jews obeyed. As was already mentioned, Ella Rappart

decided not to return to have her identification card stamped “Jew” after initially

registering. The Gutmanns had a Jewish friend in Domme who decided not to register,

reasoning that if the government did not know he existed, he was not going to inform

them of his presence.29 This friend survived the war living openly in the small town of

Domme. In the end, decisions such as these must be viewed within the context of the

time. While life was difficult for Jews, they certainly did not think that registration would

27. Lazare, Rescue as Resistance, 36. 28. Gutman, “Why do we do the things we do?”

29. Ibid.

38

endanger their lives. On the contrary, obeying the law felt like the safest move to make.

No harm ever came to anyone who obeyed the law in a civilized society. At this point in

time, Jews still assumed that France would respect the law. They had experienced the

outbreak of war in a similar manner to their non-Jewish counterparts. People had been

brought to internment camps, but these were foreign nationals and France’s actions were

no different than Britain or the United States. While foreigners had a reason to worry

because of their nationality and Vichy’s anti-Semitic laws, Jews still felt that remaining

in France during the war was the safest option.

39

TheTurningPoint

By 1941 most Jews had felt the effects of discrimination by the government, or

were at least aware of its anti-Semitic intentions. Interaction with non-Jewish French

people was mixed. Some encounters were filled with discrimination, such as that of the

Weisman child in school, but many others occurred without any thought to a person’s

Jewish ethnicity. As government persecution grew stronger in late 1941 and early 1942

(corresponding with the introduction of the Final Solution in Germany)1, life for Jews in

France became harder. By mid 1942 Jews had been completely excluded from commerce

and industry, could no longer serve as lawyers and doctors, and had their businesses

liquidated or sold in the “aryanization” process.2 Without the accumulated wealth and

personal connections of many native Jews, foreign Jews had little with which to support

themselves. Additionally, the first arrest of men for being Jewish (as opposed to previous

internments that used the pretext of foreign enemies) took place on May 14, 1941.3 Jews

were now actively being persecuted for being Jewish, and foreign Jews had no resources

with which to attempt an escape. The primary sources suggest that at this point kind acts

from French citizens were of upmost importance to the survival of foreign Jews. Though

details of the Final Solution would not emerge until 1942, non-Jewish French people

began to sympathize with the worsening plight of Jews and began to offer help. For

foreign Jews, this came in the form of assistance with emigration and hiding.

1. In the summer of 1941 the Nazis employed Einsatzgruppen, or death squads, for mass killings at the Russian front. This led to the development of death camps for the systematic murder of Jews as part of the Final Solution by early 1942. The decision to clear France of Jews was not made until June 1942.

2. Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 60-61.

3. Adler, The Jews of Paris, 38.

40

Emigration required the least assistance by far from the general French

population. For foreign Jews what was needed was to find a friendly face in the Vichy

administration. They would also likely need assistance from relatives already abroad and

enough money to pay for the expensive trip. It was most common for people to emigrate

to the United States, but others also remained close in Switzerland, or traveled as far as

Shanghai to escape Nazi Germany.4 None of the destinations were easy to get to as Vichy

required visas and other documentation to exit France, and the countries that accepted

refugees usually required vast amounts of paperwork as well. Even travel between

occupied and Vichy France required a permit.5 Legal immigration was possible, though

expensive, in 1940 and 1941 if the families had enough foresight to leave the country, but

in the summer of 1942, Vichy passed a law forbidding Jews who had entered France after

1936 to travel anywhere except to the occupied zone.6 After that, immigration was

virtually impossible for Jewish families.

The only family in this study to successfully emigrate from France during the war

was the Sternheimer family. In the spring of 1941, Ida Sternheimer started applying to the

American consulate in Lyon for entry visas for the family - but without success.

Unfortunately, the consulate in Lyon did not support immigration to the United States so

it granted very few visas. In fact, Marseille was virtually the only location in all of France

4. Ryan, The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille, 134. 5. Adler, The Jews of Paris, 34.

6. Ryan, The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille, 133-134. This was an ironic reversal of a previous law forbidding Jews to return to the occupied zone once they had crossed into Vichy France that reflects the start of deportations from occupied France.

41

that offered legal immigration papers.7 It was not until Ida began working with the

consulate in Marseille, and relatives in the United States made several trips to the State

Department in Washington D.C. on behalf of the family, that the Sternheimers were able

to obtain the necessary immigration visas.8 Even with the entry visas, the family still

needed to obtain exit visas from France and travel visas for Spain and Portugal since their

journey to America passed through those countries. The process required to leave France

was not easy. Although Vichy France was eager to see its foreign refugees emigrate, the

process was hindered by impediments of Vichy’s own making as well as others that were

out of the regime’s control, including bureaucratic chaos (both Vichy and Jewish aid

organizations), German restrictions, cost, and the reluctance of other countries to absorb

France’s refugees.9

The Rapparts also tried to emigrate from France, but without success. In early

1941 Hugo Rappart, who was in Marseille with his army unit, began the process of

obtaining visas to the United States for the family. At some point, Eva and her mother

had to pick up some papers in person, but they were still in Paris, in the occupied zone.

As previously mentioned, travel between occupied France and Vichy France also

required a pass. Ella Rappart was unable to obtain the necessary paperwork from the

Germans but strangers provided a way for Eva and her mother to cross the border

illegally.10 At every step of the way during their journey to Vichy France, Eva and her

mother encountered French citizens who helped their escape. After missing a bus

7. Ryan, The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille, 130.

8. Sternheimer, “Our Life in France,” 8. 9. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, 335-336.

10. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” 8-9.

42

connection, an innkeeper explained how to cross the barbed wire fence into the

unoccupied zone and find her father-in-law’s farm where they would be safe “if we told

him that she sent us.”11 Even when the French police caught them just over the Vichy

border, the police merely asked them if they were spies or smugglers, told them not to

return to occupied France, and “wished us good luck on our trip.”12 The police had no

desire to persecute this helpless Jewish mother and daughter.

Needless to say, the Rapparts were unable to pick up their papers to immigrate to

the United States. It is unclear if this is because of the delay in reaching Marseille or

because the father did not actually have all the necessary paperwork. After about a year in

Vichy France, the Rapparts again tried to leave France, this time through Switzerland. As

before, they had assistance from non-Jewish French acquaintances who procured false

identification cards showing the Rapparts as French citizens.13 They planned to cross the

border into Switzerland illegally with the help of a guide, but the French identification

cards would help if they were caught. Unfortunately, the guide never showed and the

family fell into the hands of the customs office. They immediately identified the family’s

false papers but let the family go because they were only interested in smugglers. Later in

the day the wife of one of the customs officers offered the Rapparts a place to stay for the

night.14

Although their attempts to leave France were unsuccessful, the Rapparts

“discovered the goodheartedness of the French people. It was they who gave [the family]

11. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” 10.

12. Ibid., 10. 13. Ibid., 14.

14. Ibid., 16.

43

the courage to go on and the hope for a better tomorrow.”15 Of course, written decades

after the events, Eva’s view of the French may be partially nostalgic and selective. She

feels indebted to those that helped her family survive and perhaps exaggerates the impact

of French attitudes on their survival due to the importance their acts have taken in Eva’s

memory. Nonetheless, in analyzing the journey of the Rapparts, it is clear that many

French strangers helped them. The fact that they had help from so many must have had

an impact on their outlook for the future.

At some point it becomes necessary to ask why so many French people helped

foreign Jews. Was it for political reasons, to take a stand against the Nazi occupiers and

Vichy France? Was it because they could not watch another human suffer? The narratives

in this study do not reveal the motives of the French non-Jews because they are written

from the Jewish perspective. There may not be any record of these individual’s motives

but it is likely that a variety of factors went into their decision to act. Some of it could be

political. Though taking a public stand against the government may have seemed too

dangerous, providing food or passage to a passing Jew may have provided an alternative

method of resistance, one that allowed for different degrees of risk depending on the

individual’s comfort level. These types of clandestine actions were outside the reach of

the government and therefore felt like a safe way to resist.16 There also may have been an

aspect of compassion behind the actions of the French. It is difficult to watch someone in

trouble and these individuals may have simply been offering a helping hand to those in

need. Vivette Samuel, a French Jewish social worker at one of the interment camps,

15. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” 16.

16. Benbassa, The Jews of France, 174.

44

recalls the change of opinion in her non-Jewish counterparts, noting, “there is a big

difference between anti-Semitism and agreeing to deportations.”17 The motives of their

actions may be important to a study of French anti-Semitism but the Jews who were

saved only cared that there was someone there to help them.

Besides the Sternheimers who were able to leave the country, every other family

had an experience with living clandestinely at some point during the war. In most cases,

living clandestinely required the help of others, especially if it meant going into hiding.

Even the Gutmann’s friend in Domme who decided not to register as a Jew required the

quiet consent of his friends and neighbors not to expose him as a Jew. It is interesting to

see that as the situation grew worse for Jews in France, accounts of non-Jewish

individuals helping those in need became more frequent.

Beginning in 1942, many Jews in France realized that things were not getting

better and their safety was in danger. They began to accept the idea of living

clandestinely, or outside the law. Having returned to Paris with her children in 1940 after

evacuating to the countryside at the beginning of the war, Rose Braunthal began to see

changes around the city. Arrests became more frequent and there were fewer people on

the street wearing the yellow star that identified Jews.18 Her friends and neighbors

convinced Rose to send her three children back to the country village where they had

stayed at the beginning of the war, and away from the watchful eye of the Germans.

Interestingly, although the family had spent nine months in the tiny village of Semur

several years prior, they apparently did not make enough acquaintances to help the

17. As quoted in Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 154.

18. Weisman-Braunthal, “Le Youpin,” 3.

45

children, showing that not every contact with the French led to benevolent acts. Instead, a

neighbor in Paris knew someone who was driving through Semur. He took the children

with him and then went to the Mayor of the town to get assistance in finding a place for

the three children to live.19 The people of Semur opened their homes to the children, and

they lived with various families in the town throughout the war. What is remarkable is

that essentially the whole village cared for these children for the rest of the war because

no one family was able to keep them for an extended amount of time. They remained in

Semur until their father returned to France in 1945 after being liberated by the Americans

from an unknown prisoner of war camp.20 The Weisman children survived the war

because of the kindness of strangers.

The Gutmanns also lived clandestinely. Like the Weisman children, they did not

disappear from the world. Instead, the Gutmanns forged fake papers that identified them

as French citizens from Alsace.21 Alsace-Lorraine is a region of France that borders

Germany. It has historically been part of France but was transferred to German control

after France lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. The region was returned to France

after Germany’s defeat in World War I, but many people of German descent remained

there. Many German-speaking Jews in France forged papers identifying themselves as

Alsatian French to help explain their German accents. With these fake identities in hand,

the Gutmanns went “underground” in the winter of 1942-1943.22 Friedl entered a home

for unwed mothers (having just given birth in November) and Max found work on a farm.

19. Weisman-Braunthal, “Le Youpin,” 6.

20. Ibid., 34. 21. Gutman, “Why do we do the things we do?”

22. Ibid.

46

Although no mention is made of people helping them obtain the false papers or finding

them a place to stay, it is likely that the Gutmanns had assistance. Additionally, it is

likely that there were suspicions about their religion as they began their clandestine lives,

but no one made mention of this. Instead, the Gutmann’s lived with their secret identities

until eventually escaping to Switzerland in 1944.

The Rapparts experienced incredible kindness from strangers during their time in

hiding. After failing in their attempt to cross into Switzerland, the Rapparts returned to

the town where they were supposed to have met the guide and asked for help. Someone

pointed them in the direction of Father Claudius Longeray who was the local priest in the

parish of St. Martin in the French Alps. Though he had never met the Rapparts, Father

Longeray welcomed them into his parsonage and insisted they remain until the end of the

war.23 Realizing that he could not keep the family hidden in his guest room, Father

Longeray introduced them to his parishioners and found the family a house in a nearby

village. The parishioners knew the family was Jewish, but also thought they were

French.24 It is interesting that Eva felt the need to add that detail, as if the villagers would

not have been as helpful and accommodating to a foreign family. The family completely

integrated into the village life. Eva made friends with girls her age and her mother traded

handmade sweaters for food and firewood.

Not everything went smoothly for the Rapparts. One day two gendarmes showed

up at their house to question the family’s identity. The family admitted that they were

foreign Jews from Austria but the gendarmes did not take them away because the family

23. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” 18.

24. Ibid., 18.

47

was not on the “wanted” list. The Rapparts later found out that one of the villagers had

reported the family to the police. Although this villager was a Nazi sympathizer, Eva

believes he reported the family to make trouble for Father Longeray.25 This highlights the

fact that silence was required from nearly everyone in town to keep a Jewish family safe.

It would only take one person to turn the family in to the authorities. The Rapparts were

lucky that even the authorities did not care enough to take action on the information from

the informant beyond a cursory interrogation. Instead, through the kindness of a stranger

and the complicity of a village, the family survived the war.

It would seem from these examples that there was a tendency for Jews to find the

countryside or remote locations safer than the city. Rose sent her children to a country

village, the Gutmanns lived in a small village until they went into hiding at which time

Max began working on a farm, and the Rapparts found a safe haven in a small mountain

village. There is not much research on this phenomenon, though Adler did examine the

population decrease in Paris during the war. The 1940 census carried out by the Germans

found just fewer than 150,000 Jews living in Paris. Adler estimates that 20,000 to 50,000

Jews were left when Paris was liberated in 1944.26 Of course, much of this decrease is

due to deportations, but Adler also points out that many Jews fled to Vichy France to

avoid living under German rule.27 The three families are certainly examples of Jews

fleeing Paris after the German invasion. The fact that they ended up in villages and

remote locations is in part due to the composition of Vichy France at that time. It is also

25. Rappart Edmands, “Childhood Memoirs,” 19. 26. Adler, The Jews of Paris, 14.

27. Ibid., 10.

48

likely that these Jews looked to avoid settling in the larger cities in Vichy France so as

not to be in close proximity to government officials and law enforcement. They were

looking for any advantage that would improve their chance of survival.

Survival, whether through immigration or a clandestine existence, was essentially

only possible with the help of French non-Jews. Those that were not able to find

assistance from others usually ended up in internment camps. By the end of the war,

France had deported approximately 76,000 Jews to the East as part of the Nazi’s Final

Solution. Almost all of them died.28 It is interesting to note, though, that even those that

were interned in France as Jews received help from friends and strangers. Most historians

now agree that the start of deportations to German concentration camps was the turning

point for French public opinion.29 Before the deportations the French public could

convince themselves that Jews were not suffering any more than anyone else, or at least

that they deserved some excessive suffering for their role in the fall of France.30 With the

deportations in the summer of 1942, however, Jews turned from the problem to the

victims and the French could no longer turn a blind eye.31 It appears that Vichy’s actions

in collaboration with Germany against the Jews had gone too far and the French were

finally moved to take action. This is not to say that the people of France publically

protested the deportations. There was never a collective demonstration against the

28. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, xi. According to Marrus and Paxton, only 3% of those deported returned to France after the war. The rest were killed in concentration camps.

29. See especially Rayski, The Choice of Jews Under Vichy, 4; and Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 270.

30. Rayski, The Choice of Jews Under Vichy, 11.

31. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 191, 270.

49

government. However, the sum of individual acts of kindness created a mass movement

of silent resistance against the government’s decisions, something that French historians

who lived through the war recognize, but historians outside of France have been slow to

acknowledge.32 Indeed, the idea of La Resistance, which many non-French historians

advocate was a myth, may actually have been based in some truth. Though limited in

their overt political actions, many in France chose to align themselves with Jews in direct

disagreement with their government.

According to Marrus and Paxton, the change in public opinion due to the

deportation of Jews was aided by the German decree that Jews wear the yellow star in

public to identify them as Jews. This was the first public persecution of Jews (internment

camps were “somewhere else”) and the French did not react kindly to it. The star aroused

pity for the Jews among the French public, a reaction unanticipated by the government.33

Rayski explains that reports from German authorities in France sent back to the Reich

document the reaction of the French to the star and public arrests. The French “all too

often demonstrated sympathy for the arrested Jews” one report stated.34 Another one

explains that the French population “severely condemns these measures, which it

characterizes as inhumane.”35 The blame for these actions fell equally on the French

government as on the Germans, for though it was the Germans who decreed the wearing

of the star in the occupied zone, it was the French police who carried out the

enforcement. The yellow star decree contributed to the growing sentiment that actions

32. Rayski, The Choice of Jews Under Vichy, 3.

33. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 237-238. 34. Quoted in Rayski, The Choice of Jews Under Vichy, 95.

35. Quoted in Rayski, The Choice of Jews Under Vichy, 97.

50

taken against the Jews were growing too extreme even without the knowledge of the fate

of deported Jews.

For those who were interned, there was little hope for help from outsiders though

some assistance was still possible. John Sternheimer was interned four times before the

family immigrated to the United States. The first two arrests have already been explored

as part of the xenophobic reaction to the start of war in 1939 and the fall of France in

1940. The early internments were reminiscent of the reaction many countries had towards

foreign nationals during war and these internments were temporary. After the Germans

occupied France, the internments began to grow into something different. They were

targeted specifically at Jews, and especially foreign Jews. However, even then, it took a

while for the intensity to increase. During early 1941, John Sternheimer was detained for

a third time near Nîmes but was able to escape by bribing the guard early one morning

and hopping on the train back to his family.36 Perhaps those working at the camps did not

have strong feelings of animosity to the prisoners held inside. In this specific instance, the

guard found it acceptable to take money in exchange for a prisoner’s freedom. It is

unknown whether other guards had similar attitudes, but the kind act of this guard was

another example of the French helping foreign Jews.

In May of 1941, John Sternheimer was again interned, this time at the notorious

camp of Gurs in the Pyrenees. Gurs was originally built in 1939 to house refugees of the

Spanish Civil War. The camp consisted of overcrowded wooden barracks and was in

desperate need of improvements. Because of the overcrowding, the interned were never

provided enough food. Only the presence of relief organizations like the Red Cross and

36. Sternheimer, “Our Life in France,” 3.

51

the Quakers made the camp livable.37 Even considering that Sternheimer was interned in

a camp of deplorable conditions, he still benefited from the help of strangers. He was

scheduled to be taken to Germany (and most likely Poland after that) but when it came

time to board the train, Sternheimer noticed other trains waiting in the yard. He asked a

guard if one was going to Marseille, for the transit camp Les Milles, and the guard

pointed to another train. Sternheimer boarded that train instead and ended up in Les

Milles where he easily left again to return to his family.38 Even with deportations starting,

this guard was not afraid to help out a resourceful prisoner. Again, this guard’s individual

act cannot be taken as widespread evidence that the guards at all French camps were this

lenient. In fact, France was responsible for the administration of the internment camps,

roundups of the Jews, and even the organization of deportations. Clearly, there were

many who were willing to partake in the destruction of the Jews of France. However,

even in the most desperate of locations, Jews had the chance to find someone who was

willing to help.

In 1942, deportations to the East, and especially Poland, began in earnest. By this

point, Nazi policy had evolved from emigration to deportation and extermination of the

Jews. Vichy France, under strict deportation quotas from the Germans, stepped up their

arrests of Jews, targeting foreign Jews before native Jews whenever possible.39 In August

of 1942, the Gutmann’s were still living openly, but quietly, in the small village of

Domme. They lived in a state of anxiety, having heard about deportations from the camps

37. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 172-173. 38. Sternheimer, “Our Life in France,” 5.

39. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 248.

52

in occupied France (though still unaware of the exterminations taking place), and having

no friends or acquaintances who could help them.40 On the morning of August 26, the

Gutmanns were awoken by a knock on their door. The gendarmes had come to arrest

Max. In this small town, the arrest was very civil. They let Friedl remain because she was

pregnant. In Max Gutmann’s account of the incident, he remembers the names of both

policemen who arrested him and recalls their “expression of sympathy” at what they were

required to do.41 Gutmann was taken to a small camp of only 120-150 people, mostly

Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, Poland, and other countries. It is likely that this

camp was a temporary holding place for the detainees, who would then be sent to

Drancy, a camp in the occupied zone from where all Vichy Jews who were deported to

the East departed.42 Gutmann was lucky that he was taken to this type of camp first

because the intimate and informal quarters probably helped save his life. Camp

employees were willing to review the cases of prisoners and happily granted releases to

those that met the loosely interpreted criteria. Though he states that few were granted

release, Gutmann was allowed to return home because his wife was expecting a child.43

Upon returning to Domme, Gutmann recalls that everyone “came to express their joy

about [his] return and indignation about [his] arrest.”44 In Gutmann’s case, the camp

administration was still lenient, even though deportations to extermination camps in the

East had begun, and the townspeople were troubled by what had befallen their neighbor.

40. Max Gutmann, “26 August 1942,” Leo Baeck Institute, 1. 41. Ibid., 2.

42. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 252. 43. Gutmann, “26 August 1942,” 4.

44. Ibid., 4.

53

Although they had not done anything to stop the arrest, they showed signs of

disapproving of the action.

Things went differently for Rose Braunthal in the big city of Paris. She was part

of the Vel d’Hiv roundup in Paris on July 16 and 17, 1942. During this action, police

rounded up approximately 13,000 Jews and held them at the Veledrome d’Hiver, a

bicycle arena, or in the nearby camp of Drancy (where Rose was taken because she had

no children with her, having sent them to the countryside). The arrest is described very

differently than Max Gutmann’s. Though Andre was not present for his mother’s arrest,

he colors the arrest in a very negative and foreboding tone because he knew his mother’s

fate when writing the narrative. At Rose’s arrest, the “heavy footsteps” of the police

could be heard coming down the hall before they began “beating at the door.”45 Though

this arrest took place in the occupied zone, the police were still French. Not everyone in

France helped the Jews, and many actually led to their destruction. However, these were

mostly government officials and those carrying out the policies of the government, like

the police officers involved in the roundups of Jews and those at the camps. For these

actions, President Chirac publically apologized fifty years later.

Rose was held at Drancy for two months, during which time she was allowed to

write to only one person every other week. Her correspondence with her French

neighbor, Madame Marthe, survives to tell the remainder of Rose’s story.46 At first Rose

45. Weisman-Braunthal, “Le Youpin,” 1.

46. Though it cannot be confirmed by the available documentation, it is likely that Madmen Marthe was a non-Jewish French citizen based on the evidence of her ability to live openly in Paris, to converse freely with French officials, and to travel unimpeded around France. Andre’s narrative and Madame Marthe’s letters show no evidence that she feared for her life as many other Jews living in Paris did.

54

was hopeful that her case would be reviewed, like that of Max Gutmann, because she was

the wife of a prisoner of war and also the mother of children born in France.47 Her

neighbor Madame Marthe also tried to do everything she could to obtain Rose’s release,

visiting the police, Jewish relief organizations, and other official departments, but to no

avail. Though Rose had someone working on her side, at this point forces in the occupied

zone were too strong to oppose. After having been listed on several convoys, Rose was

deported to Auschwitz on September 18, 1942 and sent straight to the gas chambers upon

arrival.48

Despite her fatal outcome, Rose still had help from non-Jewish friends and

neighbors, especially that of Madame Marthe. Madame Marthe advocated for Rose’s

release, corresponded with her at Drancy, sent her packages, corresponded with Rose’s

husband, and visited and looked after the children in the countryside. The circumstances

were too much for one person’s help to overcome. The fact that Rose was in Paris where

Germans were in control, that she was alone, that she was part of the largest roundup of

Jews in France, and that deportations had began in earnest by August of 1942, all

contributed to Rose’s inescapable death. At some point, the aid of friends and strangers is

no longer effective. For many Jews, foreign and native alike, help came too late or not at

all. Rose was still fortunate to have a friend on her side even after her death because

Madame Marthe continued to look out for the safety and wellbeing of the rest of the

family and helped to ensure that Rose’s children survived the war.

47. Weisman-Braunthal, “Le Youpin,” 5, 16.

48. Ibid., 28-29.

55

Of all the families examined in this study, only Rose did not survive. The

percentage of foreign Jews in France who did survive the war is less than the percentages

suggested by this study, but it is no less impressive that so many were able to escape Nazi

and French persecution. This is due in large part to the assistance French individuals gave

to foreign Jews, especially after 1941. These four case studies demonstrate countless

instances of French non-Jews aiding these persecuted foreigners. The families in these

narratives actually received aid from more than one stranger to help them survive the

war. These memoirs are an important source of information about the numerous acts of

kindness provided by the French.

It is important to remember, however, that these narratives exist because the

foreign Jews who wrote them survived the war. These survivors are inclined to remember

the especially kind strangers who helped them, and to feel a debt of gratitude for their

efforts. The lasting image of the war for these survivors is not the evil that they faced, but

the kindness that helped them make it through. Nonetheless, these narratives are concrete

evidence that French individuals were reaching out to foreign Jews during the war in an

effort prevent their deportation.

This paper’s focus on foreign Jews highlights the additional struggles foreigners

experienced due to the xenophobic attitudes of the French. Not only were foreign Jews

persecuted because they were Jewish, but they were also persecuted because they were

not native to France. This double persecution is the reason that only fifty percent of

foreign Jews in France survived the war while the native Jewish population fared much

better. Internment actions at the beginning of the war focused on enemy nationals, and

the laws later enacted by the Vichy government always affected foreign Jews first.

56

Despite the numerous obstacles that put foreign Jews at a disadvantage, a large number of

them still survived. By studying this tightly focused population in France, it demonstrates

even more emphatically the importance of the aid given to Jews in France by the French

non-Jewish population. Because French individuals chose to assist Jews against

government persecution, many Jewish lives in France were saved.

Returning to the idea of La Resistance presented at the beginning of the thesis,

perhaps it is not the myth historians have spent the last several decades promoting. The

actions of the French in these narratives were not overt political statements, nor were they

coordinated national efforts to defy the Nazis, but they were expressions of something

real. These individuals who offered help actively chose to assist those whom the

government denied rights. Their actions do not need to have intention because the act

itself speaks volumes in its mere existence. The Jews too, both foreign and native, in

attempting to maintain their presence in France during the war chose to defy the Vichy

government and its German counterpart. Though the intention of the actions of Jews may

have been only to survive, their survival still speaks to a movement of resistance against

the government. While not the idea of La Résistance that developed in France after the

war, many in France during the war still participated in acts of resistance against the

discriminatory nature of the government.

This thesis only touches on the topic of foreign Jewish survival in France during

World War II. The narratives studied account for four foreign families, though there are

many more who survived, and some who did not. There are also the stories of native Jews

and their survival or deportation. This topic can be further researched to better understand

the attitudes of the French people during the war. Did they embrace the anti-Semitism of

57

the government? If not, why did their disagreement manifest itself in individual acts of

kindness towards Jews? In studying these questions, the nuances of French anti-Semitism

can be better understood to correctly reflect the attitudes of the people of France and their

government.

58

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