The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews

by Susan Zuccotti

Many recent books have documented the collaboration of the French authorities with the anti-Jewish German policies of World War II. Yet about 76 percent of France’s Jews survived—more than in almost any other country in Western Europe. How do we explain this phenomenon? Certainly not by looking at official French policy, for the Vichy government began preparing racial laws even before the German occupiers had decreed such laws. To provide a full answer to the question of how so many French Jews survived, Susan Zuccotti examines the response of the French people to the Holocaust. Drawing on memoirs, government documents, and personal interviews with survivors, she tells the stories of ordinary and extraordinary French men and women. Zuccotti argues that the French reaction to the Holocaust was not as reprehensible as it has been portrayed.

Genres: History, Holocaust, France, Nonfiction

383 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1993

Reviews

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book a few years ago but never got around to writing a review on it. It took me awhile to finish it because of the detailed information as well as the story it told.

The dedication at the front of the book tells it all:
"This book is dedicated to the more than 3,500 Jewish children under the age of fourteen who were arrested in Paris on July 16, 1942, and forcibly separated from their mothers at the French camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande two weeks later. Their mothers were deported. The children had to fend for themselves until they too were deported, bewildered, terrified, and alone, in sealed cattle cars without light or air, to be murdered upon arrival at Auschwitz.

Regarding census data: pg 55 - even as late as the summer of 1942, most Jews persisted in believing that as long as they obeyed every regulation, their law-abiding society would spare them. The habit of obeying the law was an equally understandable characteristic among educated and patriotic middle-class people who had always taken pride in their good citizenship.

pg59 - Pierre Masse was a former deputy, senator, and cabinet minister who had many family members serve in the 1st and 2nd world wars. After hearing that Jews could no longer serve as officiers in the French army, he wrote a scathing letter to Marshall Petain. Tragically, he and his brother were deported to Auschwitz.

pg 62 - Four professors of theology prepared a text condemning the racial laws. The assembly rejected the request and issued a call for "a sincere and complete loyalty to the established power."

pg 280 - French offenses did not end with racial laws and internment. Vichy officials at the highest levels ordered French police to round up mostly foreign Jewish men in Paris in 1941 and made no protest when they and many French Jewish men were deported in March 1942. Officials then demonstrated appalling contempt for human life by depositing more than 8,000 prisoners in the Velodrome d'Hiver, with little preparation for their maintenance. Prior to the arrests, Pierre Laval, the head of government, had urged the Nazis to deport the children, before the Germans had decided what to do with them. They were deported.

[Mia]

Read this for a course I’m in about France and the Holocaust. Learned so much in such an interesting way.

[Angela Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, thorough account of the Jewish people in France during WWII. At times it reads more like a reference book, with lots of lists of numbers/statistics.

[Susan Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A close examination of France during the Holocaust and the fate of both native French Jews and foreign Jews who had fled to France after their own countries were invaded by Germany.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago but it's a great read