Escape from Vichy: The Refugee Exodus to the French Caribbean

by Eric T Jennings

In the early years of World War II, thousands of political refugees traveled from France to Vichy-controlled Martinique in the French Caribbean, en route to what they hoped would be safer shores in North, Central, and South America. While awaiting transfer from the colony, the exiles formed influential ties--with one another and with local black dissidents. Escape from Vichy recounts this flight from the refugees' perspectives, using novels, unpublished diaries, archives, memoirs, artwork, and other materials to explore the unlikely encounters that fueled an anti-fascist artistic and intellectual movement.

The refugees included Spanish Republicans, anti-Nazi Germans and Austrians, anti-fascist Italians, Jews from across Europe, and others fleeing violence and repression. They were met with hostility by the Vichy government and rejection by the nations where they hoped to settle. Martinique, however, provided a site propitious for creative ferment, where the revolutionary Victor Serge conversed with the anthropologist Claude L vi-Strauss, and the Surrealist Andr Breton met Negritude thinkers Ren M nil and Aim and Suzanne C saire. As Eric T. Jennings shows, these interactions gave rise to a rich current of thought celebrating blackness and rejecting racism.

What began as expulsion became a kind of rescue, cut short by Washington's fears that wolves might be posing in sheep's clothing.

Genres: France, History, World War II

320 pages, Hardcover

Published March 9, 2018

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a well-researched scholarly book about refugees from Europe fleeing from France to Martinique during the early days of World War II. It culminates with the end of the Vichy French regime on Martinique in 1943. It describes the situation in Vichy France and the struggle between pro-Vichy forces and those who despised the German domination of the rump state and the similar attitudes in the French colony. The book also describes the many people fleeing Nazi Europe; Jews, German intellectuals, political opponents of the Nazi regime and Republican Spanish. The book describes difficulties of getting out of France, the trip across the Atlantic, and their internment in refugee camps on Martinique. There are also descriptions of the impact that the refugees had on the inhabitants of the island, both black and white. Racism and antisemitism are discussed as well as the pro Free French uprising.

This is not a book of high drama focusing on a single individual or group. Instead, it is a scholarly overview of the European diaspora and its impact on the island during the war. The one part that I found to be least interesting was the chapter on Surrealism and Negritude. Those who are into the artistic movement in the Caribbean and its impact on race relations might enjoy it. It's a good book and if you are interested in a detailed view of the conditions in the French Caribbean in WWII you may enjoy it.