The Survival Of The Jews In France 1940 44

Between the French defeat in 1940 and liberation in 1944, the Nazis killed almost 80,000 of France's Jews, both French and foreign. Since that time, this tragedy has been well-documented. But there are other stories hidden within it-ones neglected by historians. In fact, 75% of France's Jews escaped the extermination, while 45% of the Jews of Belgium perished, and in the Netherlands only 20% survived. The Nazis were determined to destroy the Jews across Europe, and the Vichy regime collaborated in their deportation from France. So what is the meaning of this French exception? Jacques Semelin sheds light on this 'French enigma', painting a radically unfamiliar view of occupied France. His is a rich, even-handed portrait of a complex and changing society, one where helping and informing on one's neighbours went hand in hand; and where small gestures of solidarity sat comfortably with anti-Semitism. Without shying away from the horror of the Holocaust's crimes, this seminal work adds a fresh perspective to our history of the Second World War.

A renowned historian of genocide reconsiders French responses to the Nazis' attempt to exterminate France's Jewish population.

Anny Latour was an active member of the Jewish Resistance in France. She manufactured forged identity papers, transported arms, and smuggled children out of danger to safe havens. Out of 350,000 Jew in France, about 90,000 fell victims of the Holocaust. The toll would have been much higher had it not been for the well organized Resistance organized by the Jews along with the French Resistance. Tens of thousands of Jewish children were saved through the underground. A Jewish fighting force, the Jewish Army even defeated a German garrison at Gastres. Latour's saga of the heroic exploits, escapes, devotion and sacrifice are based on hundreds of personal accounts with survivors and eyewitnesses and research.

The history of France's "hidden children" and of the French citizens who saved six out of seven Jewish children and three-fourths of the Jewish adult population from deportation during the Nazi occupation is little known to American readers. In The Hidden Children of France, Danielle Bailly (a hidden child herself whose family travelled all over rural France before sending her to live with strangers who could protect her) reveals the stories behind the statistics of those who were saved by the extraordinary acts of ordinary people. Eighteen former "hidden children" describe their lives before, during, and after the war, recounting their incredible journeys and expressing their deepest gratitude to those who put themselves at risk to save others.

Between 1940 and 1944, when Alain Corcos was a teenager, the Germans systematically plundered the French countryside to feed their own armed forces and civilians. Both the Nazis and the fascist Vichy government forced everyone with "Jewish blood" to register as Jews, condemning those who complied to death in concentration camps. The Little Yellow Train chronicles the years of occupation in France, describing the Corcos family's struggles to survive. In addition to finding enough food to sustain themselves, they needed to forge records and identification cards in order to conceal the fact that some of their ancestors were Jewish. When the SS began kidnapping young French men and women to work in German factories, the author and his brother decided that the time had come to escape and join the Allied forces overseas.

Describes how Jewish resistance fighters in France saved thousands with forged identity papers, sabotaged the German war effort, and fought against Nazi forces

The Macmillan Profiles series is a collection of volumes featuring profiles of famous people, places and historical events. This text profiles heroes and activists of the Holocaust, including Elie Wiesel, Oskar Schindler, Simon Wiesenthal, Primo Levi, Anne Frank and Raoul Wallenberg, as well as soldiers, Partisans, ghetto leaders, diplomats and ordinary citizens who fought German aggression and risked their lives to save Jews.

Since antiquity, European Jewish diaspora communities have used formal appeals to secular and religious authorities to secure favors or protection. Such petitioning took on particular significance in modern dictatorships, often as the only tool left for voicing political opposition. During the Holocaust, tens of thousands of European Jews turned to individual and collective petitions in the face of state-sponsored violence. This volume offers the first extensive analysis of petitions authored by Jews in nations ruled by the Nazis and their allies. It demonstrates their underappreciated value as a historical source and reveals the many attempts of European Jews to resist intensifying persecution and actively struggle for survival.

It is generally accepted that the French government independently enacted anti-Semitic regulations during World War II. Despite the country's alignment with Nazi policies, over 75% of Jews in France survived the war. This thesis examines the relationship between the French non-Jews and the foreign Jewish population in France using the personal narratives of four survivors. In analyzing the type of help the French provided to foreign Jews, it becomes clear that the French were not as anti-Semitic as their government. Their decisive actions created a mass movement of individual resistance that helped save thousands of lives during World War II.