France and the Holocaust
Annotated Bibliography
Elizabeth Ciarrocca, a senior history major at the University of California Santa Barbara who is currently working on a Honors Thesis concerning the leaders of the Holocaust in France, looks at the situation Jews in France faced during World War II. Based on the examination of the works by Michael Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Renée Poznanski, and Susan Zuccotti, Elizabeth argues that the Holocaust in France was encouraged b French anti-Semitic trends which created a climate where the French offered assistance to the German forces, who without such aid, could not have carried out, to such ends, the Final Solution in France. This page was completed for a web project for an introductory lecture course on the Nazi Holocaust.
Poznanski, Renée. Jews in France during World War II. Translated by Nathan Bracher. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997. (jump to)
Zuccotti, Susan. The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews. New York: Basic Books, 1993. (jump to)
Marrus, Michael R. and Robert O. Paxton. Vichy France and the Jews. New York: Basic Books, 1891. (jump to)
Jews in France During World War II
Renée Poznanski
Poznanski, Renée. Jews in France during World War II. Translated by Nathan
Bracher. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997. Renée Poznanski’s publication, Jews in France during World War II (originally
published in French, Les Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale,
in 1997, and published in translation by Nathan Bracher in 2001) provides
a very detailed look at the Jewish community as it existed under Vichy’s Collaborationist
government. Her book goes to great lengths to give extensive descriptions
of the evolution of Jewish policy and discrimination in France, the conditions
for Jewish prisons in French concentration camps, and the reactions from the
Jewish communities. While other books such as Paxton and Marrus’s Vichy France
and the Jews deal with the political side of Vichy’s policies towards the
Jews, Poznanski deals more with the social situation of Jews and how they
endured the hardships of the war years. As Poznanski points out in her preface,
her goal was to “bring them [Jews] out from under the legal texts that summarily
meted out their fate….whereas Jews have often been treated only as objects
or victims of history, I strive to restore to them their role as subjects”
(preface xv). Poznanski achieves this with numerous references to personal
accounts and individual stories. She creates a picture of the Jewish community
as made up of individuals, each with their own unique story and history.
This book does not focus on how the Nazis tried to erase Jewish individual
identity, but rather shows how the Jewish people endured and survived the
long years of dehumanization. (back to top) The Holocaust, the French and the Jews Susan Zuccotti Zuccotti, Susan. The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews. New York: Basic
Books, 1993. Susan Zuccotti writes a good book surveying the Holocaust as it took place
in France. Her book is somewhat easier to read than her counterpart Renée
Poznanski. However, Zuccotti is a good starting point to introduce yourself
to the subject of Jews in France. Like Poznanski, Zuccotti makes use of personal
accounts and interviews to explore this topic. Zuccotti dedicates a large
portion of her book to describing how the remaining portion of the French
Jewish population, some 250,000 people survived. In view of all the literature
looking at how the French were collaborators who were responsible for the
death of Jews in France, Zuccotti looks at how Jews survived because of the
direct intervention of French citizens, or simply because of their silence.
While the number of French Jews who died in the Holocaust is significant in
comparison to other countries, the number of French Jews who survived is significant
in comparison as well. More Jews in France survived than in other German
occupied countries. Zuccotti is concerned with the public opinion in France
and how the French dealt with the pressures of Vichy while being surrounded
by Jewish neighbors. It is because of the public opinions of the French and
their decisions, whether it be to hid the Jews or actively aid them or to
simply remain silent during active police roundups from an anti-Semitic government,
that, despite so many deaths, so many French Jews were able to survive. The Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Summer 1995 v27 n1 p109 (book review)
(link) The Economist, Sept. 11, 1993 v328 n7828 p88 (book review) (link) (back to top) Vichy France and the Jews Marrus, Michael R. and Robert O. Paxton. Vichy France and the Jews. New
York: Basic Books, 1891. Robert O. Paxton, this time in a partnership with Michael Marrus, published
yet another book in 1981 that changed the history of Vichy France. Paxton’s
first book, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1941, was the first
of its kind of acknowledge the extent of France’s Collaboration with Nazi
Germany during World War II. In this book, Vichy France and the Jews, Paxton
and Marrus examine Vichy’s anti-Semitic policies and their contribution during
to the Holocaust. Marrus and Paxton focus on the political side of the Holocaust
in France, explaining in depth how Vichy engaged in a collaboration with the
Nazis to deport Jews to the East. In the conclusion, Marrus and Paxton present
an interesting argument to the question of what degree of knowledge Vichy
possessed about the final destination of the Jews. The explanation of work
camps was logical: it was a time of war and Frenchmen themselves were being
recruited to Germany to work in the factories there under the Service du travail
obligatoire (although it should be noted that this was obviously not a very
popular program). At the beginning of the war, Germany had used France as
a dumping ground for their unwanted Jewish population so when in 1942, Germany
offered to take them back, Vichy did not question the decision because they
wanted to rid themselves of the refugees. However, France was still the only
country to initiate their own anti-Semitic policies. Vichy was a government
that was operating on a foundation of fallacies and fell into an assumption
that “the German authorities would be grateful to the French for pursuing
a parallel anti-Jewish policy, and would respond by yielding greater authority
to the French over this and other spheres of national activity”(Marrus and
Paxton 368). And when Germany did not invade Britain or win the war, Vichy
fell to blame for the actions that it took against its citizens. Stanley Hoffman, writing for the New York Times, November 1, 1981. (link) annotated
bibliography; 
Book Reviews of The Holocaust, the French and the Jews
A Book Review of Vichy France and the Jews
list bibliography;
about the authors