The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution; Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940-1944
New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. First Oxford Paperback, first printing [stating]. Trade paperback. xxii, 310, [2] pages. Illustrations. Tables. Abbreviations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. Label removed from half-title page. Jacques Adler (1927-2017) was born in 1927. Jacques brought his experience in the Resistance to the study of history and used it in his pioneering Ph.D. Jacques joined the Jewish underground in Paris and was active throughout the war. During the Liberation, Jacques was involved in the Resistance takeover of the offices of the Union générale des israélites de France (UGIF), the organization which the Vichy regime forced French Jews to create and pay for in order to control the Jewish community. It was to the UGIF records that Jacques would turn when he began research for a Ph.D.. In 1987, OUP published a version as The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944. It was in this work that Jacques brought to bear his experience in the underground, in a meticulous study using the records of the UGIF. The leaders of the UGIF were generally from the Jewish establishment. They undertook the work in the naive hope that they could palliate the regime’s implementation of anti-Semitic measures. Jacques undertook his work in a spirit of what the eminent historian H. R. Kedward (1991, English Historical Review, vol. 106, 749–50) called ‘objective scholarship' Adler had good reason, as a resistance activist, to condemn those who took part in Vichy’s institution [UGIF], but he does not do so; rather he leaves the reader to decide whether Jewish compromise with Vichy was avoidable or not.’. In this work Jacques Adler, a former member of the French resistance, asks: "Are people powerless when confronted with a State determined to destroy them? Why didn't more Jews survive the Holocaust? How did we survive? Did we, the survivors, do all that we could, at the time, to help more people survive?" In answering these questions, Adler examines the diverse Jewish organizations that existed in Paris during the German occupation from 1940 to 1944. The first part of the book analyzes the national composition of the Jewish population, its expropriation and daily life. The remaining chapters discuss the roles, activities, and policies of various Jewish organizations as they supported Jews in their search for survival, alerted the non-Jewish population to the terrible threat faced by every Jewish family, and acted as representatives of the Jewish people--a role that led to inevitable administrative cooperation with the Nazis and Vichy. Combining careful scholarship with a survivor's zeal to set the record straight, Adler gives an insider's account of resistance members, whose determination was born of the pain and anger that came from the loss of loved ones, whose political ideology sustained them even when they faced the threat of starvation and the loneliness of clandestine existence, and whose anguish was all the more intense because they belonged to that community in Paris that was selected as fodder for the "Final Solution." Thoroughly researched and drawing upon previously unavailable materials, Adler presents an important portrait of communal solidarity and communal conflict, of heroes and those whose courage failed. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Holocaust, Vichy Zone, UGIF, Israelites de France, Jews, Anti-Semitism, Deportation, Jewish Relief, Immigrants, Survival, Expropriation, Military Occupation, Franco-Jewish, Resistance, Amelot Committee, Andre Baur, Theodor Dannecker, Internment, Xavi
ISBN: 0195043065
[Book #83485]
Price: $45.00