Homes as Witnesses of the Holocaust: The Parisian Jews and their neighbors

In 1940, Paris was home to some 200,000 Jews of whom 40,000 will be deported or shot by the end of the war. The rest survived by moving to the south of France or moving to hiding places in the city. After the Liberation of Paris, at the end of August 1944, however, these survivors found their tenements emptied of their possessions and occupied by new families. Most were unable to reclaim their home.

Indeed, the restored French Republic chose to sacrifice the rights of Jewish tenants in order to appease a Parisian population that, during the Occupation, had taken advantage of the absence of Jewish families to solve a long-standing housing crisis exacerbated by the war. Based on ten years of research and the analysis of numerous unpublished archives, with her two colleagues, Sarah Gensburger highlighted the ways in which the City of Paris, landlords, trustees, neighbors and prospective tenants took an interest in the persecution of Jews. This forgotten chapter of the history of the Holocaust in France invites us to reconsider the historiography that has been developing in recent years and praises the supposed solidarity of Parisians with the Jews as opposed to the attitude of the French state and administration. Considering homes as witnesses highlights, on the contrary, how the policies of persecution and the attitude of the population reinforced each other explaining why the Holocaust could take place in Paris where no ghettos ever existed. Until today, this spoliation has been forgotten and never repaired.
This talk is based on the book Appartements témoins. La spoliation des locataires juifs à Paris, 1940-1946 (La Découverte, 2025), by Isabelle Backouche, Sarah Gensburger et Eric le Bourhis.
Sarah Gensburger is full professor of sociology, political science, and history at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Sciences Po Paris. Between 2021 and 2024, she served as the president of the international Memory Studies Association.

She is the author of fifteen books, including Beyond Memory: Can We Really Learn from the Past, Palgrave, 2020, with Sandrine Lefranc; Memory on my Doorstep: Chronicles of the Bataclan Neighborhood (Paris, 2015-2016), Leuven University Press, 2019; Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris 1940-1944, Indiana University Press, 2015 and National Policy, Global Memory: The Commemoration of the Righteous among the Nations from Jerusalem to Paris, Berghahn Books, 2016.

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This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia University Alliance Program and the Columbia University French Department.

Host or Publisher The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University