Jews in France during World War II

Hanover: for Brandeis University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by University Press of New England, 2001. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. Good. xxv, [3], 601, [1] pages. Illustrations (Tables, Figures). Notes. Bibliography. Index. Minor cover wear and soiling noted. This is one of The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry series. Renée Poznanski (born 26 April 1949 in Paris) is a French-born Israeli historian, specialist in the Holocaust, and the Jewish Resistance in France during the Second World War. Renée Poznanski is the Yaakov and Poria Avnon Professor of Holocaust Studies in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, a department she created and has led for several years. Poznanski's book Jews in France during World War II was awarded the Jacob Buchman Prize for the Memory of the Holocaust. Renée Poznanski presents an extraordinary panorama of Jewish daily life in all of France during World War II. The Jews in France during World War II provides a detailed and nuanced account of Jews in both occupied and Vichy France as well as of Jewish life in French camps. In addition to standard French and German documentation, Poznanski relies on non-published sources (diaries, reports by various organizations, personal correspondence) to build riveting collective portraits of Jewish suffering and survival. Even more than this, she uses these sources to illuminate "the rhythm of French and German persecution, the reactions of Jewish and non-Jewish opinion, and the various strategies of the Jewish victims." A crucial contribution to French Jewish and Holocaust historiography, and an important corrective to much of the literature that treats Jews as victims rather than as subjects able to make (some) choices, The Jews in France during World War II is certain to become the most authoritative work in the field.