But Where Will We Go? France and Jewish Refugees in the Twentieth Century

• In Event: Holocaust Refugees in Global Perspective

Abstract

Heralded throughout the nineteenth century as a land of safe haven and champion for Jewish rights, France faced two significant Jewish refugee crises in the twentieth century: the crisis of the 1930s and the exodus of Jews from North Africa after 1946. In each case, Jewish institutions grappled with how to help foreign brethren and the French state’s responsibility to welcome them. Yet, the circumstances surrounding each crisis also prompted unique challenges for the members of Jewish communities. In the 1930s, Jews desperate to escape Nazi persecution sought France as a land of safe haven. While the government fluctuated in its stance on refugees and, eventually, tracked foreigners in the country, Jewish individuals and organizations sought to help them. During the 1950s – a period marked by the long shadow of the Holocaust, the difficulties of reconstruction, and the creation of the state of Israel – French Jewish institutions again grappled with how to help Jews facing deteriorating circumstances.

This paper will consider these two significant moments in twentieth-century French Jewish history, examining the factors that drove the crises and the attitudes of Jews in France as they struggled to find solutions. It explores the circumstances of each situation and how Jewish institutions responded. Furthermore, it considers how interwar and post-Holocaust Jewish communities in France viewed Jewish migrants, refugees, and repatriates and the debates surrounding whether France could be their new home. At the center of these debates were questions of identity and belonging. This paper will explore attitudes regarding Jews with different cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions, and after 1945, whether imperialism influenced conceptions of who belonged. In doing so, it examines conceptions of nationhood, citizenship, and belonging.

Author

• Meredith Scott, US Air Force Academy