Individual Presentation or Panel Title
Vichy France, Foreign-born Jews, and the Velodrome d'Hiver
Abstract
For my January term independent study, I undertook a research paper at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exploring Vichy France’s treatment of foreign-born and refugee Jews from 1940 to 1942, with a special focus on the Vél d’Hiv round-up of July 1942. I argued that Vichy France specifically isolated foreign born and refugee Jews for persecution. I consulted a vast array of primary sources, including the testimonies of three Holocaust survivors—Helga Franks, Marcelle Bock, and Mirka Mora. Primary print sources (that I translated from the French) included the memoir of Vel d’Hiv escapee Anna Traube, and various documents from the Vichy period, including correspondence from Marshal Pétain, various collaborationist press articles, and the written testimony of social workers and UGIF leaders evaluating the situation in the Vélodrome during the round-up. Prominent secondary sources included Vichy France and the Jews, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, and Betrayal at the Vel d’Hiv. Through my research I found that Vichy France not only created legislation designed to specifically persecute foreign Jews, but the horror of the Vel d’Hiv had its own historical precedent in the treatment of foreign Jews in France dating back through the Third Republic.
Location
Goodwin Private Dining Room
Start Date
20-4-2013 1:30 PM
End Date
20-4-2013 2:20 PM
Vichy France, Foreign-born Jews, and the Velodrome d'Hiver
Goodwin Private Dining Room
For my January term independent study, I undertook a research paper at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exploring Vichy France’s treatment of foreign-born and refugee Jews from 1940 to 1942, with a special focus on the Vél d’Hiv round-up of July 1942. I argued that Vichy France specifically isolated foreign born and refugee Jews for persecution. I consulted a vast array of primary sources, including the testimonies of three Holocaust survivors—Helga Franks, Marcelle Bock, and Mirka Mora. Primary print sources (that I translated from the French) included the memoir of Vel d’Hiv escapee Anna Traube, and various documents from the Vichy period, including correspondence from Marshal Pétain, various collaborationist press articles, and the written testimony of social workers and UGIF leaders evaluating the situation in the Vélodrome during the round-up. Prominent secondary sources included Vichy France and the Jews, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, and Betrayal at the Vel d’Hiv. Through my research I found that Vichy France not only created legislation designed to specifically persecute foreign Jews, but the horror of the Vel d’Hiv had its own historical precedent in the treatment of foreign Jews in France dating back through the Third Republic.