French Jewry during the Holocaust

In May 1940, the German army attacked and invaded France. 500,000 more Jews were now under Nazi rule. Although the Jews in these countries enjoyed equality for decades. Within months, their rights were taken away from them with the Nazi occupation of France in 1940 and its division into two parts. Thus began the darkest period in the history of French Jews. The Vichy government adopted the principles of Nazi racism and thus turned its back on its national and moral values. Nazi antisemitism found room for cooperation with the French establishment and local antisemitism. The French deprived the Jews of their property, humiliated them, and imprisoned thousands in the internment camps that operated in the north of France and later also in the south. As transit or detention stations, internment camps were built in France for Jews who did not hold French citizenship. Thousands of Jews were transferred to Gurs, Drancy, Vittel, and other camps, whose living conditions were a lack of food, overcrowding, disease, and disconnection from their families and the world. In 1942, the fate of thousands of Jews was sealed with the great roundup in July and the deportations to the east that followed. The roundup and deportation were carried out by French policemen and they also played key roles in the internment camps. French Jews fought for their existence and began rescue operations. They used all means of escape. Individuals and families fled south to the free part of France which was a brief place of refuge. The lucky ones managed to pass through the Alps to Switzerland and through the Pyrenees to Spain and Portugal. Others tried their luck in Italy. Rescue operations for children are recorded as a special chapter in the sanctification of life in France. The desire to provide a Jewish life to children and youth created unique activities under almost impossible conditions. In the midst of the war, educators and instructors dedicatedly worked to establish educational institutions, youth movements, and Torah lessons by means of correspondence in the remote villages where children hid and also in the internment camps. Nearly eighty thousand Jews, men, women, and children, who lived in France, were sent to Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Sobibor. After the war, France opened its doors to Holocaust survivors from Poland and other Eastern European countries, and gave them temporary refuge. The photos and testimonies before you are from the impressive archival database of Ganzach Kiddush Hashem. They document the spiritual standing of French Jews before and during the Holocaust, as well as amongst the survivors.

French Jewry during the Holocaust

Miriam Pollack – Songs of Faith (Hamburg, Germany)

Chaim Tannenbaum - A Cantor between the Two World Wars (Strasbourg, France)

Yona Guttel - Childhood Photos (France)

Miriam Pollack - Liberation from the Prison (Hamburg, Germany)

Moshe Ackerman - Smuggling Over the Border to Switzerland (Strasbourg, France)

Rivka Avichayil - The Miracle of Rescue on the Train (Paris, France)

Moshe Ackerman – Simchat Torah in the Jewish Community (Strasbourg, France)

Moshe Schweber - The Nazi Occupation in France (Strasbourg, France)

Rivka Avichayil - The Shema Yisrael Prayer in the Catholic Church (Paris, France)

Tova Albaum - The Escape from Occupied France (Balfour, France)

Ephraim Moll - With My Adoptive Family in Paris in the Shadow of the Nazi Occupation (Belgium - France)

Shulamit Katan – The Holiday Period in Hiding in France (Frankfurt, Germany)

Fela Eizowitski - The Liberation in Chamonix, France (Poland - Belgium)

Tova Albaum - A Jewish Girl in a French Village (Balfour, France)

Menachem Teichtel - Hiding in France with Rabbi Schneerson (Slovakia)

Miriam Pollack - Caught at the French Border (Hamburg, Germany)

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