ABOUT THIS BOOK

Renée Poznanski’s magisterial history of the French Resistance during World War II offers a comprehensive exploration of the most significant issue in that period’s social imaginary: the “Jewish question.” With extraordinary nuance, she analyzes the discourse around Jews and Judaism that pervaded the Resistance’s propaganda and debates, while closely examining the fate of Jews under Vichy and after.

Poznanski argues that Jews in France suffered a double persecution: one led by the Vichy government, the other imposed by the Nazis. Marginalization and exclusion soon led to internment and deportation to terrifying places. Meanwhile, a propaganda war developed between the Resistance and the official voice of Vichy. Poznanski draws on a breathtaking array of sources, especially clandestine publications and French-language BBC transmissions, to show how the Resistance both fought and accommodated the deeply entrenched antisemitism within French society. Her close readings of propaganda texts against public opinions probe ambiguities and silences in Resistance writing about the persecution of the Jews and, in parallel, the numerous and detailed denunciations that could be read in the Jewish clandestine press. This extensive synthesis extends to the post-Liberation period, during which the ongoing persecution of Jews in Europe and North Africa would be portrayed as secondary to the suffering of the nation.

The winner of the 2009 Henri Hertz Prize by the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris, Sorbonne, Propaganda and Persecution makes major contributions to the study of the Resistance and of antisemitism. Lenn J. Schramm’s English translation brings Poznanski’s dynamic prose to life.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Renée Poznanski is a professor emerita at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Her most recent English-language book is Jews in France during World War II.

Lenn J. Schramm is a professional translator of French and Hebrew to English. Among his many translations is The Sparks of Randomness by Henri Atlan.

REVIEWS

“Renée Poznanski is one of the finest scholars of our time on the subject of France during the Holocaust and World War II. Her central question here—How much did the French Resistance care about Jews and antisemitism?—is timely, and she presents a mountain of evidence to support her thesis.”—Ethan Katz, University of California, Berkeley

“This book adds to our understanding of the Resistance, the persecution of the Jews, and the clandestine press in ways likely to make it a fundamental work for future scholarship.”—Holocaust and Genocide Studies

“An impressively informative, finely detailed, copiously documented, exceptionally well written/translated, and seminal work of original scholarship.”—Midwest Book Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTENTS

Part I. We Are All Patriots

Part II. The Curtain Rises

Part III. The Judeo-Gaullists in London

Part IV. The Judeo-Bolsheviks of France

Part V. The Sense of Being Abandoned

Notes
Bibliography
Index

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