The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews

New York: BasicBooks, 1993. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. Good. xv, [1], 383, [1] pages. Illustrations. Map. Notes. Index. Some page discoloration noted. About 76% of France's Jews survived the Holocaust--more than in almost any other country in Western Europe. The author concludes that it was the passive support of the majority of average French people that saved lives. Susan Sessions Zuccotti (born November 14, 1940) is an American historian, specializing in studies of the Holocaust. She holds a Ph.D. in Modern European History from Columbia University. She has won a National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Studies, and the Premio Acqui Storia - Primo Lavoro for Italians and the Holocaust (1987). She also received a National Jewish Book Award for Jewish-Christian Relations, and the Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Prize of the German Studies Association in 2002 for Under His Very Windows (2000). Zuccotti has taught courses on Holocaust history at Barnard College and Trinity College. Zuccotti argues that the French reaction to the Holocaust, when judged by the awful standards of the rest of the world, was not as reprehensible as it has been portrayed. She draws on memoirs, government documents, and personal interviews with survivors to chronicle some of the stories of ambiguity and betrayal, as well as those of courageous protection. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: Despite the French Vichy regime's complicity in the roundup and deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps, roughly three-fourths of France's Jews, an estimated 250,000 people, survived. Zuccotti, author of the National Jewish Book Award-winner Italians and the Holocaust , attributes their survival partly to `benign neglect'--the vast majority of French men and women kept silent, allowing Jews to remain in hiding or to cross borders. Many Jews in France with fake papers and ration cards survived by living quietly and taking odd jobs, abetted, according to Zuccotti, by the passive goodwill of hundreds of thousands of French men and women who simply went about their own business. Using a wealth of archival documents, the author chronicles the clandestine networks of Jewish rescue organizations, the heroic efforts of armed Jewish resistance groups and the assistance provided by non-Jews such as the 3000 residents of Le Chambon who hid some 5000 Jews in their homes. She also charts the treachery of Vichy politicians and of countless French collaborators who joined fascist leagues to hunt down resistants and Jews. European history professor at Barnard and Columbia, Zuccotti forces us to rethink the French response to the Holocaust in this challenging book.