cover image The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940-1944

The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940-1944

Jacques Adler. Oxford University Press, USA, $49.95 (334pp) ISBN 978-0-19-504305-1

During the Nazi occupation of France, the French Jewish establishment tried to buy time with the collaborationist Vichy government. Franco-Jewish leaders viewed the large numbers of Jewish immigrants in France as a political liability. Many Jewish organizations publicly accepted Vichy press reports of Jewish ""settlements'' in Eastern Europe, knowing that refugees were being deported to death camps. Through public silence, French Judaism abandoned foreign-born Jews to a fate which, in the end, the native French Jews themselves shared. This important, courageous book unflinchingly examines a dark chapter in Jewish and world history. Adler, who fought in the Jewish underground resistance, argues that immigrant Jews were, in fact, the pacesetters in solidifying French Jews' resistance. The Nazis' slow, gradual enforcement of anti-Jewish measures confused and paralyzed a disunified Jewish leadership. Adler teaches at the University of Melbourne in Australia. (September)