Posted on: 27 February 2014
Being Jewish in France during the Second World War was the theme of the Annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture which took place in Trinity College Dublin recently.
Professor Renée Poznanski, Ben Gurion University, Israel, delivered the ninth Annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture to an audience of over 400 on Tuesday February 18th, 2014. The event was organised by the Department of History and the Herzog Centre at the Department Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity College Dublin, in collaboration with the Holocaust Education Trust Ireland.
In the lecture, Professor Poznanski spoke about how the choices made by Jews in France following the defeat of that country by Nazi Germany in 1940 amounted to strategies of survival. They reflected the complexity of a Jewish community made up of French natives as well as immigrants from a variety of countries. Some were religious believers and others observed Jewish religious laws while yet others put their faith in Communism or Zionism. Some were wealthy while others struggled to make a decent living.
The history of these fates, which often ended tragically, was a key episode both in relations between Jews and non-Jews in France and in the history of the Holocaust, according to Professor Poznanski.
Renée Poznanski is Professor of Holocaust Studies in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University. Her books include The Jews in France during the World War II (2001), which was awarded the Jacob Buchman Prize for the Memory of the Holocaust, and The Propaganda of the Resistance and the Persecution of the Jews (2008), which was awarded the 2009 Henri Hertz prize in Paris. She is currently writing a book on the Resistance of the Jews in France during the Second World War.
Further information:
The Department of History, Trinity College Dublin: http://www.tcd.ie/history/
The Holocaust Education Trust Ireland: www.hetireland.org
