Stealing home : looting, restitution, and reconstructing Jewish lives in France, 1942-1947 / Shannon L. Fogg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fogg, Shannon Lee, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Holocaust survivors--France--Social conditions--20th century.

Holocaust survivors.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--France--Personal narratives.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Social conditions.

France.

Holocaust survivors--Social conditions.

Genre:

Personal narratives.

Physical Description:

xvi, 197 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

"Between 1942 and 1944 the Germans sealed and completely emptied at least 38,000 Parisian apartments. The majority of the furnishings and other household items came from 'abandoned' Jewish apartments and were shipped to Germany. After the war, Holocaust survivors returned to Paris to discover their homes completely stripped of all personal possessions or occupied by new inhabitants. In 1945, the French provisional government established a Restitution Service to facilitate the return of goods to wartime looting victims. Though time-consuming, difficult, and often futile, thousands of people took part in these early restitution efforts. Stealing Home demonstrates that attempts to reclaim one's furnishings and personal possessions were key in efforts to rebuild Jewish political and social inclusion in the war's wake. Far from remaining silent, Jewish survivors sought recognition of their losses, played an active role in politics, and turned to both the government and each other for aid.0Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, restitution claims, social workers' reports, newspapers, and government documents, 'Stealing Home' provides a social history of the period that focuses on Jewish survivors' everyday lives during the lengthy process of restoring citizenship and property rights." Dust jacket.

Contents:

I Returning Home

1 Reconstructing Homes: Rebuilding Private Lives in Postwar Paris 19

II Public Politics and Private Homes

2 Displaced Persons, Displaced Possessions: The Furniture Operation in France 33

3 Competing Claims: Housing, the Restoration of Republicanism, and the Myth of Unity 57

4 The Restitution Service: The Creation of a Republican Bureaucracy 83

III Looking Back and Moving Forward

5 Rebuilding Families: The Gendering and Meaning of Home 111

6 Reclaiming Rights: Jewish Communal Responses to Material Loss 125

7 Social Rebirth: The Role of Public and Private Aid in Rebuilding the Jewish Community 149.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-192) and index.

ISBN:

9780198787129

019878712X

OCLC:

952182468