Jews and Resistance in France

w-oesterreicher-080612-1425717712Close to twenty years ago, my daughter Rebecca spent a semester in France. After college she returned to France, eventually meeting Jerome. Now a house, a husband, two kids and several cats later, Rebecca and her family live in Lille, a city in northern France, close to the Belgian border.

All this is prelude to sharing a program I attended just few days ago at Seton Hall University. Titled “Jews and Resistance in France during World War II,” this program investigated the role of French Catholic individuals in saving Jews during the war. It was presented under the aegis of the Jewish-Christian Studies Graduate Program with funding from the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust and Genocide Education and Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher Endowment.

Msgr. Öesterreicher (1904-1993) was born a Jew in Moravia. He converted to Catholicism while a student studying medicine in Vienna and became a priest in 1927. He was staunchly anti-Nazi; his writing and broadcasts arguing that Nazi ideology was not only anti Jewish but also anti Christian made him vulnerable. He fled to the U.S, in 1940.

As founder of the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies at Seton Hall, Oesterreicher contributed to the Second Vatican Council’s acceptance of Nostra Aetate in 1965 which opened up relations between the Church and Jews.

The topic interested me since both of my son-in-law’s grandparents were active in the Resistance. Pretending to be a school girl, his grandmother rode around Lille on a bike delivering underground newsletters. Several times she barely escaped arrest. His Communist grandfather, a physician, was sent to an internment camp in Eastern France. Later, as punishment for helping the prisoners there, he was sent to another camp. He was so well respected that he was able to escape with a pocketful of sugar and not much else. A tall man, he weighed 100 pounds.

Although France seems to have a strong anti-semitic streak, victims of the Final Solution rank among the lowest in Europe at about one quarter of the Jewish population. It could have been much higher. Why was it not?

Dr. Brenda Moore, who teaches theology at Fordham University, said that Catholic faith and resistance was not an “inoculation against committing atrocities. ”  Hannah Arendt stated that under conditions of terrorism most people will comply but some won’t. The resisters were like flickers of light.

resistance940Despite the fact that the Catholic Church did not speak out, many individual members of the clergy did encourage their congregants to resist the Nazis. The Jesuits actually took action in a journal condemning new anti-Jewish statutes. The Jesuit priests helped Jews escape by providing false baptism certificates, money; they frequently protected children by hiding them in school and orphanages.

Secularly educated Catholic intellectuals were often among those who acted against the Germans. The generation that recalled the controversy of the Dreyfus trial also was conscious of their obligations to their Jewish compatriots.

In the end, Michael Jeifa, a survivor who was hidden in the south of France, says that in addition to being in the right place at the right time, it was the help of a lot of good Christian people who did what they morally had to do.

It only took one person at the right time to save a life.

Books that explore this topic:

51IjiBeVNFL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_Bishop, Claire Huchet. Twenty and ten. Jewish children are hidden an orphanage (J)

Belfoure, Charles. The Paris architect : a novel (Fiction)

Burrin, Philippe. France under the Germans: collaboration and compromise.

Dauvillier, Loi˜c. Hidden : a child’s story of the Holocaust.(J)

DeSaix, Deborah Durland. Hidden on the mountain: stories of children sheltered from the Nazis in Le Chambon.

Draper, Allison Stark. Pastor Andr ̌Trocm̌: spiritual leader of the French village Le Chambon.

Gray, Karen. The grand mosque of Paris: a story of how Muslims saved Jews during the Holocaust.

Hallie, Philip Paul. Lest innocent blood be shed : the story of the village of Le Chambon, and how goodness happened there.

Hannah, Kristin. The nightingale. (Fiction)

Leff, Lisa Moses. The archive thief : the man who salvaged French Jewish history in the wake of the Holocaust.

91t49E53DSLMarrus, Michael Robert. Vichy France and the Jews

McDonough, Yona Zeldis. The bicycle spy (J)

Petrement, Simone. Simone Weil: A Life

Roth-Hano, Renée. Touch wood: a girlhood in occupied France.(J)

Schoenbrun, David. Soldiers of the night: the story of the French Resistance.

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