A survivor of the Holocaust and a distinguished scholar of Jewish history, Lucien Lazare presents a compelling defense of the Jewish resistance movement in France during World War II, arguing that rescue was a genuine and significant way of fighting back.
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Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Lazare, the science editor for the International Center for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vasham, in Jerusalem, participated in many of the events he describes. His is certainly not the first book on Jews in France during World War II nor on French resistance to the Nazis. But Lazare delves much further than any previous author into the question of what Jews did, rather than what was done to them. Using private and public archives from Israel, France, and the United States, plus hundreds of books and articles, Lazare documents the efforts of thousands of French Jews who rescued fellow Jews from prison, sheltered those who were in hiding, and enabled yet others to camouflage themselves as Aryans through false identification papers. His work is both poignant and authoritative; highly recommended for all libraries.?Thomas J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ., N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A challenge to traditional views of Jewish passivity in the face of the Holocaust. One of the most contentious aspects of that tragedy concerns the disputed role of the Jews themselves during WW II. Introduced into the postwar debate about the Holocaust with Hannah Arendt's accusations against Jewish leaders in her landmark work Eichmann in Jerusalem, the Jews have since been accused of accepting extermination with resignation and docility. That scenario is effectively contested by Lazare, a Holocaust survivor himself, a member of the French Jewish underground during WW II, and scientific editor at the International Center for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. He presents overwhelming evidence that French Jews were active in the Resistance. And he demonstrates in compelling detail how Jewish resistance took many more forms than just armed insurgency. He traces how the myriad array of small actions undertaken by French Jews--from the establishment of underground networks to the smuggling of children across borders- -eventually coalesced into a concerted and collective effort to survive the Nazi program of extermination. Besides the study's value in gathering this material, Lazare offers an important theoretical reconsideration. French Jews were acutely conscious of an inevitable fact: French gentiles could obey the laws of Vichy and occupied France and survive. Jews had no such option. Therefore, the Jewish Resistance in France, according to Lazare, was qualitatively different from the French Resistance. Christian French were fighting for their country's independence, while Jews were fighting for the survival of their people. This distinction generated much controversy when the book was published in France. Perhaps the formulation is overly rigid: The Resistance also saw itself as fighting for survival, both its own and that of civilization itself. The controversy, however, does nothing to diminish Lazare's accomplishment in bringing to light an important episode in the history of the 20th century. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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This review is from: Rescue as Resistance (Hardcover)
This is an excellent book for anyone interested in French history, or trying to understand the holocoust, and especially for anyone who is descended from one of the 10,000 or so french children whose rescues are described in the book. The book is written in a scholarly fashion, with footnotes on the sources of information. It covers not only who rescued the children and how they did it, but also explores the very complex political and social environment that lead to these events. From this book I learned much about the concentration camp where my mother had been held, and also learned that she was one of only about 100 children who escaped across the Spanish border. (The majority of the children escaped through the Swiss border.) Thank you, Amazon, for selling me this wonderful book!
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