Abstract: Built from nothing on the Parisian periphery in the 1950s, the neighbourhood known as Les Flanades in Sarcelles is perhaps the single largest North African Jewish urban space in France. Though heavily policed since 2000, Les Flanades had been free from violence. However, on 20 July 2014, violence erupted close to the central synagogue (known as la grande syna’) during a banned pro-Palestinian march. The violence pitted protestors and residents against one another in a schematic Israel v. Palestine frame leading to confrontations between many descendants of North African Jews and Muslims. Using that moment as a strong indicator of a broken solidarity/affinity between people of North African descent, Everett’s article traces a process of de-racialization, amongst Jews in Les Flanades, through the use of place names. North African Jewish residents use the local names of first-, second- and third-generation residents for their neighbourhood, ranging from from Bab El-Oued (a suburb of Algiers), via un village méditerranéen (a Mediterranean village), to la petite Jérusalem (little Jerusalem). Using the lens of postcolonial and racialization theory—a lens seldomly applied to France, and even less so to Jews in France—and a hybrid methodology that combines ethnography with discursive and genealogical analyses, Everett traces the unevenness of solidarity/affinity between Muslim and Jewish French citizens of North African descent and the messy production of de-racialization. This approach involves looking at shifting landscapes and changing dynamics of demography, religiosity and security and describing some tendencies that resist these changes consciously or not. Examples include the re-appropriation of Arabic para-liturgy and an encounter with a lawyer from Sarcelles who has taken a stand in prominent racialized public legal contests.
Abstract: Relatively little comment has been passed on the role of the Holocaust at the Imperial War Museum (IWM). There is a critical discourse about the role of the exhibition in the museum of course, and Rebecca Jinks’s and Antoine Capet’s essays contribute admirably to that discourse, yet the specific question of the relationship between thinking about the Holocaust and thinking about Empire and imperial genocide has seldom been asked. Yet as Jinks’s essay makes clear, Britain has an imperial past and as such it is not possible for the Holocaust exhibition to just avoid that context. It would be very difficult anywhere in Britain, but in the IWM, the official repository of the nation’s war memories, it is impossible. What is more, the IWM specifically tasks itself, in its Crimes Against Humanity exhibition, to engage with genocide in a wider context and as such to place the Holocaust in that context. And the British Empire was a site of genocide. One might expect then to find that the IWM grapples with the problem of genocide in the British Empire (in Australia, in Ireland, in India for example). It does not. As such, I want to use this commentary to think more about the relationship between the galloping British memory of the Holocaust that Capet identifies, and Britain’s memory of genocide in its Empire that Jinks highlights, using the IWM as a case study.
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Survivors: Children of, Jewish Community, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Post-Colonial, Post-War Reconstruction, Restitution and Reparations, Memory
Abstract: Książka jest wynikiem interdyscyplinarnych badań dwudziestu ośmiu autorów pracujących przez trzy lata systemem seminaryjnym pod kierownictwem Feliksa Tycha, autora projektu, oraz Moniki Adamczyk-Garbowskiej. Przedstawia próbę kompleksowego zbadania wpływu Holokaustu i okupacji niemieckiej na kondycję nielicznych - w porównaniu z przedwojenną liczbą - ocalałych Żydów polskich. Autorzy wprowadzają czytelnika w świat życia żydowskiego i stosunków polsko-żydowskich w powojennej Polsce od roku 1944 po pierwszą dekadę XXI wieku. Teksty zostały ułożone w czterech blokach tematycznych, które w znacznej mierze odpowiadają istotnym etapom życia żydowskiego w Polsce i jego postrzegania przez większość społeczeństwa, czyli kolejno latom szacowania strat, nadziei i odbudowy, okresowi tabuizacji, zacierania pamięci, wreszcie - sytuacji obecnej. Adresowana zarówno do specjalistów, jak i szerszego kręgu odbiorców książka ta może służyć jako źródło wiedzy, swoisty przewodnik, a także inspiracja do dalszych badań nad następstwami Zagłady w Polsce i w innych krajach. Jest to pierwsza zakrojona na tak szeroką skalę publikacja, która na przykładzie Polski - przed wojną największego skupiska Żydów w Europie i drugiego, po USA, na świecie - ukazuje wpływ Holokaustu na powojenną kondycję Żydów oraz całego społeczeństwa polskiego.
Feliks Tych, Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska Przedmowa 7
KRAJOBRAZ PO WOJNIE 13
Albert Stankowski, Piotr Weiser Demograficzne skutki Holokaustu 15
Alina Skibińska Powroty ocalałych i stosunek do nich społeczeństwa polskiego 39
Andrzej Żbikowski Morderstwa popełniane na Żydach w pierwszych latach po wojnie 71
Tamar Lewinsky Żydowscy uchodźcy i przesiedleńcy z Polski w okupowanych Niemczech 95
Ewa Koźmińska -Frejlak Kondycja ocalałych. Adaptacja do rzeczywistości powojennej (1944–1949) 123
August Grabski Żydzi a polskie życie polityczne (1944–1949) 157
PRÓBY ODBUDOWY ŻYCIA ŻYDOWSKIEGO 189
Grzegorz Berendt Życie od nowa. Instytucje i organizacje żydowskie (1944–1950) 191
August Grabski, Albert Stankowski Życie religijne społeczności żydowskiej 215
Helena Datner Dziecko żydowskie (1944–1968) 245
Joanna Nalewajko-Kuliko V, Magdalena Ruta Kultura jidysz po II wojnie światowej 283
Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Magdalena Ruta Literatura polska i jidysz wobec Zagłady 305
Renata Piątkowska Żydowskie życie artystyczne po Zagładzie 339
Grzegorz Berendt Wpływ liberalizacji politycznej roku 1956 na sytuację Żydów 359
Feliks Tych „Marzec’68”. Geneza, przebieg i skutki kampanii antysemickiej lat 1967/68 385
Edyta Gawron Powojenna emigracja Żydów z Polski. Przykład Krakowa 413
PAMIĘĆ I ZAPOMNIENIE 439
Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Adam Kopciowski Zamiast macewy. Żydowskie księgi pamięci 441
Eleonora Bergman , Jan Jagi elski Ślady obecności. Synagogi i cmentarze 471
Robert Kuwałek Obozy koncentracyjne i ośrodki zagłady jako miejsca pamięci 493
Sławomir Kapralski Od milczenia do „trudnej pamięci”. Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau i jego rola w dyskursie publicznym 527
Bożena Szaynok Kościół katolicki w Polsce wobec problematyki żydowskiej (1944–1989) 553
Małgorzata Melchior Zagłada w świadomości polskich Żydów 583
Hanna Węgrzynek Tematyka Zagłady w podręcznikach szkolnych (1945–2009) 597
Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs Świadomość Holokaustu wśród młodzieży polskiej po zmianach systemowych 1989 roku 625
TU I TERAZ 659
Helena Datner Współczesna społeczność żydowska w Polsce a Zagłada 661
Monika Krawczyk Status prawny własności żydowskiej i jego wpływ na stosunki polsko-żydowskie 687
Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Magdalena Ruta Od kultury żydowskiej do kultury o Żydach 715
Dariusz Libionka Debata wokół Jedwabnego 733
Joanna Tokarska-Bakir Następstwa Holokaustu w relacjach żydowskich i w pamięci polskiej prowincji w świetle badań etnograficznych 775
Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak Wdzięczność i zapomnienie. Polacy i Żydzi wobec Sprawiedliwych (1944–2007) 813
Antoni Sułek Zwykli Polacy patrzą na Żydów. Postawy społeczeństwa polskiego wobec Żydów w świetle badań sondażowych (1967–2008) 853
Informacje o autorach 889
Wykaz skrótów 895
Indeks 897
Abstract: This book traces the global, national, and local origins of the conflict between Muslims and Jews in France, challenging the belief that rising anti-Semitism in France is rooted solely in the unfolding crisis in Israel and Palestine. Maud Mandel shows how the conflict in fact emerged from processes internal to French society itself even as it was shaped by affairs elsewhere, particularly in North Africa during the era of decolonization.
Mandel examines moments in which conflicts between Muslims and Jews became a matter of concern to French police, the media, and an array of self-appointed spokesmen from both communities: Israel's War of Independence in 1948, France's decolonization of North Africa, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1968 student riots, and François Mitterrand's experiments with multiculturalism in the 1980s. She takes an in-depth, on-the-ground look at interethnic relations in Marseille, which is home to the country's largest Muslim and Jewish populations outside of Paris. She reveals how Muslims and Jews in France have related to each other in diverse ways throughout this history--as former residents of French North Africa, as immigrants competing for limited resources, as employers and employees, as victims of racist aggression, as religious minorities in a secularizing state, and as French citizens.
In Muslims and Jews in France, Mandel traces the way these multiple, complex interactions have been overshadowed and obscured by a reductionist narrative of Muslim-Jewish polarization.
Abstract: In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
The public lighting ceremony in Paris on the first night of Hanukah, December 23, 1997, resembled battle. Chabad raised a giant menorah on the Champs de Mars and ranged around its flanks various siege engines: portable generators, a stage, a screen, batteries of speakers. The speakers boomed Hasidic marching music that rattled windows on the buildings facing the field. Then shrill young boys on stage shouted Hebrew verses into a microphone. Napoleon's grapeshot could not have done a more effective job of subduing a mob. The previously talkative crowd fell silent and gazed at the stage for what was to come next: first, a five-minute video biography of Rabbi Schneerson projected onto a large screen, then a satellite link-up with similar ceremonies in Crown Heights and Jerusalem. On cue, bearded cameramen turned to the crowd. People waved and cheered when their image on screen joined that of crowds in America and Israel. This was mixed with video of boys' choirs and stock footage of the Rebbe waving to crowds, as if to suggest that he was alive and actually participating. Then came the climax, the victorious raising of the flag: the Grand Rabbi of France, Joseph Sitruk, accompanied by a Chabad rabbi, rose aloft in a cherry picker. He pronounced a series of blessings into a microphone and lit the menorah. Paris was his.
The spectacle that night on the Champs de Mars has, arguably, less to do with Chabad's penchant for messianism and noise than it has to do with decolonization. Since emancipation in 1791, French Judaism has defined itself according to its embrace of the Revolution's universalist principles and its disavowal of political, cultural, and doctrinal separateness. Now, however, a small but vocal minority of the North African Jewish immigrants who have settled in France during the past 30 years is challenging the 200-year-old consensus. All of the people involved in the Hanukah ceremony, including the Grand Rabbi, were Sephardic Jews of North African descent. Like the millions of other formerly colonized peoples, most of them Muslim, who have come to France and are altering its culture, their aim is to assert a more uncompromised cultural identity within an ethnic community less sympathetic to its historical concern for discretion. What is happening among Jews is thus only a subset of a larger, national process. The North African Jews have succeeded to the extent that Judaism, at least in the Paris region, is more vital than it has been since before World War II. And never in France's history have there been as many Jewish schools, yeshivas, synagogues, kosher restaurants, and ritual baths.
The revival of Jewish life in France because of the North Africans is also strengthening French Judaism in some less obvious ways. The North African Jews' activism has taken place amidst a national debate concerning cultural pluralism and the integration of African immigrant communities. The conjunction of communal and national issues has provoked responses from community leaders and Jewish intellectuals anxious to defend the Republican values of traditional French Judaism. While some go no farther than defend the historical status-quo, others endeavor to rethink French Judaism and bring it up to date. Two Jewish thinkers in particular, Shmuel Trigano and Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, are beginning to elaborate a French Judaism that reconciles the demand for a stronger Jewish identity with the values of the Republic. After first exploring recent developments in France's Jewish community and their relation to national debates, this article will examine the ideas of Trigano and Bernheim at length.
France has historically been ill at ease with its own diversity. France's monarchy, for instance, worried that religious diversity impeded political centralization and undermined the power of the crown. The Enlightenment interpreted cultural differences in terms of the persistence of atavisms such as tribalism and superstition, both of which it contrasted with the universality of civilisation. Finally, the Revolution added Jean-Jacques Rousseau's obsession with private or minority interests that might threaten the unity of a Republic one and indivisible. It follows that the emancipation offered to Jews came with precise conditions. Jews had...
