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An anti-Jewish pogrom in 1930s Dijon? This article argues that the looting of two stores in the center of this French city in 1938 is a strategic vantage point from which to study anti-Jewish collective violence. This micro-historical approach enables us to examine the factors that precipitated the looting, as well as the administrative, judicial and media conditions which framed its occurrence. The “Lerner affair” was both a news item lost among countless others in the French press, and a major European media event on the eve of Kristallnacht. Finally, this article discusses how the use of the term “pogrom” allows us to understand the violent context in which this event took place.