“French prisoners of war” or “Jewish prisoners of war”?
Type de matériel :
74
Following France’s defeat in May–June 1940, more than 1.8 million French soldiers were captured by German forces. These prisoners of war included some 10,000 to 15,000 French combatants of Jewish origin. Despite their Jewishness, these individuals were granted a relatively protected status within the camps, and therefore escaped the genocidal fate reserved for other Jews in France. This paper seeks to uncover the specificity of this POW experience from 1940–1945 by following the modalities of their captivity as Jewish POWs of the French army. It will jointly consider the concrete experience “from below” of the arbitrary and ad hoc racial discrimination by camp authorities (oflags and stalags), and the role of Vichy collaborationist policy in the fate of this minority of prisoners of war of “Jewish race.”
Réseaux sociaux