Overview

Between 1942 and 1944 the Germans sealed and completely emptied at least 38,000 Parisian apartments. The majority of the furnishings and other household items came from 'abandoned' Jewish apartments and were shipped to Germany. After the war, Holocaust survivors returned to Paris to discover their homes completely stripped of all personal possessions or occupied by new inhabitants. In 1945, the French provisional government established a Restitution Service to facilitate the return of goods to wartime looting victims. Though time-consuming, difficult, and often futile, thousands of people took part in these early restitution efforts. Stealing Home demonstrates that attempts to reclaim one's furnishings and personal possessions were key in efforts to rebuild Jewish political and social inclusion in the war's wake. Far from remaining silent, Jewish survivors sought recognition of their losses, played an active role in politics, and turned to both the government and each other for aid. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, restitution claims, social workers' reports, newspapers, and government documents, Stealing Home provides a social history of the period that focuses on Jewish survivors' everyday lives during the lengthy process of restoring citizenship and property rights. It examines social rebirth through the prism of restitution and argues that the home was critical in shaping the postwar relationship between Jews and the state, and in the successes and failures associated with rebuilding Jewish lives in France after the Holocaust.

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9780198787129

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Reviews

Stealing Home, however, is more than a grim catalogue of theft. Fogg's real concern lies with what Jewish survivors encountered when they struggled home from camps in the winter of 1944 ... At a moment when xenophobia and racism are again on the rise ... Stealing Home make[s] uneasy reading. * Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement * Fogg's treatment of a difficult and complex topic is well-researched, fluidly written and impressive. It aids our understanding of the Holocaust and its aftermath in France, while also deepening our knowledge of he reconstruction of Europe and post-war gender relations. * European History Quarterly * Fogg underscores that hers is a social history interested in discovering the human impact on survivors who returned to Paris to find their apartments occupied by others and the furnishings gone. To this end, she has looked at memoirs and oral interviews to understand the sociological and psychological implications of reconstructing one's life after several harrowing years of absence ... Fogg makes the powerful point that what she terms memocide, the killing of memories, accompanied genocide. * Richard D. Sonn, Journal of Modern History * All in all Shannon Fogg has added an important study of the Vichy period. She has labored vigorously in order to reach information about different levels of society and has produced a finely crafted and sensitive historical work based on a truly commendable gift for archival research and an excellent command of the relevant historical literature. * Richard I. Cohen, Yad Vashem Studies * Fogg's richly documented Stealing Home resonates well beyond its time frame. * Gary D. Mole, H-France *

Stealing Home, however, is more than a grim catalogue of theft. Fogg's real concern lies with what Jewish survivors encountered when they struggled home from camps in the winter of 1944 ... At a moment when xenophobia and racism are again on the rise ... Stealing Home make[s] uneasy reading. Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement

Stealing Home, however, is more than a grim catalogue of theft. Fogg's real concern lies with what Jewish survivors encountered when they struggled home from camps in the winter of 1944 ... At a moment when xenophobia and racism are again on the rise ... Stealing Home make[s] uneasy reading. * Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement * Fogg's treatment of a difficult and complex topic is well-researched, fluidly written and impressive. It aids our understanding of the Holocaust and its aftermath in France, while also deepening our knowledge of he reconstruction of Europe and post-war gender relations. * European History Quarterly * Fogg underscores that hers is a social history interested in discovering the human impact on survivors who returned to Paris to find their apartments occupied by others and the furnishings gone. To this end, she has looked at memoirs and oral interviews to understand the sociological and psychological implications of reconstructing one's life after several harrowing years of absence ... Fogg makes the powerful point that what she terms memocide, the killing of memories, accompanied genocide. * Richard D. Sonn, Journal of Modern History * All in all Shannon Fogg has added an important study of the Vichy period. She has labored vigorously in order to reach information about different levels of society and has produced a finely crafted and sensitive historical work based on a truly commendable gift for archival research and an excellent command of the relevant historical literature. * Richard I. Cohen, Yad Vashem Studies * Foggs richly documented Stealing Home resonates well beyond its time frame. * Gary D. Mole, H-France *

Author Information

Shannon L. Fogg is professor of history at Missouri University of Science and Technology and the author of The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France: Foreigners, Undesirables, and Strangers.

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