Jews and Gender in Liberation France

Taking a new view of France during and after the German occupation, this book challenges traditional chronology concentrating on the Vichy government. It punctures standard interpretations dividing occupied France into resisters and collaborators and explores the resistance concept of an ideal Frenchwoman by using interview material to contest the standard view. French demographers' post-liberation enthusiasm for Nazi population policy, women in the city, and the widespread fervor for the family are also examined. The significance of race--specifically Jewishness--and gender is emphasized throughout this study.

This book takes a new look at occupied and liberated France through the dual prism of race, specifically Jewishness, and gender - core components of Vichy ideology. The imagining of liberation and the potential post-Vichy state, lay at the heart of resistance strategy. Their transformation into policy at liberation forms the basis of an enquiry that reveals a society which, while split deeply at the political level, found considerable agreement over questions of race, the family and gender. This is explained through a new analysis of republican assimilation which insists that gender was as important a factor as nationality or ethnicity. A new concept of the 'long liberation' provides a framework for understanding the continuing influence of the liberation in post-war France, where scientific planning came to the fore, but whose exponents were profoundly imbued with reductive beliefs about Jews and women that were familiar during Vichy.

List of illustrations; Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: the long liberation; 2. Narrating liberation; 3. Anticipating liberation: the gendered nation in print; 4. Limiting liberation: 'the French for France'; 5. Controlling liberation: Georges Mauco and a population fit for France; 6. Liberation in place: Jewish women in the city; 7. Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

This book takes a new look at France during and after the German occupation. It challenges traditional chronology that concentrates on the Vichy government and punctures standard interpretations that divide occupied France into resisters and collaborators. Throughout, race - specifically Jewishness - and gender are drawn together in original and illuminating ways.

Karen Adler is Research Fellow, Department of History, University of Nottingham.