Denaturalized
How Thousands Lost Their Citizenship and Lives in Vichy France
Published on 13. October 2020
Book
Hardback
408 pages
978-0-674-98842-2 (ISBN)
Description
"In Denaturalized, Claire Zalc combines the precision of the scholar with the passion of a storyteller...This is a deftly written book. Zalc combines in an accessible style (smoothly translated by Catherine Porter) the stories of people trapped within a bureaucracy that was as obsessed, perhaps, with clearing files as with hunting Jews. In other words, Zalc reminds us how cruel the banality of indifference could be."-Wall Street Journal
Winner of the Prix d'histoire de la justice
A leading historian radically revises our understanding of the fate of Jews under the Vichy regime.
Thousands of naturalized French men and women had their citizenship revoked by the Vichy government during the Second World War. Once denaturalized, these men and women, mostly Jews who were later sent to concentration camps, ceased being French on official records and walked off the pages of history. As a result, we have for decades severely underestimated the number of French Jews murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust. In Denaturalized, Claire Zalc unearths this tragic record and rewrites World War II history.
At its core, this is a detective story. How do we trace a citizen made alien by the law? How do we solve a murder when the body has vanished? Faced with the absence of straightforward evidence, Zalc turned to the original naturalization papers in order to uncover how denaturalization later occurred. She discovered that, in many cases, the very officials who granted citizenship to foreigners before 1940 were the ones who retracted it under Vichy rule.
The idea of citizenship has always existed alongside the threat of its revocation, and this is especially true for those who are naturalized citizens of a modern state. At a time when the status of millions of naturalized citizens in the United States and around the world is under greater scrutiny, Denaturalized turns our attention to the precariousness of the naturalized experience-the darkness that can befall those who suddenly find themselves legally cast out.
Winner of the Prix d'histoire de la justice
A leading historian radically revises our understanding of the fate of Jews under the Vichy regime.
Thousands of naturalized French men and women had their citizenship revoked by the Vichy government during the Second World War. Once denaturalized, these men and women, mostly Jews who were later sent to concentration camps, ceased being French on official records and walked off the pages of history. As a result, we have for decades severely underestimated the number of French Jews murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust. In Denaturalized, Claire Zalc unearths this tragic record and rewrites World War II history.
At its core, this is a detective story. How do we trace a citizen made alien by the law? How do we solve a murder when the body has vanished? Faced with the absence of straightforward evidence, Zalc turned to the original naturalization papers in order to uncover how denaturalization later occurred. She discovered that, in many cases, the very officials who granted citizenship to foreigners before 1940 were the ones who retracted it under Vichy rule.
The idea of citizenship has always existed alongside the threat of its revocation, and this is especially true for those who are naturalized citizens of a modern state. At a time when the status of millions of naturalized citizens in the United States and around the world is under greater scrutiny, Denaturalized turns our attention to the precariousness of the naturalized experience-the darkness that can befall those who suddenly find themselves legally cast out.
Reviews / Votes
In Denaturalized, Claire Zalc combines the precision of the scholar with the passion of a storyteller...This is a deftly written book. Zalc combines in an accessible style (smoothly translated by Catherine Porter) the stories of people trapped within a bureaucracy that was as obsessed, perhaps, with clearing files as with hunting Jews. In other words, Zalc reminds us how cruel the banality of indifference could be. * Wall Street Journal * Claire Zalc's book is an important and original contribution to the history of Occupied France. It examines one of the key organisms of xenophobic persecution and discrimination set up by France's collaborating Vichy regime: the Commission for the Review of Naturalizations. Since the archives of that body have disappeared her work is a brilliant piece of historical detective work which situates the work of the Commission within the wider anti-Semitic policies of the Vichy regime. Her book not only analyzes the workings of an institution but recovers the stories of individuals whose lives were destroyed by it. -- Julian Jackson, author of <i>De Gaulle</i> Some 15,000 newly naturalized people were stripped of their French citizenship by the Vichy administration during the Nazi occupation of France; many of the Jews among them were then deported to their deaths. Here, Claire Zalc ingeniously unravels the mechanism of 'denaturalization' and gives us vivid portraits of both perpetrators and victims. -- Robert O. Paxton, author of <i>The Anatomy of Fascism</i> During World War II the experience of denaturalization was akin to a death sentence for many Jews. Some were already at Auschwitz when their citizenship was revoked. For others this change in legal status sealed their fate. Zalc's eye-opening book invites us to consider the true nature and fragility of national identity. At a time when a global crisis is forcing many of us to return to our country of origin, this is a book of great civic and political relevance. -- Annette Wieviorka, author of <i>The Era of the Witness</i> Zalc delivers an insightful and distressing look at efforts to revoke citizenship in Nazi-occupied France...This is an enlightening portrait of how the tools of bureaucracy can be bent to evil ends. * Publishers Weekly * Her detailed investigation provides unique insights into how bureaucracies in authoritarian regimes produce and reproduce violence...Drawing on the Vichy government's archives, Zalc follows the life stories of some of those who were naturalized as French during the interwar years, only to be stripped of their citizenship and deported under wartime France's collaborationist regime...Zalc's work provides direct evidence of how state power-and sometimes state violence-functions through the routine processes of registration, categorization, and counting. -- Laura van Waas and Natalie Brinham * Project Syndicate * An immensely successful volume, Denaturalized will make an important addition to the reading lists of scholars of modern France and the Holocaust, as well as those interested in the methods of studying democracies and citizenship, police surveillance, and the relationship between immigrants and the state. -- Robin Buller * H-Net Reviews * Denaturalized is a landmark study of the internal workings of the Vichy state and an important contribution to the literature on France and the Holocaust...Deserves a wide readership. -- Herrick Chapman * Journal of Modern History *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
14 photos, 3 tables
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 40 mm
Weight
786 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-98842-2 (9780674988422)
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Schweitzer Classification