Stealing home : looting, restitution, and reconstructing Jewish lives in France, 1942-1947 /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Fogg, Shannon Lee, author.
Edition:First edition.
Imprint:Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2017.
©2017
Description:xvi, 197 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Language:English
Subject:
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10928384
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780198787129 ;
019878712X ;
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages [179]-192) and index.
Summary:"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."
Table of Contents:
  • List of Figures
  • Abbreviations
  • Introduction. Restitution: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Twentieth-Century France
  • I. Returning Home
  • 1. Reconstructing Homes: Rebuilding Private Lives in Postwar Paris
  • II. Public Politics and Private Homes
  • 2. Displaced Persons, Displaced Possessions: The Furniture Operation in France
  • 3. Competing Claims: Housing, the Restoration of Republicanism, and the Myth of Unity
  • 4. The Restitution Service: The Creation of a Republican Bureaucracy
  • III. Looking Back and Moving Forward
  • 5. Rebuilding Families: The Gendering and Meaning of Home
  • 6. Reclaiming Rights: Jewish Communal Responses to Material Loss
  • 7. Social Rebirth: The Role of Public and Private Aid in Rebuilding the Jewish Community
  • Conclusion: Coming to Terms with the Past
  • Bibliography
  • Index