CHAPTER 5
RECONSTRUCTING TRAJECTORIES
OF PERSECUTION
REFLECTIONS ON A PROSOPOGRAPHY
OF HOLOCAUST VICTIMS
Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc
R
Comparing the number of Holocaust victims against estimates of the
prewar Jewish population has allowed historians to calculate deportation rates in Western Europe with reasonable accuracy, with figures of
25 percent for France, 40 percent for Belgium, and even 73 percent for
the Netherlands. Numerous studies have proposed stimulating hypotheses to account for these disparities, typically proceeding on a macrosociological level by focusing on factors such as relations between Nazis
and local officials, the role of Jewish community representatives, the
extent of relationships among different ethnic communities, as well as
the effects of religion and the amount of assistance and rescue support
available.1
Sometimes priority has been given to a more individual approach,
particularly when focusing on the choices and options available to victims. Firsthand accounts by survivors, which were initially studied for
memorial purposes, have more recently contributed to a broader understanding of the genocides.2 Yet as Michael Pollak’s work has forcefully
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Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc
demonstrated, these accounts—which are often haunted by the question
of “How and why did I survive?”—reveal and reflect upon the methods
and characteristics of survival.3 The insights provided by this approach
have stark implications for historians. Firstly, since researchers know
how the story ends, such accounts may lead to arguments that explain
persecution trajectories by way of a regressive logic. Historians may be
tempted to mirror the polarized thinking of survivor accounts, which
embrace binaries such as “good” or “bad” choices, or individuals who
are naïve or lucid, “fortunate” or “unfortunate.”
It is on this individual scale of analysis that we seek to proceed, although we reject the notion that decisions—whether to register as a
“Jew” with the authorities, whether to leave or stay—can solely be explained by way of individual choices supposedly made with full awareness. The following methodological principles that we used stem from
this position:
• Instead of basing our analysis on survivor testimony, we propose
using archival documents that were for the most part contemporary with the persecution, in an attempt to reconstruct the world
of possibilities surrounding these trajectories, while freeing ourselves from our knowledge about how these stories end.
• Instead of focusing on a limited set of carefully selected cases, we
attempt to define and assess actual trajectories within a relatively
large group in order to make statistically verifiable comparisons.
Quantitative analysis helps avoid an approach focusing on individual cases and provides a certain detachment that is particularly
helpful with controversial subjects and matters involving collective
memory. A case study method would have risked focusing on “exemplary” or “non-normative” cases, those involving the most powerful or compelling evidence, or on cases that are familiar through
privileged access to descendants or private archives. This makes it
possible to compare individual and family trajectories that would
otherwise remain apart in their solitary singularity.
• Rather than a corpus of unrelated individuals, we have chosen a
well-defined community with preexisting bonds of acquaintance
and reputation, whose members were faced with the same situations. By following a cohort of people over the five-year war period,
we have attempted to transcend psychological judgments about the
choices made by individuals. We do not believe that these actors
made moral decisions with a supposed full awareness of their possible outcomes or consequences, nor have we evaluated their choices
through the prism of the preestablished categories of researchers
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
87
or readers. Instead, we have resituated their decisions within the
familial, economic, and local environments in which they were
made. This study is therefore predicated on the assumption that
the individual or family decisions made by victims, whether voluntary or imposed, inevitably had a social dimension. They therefore
have meaning only within the restricted limits of a particular life
or lives, in which relationships between people and the resources
at their disposal are accounted for and analyzed by restoring the
original social “thickness” to an individual persecution itinerary.
We believe that a monographic approach is essential for putting these
methodological principles to the test. It provides the only way of anchoring analysis of behaviors within the social spaces in which they take on
concrete form and meaning. The present study is based on a cohort of
approximately one thousand Jews residing before the war in the Lens
area, a city in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France.4 We
chose this location firstly because of the wealth of sources, which makes
it possible to document on a local level the process of stigmatizing and
persecuting groups. In addition to standard sources, including both
national (Aryanization and naturalization dossiers) and international
(ITS Archives and Swiss government files), local departmental archives
have, in a rare occurrence, notably conserved all of the self-declarations
of Jewishness mailed from Lens to prefecture authorities.
It is important to note at the outset that the local situation in Lens
was highly particular and distinguished it from the persecution of Jews
in the rest of France. Firstly, the town’s Jewish community, which in
the 1930s represented 3 percent of the population of thirty-three thousand, was particularly devastated by these policies, as nearly half of the
Jews in Lens were deported, as opposed to a quarter for France as a
whole. Secondly, Lens was part of the “forbidden zone” encompassing
the “Nord” and “Pas-de-Calais” departments, which was annexed to
Belgium by the Germans after the Armistice. The local chronology differs relatively little from the more familiar chronology of the larger “occupied zone.” In the fall of 1940, the first statute targeting Jews came
into effect, and the first census of Jews in the northern zone—required
but based on self-declaration—was conducted. The first expulsions from
professions also occurred during this period, as did the Aryanization of
businesses and the internment of some foreign Jews. In June and July
1941, the second statute on Jews took effect, the program of professional quotas and expulsions was expanded, while a second census was
conducted. Curfews were imposed in the spring and summer of 1942,
as well as the law requiring Jews to wear the Star of David. French
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authorities also conducted frequent roundups of Jews, whom they then
turned over to the Germans, while mass arrests and deportations also
continued from the summer of 1942 through 1944. The incorporation of
Pas-de-Calais into the German wartime administration of Belgium had
harsh consequences for the local Jewish population; in the case of Lens,
the French Jews who remained there became like any other foreigner,
and Jewish families no longer had the protection of French nationality
during local roundups in the summer of 1942.
In this respect Lens is not at all representative of France, a circumstance often referred to in microhistory as a “normal exception.” Our
priority was not to select a representative area, but to write the story
from the bottom up in order to understand precisely why Lens is nonrepresentative and why the persecution inflicted on Jews there was so
severe. What’s more, it is not Lens that proves this history correct; the
research could have focused on many other locations, although it had to
be situated “somewhere,” in a setting that could be identified as social
space, a well-defined terrain of observation where it becomes possible
to reconstitute—between choice and imperative—the social factors that
shaped the decisions made by the individuals concerned.
The essay unfolds in four parts. We begin by introducing sources,
based on a household monograph, pertaining to anti-Semitic persecution against a particular group of Jews who resided in the Lens area in
1939. This first section attempts a step-by-step reconstruction of certain aspects of the lives of Jews, in order to shed light on the actual
experiences of those facing persecution. Next, we pursue our effort to
construct a prosopographic approach by exploring different ways of treating the data that we uncovered. We will then discuss the problems associated with applying different quantification and modeling methods
to this specific case, which involves discrimination, persecution, and extermination. We will conclude by presenting potential complementary
projects to engage in both a microhistorical and sequential approach for
this singular context.
Selecting Sources: Different Persecution
Trajectories in the Same Household
Joseph Dawidowicz and His Close Relatives
In October 1944, after four years spent evading German and French authorities, Joseph Dawidowicz finally returned to Bethune only to learn
that his lease had been canceled on 13 May 1942, allowing the city government to purchase his apartment building. A neighbor housed him
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
89
while he appealed to have the lease reinstated, and he sent the following
letter to the prefect of Pas-de-Calais after his appeal was denied:
I would ask you very respectfully, Monsieur le Préfet, to be kind enough to
contact Monsieur le Maire and to allow him to authorize me to live in my
home, which is unoccupied, so that I may house my family, which comprises
eight members, four of whom are minors, who need to rest because of the
constant travel that they have been forced to endure for the past four years.
Monsieur le Préfet, please accept my assurances of the deepest respect.5
This was not the first time that Joseph had addressed the prefect. He
had sent a handwritten letter four years earlier in response to a census
of the Jewish population that began on 13 December 1940. His letter
stated that he was born in 1886 in a village near the Polish city of Lodz,
which at the time was under Russian rule, and that he had settled in
Bethune as a “purveyor of clothing and furs” with his wife Chana, and
their children Jean (aged nineteen), Jenny (fourteen), Fanny (eleven),
and Simon (ten).6
On 16 December 1940, three days after Joseph drafted his letter, the
Germans decided to expel Jews from Boulogne-sur-Mer and Bethune as
part of their effort to “protect” the coastal zone, which was at risk of a
British invasion. Learning from a friend on the police force that he was
on the list, Joseph and his family fled in the middle of the night, the first
stage in an extended odyssey that would eventually take them to Pau,
Lyon, Nice, and Uriage.
The Dawidowicz family had first left Bethune in mid-May 1940
during a mass exodus in advance of German troops. They climbed into
the family Peugeot sedan “with a trunk in the back,” followed by a Ford
truck borrowed from a mechanic friend carrying household items such
as “bedding, packages, suitcases of clothing and linens, and medication.”7 The first halt on their trip was at Noisy-le-Grand with the Jablon
family, who owned a distillery: “We thought we would stay a little while
in Noisy; with a bit of patience, once the Germans were defeated, we
would then return to Bethune.” The Germans were steadily advancing,
however, and Joseph, who had already spent several years as a German
POW in the previous war, quickly decided to take to the road.
They would never again see the Jablons, who disappeared after their
deportation. The family next halted in Angouleme, where they met a
cousin who had fled from Metz, but who was unable to take them in.
They again departed, traveling first to Cognac and later to Bordeaux,
where Joseph searched in vain for a boat to Africa. Soon enough, the
Germans arrived there as well. “We were unable to escape,” wrote Jean,
the eldest son, explaining their decision to turn around and return to
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Bethune. While his mother, brothers, and sisters returned home by
train, he and his father transported the family’s luggage and personal
effects, crossing the Somme River at a tiny village, Pont-Rémy, where
a German guard briefly detained them. The Dawidowicz family eventually found their way home to Bethune, with no plans to leave again.
For Joseph, leaving had always been a possibility. Until he settled in
the North of France, his itinerary was like that of thousands of other
Jews who emigrated for economic reasons from Central Europe at the
turn of the century. Some of his cousins left for England, but he traveled
to Germany sometime in 1901 or 1902 and found work as a cabin boy
on a coaster plying the waters between Hamburg and coastal ports in
the Netherlands, Denmark, and Great Britain. In 1914, he was imprisoned as a “Russian emigrant” and conscripted to work at a meat-curing
plant. After he was liberated in 1918, he returned to his native village in
Poland and married, before quickly leaving again in 1921, this time for
France. Chana and Joseph first traveled to Nancy and later to the Meuse
region, where their oldest son Jean was born in 1921. They then moved
to the area in the North around Douai in 1924. Rumors were circulating
that in the wake of mass migrations of Polish miners to the coal-mining
region in northern France, there was a market for Jewish immigrants
who could speak Polish and who were familiar with the tastes of this
potential market. Joseph first opened a small shop in Douai that sold
Salaisons douaisiennes (Douai cured meats), before moving to Bethune
and establishing himself in a well-located boutique on the town’s main
square as a purveyor of women’s clothes, under the appealing name “A
la Femme Chic” (The Chic Woman’s Shop).
This may indicate that the family was relatively comfortable financially by this time, and at some point in the interwar period, Joseph and
Chana requested and were granted French nationality. Joseph socialized
with other members of the Jewish community in Lens, most of whom
had arrived in the area in the 1920s and ’30s, like he and Chana. Yet
he simultaneously cultivated professional and personal contacts beyond
this circle of fellow immigrants, particularly in an association for fellow
former German POWs. The family may also have served as a type of
model for friends and relatives who later moved to the region. For example, in 1928, Joseph’s youngest brother, Abraham, moved to Avion (near
Lens), where he worked as a shoemaker. Abraham was married and had
three children, two born in Berlin in the late 1920s, and the youngest,
Liliane, born in Avion in 1941. Another relative, Moïse Dawidowicz, lived
in the nearby coal-mining town of Sallaumines with his wife and two
children, who were born there in 1932 and 1937. One of Chana’s sisters,
Sara Glicksman, lived in Douai with her husband and their five children.
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
91
Like Joseph and his immediate family, all three related families officially registered themselves as “Jews” in December 1940 in accordance
with the 18 November 1940 regulations “relative to the measures against
the Jews.” Article 3 of the regulations stated that “any Jewish person
will be required to present themselves without delay to the sub-prefect
of the district of their residence to be registered in a special ledger. The
declaration of the head of household will be valid for the entire family.”8
However, unlike other families, they remained in the town, submitting
to three censuses and enduring the Aryanization of their businesses and
homes (in Sallaumines, a neighbor residing in the same street made an
offer on Moïse’s house9); they were eventually arrested on 11 September
1942 during a wave of mass arrests among the remaining vestiges of the
Jewish community of Lens.10 The 10 September “daily report” to the
mayor from the Sallaumines police commissioner reported two events
that day under the heading “interesting events public order”—the “arrival of five new guardians of the peace,” and the “arrests of the Jewish Katz, Klajnberg, and Dawidowicz families by German authorities.
Their animals and fowl were donated to the Secours national”—before
concluding that there were “no major events.”11 After first being transferred to Malines in Belgium, all three families were deported by Convoy
X to Auschwitz on 15 September 1942. When they arrived, Moïse was
registered and assigned to forced labor under the registration number
42,828. He survived less than three months, dying on December 3. The
other members of the household were gassed immediately on 17 October after descending from the train.
Approximately one thousand Jews lived in the coal-mining basin surrounding Lens in early 1940. Following the exodus of about half of this
number beginning in May 1940, the December 1940 census recorded
482 “Israelites.” The census of 1 October 1942, less than two years later,
noted a total of thirteen survivors.
How to Interpret the Dawidowicz Family Itineraries
This recursive narrative of the itineraries of the Dawidowicz household
provides the basis for a family monograph, like those written by Daniel Mendelsohn and Götz Aly.12 In methodological terms, the history of
Joseph’s immediate family and close relatives is remarkable in that it
spanned the entire period that began with their exodus in May 1940 and
ended with their return as refugees and survivors in late 1944 and early
1945. This family’s history demonstrates the importance we have given
to chronology in analyzing individual, familial, and collective itineraries. Establishing the precise timing of their initial departures also offers
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information on the means and methods of itineraries, as well as their
determining factors. This is particularly useful in explaining certain
points in the family members’ itineraries that remained murky, such
as their return in late 1944. Even at the time, local authorities experienced considerable difficulty relinquishing the old reflexes from the era
of “Jewish affairs” (affaires juives) under the Vichy regime.
Joseph’s narrative is also unusual because his was one of the few family trajectories that can be traced through practically every layer of intersecting documentation that we unearthed for the study. This enabled
us to construct a portrait of the family’s history based on a wide array
of original resources, varying both with regard to where and by whom
they were produced. The sources include the testimony of one of Joseph’s daughters, Fanny (which was collected and preserved by the Yad
Vashem Institute in memory of the non-surviving members of her family), as well as individual refugee and displaced person search-service
files created by the International Red Cross (and consulted online on
the USHMM website in Washington), Aryanization files in the French
National Archives, documents located at the Center for Contemporary
Jewish Documentation (particularly deportation lists), and a major trove
of administrative and police documents stored in departmental archives
(including inventories of people and property, surveillance and pillaging
reports, commercial ledgers, distribution documents concerning yellow
stars, arrest lists, and return documents). Only two other sources are
missing in the case of the Dawidowicz family—the naturalization requests filed by Joseph and Chana (because the dossier is inexplicably
missing), and Swiss refugee dossiers, which are stored in Bern (because
none of the Dawidowiczes pursued this route). These documents represent potentially fertile additional sources, since the firsthand narratives
they contain date from before and during the family’s persecution.
The dispersed geographic locations of the archives used in this study,
although not unusual, were further complicated by the fact that the four
related families in the study resided in four municipalities—Bethune,
Sallaumines, Avion, and Douai. The first three of these municipalities
are in two different districts (Bethune and Arras) of the department of
Pas-de-Calais, while Douai is located in the neighboring department, the
Nord. The families’ records are consequently stored in three different
sub-prefectures, a distribution of sources that illustrates the principle
we used to shape our choice of population: instead of dividing the population sample according to basic administrative divisions (a history of
the Jews of the city of Lens, for example, or “from the Bethune district”
would have constituted a more convenient sample), we have focused on
the group’s boundaries as the group members themselves defined them,
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
93
notably by using the list engraved in the room that once served as a
synagogue; this list includes all local victims of deportations, whether
they were arrested in the immediate region or elsewhere in France and
whether they were residents of Lens itself or of neighboring towns.
With respect to the origins of the documents, the itineraries of Joseph
and his family members are corroborated by direct testimony from the
study subjects themselves. Some accounts were collected by officials at
the time—as seen earlier, this includes an unusual collection of handwritten self-declarations that offer a privileged look at the different approaches adopted by the Jews of Lens in their written declarations.
Additional narratives were collected in the course of our investigation,
including an oral interview with Jean Dawidowicz, and two short memoirs of his recollections, one typed and the other handwritten. The close
correlation between sources indeed indicates an astonishing degree of
reliability. Clearly, if we possessed only Jean’s testimony, we would have
had no information about the declarations of Jewish identity submitted
to the authorities by the three heads of household. Nor would we have
been aware of the conflict between the Bethune town hall and Jean’s
father after he returned (because Jean’s father did not allude to the
declaration), and we obviously would have remained ignorant about
the experience of the family members who remained behind (because
Jean was not present). And finally, without Jean’s firsthand account,
we would have lacked basic but critical details concerning the family’s
exodus, their decisions en route, and the various people they met along
the way.
The startling depth of these sources allowed us to conduct the intensive and strictly localized study that we argued was needed to answer
our initial research questions. Our recourse to the monographic genre
is not justified solely for this reason, but also because the local setting
makes it possible to closely contextualize individual trajectories by giving them back their social depth.
A series of questions arises from this perspective: Should one report
oneself as a Jew? If so, when? Should one simply continue with one’s
business? Should one flee? If so, how? Should families remain together
or travel separately? What should be done with property and assets, and
who could be trusted?
Additional related questions also arise. What factors influenced individual answers to these questions and, more broadly, the future of the
Dawidowicz household? What was the effect of such factors as nationality, the family’s relative wealth, their length of residence in the area, or
the diversity of their local and broader social networks? The answers to
these questions often draw on individual consciousness and then trans-
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late to the register of choice, sense of responsibility, or even moral judgment, contrasting the “naiveté” of some against the “lucidity” of others,
or “consent” with “resistance.” It is precisely because such questions
involve the inner world of individual consciousness that they arguably
cannot be adequately addressed in a historical study. They are supposed
to be private, personal decisions that cannot be evaluated or judged,
yet too often this is how reconstruction of the possible range of options
available to individuals is conceived, even and especially when this
range is limited not to discussion of what they supposedly had in mind,
but more simply to retrace the order of the thinkable and the possible
at a given point in time.
Intensive analysis of the sources on the ground level implies resituating the unusual trajectory of the Dawidowicz family in its material and
social context, partly by comparing it with the trajectories of other families who did not declare themselves or who either did not leave or left
under different circumstances (as a group, at another time). The goal of
giving observable itineraries and decisions their social depth or of establishing links between individual behaviors and personal characteristics
makes quantitative analysis necessary.
A Household within a Community: Was the
Dawidowicz Family’s Trajectory Representative?
Quantitative analysis does not merely imply counting how many people
were dispossessed, hidden, and deported, but instead knowing who they
where and how they were different (or where not) from those who did
not suffer the same fate. The first step was to create a detailed chart,
with the names of individual family members in the left-hand column
and, in the corresponding columns to the right, as many personal and
family variables as the data allow, including age, nationality, date of entry in France, family composition, and profession. These data were then
compiled into a single database that allowed basic statistical analysis to
establish the relationships between individual fates and personal variables. Significantly, this also made it possible to compare characteristics and itineraries among individuals and family groups according to
whether they had declared themselves as Jews, whether they departed
or remained in Lens, and whether they were placed under house arrest,
interned, or “departed with no forwarding address” during the course of
the occupation. Without quantitative analysis, in other words, it would
have been difficult to accurately compare the Dawidowicz family’s departures to other Lens residents.
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
95
Let us begin by returning to the December 1940 census. The four
Dawidowicz households all chose to officially declare themselves as
“Jews.” Each member of the four families was registered on the first set
of lists created by the prefecture. The decision to register, which may
have been jointly agreed to during an extended family meal, can be compared to that of other members of the Jewish population of Lens. Based
on their letters of declaration preserved in the archives, we are able to
describe their reactions to the official self-declaration requirement.
The declaration letters represent an exceptional archival resource
that is in many ways the product of a historical accident. In Paris and
most other cities, Jews declared themselves in person directly to the
authorities, encounters that left no detailed trace. Lens, however, was so
remote from prefectural headquarters that direct registration was considered impractical, and many declarations were therefore submitted in
writing. The resulting documents provide a privileged glimpse of the act
of self-declaration and the way in which the declarant experienced and
represented this act to the authorities.13
In one letter, for example, a father declares himself to be Jewish—“as
a nationality”—but describes his daughter as “French” because “she
was born in France.” At approximately the same time, a woman wrote
to the sub-prefect in Bethune to explain her reluctance to respond. Acknowledging that she was of “Jewish origin,” she also argued that she
was born a French citizen and was the child of French parents. She
also noted that her father had volunteered for military service in 1870,
followed by her husband, who had volunteered in 1914, and her son
in 1939. “I therefore come to you to ask, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet, if,
with all these French qualities, I should be classified among the Jews
who are currently being investigated.” Her reasoning demonstrates
the extent to which prewar “Israelites” had internalized the dichotomy
between citizens and foreigners, which is central to French jurisprudence. Her case also reflects a sociological distinction between, on the
one hand, long-standing French citizens of Jewish faith or culture, who
were endowed with “French qualities,” and on the other, Ostjuden, who
were immigrants seeking employment or refugees fleeing official antiSemitism in their native countries—the “Jews who are currently being
investigated” referred to by the author of the letter. This distinction
offers a significant clue into how French Jews positioned themselves.
The official reply that arrived a few days later pursued a rather different interpretation of what it meant to be a Jew, by asserting that
“[because you were] born, as you yourself declare, to parents of Jewish
origin, you belong to the Jewish race.” The petitioner was compelled
to declare herself at the Lens town hall, demonstrating that the bu-
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reaucracy of the time was entirely indifferent to logic or even legality.
Indeed, the variety of ways in which individuals declared their Jewish
identity differed markedly from how the resulting data were treated at
the time and subsequently interpreted by historians and others.
We have attempted to answer two simple but hitherto largely neglected questions concerning these letters of self-declaration:
1. What concrete steps were taken to identify and list Jews in France
during World War II?
2. Who was in charge of this operation, and what criteria and methods did they use?
Our findings show that three-fourths of the Jewish population in and
around Lens elected to self-declare, contradicting the widely held view
that most Jews were identified by being detected by the Vichy government and were therefore to be treated as foreigners according to Third
Republic policy. The self-declaration initiative was not widely contested,
despite taking place on a massive scale, with 90 percent of the Jews in
the department of the Seine, for example, ostensibly self-declaring (although the source of this estimate is unknown).14 Declaration letters also
revealed the gray area between self-identification as Jewish by religion
and Jewishness construed as “nationality,” “origin,” or “race.”
Self-declaration varied across categories and locations. Younger and
single people, as well as those who were spatially isolated, were born in
France, or had entered the country more recently, were least likely to
declare themselves (see table 5.1). Socio-professional status, however,
was not closely related to whether individuals or families self-declared,
Table 5.1. Characteristics of Self-declared and Non-declared Jews
Non-declared
Self-declared
Single
44%
56%
100% (34)
Couples
22%
78%
100% (54)
Type of household (chi-sq. ***)
Families of 3 to 4 members
21%
79%
100% (310)
Large families
31%
69%
100% (192)
Total
26%
74%
100% (590)
Age (chi-sq. ***)
0–16
32%
68%
100% (181)
16–30
28%
72%
100% (107)
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Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
31–45
20%
80%
100% (197)
46 and over
17%
83%
100% (96)
Total
25%
75%
100% (581)
Born in France
31%
69%
100% (177)
Prior to 1928
20%
80%
100% (97)
Between 1928 and 1930
13%
87%
100% (132)
Between 1931 and 1934
16%
84%
100% (55)
1935 and subsequently
27%
73%
100% (62)
Total
22%
78%
100% (523)
Entry into France (chi-sq. ***)
Number of households per street (chi-sq. **)
One household
37%
63%
100% (86)
2 to 4 households
26%
74%
100% (118)
5 to 9 households
19%
81%
100% (160)
More than 10 households
24%
76%
100% (221)
Total
25%
75%
100% (585)
Socio-professional status (chi-sq. *)
Student
30%
70%
100% (64)
Minor
33%
67%
100% (135)
Self-employed
20%
80%
100% (143)
Employee
22%
78%
100% (63)
No profession
21%
79%
100% (155)
Overall total
24%
76%
100% (560)
Real estate ownership (chi-sq. **)
(total households for which information is available)
No
12%
88%
100% (57)
Yes
29%
71%
100% (35)
Total
18%
82%
100% (92)
The chi-square test of significance assesses the difference between an observed situation
and the theoretical independence of variables, making it possible to measure the extent
to which two variables are related to each other. By convention, the symbol *** is used
to indicate that the value of the chi-square test is significant to the level of 1%. The interpretive risk in minimal, because there is only one chance in one hundred that the gap
observed with respect to the situation of independence is due to chance (i.e., the situation
in which self-declaration or non-self-declaration was unrelated to family status, age, date
of entry into France, or professional status). The symbol ** indicates that the chi-square
value is significant to 5%, and the symbol * to indicate that it is significant to 10%; NS
indicates no significance.
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Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc
as self-employed workers, employees, and the unemployed were equally
likely to register. The influence of age was enormous, which explains
the over-representation of bachelors and individuals “born on French
soil” among those who chose not to self-declare. The non-declared group
included a relatively higher proportion of young adults, who were evidently less likely to comply with the declaration requirement. It also
included more children, whom heads of household tried to protect by
not declaring. If we change scale, it is also possible to observe dynamics
of social contagion, as non-declared Jews were highly concentrated in
two streets in Lens, rue Flament, where three out of five households did
not declare, and rue Félix Faure, where eight out of thirteen heads of
household decided not to declare their families to the authorities. Elsewhere, declarations were made en masse: all eleven families residing in
rue Gauthier, ten out of the twelve Jewish households in rue Pasteur,
and eight of the Jewish households in rue Camille Beugnet officially
registered themselves as Jewish.
This micro-local approach helps better understand the factors determining the act of declaration. Let us examine rue Félix Faure. Of the
sixteen Jewish families residing in the street, three left Lens at the time
of the initial exodus in 1940 (living at numbers 14, 16, and 39), and eight
did not declare themselves. These latter lived at numbers 14, 14bis, and
15. However, five families chose to declare, those residing at numbers
12, 14bis, 15bis, 16, and 39. Considering the proximity of the addresses
of the non-declared households and the range of responses within the
same street, it is difficult to argue that ignorance or isolation were factors in explaining non-declaration. This is particularly true given that
the same address, number 14, housed both the household of Jechezkiel Himmelbarb, president of the Israelite Community of Lens, and
the headquarters for the Association of the Jewish Faith. The decision
of whether to obey the order to register was probably a topic of discussion among neighbors. Did these discussions juxtapose legalism with the
sense of a perceived threat? We do not know the precise nature of such
discussions, as they have left no traces.
A second indicator nevertheless makes it possible to determine the
relative level of local integration of non-declaring households. Over 25
percent of property-owning households (ten out of thirty-five) did not
respond to the declaration requirement (as compared to 12 percent
of non-property-owning households). Should we conclude that it was
precisely the lesser degree of social fragility and the higher visibility of
property-owning Jewish households that encouraged them not to declare (particularly since non-declaration did not prevent them from being identified beginning in December 1940)?
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Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
From the perspective of those who did self-declare, the various Dawidowicz couples are highly consistent with the choices of their neighbors in Lens. These similarities within extended families and with
respect to other Jews in the area tend to mask the highly exceptional nature of the itinerary of Joseph Dawidowicz’s household during the war.
Quantitative analysis can again provide revelatory information. Examining the relationship between household size and family ties outside
of the Lens area reveals that Joseph’s family actually had a high statistical probability of not leaving because, as tables 5.2 and 5.3 illustrate,
higher numbers of children per family as well as more local family ties
increased the probability of being arrested.
Table 5.2. Those Who Left and Those Who Remained: Household Size
Household type
(chi-sq. ***)
Departed
Remained
Total
Single-member households
73%
27%
100% (70)
Couples
73%
27%
100% (110)
Families of 3 to 4 persons
65%
35%
100% (508)
Large families
51%
49%
100% (298)
Total
62%
38%
100% (986)
Table 5.3. Kinship Network and Arrest of Departed
(compared to total number of households)
Not
Ties to other Lens households (chi-sq. ***) arrested
Arrested
Total
No family ties acknowledged with other
households
78%
22%
100% (125)
One family tie with other households
73%
27%
100% (44)
From 2 to 4 ties with other households
51%
49%
100% (39)
Total
72%
28%
100% (208)
How can the differences between the itineraries of the various Dawidowicz family members be explained?
First, it is worth recalling that Joseph and his family were forced
to flee within a few days of having filed their self-declaration, meaning
that, unlike other families, their choice was not independent of the circumstances. Jean’s testimony also informs us of the person who notified
the family that they were on the arrest list and how they organized
100
Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc
their “furtive departure,” to use language typical of police records. On
the evening of 15 December 1940, Jean learned of their imminent arrest
from a brigadier from local police headquarters, which was immediately
across the street from the family business, where the German occupying
force’s Kommandantur (local headquarters) was also located. The statistical relationship between time of departure and individual destinies
also shows that the family’s forced departure took place at exactly the
“right” moment. Their incentive to remain discreet, if not completely
hidden, along with the certainty that any eventual return would be in
the distant future, was far clearer than at the time of their first departure in May 1940; however, the ability of Jews to flee or circulate and
reach the unoccupied zone was better than in the summer of 1942 (see
tables 5.4 and 5.5).
Table 5.4. Destination as a Function of Time of Departure
Chi-sq. ***
Destination Unoccupied Occupied
unknown
zone
zone
Switzerland Total
Departure prior to
December 1940
47%
27%
17%
9%
100%
(388)
Departure in 1941
40%
41%
11%
8%
100%
(98)
Departure in 1942
52%
14%
24%
10%
100%
(124)
Total
48%
26%
17%
9%
100%
(610)
Table 5.5. The Effect of Departure Time on Arrest Rates
Chi-sq. ***
Arrested
Not arrested Total
Final departure before December 1940
34%
66%
100% (388)
Final departure between December
1940 and December 1941
17%
83%
100% (98)
Final departure between January and
September 1942
20%
80%
100% (124)
Total
28%
72%
100% (610)
Joseph’s networks—local, in Paris, and elsewhere—significantly improved the conditions under which the family departed, as well as their
eventual chances of surviving. Beginning on the morning of December
16, the aid network for lost British soldiers to which Joseph and Jean
both belonged was mobilized to help organize their departure. Fanny
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Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
and Simon, aged ten and eleven, left first, blending in with other children at the town hall in the care of Monsieur Delestrez, the same person
Joseph consulted regarding his letter to the prefect in October 1944.
Joseph remained in the shop until he met his wife and oldest daughter,
Jenny, who was fourteen, in a café. They were then driven to Noeuxles-Mines and temporarily hidden by a laborer family. Jean was assisted
by a merchant from Lens who had a stall in the Bethune town market.
These connections also made it possible for Joseph to use the truck and
identity card of an Italian (who could circulate freely because Italy was
allied with the Germans) in order to reach Albert Goldberg’s apartment
on the rue de la Paix in Lens. He eventually arrived at the nearest railway station and boarded a train to Paris.
The family then separated, and the oldest child, Jean, left for Paris,
while Joseph, his wife, and their oldest daughter, Jenny, found refuge
at the Caine’s home in Noeux-les-Mines thanks to the assistance of a
Red Cross worker. The two youngest children, Fanny (eleven) and Simon (ten) were entrusted to Monsieur Delestrez at the Bethune town
hall. Their parents and Jenny were able to reach the capital several
weeks later, where they joined Jean, who then returned north to retrieve Fanny and Simon. The entire family was finally reunited in Paris
before departing for Grenoble, where they remained in hiding until the
end of the war.15
The destiny of this family is without question highly exceptional.
The Dawidowiczes were only able to leave in separate groups because
they enjoyed a series of networks and trusted friends, as well as acquaintances who consented to hiding their children. The home of the
Delestrez family, who were municipal employees, was on the top floor of
the Bethune town hall, directly opposite German police headquarters on
the town square. The Dawidowicz family was additionally able to find
shelter with cousins in Paris. Support networks and relatives outside of
Lens—more specifically in the southern zone—clearly facilitated departures in a significant way, because there were no guarantees, even after
the occupied/unoccupied line had been crossed (see table 5.6).
Table 5.6. Arrest as a Function of Final Destination
(Chi-sq. ***)
Arrested
Not arrested
Overall
As %
Occupied zone
62%
38%
100% (107)
17%
Unoccupied zone
25%
75%
100% (165)
27%
Switzerland
0%
100%
100% (54)
9%
Unknown destination
14%
86%
100% (290)
47%
Total
24%
76%
100% (616)
100%
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Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc
Individual testimonials also demonstrate the crucial importance of the
material resources available to Joseph during the latter stages of the
family’s forced exodus. In January 1941, they were able to arrange for
the family to be reunited in late February 1941 and to stage their crossing into the “free zone”: they used a Parisian apartment in the rue Notre
Dame de Nazareth belonging to suppliers of their clothing shop, as well
as a hotel where “they usually stayed.” They also benefited from the
involvement of the Bethune support network, including a neighbor who
was a charcutier (a purveyor of cured meats) and a “devoted” salesclerk,
who helped remove and sell the remaining merchandise from the clothing shop. It was Jean who clandestinely returned to Bethune via Lens
and the rue de la Paix to recover the proceeds from this sale along with
the younger children. Later, each phase of their wanderings appears to
have been chosen based on the location of friends or acquaintances. In
Pau, they stayed with other “refugees from Lens,” in particular “the insurance agent and friend” Léon Baron. This socialist activist was close
to the local député (congressman), the former president of the association of the internees at Gurs, who is buried in the Jewish cemetery of
Eleu (called Lauwette) on the outskirts of Lens.
Jean related another significant episode that took place while they
were in Pau. Jean’s parents heard about the first mass arrests of foreign Jews in the occupied zone and decided to send Jean north one last
time in April 1941 to persuade the other branches of the family to join
them. He thus returned a second time to Lens, again staying with the
Goldbergs. Neither friends nor family members heeded his pleas, however: “They answered that they had done everything they could, and
that they were working and earning an honest living. And that if we,
the Dawidowiczes, had been harassed … it was because we had engaged
in reprehensible activities.” Their refusal to leave is a testament to the
influence of peer pressure on decision-making. Unlike Joseph, who was
isolated in Bethune and maintained contacts with non-Jews, the other
Dawidowicz households, particularly those in Douai and Sallaumines,
lived in streets in which five to nine other Jewish families resided. Yet
judging from table 5.7, living in a street shared by other members of the
same faith seems to have made it harder to decide to leave, perhaps because these households felt protected by this proximity to one another.
The Chronology of Persecutions and
the Changing Effects of Variables
The statistical approach used in the previous sections provides several
interesting findings, particularly concerning the reasons for departure,
103
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
Table 5.7. Departing versus Remaining in Lens: Street Addresses and Proximity
Number of Jewish households in
street (chi-sq. ***)
Departed
Remained
Total
Isolated household
35%
65%
100% (114)
2 to 4 households
62%
38%
100% (186)
5 to 9 households
72%
28%
100% (272)
More than 10 households
62%
38%
100% (370)
Overall
62%
38%
100% (942)
while revealing powerful differences for several of the variables at work.
On the other hand, our quantitative methodology is not effective in reflecting relationships of causality between variables that change over
time. Nor would more sophisticated statistical procedures such as logistical regression have provided more nuanced information about evolving
relationships between variables. Indeed, on several occasions we observed that the negative and positive effects of certain variables evolved
over time as the geographic and chronological situations of individuals
changed. Something that was a handicap in Lens could become an advantage in another setting or vice versa. What follows is a description of
several important examples of this chronological phenomenon that reveals the fundamental patterns underlying persecution, including a tendency toward increasing arbitrariness in which searching for causative
factors loses its meaning amid the reality that every Jew was eventually
a target for repression.
In introducing these findings, we would like to call particular attention
to the systematic results of the chi-square tests of significance/non-significance that were used in this study. As we know, the test makes it
possible to determine the significance or non-significance of the results
obtained. We also wish to underscore the fact that a finding of statistical
non-significance can in fact provide important insights. For example,
the relationship between self-declaration (or not) and deportation (or
not) is quite revealing. As a general rule, with regard to the probable
uses of the census data, it is conceivable that the act of self-declaration
indicates a certain level of naïveté or even blindness on the part of the
families. But this viewpoint fails to consider the time frame—declaring
oneself Jewish in 1940 was not necessarily perceived as suggesting a
tragic future outcome. More specifically, whether one self-declared or
not did not change the risk of being arrested, as noted previously. As
table 5.8 illustrates, the same proportion of declared and non-declared
households were deported to the East two years later.
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Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc
Table 5.8. Family Declaration in December 1940 and Deportation
Chi-sq. NS
Not deported
Deported Total
Not declared—identified by authorities 43%
57%
100% (37)
Self-declared
46%
54%
100% (150)
Total
45%
55%
100% (187)
Having demonstrated a probable statistical independence between declaring oneself Jewish (or not) and subsequently being deported (or not)
is very important. It allows us to avoid value judgments concerning the
alleged “quality” of the “choice” made by the individual families.16 In
this sense, the creation of a database is also an argument for a depersonalized and collective analysis of what could be called extreme situations.
The role of nationality illustrates how the effects of a particular variable can change over time. Nationality played a relatively minor role in
the decision to remain in Lens or to leave. There is a slight disparity,
however, between French and Polish citizens, who represented the majority of those who left, and other nationalities, who were more likely
to remain. It is very likely that French and Polish citizens, who represented the majority of the local Jewish population, had more local
acquaintances, both in the region and throughout occupied France, and
thus confronted fewer obstacles to departing and/or going into hiding
(in some cases even by remaining near the Lens area) (see table 5.9).
Table 5.9. Nationality and Departure between 1940 and 1942
Nationality (chi-sq. **)
Departed
Remained
Total
French
62%
38%
100% (218)
Polish
59%
41%
100% (491)
Other
47%
53%
100% (142)
Total
46%
54%
100% (851)
Nationality was a predictor of arrest, however. In theory at least, French
citizens in the forbidden zone that included Lens were considered foreigners just like everyone else, since the region, as mentioned, came under German command and was annexed to Belgium (see table 5.10). Yet
there were disparities in arrest rates depending on nationality. “Only”
36 percent of Jews in the Lens area who had French nationality were
arrested, compared with 59 percent for Polish citizens and 63 percent
for other nationalities (e.g., Romanians, Czechs, Russians). This result
stems from the fact that the table does not take displacement or chronol-
105
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
ogy into account. Jews who left the Lens area—which once again was
administratively attached to Belgium—and entered the “French” zones
regained the prevailing “national” criterion used for managing arrests.
They therefore once again became “nationals,” whereas the Polish remained just as foreign as they had been in the “forbidden zone.”
Table 5.10. Nationality and Arrest
Nationality (chi-sq. ***)
Not arrested
Arrested
Total
French
64%
36%
100% (218)
Polish
41%
59%
100% (491)
Other
37%
63%
100% (142)
Total
46%
54%
100% (851)
Leaving Lens and entering occupied France guaranteed nothing, for
the French or for anyone else. In fact, when they crossed the border
between these two sectors, Jews from Lens who had acquired French
nationality after 1927 were no longer necessarily protected by it. The
law of 22 July 1940 stipulated that citizens naturalized after that date
would have their cases reexamined and risked being stripped of naturalized French citizenship. Indeed, over fifteen thousand individuals lost
their French nationality in this way between 1940 and 1944, including
approximately ten Jews from Lens.
Finally, the “nationality” variable shows a strong positive correlation
with the date of departure from Lens. On average, 20 percent of Jews from
Lens left in 1942, but this number comprised 41 percent of the French,
as opposed to only 19 percent of Poles and 8 percent of other nationalities
(see table 5.11). As we had hypothesized, the sense of being protected by
their nationality influenced the decision of French citizens to leave.
Table 5.11. Nationality and Date of Departure
Final departure
between
Final departure December 1940
Nationality before
and
(ch-sq. ***) December 1940 December 1941
Final departure
between
January and
September 1942
French
40%
39%
21%
100% (135)
Polish
65%
16%
19%
100% (284)
Other
79%
13%
8%
100 % (191)
Total
64%
16%
20%
100% (610)
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Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc
The effects of socioeconomic status represent a mix of the two previously discussed variables. Indeed, although it was relatively strongly
related to the likelihood of departure, the relationship between socioeconomic status and being arrested and eventually deported disappears
completely. The binary opposition between “staying in Lens” and “leaving Lens” serves as an example of this distinction. There is a marked
effect for socioeconomic status, although it appears to be less significant
than variables such as age and especially household size; on average,
56 percent of the Jews living in or near Lens left, but the rate was 62
percent for independent workers and 53 percent for salaried employees
(see table 5.12).17
Table 5.12. Socioeconomic Status of Jews Who Left Lens between 1940 and
1942
Employment status (over 16 years
of age) (chi-sq. **)
Departed
Remained
Total
Independent workers
62%
38%
100% (229)
Salaried employees
53%
47%
100% (88)
No profession
49%
51%
100% (201)
Overall
56%
44%
100% (518)
Factors correlated with being arrested or not suggest a non-significant
relationship with socioeconomic status: similar percentages of independent workers, salaried employees, and those with no profession avoided
arrest (roughly 45%); this was also true of individuals who self-declared
(see table 5.13).
This can easily be explained, as Aryanization files and professional
declarations from the different occupation censuses make it possible to
verify the socioeconomic status of Jews residing in Lens in the fall of
1939. Auschwitz entry questionnaires also provide evidence that some
individuals continued to occupy their professions even until entering
the camps—at least those who were not immediately gassed on arrival.
The confiscation of Jewish property as early as the latter half of 1940,
coupled with being banned from practicing their professions, however,
renders any attempt to establish the socioeconomic classification of
Jews meaningless. The population’s socioeconomic categories therefore
evolved over time, making this an unstable statistical criterion. In fact,
it was impossible for Jews to convert currency under the Vichy regime,
because as early as the fall of 1940, there was a concerted effort in the
occupied zone to despoil them and to confiscate their assets and prop-
107
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
erty. This was accompanied by the loss of any legitimate means of earning a living, which forced Jews to survive without work for several years,
sometimes in a new location (this was also true in the southern zone for
individuals who lacked community connections). This also helps to explain why, for some individuals and in some cases over the long term,
forced participation in a Groupement de Travailleurs Etrangers (GTE;
Foreign Workers’ Group of the Vichy regime) offered a credible solution
to the profound hardships suffered by Jews who fled after May 1940.
Table 5.13. Socioeconomic Status and Arrest
Employment status of individuals
over 16 years of age (chi-sq. NS)
Not arrested
Arrested
Total
Self-employed
48%
52%
100% (229)
Salaried employees
45%
55%
100% (88)
No profession
42%
58%
100% (201)
Total
45%
55%
100% (518)
Indeed, our search for causal factors rapidly encountered the arbitrariness that characterized the application of persecution policies and, to
some extent, the lack of evidence for a relationship between socioeconomic status and whether an individual was arrested or not.
Discussion and Conclusions
These examples of the interplay of variables show that answering the
question haunting the contemporary historian as he or she narrates (or
as the reader reads about) the fate of 991 Jews from Lens during World
War II—“Why did some people survive while others did not?”—is difficult using an approach favoring “linear causality.” The research conducted on the Jews of Lens facing persecution suggests the importance of
abandoning the fiction of monolithic determining factors and accepting
that the variables have different meanings.18 More broadly, this involves
rethinking both how variables are constructed and how they are used.
Yet in the same field of operation, variables can vary over time, with
differing methods and effects. Our selected area of Lens directly confronted us with this fact: the context speeds up time, often from one day
to the next, and the factors characterizing individuals evolve.
We readily acknowledge that the statistical approach that we used in
this study has failed to a certain extent, because it proved unable to offer
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Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc
a plausible explanation for the chronological variability in the destinies
of the roughly one thousand Jewish subjects of our study. For a particular variable “to be explained” (for example, leaving Lens, regardless of
time of departure), some variables are determinant, such as household
size, whereas others have been shown to be non-determinant (such as
gender) or only slightly determinant (such as socioeconomic status or
nationality). There are nevertheless difficulties, as revealed even by our
book’s table of contents (Face à la persécution. 991 Juifs dans la guerre).
Indeed, the relevance of “spaces of possibilities” (to borrow terminology
used by microhistorical studies) diminishes significantly as individual
itineraries move forward in time from one period—the early days of the
persecution (between the summer of 1940 and spring 1942)—to a later
one (summer 1942, when circumstances worsened significantly). In the
process of attempting to make sense of the causative factors for actions
revealed by our data and to present and interpret our findings in writing, we have increasingly been struck by the apparently random nature
of persecution, a gloomy sensation that became increasingly powerful
as our project advanced. The population’s room to maneuver shrank
gradually but steeply, and the categories of victims seem to have become
increasingly blurred. The logic behind the various methods of persecuting the population varied from place to place and from one official to another, ultimately evolving into the steamroller that carried a significant
portion of the Jewish population of Lens inexorably toward death. As
researchers, we are left with the sense of having failed to decipher any
overall causal pattern, despite our best efforts to make sense of a rich
collection of data on this specific, well-defined population.
We also confronted another pitfall, in that the implementation of a
causal explanation clashes with the arbitrariness specific to the policy
of persecution; in a certain sense, the lack of a relation between socioeconomic status and arrest that we presented already indicates the presence of this arbitrary element. Is there any sense in parsing variables
in the summer of 1942? Were there improbable situations whose possibility can nevertheless be examined? The lives of the Jews living in
Lens appear to have often hung by a thread, like that of young William
Scharfman, arrested with his mother on 11 September 1942, but saved
by a railway worker on the station platform.19 A fleeting, apparently
random incident thus determined the boy’s survival, but how can such
apparent randomness be accounted for empirically?
In the face of the difficulties presented by quantitative analysis, a
doubt can arise—should one quite simply give up? The difficulties
encountered are not specific to the period or the subject studied—as
numerous colleagues continue to believe by arguing that the radical sin-
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
109
gularity of the genocidal war context dooms any attempt at modeling
to failure—but rather to a way of conceiving the social. For this reason,
we anticipate reorienting the investigation by adhering to other ways of
reading the data and formulating the thinking, as well as modeling the
data. As we became aware that the deck of cards was reshuffled at every
phase of the persecution, we realized that we needed a way to analyze
trajectories that could also account for particular “turning points” and
“bifurcations” in individual itineraries. It is unclear, in fact, whether
concepts such as “career” or “sequence” are even relevant to the fates of
this population or to the ebb and flow of their itineraries during different phases of persecution. This suggests that studies should be based on
shorter-term strategies and on a direct approach to the methodological
question of how to accommodate unpredictable or missing data, all the
more important as the individuals escaped persecution. These are promising subjects that future research should address.20
As is clear, a microhistorical approach and quantitative analysis are
not contradictory, and the shifting scale of analysis does not necessarily
require a monographic or linear narrative. On the contrary, the example
of the Jews from Lens offers a reminder that monographic endeavors
are not part of the Labroussian model of puzzle pieces that one attempts to put together.21 To conclude, one of the results of this text is
to promote, in spite of the methodological challenges, a new approach
to studying the Holocaust process, using all of the traditional methods
in the historian’s toolbox. We remain convinced that social science research methods can be applied to research subjects that, due to their
exceptional character, are also subjects of debate and contention. There
is no reason why the history of this period should be written using tools
that are different from those of other historians and social scientists.
Nicolas Mariot is senior research fellow at the National Center for
Scientific Research (CNRS, France). Among his publications are Face
à la persécution. 991 Juifs dans la guerre (Facing the persecution: 991
Jews during the war) published with Claire Zalc (Odile Jacob, 2010);
“Does Acclamation Equal Agreement? Rethinking Collective Effervescence through the Case of the Presidential Tour de France during the
20th Century,” Theory & Society 40, no. 2 (March 2012): 191–221; and
Tous unis dans la tranchée? 1914–1918, les intellectuels rencontrent le
people (Seuil, 2013). His website is http://www.jourdan.ens.fr/~mariot/.
Claire Zalc is research fellow at the Institut d’histoire moderne et
contemporaine (Centre national de la recherche scientifique-Ecole normale supérieure). She is the CNRS bronze medal winner for 2012. She
110
Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc
is the author of Méthodes quantitatives pour l’historien (2008), Melting
Shops. Une histoire des commerçants étrangers en France (2010), and
Face à la persécution. 991 Juifs dans la guerre (2010) and is the coeditor
of Pour une microhistoire de la Shoah (2012).
Notes
Translated from the French by John Angell and Arby Gharibian.
1. Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, “La persécution des Juifs en Belgique et aux Pays-Bas
pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Une analyse comparative,” Cahiers d’Histoire
du Temps Présent, CGTP-BEL 5 (1998): 73–132. For discussions based on statistical
analyses of municipal data, see Marnix Croes, “Anti-Jewish Policy and Organization of the Deportations in France and the Netherlands, 1940–1944: A Comparative
Study” and “The Holocaust in the Netherlands and the Rate of Jewish Survival,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20, no. 3 (Winter 2006): 437–73 and 474–99; also
see Peter Tammes, “Jewish Immigrants in the Netherlands during the Nazi Occupation,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37, no. 4 (Spring 2007): 543–62. For
the debate regarding survival rates in France, see Jacques Semelin, Persécutions et
entraides dans la France occupée. Comment 75% des Juifs en France ont échappé à la
mort (Paris: Les Arènes-Éd. du Seuil, 2013), as well as the controversy surrounding
this book, particularly Robert O. Paxton, “Comment Vichy aggrava le sort des juifs
en France,” Le Débat 183 (2015): 173–81.
2. Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2006). For examples of studies, see Christopher Browning, Remembering Survival:
Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp (Chicago: WW Norton, 2010); Götz Aly, Into the Tunnel: The Brief Life of Marion Samuel, 1931–1943 (New York: Metropolitan Books,
2007); Jürgen Matthäus and Mark Roseman, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 1,
1933–1938, Documenting Life and Destruction: Holocaust Sources in Context (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2010).
3. Michael Pollak, L’expérience concentrationnaire. Essai sur le maintien de l’identité
sociale (Paris : Métailié, 1990).
4. Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc, Face à la persécution. 991 Juifs dans la guerre (Paris:
Odile Jacob, 2010).
5. Departmental Archives (AD), Pas-de-Calais, 1Z499.
6. AD Pas-de-Calais, 1Z500 bis.
7. Jean Dawidowicz Archives, untitled two-part memoir, part handwritten and part
typed, “1939–1941” and “1941–1945,” undated, but after 1990, partially published
in “Un jeune couple dans la guerre. Témoignage de Jean et Charlotte Dawidowicz”
[A young couple in the war: The testimonials of Jean and Charlotte Dawidowicz],
Tsafon, revue d’études juives du Nord 47 (2004): 41–60.
8. Journal Officiel (Verkündungsblatt des Oberfeldkommandanten) containing the orders of the Military Governor of the Departments of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais, no.
7, 6/12/1940, pp. 129–30, ADPC 1Z497.
9. Archives Nationales (AN), AJ38/4932 dossier 8874.
10. Two of Joseph Dawidowicz’s nephews, Léon and Paul Glicksman (aged twenty and
twenty-six), were arrested and “recruited” to work on the Todt organization’s fortifications on the Anglo-Norman islands. They were deported on Convoy No. 55, which
left Drancy for Auschwitz on 23 June 1943.
Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution
111
11. Daily report from the police commissioner to the mayor, dated 10/9/1942, Municipal
Archives of Sallaumines.
12. Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (New York: HarperCollins, 2006); Aly, Into the Tunnel. More generally, see Matthäus and Roseman, Jewish
Responses to Persecution, vol.1, 1933–1938.
13. Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc, “Identifier, s’identifier: recensement, auto-déclarations et persécution des Juifs lensois (1940–1945),” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 54, no. 3 (July–September 2007): 91–117.
14. Jean-Jacques Becker and Annette Wieviorka, eds., Les Juifs de France de la révolution française à nos jours (Paris: Liana Levi, 1998), 200.
15. “Témoignage de Mme Fanny Fleinman, née Dawidowicz,” collected by Danielle Delmaire, Tsafon, revue d’études juives du Nord 9–10 (Summer–Fall 1992) : 6–11.
16. Mariot and Zalc, “Identifier, s’identifier.”
17. The study considered only individuals over sixteen years of age.
18. Andrew Abbott, Time Matters: On Theory and Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
19. Interview with William Scharfman, Lille, January 2011.
20. Pierre Mercklé and Claire Zalc, “Trajectories of the Persecuted during the Second
World War: Contribution to a Microhistory of the Holocaust,” in Advances in Sequence Analysis: Theory, Method, Applications, ed. Philippe Blanchard, Felix Bühlmann, and Jacques-Antoine Gauthier (New York, London: Springer, 2014), 171–90.
21. Peter Bruke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929–1989, Key
Contemporary Thinkers (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990).
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