| Bio | 
| Presentation/Paper |
Sara Jay
Lafayette College
Subject Listing - History
Advisor: Dr. Robert Weiner
Thursday, Oral Session 1, Presentation 2, New Hall 013
THE FRENCH JEWISH COMMUNITY IN DIJON: HISTORY AND MEMORY
This paper analyzes how the Jewish Community in the French city of Dijon has coped with its tumultuous history from 1940 to the present, especially with the experiences and memory of the Holocaust. As with the rest of France, the French Jewish community has had to confront the demons that have haunted France for the past sixty years. However, for most of France, the heart of the healing process has been facing the truth about P‚tain, Vichy, and the extent of French collaboration. Although the healing process for the Jewish community certainly overlaps with that of the French community, dealing with the Holocaust goes far beyond these factors. Jews first had to deal with the impact of the Holocaust on their community, deal with the memories of the Holocaust, react to the constant changing scholarship and opinion on the Holocaust as well as find a place for themselves as Jewish French citizens in post World War II society. The greater openness of anti-Semitism (Le Pen), the rapid growth of anti-Zionism and attacks on Jews in France following the outbreak of Intifada II in 2000 have interacted with Holocaust memory to create a sense of anxiety within the French Jewish Community both on a national and local level. Thus, in order to trace the mechanisms in which the Jewish community in Dijon engages with its past as well as plans for the future, much of the paper will be based on such primary sources as the local French Jewish journal and access to numerous interviews of Jewish people who live in Dijon.
Advisor: Dr. Robert Weiner, T. Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Professor of History, Department of History, Lafayette College, Easton, Pa