Denaturalized - How Thousands Lost Their Citizenship and Lives in Vichy France

A leading historian radically revises our understanding of the fate of Jews under the Vichy regime. Winner of the Prix d'histoire de la justice. 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.

About the author

Claire Zalc, a prizewinning historian, is Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Research Director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, and Director of the Institute of Modern and Contemporary History at the École normale supérieure.

Summary

The number of French Jews killed during the Holocaust has been massively underestimated. Claire Zalc explains why: the Vichy regime terminated the legal standing of thousands of naturalized Jewish citizens, erasing them from the record. Their official disappearance is a lesson about the precariousness of naturalized status, then and now.

Product details

• Authors: Zalc Claire, Catherine Porter, Claire Zalc, Zalc Claire
• Assisted by: Catherine Porter (Translation)
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.10.2020
• EAN: 9780674988422
• ISBN: 978-0-674-98842-2
• No. of pages: 408
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political administration; Frankreich, 20. Jahrhundert (1900 bis 1999 n. Chr.), Europäische Geschichte, Europe, European History, HISTORY / Holocaust, HISTORY / Europe / France, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century, History - General History, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Immigration, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Second World War, The Holocaust, Public Administration, c 1940 to c 1949, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / General, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / Holocaust