The Terrible Solitude of Pillaged Jews who Attempted to Recover Their Property after the Occupation
La solitude des Juifs spoliés confrontés au problème de la récupération de leurs biens après l’Occupation
Abstract
All existing testimony emphasizes the difficulty that Jews had in reintegrating into post-war French society. Jean-Jacques Bernard’s bitter cry at the moment of his liberation from the Compiègne concentration camp—‘‘We were expected not to speak of our sufferings’’—speaks volumes of this phenomenon. The defense organizations of temporary administrators and spoliators of Jewish property reveal a collection of arguments that rest on a well-established undercurrent of anti-Semitism in order to defend the indefensible. The archives of resistance member Lucien Rachline, uncovered by his son, or the testimony of Gérard Garouste regarding his father who participated in the spoliation of Jewish property, completes the picture. But in the end, it was the role of institutions (Caisse des dépôts et consignations, etc.) that appears to be the most damning.