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Uneasy Asylum
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Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture
Edited by Aron Rodrigue and Steven J. Zipperstein
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Uneasy Asylum
France and the Jewish
Refugee Crisis, 1933–1942
Vicki Caron
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California 1999
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Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 1999 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
CIPdata appear at the end of the book
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To Bob
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Acknowledgments
This book, which I began working on in the early 1980’s, and which has ex-
panded in ways I had never imagined, would not have been possible with-
out the generous support of numerous individuals and institutions. First
and foremost, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to those
foundations that provided the financial support that enabled me to carry
out the travel, research, and writing involved in this project: the Memorial
Foundation for Jewish Culture; the National Endowment for the Human-
ities; and the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey. Given
the difficulties involved in gaining access to archival material pertaining to
the period covered in this book, not to mention the restrictive hours at sev-
eral of the archives, this project could never have gotten off the ground had
I not been able to spend extended periods of time in France in 1985–86 and
again in 1987–88. Moreover, the fellowship I had at the Institute for Ad-
vanced Study in 1990–91 provided me with the ideal environment, both
stimulating and peaceful, in which to begin writing this book. In particu-
lar, I would like to thank Professor Peter Paret, director of the School of
Historical Studies, for his support and warm hospitality during that time.
With respect to the intellectual origins of this project, I am indebted to
Professors Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton for having invited me
to serve as research assistant during the writing of their book Vichy, France,
and the Jews in 1977–78, when I was a graduate student at Columbia Uni-
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x Acknowledgments
versity. As I assisted in their research on the roots of Vichy antisemitism, I
became intrigued with the subject of France and the Jewish refugee crisis in
the 1930’s and realized that this topic in itself would provide a fascinating
subject for a book, particularly because scarcely anything had been written
about it to date. Fortuitously, it was around this time that the French
archives on this period were beginning to open up, and so I am grateful to
Michael and Bob for having involved me in their project.
The research for the present volume could not have been completed
without the patient and generous assistance of the staffs of a great many li-
braries and archives in France, the United States, and Great Britain. I would
like to express my appreciation to the staffs of the following institutions in
France: the Archives Nationales, Paris; the Archives de Paris; the Archives
of the Paris Prefect of Police; the Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Paris;
the Library and Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris; the Bi-
bliothèque Nationale, Paris; the Departmental Archives of the Bas-Rhin,
Strasbourg; the Archives of the Jewish Consistory of the Bas-Rhin, Stras-
bourg; the Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine
at the Université de Paris-X, Nanterre; and the Archives of the Service His-
torique de l’Armée de Terre, Vincennes. I would also like to thank the
staffs of the following institutions in the United States: the Jewish Theo-
logical Seminary, New York; the Rockefeller Library of Brown University;
the Columbia University Library; the New York City Public Library; the
Herbert H. Lehman Collection at the School of International Affairs, Co-
lumbia University; the Leo Baeck Institute, New York; the American Jew-
ish Joint Distribution Committee, New York; the Franklin Delano Roo-
sevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; and the National Archives, Wash-
ington, D.C. I am grateful as well to the staff of the Public Records Office,
in London, which graciously permitted me to view a huge amount of ma-
terial over a period of three days, a courtesy that obviated the need for a re-
turn visit. Finally, I would like to offer special thanks to Chantal Bonazzi
andMademoiselleVayassaireoftheArchivesNationales;toYvonneLevyne,
former head librarian at the Alliance Israélite Universelle; to Philippe Lan-
dau,Conservateur-en-ChefatthearchivesoftheCentralConsistoryandthe
Consistory of Paris; to Brigitte Lainé, Conservateur-en-Chef of the Ile-de-
France region at the Archives de Paris; to Jacques d’Orléans, Conservateur-
en-Chef of the Departmental Archives of the Bas-Rhin, in Strasbourg;
to Denise Gluck, former director of archives and records at the Ameri-
canJewish Joint Distribution Committee, and her assistant, Regina Chim-
berg, for their personal attention in helping me track down pertinent
information; and to Jean Favier, who formerly headed the Direction des
Archives at the French Ministry of Culture, for granting me numerous
“dérogations,” or special permissions to consult materials normally closed
to researchers.
