"Jewish Marshall Plan"

While the role the United States played in France's liberation from Nazi Germany is widely celebrated, it is less well known that American Jewish individuals and organizations mobilized to reconstruct Jewish life in France after the Holocaust. In A "Jewish Marshall Plan," Laura Hobson Faure explores how American Jews committed themselves and hundreds of millions of dollars to bring much needed aid to their French coreligionists. Hobson Faure sheds light on American Jewish chaplains, members of the Armed Forces, and those involved with Jewish philanthropic organizations who sought out Jewish survivors and became deeply entangled with the communities they helped to rebuild. While well intentioned, their actions did not always meet the needs and desires of the French Jews. A "Jewish Marshall Plan" examines the complex interactions, exchanges, and solidarities created between American and French Jews following the Holocaust. Challenging the assumption that French Jews were passive recipients of aid, this work reveals their work as active partners who negotiated their own role in the reconstruction process.

A "Jewish Marshall Plan" is well written and researched, incorporating new historiographical frameworks and details that deepen the analysis first developed in the original [French] edition. The result is a painstaking examination of American Jewish efforts to influence the reconstruction of Jewish life in France after the Holocaust. Faure examines these processes, which she terms the "Jewish Marshall Plan," with a particular focus on the JDC.

Laura Hobson Faure is Professor at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University-Paris 1, Chair of modern Jewish history, and member of the Center for Social History (UMR 8058). She is co-editor (with Katy Hazan, Catherine Nicault and Mathias Gardet) of L'Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants et les populations juives au XXème siècle. Prévenir et Guérir dans un siècle de violence.