A two-volume book in which Maurice Rajsfus, a French activist and former investigative journalist for Le Monde, shares his research and personal recollections in order to shed new light on France's role in the Holocaust. In the first volume, "Operation Yellow Star," Rajsfus meticulously analyzes archival documents, demonstrating the extent of police collaboration with the Vichy regime and how it facilitated the persecution, deportation, and ultimately the death of hundreds of thousands of Jews. Examining long-unseen arrest records and transcripts, Rajsfus seeks to understand how and why many average French citizens resisted Nazi occupation while others were willingly complicit. In the second book, "Black Thursday," Rajsfus recounts his own experiences of July 16, 1942, when he and his family were arrested as part of the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, the largest ever in France, of 13,000 Jews. While most of those detained during the two-day sweep eventually died in Auschwitz, the author survived and has spent the rest of his life grappling with his country's betrayal.Together, the two volumes by Rajsfus offer a damning expose of the bureaucracy of genocide, laying bare how cultural bias, political self-interest, and the influence of right-wing media led to the implementation of the Yellow Star as a segregationist device and determined France's culpability in the Holocaust. Maurice Rajsfus is the author of thirty books and from 1994--2012 he created and circulated "Que fait la police," a "Cop Watch" bulletin detailing human rights abuses. He lives in Paris with his wife, sons and grandchildren.
Format: Hardback
CONTRIBUTORS: Maurice Rajsfus
EAN: 9780997818406
COUNTRY: United States
PAGES: 288
WEIGHT:
HEIGHT: 241 mm
PUBLISHED BY: DoppelHouse Press
DATE PUBLISHED: 2017-08-17
CITY:
GENRE: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs, HISTORY / Europe / France, HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / World War II / European Theater, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / Holocaust
WIDTH: 152 mm
SPINE:
Book Themes:
France, c 1940 to c 1949, c 1938 to c 1946 (World War Two period), Memoirs, European history, The Holocaust, Second World War
Maurice Rajsfus (1928–2020) was an author and activist who worked as an investigative journalist at multiple French outlets, including at Le Monde. Of his many books, many dealt with the Vichy regime and its legacy in French police culture, focusing on police violence against immigrants and people of color. He also wrote about Drancy concentration camp and Israel-Palestine, as well as co-authoring several illustrated books about history. In 1990, Rajsfus and several friends founded “Ras l’Front,” the anti-racist association of far-left-wing organizations extremely active in the 1990s against the rise of Le Pen and fascist/nationalist parties in France. They worked together and promoted leftist causes through a monthly publication as well as actions. He served as chairman from 1991–1999. From 1994–2012 Rajsfus created and circulated Que fait la police?, a “Cop Watch” bulletin with selections from his archive of over 40,000 press clippings detailing human rights abuses by French police. His books about the Vél d’Hiv raid and his experiences during WWII have been brought together to form the basis of a YA comic (Tartamudo editions) as well as a play written and directed by Philippe Ogouz, which was then adapted for film in 2010, Souvenirs d’un vieil enfant: La rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv (Memories of an Old Child: The Roundup of the Vel’ d’Hiv), directed by Alain Guesnier. Maurice Rajsfus is survived by two sons as well as several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Read more about Rajsfus and his legacy at the link posted in our tribute.