Summary

Jewish writers from many different religious, national, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds confronted the Holocaust while writing a rich body of literary texts in French—often through reflection on their own positions as authors. From the beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933 through the end of the 20th century, authors addressed the topics of migration and exile, spaces of belonging and exclusion, and the role of language and multilingualism in representing persecution. The category of the French Jewish writer is complex, as France saw waves of Jewish migration, forced displacement, and postcolonial emigration in the 20th century. In the 1930s, Jewish writers in France were forced to confront their positions as both French and Jewish authors in a universalist country that was also experiencing the largest wave of Jewish immigration in its history. During the war, writers continued to be active, addressing the themes of Jewish exile and rejection from the nation, as well as the role of the writer in resisting persecution. Jewish survivors wrote and published testimonies and memoirs in French immediately following the war; although these works were often underread, by the 1950s novels about the Holocaust—including transmission of Jewish history and testimony about the experience of concentration camps—gained literary recognition. Child survivors and the second generation from Europe and North Africa also addressed writing about memory and forgetting, and the ways in which these topics can be inscribed in language itself.