I analyze the behavior of Jews imprisoned in the Treblinka, Sobibór, and Birkenau extermination camps in order to illustrate a systematic process of deception and psychological conditioning, which the Nazis employed during World War II to preclude Jewish resistance to the Final Solution. In Chapter I, I present resistance historiography as it has developed since the end of the war. In Chapter II, I delineate my own argument on Jewish behavior during the Final Solution, limiting my definition of resistance and the applicability of my thesis to behavior in the extermination camp, or closed, environment. In Chapters III, IV, and V, I present a detailed narrative of the Treblinka, Sobibór, and Birkenau revolts using secondary sources and selected survivor testimony. Finally, in Chapter VI, I isolate select parts of the previous narratives and apply my argument to demonstrate its validity as an explanation for Jewish behavior.

Although the Soviet partisan movement in the Second World War was one of a kind, in the sense that it was far more substantial than any comparable phenomenon in the West, the Jewish role within it had its own historical peculiarities. If Jewish motives for taking up arms against the occupying forces of the Third Reich were much the same as those of other partisans, they were forced to come to terms with the anti-Semitism not only of their Axis foes, but of so-called collaborators, anti-Nazi but anti-Soviet nationalists, and anti-Nazi but anti-Semitic Soviet partisans. This subject has not been explored by Soviet historians for obvious ideological reasons and the scant literature in English so far is limited largely to eye-witness accounts and insufficient statistics, which this thesis makes use of. Its purpose is to attempt to ascertain the Jewish contribution to the Soviet partisan movement and the circumstances, some of them unique, that defined it.

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Published in 1985, Marguerite Duras' La Douleur is a collection of six autobiographical and semi-autobiographical short stories written during and just after the German Occupation. Echoing the French national sentiment of the 1970s and 1980s, these stories examine Duras' own capacity for good and evil, for forgetting, repressing, and remembering. The first of these narratives, the eponymous "La douleur," is the only story in the collection to take the form of a diary, and it is this narrative, along with a posthumously published earlier draft of the same text, that will be the focus of this thesis. In both versions, Duras recounts her last tortuous months of waiting for her husband, Robert Antelme, to return from a German concentration camp after he was arrested and deported for his participation in the French Resistance. Though Duras claims in her 1985 preface to "La douleur" that she has no memory of having written this diary and that it has "nothing to do with literature," when it is compared to the original version it becomes clear that substantial changes in style and tone were made to the 1985 version before publication. Though many of Duras' peers disregarded this rewritten version of "La douleur" as a shameful distortion of the truth, it is my contention that historical accuracy was never Duras' primary goal. Instead, what manifests in these two versions of the same story is Duras' path toward understanding and closure in the wake of a traumatic event. Using a combination of psychoanalytic and post-structuralist theory, I will show that Truth and History are essentially incompatible when narrating trauma. Instead what is central to these two texts is their emotional accuracy: the manner in which the feelings and impressions associated with a traumatic event are accurately portrayed.

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Laurence Prempain consacre sa thèse de doctorat d’histoire aux Polonais-es et Juif-ve-s polonais-es venu-e-s vivre à Lyon (France) entre 1935 et 1945. Dans une première partie, elle présente le cadre géographique (Lyon) ainsi que sa méthodologie (approche par le genre, choix de la microhistoire, le silence comme source) et sa volonté de donner à entendre leurs voix afin de les placer au coeur de sa démarche. Pour cela, suite au dépouillement de quelque 600 dossiers administratifs constitués par le bureau de contrôle des étrangers (préfecture du Rhône), les lettres qu’ils-elles ont écrites ont été collectées pour ce qu’elles mettent au jour de la lutte de leurs auteur-e-s pour vivre et survivre. L’historienne part du postulat que les Polonais-es et Juif-ve-s polonais-es venu-e-s en France composent une population hétérogène n’ayant en commun qu’un rattachement à une citoyenneté, mais qu’ils-elles n’en demeurent pas moins des réfugié-e-s économiques, politiques ou de guerre. Ainsi, un temps considéré-e-s comme les bienvenu-e-s, les ressortissant-e-s polonais-es sont tous-tes, à un moment de leur parcours de vie, considéré-e-s comme indésirables. Aussi, la deuxième partie est consacrée à l’exploration des procédés auxquels la Troisième République, puis le régime de Vichy ont recours : expulsions, refoulements, exclusions, internements sinon déportation. Par ailleurs, l’auteure s’intéresse aux sorties de guerre et démontre l’existence d’une dimension genrée de l’épuration, comme expression d’une tentative de réappropriation de l’autorité. L’attention est également portée sur l’organisation du rapatriement des étranger-ère-s déporté-e-s raciaux et politiques. Enfin, dans une troisième partie, elle affirme que loin de subir, ces hommes et femmes agissent et développent des stratégies évolutives. Au travers des lettres qu’ils-elles ont écrites, de ce qui est dit mais aussi passé sous silence, elle établit que ces stratégies semblent relever de ce qu’elle choisit de nommer esquive et transgression. L’une s’accommode des limites quand l’autre s’y oppose délibérément. Esquive et transgression se complètent. Il est montré qu’à l’arbitraire sans cesse croissant du régime de Vichy, répondent des stratégies de plus en plus transgressives, dont relèvent notamment le passage de frontière, l’entrée en clandestinité et en résistance. Le passage d’une forme de stratégie à l’autre dépend de l’individu, du contexte, de ses habiti, de son parcours et de son identité. L’historienne conclut qu’en 2016, la crise des réfugié-e-s qui secoue l’Europe résonne des mêmes voix, de celles et ceux qui cherchent à protéger leurs vies et à vivre dans la dignité / Laurence Prempain dedicates her PhD (History) to the study of the Poles and Polish Jews who came to live in Lyon (France) between 1935 and 1945. In the first part, she presents the geographical framework (Lyon), her methodology (Gender approach, microhistory and silence as a source) and her will to understand their voices and place them to the heart of her work. For that purpose, upon the examination of approximately 600 administrative files amassed by the « bureau des étrangers » (préfecture du Rhône), the letters they wrote have been then systematically collected to shed light on their authors’ struggle to live and survive. The historian starts from the postulate that Poles and Polish Jews in France make up a heterogeneous population, only sharing a common citizenship, nonetheless they remain economic, political and war refugees. Thus, once considered welcomed, all Polish nationals are , at their life, considered as unwanted, « indésirables ». Therefore, the second part investigates the processes used by the Third Republic and then the Vichy Regime to get rid of them: expulsions, driving back, exclusions, internments or deportation. Moreover, the author raises the question of the war ends and demonstrates that purges have a gendered dimension, which can be seen as an attempt of reappropriation of the authority. She also focuses on the foreign deportees repatriation’s organisation. Finally, in a third part, she asserts that far from being subjected, these men and women have acted and developped evolutive strategies. Through the letters they wrote, through what is said and what is silenced, she establishes that those strategies are a matter of what she names sidestep and transgression. The first one adapts itself with the limits while the other is deliberately opposed to it. Sidestep and transgression complete each other. It is also showed that to the arbitrary of the richy regime respond strategies more and more transgressive, such as clandestinity, cross borders and resistance. The moving from a strategy to another one, depends on the person, the context, the habits, the life course and the identity. The historian concludes that in 2016, the refugees crisis that shakes Europe resonates of the same voices, of those who are looking for protecting their lives and to living in dignity..

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Le cadre global des persécutions juives en France, les mécanismes de la Shoah sont largement connus. Sur 330 000 Juifs qui vivaient France en 1940, 80 000 ont été victimes des persécutions d’État et des déportations. En deçà de cette histoire nationale, André Kaspi s’étonne en 1991 que des centres aussi importants que Lyon, Toulouse, Grenoble n’aient pas fait l’objet d’étude attentive et scientifique (Les Juifs pendant l’Occupation, Édition du Seuil, 1991, 150 p.). Les travaux locaux ont comblé ce manque depuis. Mais le déroulement sur le terrain au quotidien, au « ras des individus », mérite encore de faire l’objet de nouvelles investigations, sans perdre de vue la diversité des situations que l’on soit de part et d’autre de la ligne de démarcation. Lyon, en zone libre jusqu’en novembre 1942, n’est pas à considérer comme Paris occupée dès juin 1940. Dans cette étude nous n’avons eu de cesse de nous interroger sur ce qui fait les spécificités de Lyon. Globalement le sort des Juifs dans la capitale des Gaules a été proche de leurs coreligionnaires de la zone sud. Toutefois, écrire l’histoire des Juifs à Lyon de l’avant-guerre à la Libération, revient à s’intéresser à des itinéraires de vie et de survie dans une ville dont certaines caractéristiques lui sont propres. L’histoire des Juifs à Lyon de l’avant-guerre à la Libération, en plus de parler de la Shoah dans la cité rhodanienne, cherche à raconter les ondes de choc d’une Europe en guerre sur les individus pour comprendre ce qui leur arrive. C’est en étant plus attentifs au tissu de la vie quotidienne, dans sa diversité individuelle que nous nous proposons dans cette étude de restituer la dimension humaine d’un monde qui a été au bord du gouffre. / The global framework of the Jew's persecutions in France as well as the mechanisms of the Shoah are widely known. 80 000 Jews out of the 330 000 who were living in France in 1940 have been the victims of state persecutions and deportations. On this side of this national history, Andre Kaspi was surprised in 1991 at seeing that cities as populated as Lyon, Toulouse or Grenoble had not been given an active and scientific consideration (Les Juifs pendant l'Occupation, Édition du seuil, 1991, 150 p.). Local research have since then enabled to address this lack. However, the daily course of operations, as close as possible to each individual, still deserves to be submitted to new investigations, without losing sight of the diversity of situations on both sides of the line of demarcation. The city of Lyon, which was within the unoccupied zone until November 1942, is not to be compared with the city of Paris which had been occupied from June 1940.In this essay, we kept wondering about the causes related to the specificities of the city of Lyon. On the whole, the fate of the Jews in the capital of the Gauls was almost the same as for their co-religionists in the south zone. Nevertheless, writing about the history of the Jews in Lyon from the pre-war years to the Liberation comes down to taking an interest in different journeys though life and survival within a city which has its own features.Besides tackling the Shoah in the Rhone city of Lyon, the history of the Jews in Lyon from the pre-war years to the Liberation, also aims at telling about the shock waves experienced by individuals in a Europe in war and perceiving what was happening to them. By paying more attention to the fabric of daily life seen in its individual diversity, we thereby intend to reconstruct the human dimension of a world which was once on the brink of the abyss.