Synopses & Reviews
The center of the art world before the war, Paris fired the Nazis' greed. The discovery of more than 1,500 prized paintings and drawings in a private Munich residence, as well as a recent movie about Allied attempts to recover European works of art, have brought Nazi plundering back into the headlines, but the thievery was far from being limited to works of art. From 1942 onwards, ordinary Parisian Jews--mostly poor families and recent immigrants from Eastern Europe--were robbed, not of sculptures or paintings, but of toys, saucepans, furniture, and sheets. Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews tells how this vast enterprise of plunder was implemented in the streets of Paris by analyzing images from an album of photographs found in the Federal Archives of Koblenz. Brought from Paris in 1945, the photographs were cataloged by the staff of the Munich Central Collecting Point. Beyond bearing witness to the petty acts of larceny, these images provide crucial information on how the Germans saw their work. They enable us to grasp the "Nazi gaze" and to confront the issue of the relation between greed and mass destruction.
Review
"The material for Sarah Gensburger's study is for the most part previously unseen: a collection of eighty-five photos taken in France during the Occupation [...] These are particularly powerful images. They are all the more so because of the meaning that is given to them through the analysis and historical commentary of the author" --Anne Grynberg, Etudes Photographiques Indiana University Press
Review
"Sarah Gensburger's comments on each photograph are fascinating in light of the reproductions [...] The great value of this publication lies in providing original material on the history of the plundering, while cultivating prudence and distance in its gaze. Thus, it gives us access both to the traces of the past and to the work of the historian, who explores, supposes, deduces and sometimes lets a healthy doubt linger." --Claire Zalc, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire Indiana University Press
Review
"These photographs reveal a whole new dimension of the Nazi spoliation of Jewish property in occupied France. Art theft is well known. Who knew that the Nazis also sent to Germany 674 trainloads of household goods from the apartments of deported Jews? The heaps of used toys, pans, chairs, and clocks are a pitiful final trace of destroyed families. They also show how the Nazis tried to anonymize their victims for annihilation, and to profit from their distress. Sarah Gensburger has edited them with precision and with a keen sense of multiple ways to read images." --Robert O. Paxton, author of Vichy France and The Anatomy of Fascism Indiana University Press
Review
"With piercing insight, Sarah Gensburger guides readers through this extraordinary collection of German photographs documenting the Nazi looting of Jewish homes in wartime Paris.
Review
"A wonderful and telling record. Only now are historians seriously engaging with the material plunder that accompanied the Holocaust. The remarkable text that accompanies the photographs, dry-eyed, precise, yet moving, consolidates Sarah Gensburger's reputation as one of the most insightful and innovative historians of the Holocaust in France today." --Mark Roseman, author Documenting Life and Destruction: Jewish Responses to Persecution, 1933-1946
About the Author
Sarah Gensburger is researcher in social sciences at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She is author of C'étaient des enfants: Déportation et sauvetage des enfants juifs
Table of Contents
1. Paris, Capital of Plunder
2. Looking at the Past, Witnessing History: The Koblenz Album
3. The Photographs
4. Images and Traces of the Past
Bibliography
Index