Author:
Fogg, Shannon Lee, author.
Edition Statement:First edition.
ImprintOxford, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017.
Imprint2017
Descriptionxvi, 197 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
Note:Reconstructing homes: rebuilding private lives in postwar Paris -- Displaced persons, displaced possessions: the furniture operation in France -- Competing claims: housing, the restoration of Republicanism, and the myth of unity -- The Restitution Service: the creation of a Republican bureaucracy -- Rebuilding families: the gendering and meaning of home -- Reclaiming rights: Jewish communal responses to material loss -- Social rebirth: the role of public and private aid in rebuilding the Jewish community.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-192) and index.
Note:"Between 1942 and 1944 the Germans sealed and completely emptied at least 38,000 Parisian apartments. The majority of the furnishings and other household items came from 'abandoned' Jewish apartments and were shipped to Germany. After the war, Holocaust survivors returned to Paris to discover their homes completely stripped of all personal possessions or occupied by new inhabitants. In 1945, the French provisional government established a Restitution Service to facilitate the return of goods to wartime looting victims. Though time-consuming, difficult, and often futile, thousands of people took part in these early restitution efforts. Stealing Home demonstrates that attempts to reclaim one's furnishings and personal possessions were key in efforts to rebuild Jewish political and social inclusion in the war's wake. Far from remaining silent, Jewish survivors sought recognition of their losses, played an active role in politics, and turned to both the government and each other for aid. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, restitution claims, social workers' reports, newspapers, and government documents, 'Stealing Home' provides a social history of the period that focuses on Jewish survivors' everyday lives during the lengthy process of restoring citizenship and property rights." --Dust jacket.
