A Case Study of Systemic Antisemitism: The Housing Market in Paris during the Holocaust

Annual Pell Lecture

Presented by Berkeley’s Center for Jewish Studies and CJS Antisemitism Education Initiative. Co-Sponsored by the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life.

In France, during the Holocaust, about three-quarters of the Jewish population avoided arrest and deportation. Should the conclusion be reached that the French population was not very anti-Semitic? This idea is supported by some recent studies in history, which focus on anti- Semitism as it relates to individual actions and decisions. However, a study of the fate of the rental rights of Parisian Jewish families suggests a different interpretation. How can we understand that the Parisian population, described as moved by the fate of the Jews after the great roundups of 1942, actively participated in replacing the absent Jews in the apartments of which they were the legal tenants? Through a spatialized case study based on numerous different archival collections, this presentation by French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Sciences Po Paris Professor Sarah Gensburger will consider what the notion of systemic anti-Semitism can contribute to our understanding of the implementation of the Holocaust in Paris and its aftermath. Indeed, at the Liberation, the situation created by the housing policy of the occupation years became permanent for most of the families concerned.

Thursday, November 20, 2025 | 5:00-6:30 pm

at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA

Reception and light refreshments: 5:00-5:30pm
Lecture and Q&A: 5:30-6:30pm

For questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please reach out to magnes@berkeley.edu or (510) 643-2526 with as much advance notice as possible.

Sarah Gensburger is full professor of political science and history at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Sciences Po Paris. Between 2021 and 2024, she served as the president of the international Memory Studies Association. As a political scientist, she has been studying the public policies of remembrance and their feedback in a critical perspective. As a historian, she is a specialist of the micro-history of the Holocaust in Paris, using space and geography to renew the study of social interactions in time of crises. She is the author of fifteen books, including Beyond Memory: Can We Really Learn from the Past, Palgrave, 2020, with Sandrine Lefranc; Memory on my Doorstep: Chronicles of the Bataclan Neighborhood (Paris, 2015-2016), Leuven University Press, 2019; Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris 1940-1944, Indiana University Press, 2015 and National Policy, Global Memory: The Commemoration of the Righteous among the Nations from Jerusalem to Paris, Berghahn Books, 2016. Her talk will continue the work undertaken in the recently published book Appartements témoins. La spoliation des locataires juifs à Paris, 1940-1946 (La Découverte, 2025), co-written with Isabelle Backouche and Eric le Bourhis. Winner of Albertine Translation Grant 2025, this book should be published in English in a near future.