| Resisting the occupier with yellow roses
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PARIS (EJP) --- The story of Righteous Among Nations is known but what do we know about the solidarity of many French people toward Jews?
The new book, “Friend of Jews, Resisting with Stars” pays tribute to the men and women who chose in 1942 to wear the yellow Star of David to share the humiliation of the Jews who were forced to wear them as marks of recognition.
These non-Jews, mostly anonymous resistants, stood up to the occupier in a “non-violent, symbolic and humoristic way”.
They have altered the Star in various ways: young people wore it as a badge and added humour to it, writing names like “Zazou”, “Swing 42”, “Auvergnat”, “Goy” or “Papou” on them.
Others pinned other yellow objects to lapel, such as roses, carnations, or also drew a Christian Cross on their Star.
Irony and fantasy
All these people demonstrated endless imagination and fantasy to ridicule Nazi authorities.
The spontaneity of their gesture was that of revolt, anger against iniquitous methods used by the occupant towards the Jewish community. It was also for some people the beginning of their resistance and their entrance into movements or networks.
These friends of Jews were arrested by the French or German police and placed in Gestapo prisons from where they were deported to the Drancy camp “friends of Jews”.
It is not only a lesson in humanity, dignity and generosity, but also a satire against the evil and cynicism of Nazi system.
The authors, two researchers, trace the experiences of these people who took part in a symbolic resistance to the occupant and its supporters with irony and derision.
Others Star Resistants in Bordeaux, Niort, Rouen, Nancy and Dijon had the same compassion towards Jews, the same disapproval, that blew a breath of fresh through the whole of occupied France.
Sixty years later two young historians, Cécile Leblanc and Cédric Gruat, have found documents in archives of Commissariat Générale aux Questions Juives at the Centre for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Paris.
Amis des Juifs – Les résistants aux étoiles by Cédric GRUAT & Cécile LEBLANC.
Tirésias editions.
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