Ordinary Workers, Vichy and the Holocaust

The mythic representation of France’s Occupation depicted large groups of resisters united behind General De Gaulle, frustrated by small bands of traitors. Following the ‘breaking of the mirror’ that took place in the 1970s, and after nearly fifty years of scholarship in this vein, however, the historian’s gaze seems ever more likely to fall on smaller acts of resistance, and much larger areas of ambiguity across French society. France’s rail workers (or cheminots) were heroes of that first phase of commemoration, when the post-war film La Bataille du Rail framed a heroic struggle pursued by men with dirty hands and clean consciences. Yet, as Marrus and Paxton pointed out, a ‘curious blind spot’ bedevilled that narrative: if cheminot resistance had been so fierce, why were those trainloads of deportees not stopped? Ludivine Broch’s outstanding first book sets out partly to answer this question, but notably also succeeds in offering a much broader understanding of the cheminot community’s diverse wartime experience

Art · Conscience · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics · Resistance (ecology · Scholarship · Sociology · The Holocaust · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies