Newly discovered archives tell the forgotten story of systematic housing dispossession that fundamentally reshaped post-war Paris. In this episode, Sarah Gensburger discusses Appartements témoins, a microhistory that reconstructs the process by which over 20,000 Jewish tenants were stripped of their rental rights by the City of Paris. This groundbreaking book challenges the pre-existing narrative of widespread French resistance to antisemitism, fundamentally altering our understanding of French complicity and opportunism during and after the Holocaust.
Appartements témoins La spoliation des locataires juifs à Paris, 1940-1946 is co-authored by Isabelle Backouche, Sarah Gensburger, and Eric Le Bourhis, and was published in 2025 by the éditions La Découverte.
Website - globalcenters.columbia.edu/paris
Newsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newsletters
Instagram - instagram.com/cgcparis
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparis
YouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParis
Host: Marie Doezema
Production: Marie Doezema, James Allen, Charlotte Force, and Anthony Valette
Editing: Theo Albaric
Music: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha He
With thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in Paris
The Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.
Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.
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