Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933-1942 (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 615-619 ViCKI Caron. Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 19331942 . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Pp. xi + 605. Vicki Caron's lucid, thoroughly researched study of French reactions to the Jewish refugee crisis of the 1930s sheds important new light on a troublesome period in French history and proves the complexity of French attitudes and policies. Through careful examination of previously unavailable archival sources as well as an extensive survey of the French press, Caron examines and reevaluates the evolution of French policy towards Jewish refugees from the three interrelated vantage points of government policy, public opinion, and the native Jewish community. In all three areas, she revises existing historiography and shows the limitations of many commonly held assumptions about French attitudes and policies. In her discussion of the legal and political aspects of the crisis, Caron refutes the contention that French refugee policy hardened progressively over the course of the decade, so that by 1938 the stage was set for mass internments in the final months of the Third Republic, which subsequently paved the way for Vichy antisemitic legislation. Rather, she suggests, French policy prior to the German invasion followed a "twisted road" that lead to militant crackdowns in 1934-35 and 1938, as well as attempts at constructive solutions by the Popular Front in 1936-37 and the Daladier regime in early 1939. While other historians have stressed the political growth of right-wing leagues and Nazi propaganda in fanning the flames of French antisemitism and anti-refugee sentiment in the 1930s, Caron emphasizes economic factors . She argues that the idea that German Jewish refugees represented unfair competition for the French middle-class—a notion that played such an important role in fueling 19th-century antisemitic movements—continued to exercise a powerful influence in shaping French attitudes, particularly in the early part of the decade. At the same time that Caron tracks anti-immigrant policy and sentiment, she also gives voice to the pro-refugee lobby, which historians have tended to dismiss as ineffectual and weak. Though it was ultimately defeated by the xenophobic right, as Caron's study clearly demonstrates , a broad-based coalition that advocated the liberalization of refugee policy remained a strong countervailing force in France until the fall of the Third Republic in 1940. In her discussion of the native Jewish community's response to the refugee crisis, Caron shows that the widely accepted view that the natives betrayed the refugees, both by failing to provide sufficient philanthropic assistance and by collaborating with the government to restrict immigration, 6 1 6 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW is vastly oversimplified. As her nuanced account clearly illustrates, it is impossible to paint the "native" community's attitudes and activities with a single brush-stroke. She rather points to the variety of factions and attitudes among French Jews in the 1930s, an approach that reflects a welcome trend towards complicating the native/immigrant paradigm that has dominated historiography on 20th-century French Jews and Western European Jewry in general. Caron's story begins in 1933, when the Nazi seizure of power sparked outrage in France and the government announced its intention of welcoming refugees fleeing from the fascist state. This initial generous refugee policy , however, was short-lived: by the end of 1933, France announced that it would serve only as a "way station" for refugees bound for other countries and began to drastically restrict the number of people allowed to cross its borders. This reversal in policy, Caron demonstrates, was spearheaded by middle-class professionals who saw German Jews—largely concentrated in business and the liberal professions—as a threat. It was the law students' association that persuaded legislators to sponsor a bill barring foreigners from being admitted to any kind of public office, including the bar, for ten years after their naturalization. In a similar vein, French doctors pressured the government into passing the 1933 Armbruster Law limiting the practice of medicine to French citizens, and requiring doctors of foreign origins to repeat their entire medical education before being allowed to practice in France. Raids on illegal immigrants were stepped up in...