Resistance to mass persecution: the survival of Jews in France (1940-1944) - a sociological investigation of extraordinary behaviour of ordinary peopl

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In my DPhil project I combine social science and history, revealing the social and political factors that facilitate resistance to oppression and persecution and investigating the ways in which individuals' acts of altruism are structured by social institutions.The survival of Jews in France during the Holocaust serves as an historical example. Why did 75% of the Jews living in France between 1940 and 1944 manage to escape deportation? I focus on two distinct but interrelated topics: the decision of some altruistic individuals to risk their lives for protecting Jews, and the role of political and religious groups for explaining variance in the survival rates of Jews in different parts of France. In the context of explaining variation in survival rates of Jews under German occupation, Braun (2016) concentrates on the rescue of Jews in the Netherlands and Belgium showing that local minority churches played an important role in the rescue of Jews. He demonstrates that Jews in Catholic regions of the Netherlands were more likely to get rescued by Protestants and vice versa. I will focus on evaluating whether these hypotheses hold also true for France and if similar patterns of rescue actions can be observed in the case of political minority groups. A considerable amount of research focusses on the phenomenon of altruistic actions taken by some individuals at great expense or risk to themselves (Montroe 1991, Geras 1995). The State of Israel honours non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives for saving Jews from persecution during the Holocaust. Among those 26.000 Righteous Among the Nations, more than 4.000 Frenchmen have been awarded this distinction. There are only two quantitative studies on the Righteous in France (Hannoun 2005, Frenk 2008), which make use of basic descriptive statistics. I build on these studies by applying more advanced statistical techniques, by including census data and by taking the community level context into account. To assess hypotheses about variation in survival, I utilise existing datasets which are based on German registration lists providing detailed information about the addresses of all the Jews living in France in 1942 (see Braun 2019 for the same methodological approach). I retrieve the names of French Jews who got deported between 1942 and 1944 from French deportation lists, in order to identify the Jews who evaded the Nazis successfully. The registration lists contain information about the personal addresses of the Jews, which can be geocoded (Braun 2016). Having matched geographical information to the Jews who were deported and those who escaped, I intend to gather data about the churches in France, about the social structure and political landscape of France at the time. Census data of the French population from 1936 constitutes one relevant data source providing demographic information about French municipalities. Case by case studies of municipalities with similar characteristics but different survival rates help to detect the social mechanisms that are responsible for some municipalities to be more supportive of Jews than others. The Holocaust research centre of Yad Vashem provides a valuable source of individual level data on the Righteous Among the Nations. Each rescuer's story is documented in an encyclopaedia containing geographical and socio-economic data as well as information about the concrete situation of help. I intend to construct a quantitative database of the Righteous Among the Nations which incorporates socio-economic characteristics as well as geographical information, allowing for comparisons between the general French population and the group of rescuers.The implications of my research may go beyond the heroism of the Righteous in Nazi dominated France, offering a community level theoretical framework for explaining extraordinary actions of individuals and social groups that are realised under conditions of oppression and persecution.