An English translation of Gilbert Michlin's Holocaust memoir detailing his family's life as Jewish immigrants in France and their deportation to Auschwitz in 1944. France drew many Jews from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. But the German occupation of France and the the Vichy government and its anti-Jewish laws would soon follow.
Gilbert Michlin's sober text thoroughly documents the story of a Jewish immigrant family in France during the war years. Known as the country of enlightenment and human rights, France drew many Jews from Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century, including Michlin's parents, who fled the harsh conditions of Poland in the mid-1920s. Michlin's memoir evokes the golden years of his family's life in prewar Paris, where he was born, but also reflects on the difficulties of being Jewish in France. His father learned this when French authorities rejected his request for naturalization on the symbolic pretext that he was "of no interest to the nation." The rise of Nazi Germany, the German occupation of France, and the advent of the Vichy government and its anti-Jewish laws would soon follow, and in 1944 the Michlin family would be deported to Auschwitz.
