We are pleased to invite you to the launch of the book Shadows in the City of Light: Paris in Postwar French Jewish Writing, edited by Centre members Sara R. Horowitz, Amira Bojadzija-Dan, and Julia Creet, to be held on Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 7pm on Zoom.

Between the two World Wars, Paris was a magnet for eastern European Jews fleeing oppression and attracted by it promise of equality. But these “foreign Jews” – immigrants and their children – were the most vulnerable during the Nazi occupation of Paris and the ensuing round-ups and deportations. After World War II, the public conversation about the evils of World War II rarely acknowledged Jewish victimization. But urban space remembers. Post-war Jewish writing – by both native Parisians and war refugees – walk their readers through the city’s streets and neighborhoods. In their writing, the citiscape itself bears witness to the absent Jews, and what happened to them.