Category: French Resistance

Lessons From the Holocaust with Suzanne Weiss, Holocaust Survivor

Workshop Opportunity: Lessons From the Holocaust with Suzanne Weiss, Holocaust Survivor

Independent Jewish Voices is offering this powerful and moving talk featuring Jewish Holocaust survivor, author, and longtime social justice activist Suzanne Weiss. If you would like to have Suzanne present this talk for your school, student association, faith group, community organization or union, get in touch with us. We’d be happy to work with you. Contact lessons@ijvcanada.org
Suzanne’s talk draws on her experiences surviving the Holocaust as a child in Vichy France and lessons from her lifetime of social justice activism to explore how we can fight racism in our present time. In relating her powerful story, she provides listeners with both a history which we must remember and the inspiration to make a difference in our world.

The Impact of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the French Resistance

Commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto, 2020

I come from the Nazi Holocaust in France born under Nazi occupation. There, an anti-Jewish French regime, called “Vichy,” was allied with the Nazi invaders. The Nazis considered the Jews, Roma, people of colour, anyone not of German origin, “untermenshen” lower than human.

The French authorities campaigned against immigrants and refugees, blaming them for unemployment. Vichy passed harsh laws against Jews, including my parents.

In July 1942, a massive police raid in Paris imprisoned 13,000 men, women and children in the sports arena, Vel D’hiver. Among them were 4,000 children. Disoriented and stunned, they were all transported to concentration camps. They knew not what was in store for them.

The fact is that up to that point, the Jewish people believed the transports were taking men to Germany as slave labour. There was much discussion on the separate transport of women and children. Where were they going? Would their families reunite? How would they live? They did not know.

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