Proceedings American Philosophical Society Vol 124 No 5 1980

The first comprehensive, comparative study of the 'Jewish Councils' in the Netherlands, Belgium and France during Nazi rule. In the postwar period, there was extensive focus on these organisations' controversial role as facilitators of the Holocaust. They were seen as instruments of Nazi oppression, aiding the process of isolating and deporting the Jews they were ostensibly representing. As a result, they have chiefly been remembered as forms of collaboration. Using a wide range of sources including personal testimonies, diaries, administrative documents and trial records, Laurien Vastenhout demonstrates that the nature of the Nazi regime, and its outlook on these bodies, was far more complex. She sets the conduct of the Councils' leaders in their prewar and wartime social and situational contexts and provides a thorough understanding of their personal contacts with the Germans and clandestine organisations. Between Community and Collaboration reveals what German intentions with these organisations were during the course of the occupation, and allows for a deeper understanding of the different ways in which the Holocaust unfolded in each of these countries.

Tells the story of a young Jewish girl who survived in Nazi occupied France posing as a French gentile.

Who was Alexander Glasberg? A Jewish emigre from the former Russian empire who settled in France in 1932 and became a Catholic priest. A Yiddish-speaking polyglot. A man of astonishing audacity who saved many Jews during the German occupation. After narrowly escaping from the clutches of the Gestapo in Lyon in 1942, he appeared under an assumed name as a parish priest in south-west France, where he joined the local Resistance. After the Liberation he moved to Paris and set up an entirely secular organisation, COS, to help people to find their feet in France after the traumas of the war. It provided a unique combination of services for asylum-seekers, for the elderly and for the disabled. Forty years after the death of the founder in 1981, the COS Alexander Glasberg Foundation is much bigger but remains strikingly faithful to the ideals which inspired its beginnings. Abbe Glasberg was a free spirit who evaded all conventional boxes. A priest outside the Church. An ardent Francophile yet passionate defender of refugees. A Zionist yet strong supporter of the Palestinian people. A sociable yet also secretive figure. This book traces key moments in his remarkable life and sheds light on a mesmerising personality.