Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Holding On and Holding Out: Jewish Diaries from Wartime France by Anne Freadman

2022; American Association of Teachers of French; Volume: 96; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tfr.2022.0165

2329-7131

Michelle Beauclair,

French Historical and Cultural Studies

Reviewed by: Holding On and Holding Out: Jewish Diaries from Wartime France by Anne Freadman Michelle Beauclair Freadman, Anne. Holding On and Holding Out: Jewish Diaries from Wartime France. Toronto UP, 2020. ISBN 978-1-4875-2519-4. Pp. 262. Freadman highlights the unique power of the diary—as opposed to autobiography or memoirs where the writer has the “benefit” of hindsight—to elucidate the lived experiences of France’s Jewish citizens as they face an uncertain and unknowable, yet increasingly dire, future during the Nazi Occupation. The focus of the book is multilayered, and it makes the case for the diary as both an important literary genre and a critical historical document. The text is not a reprint of the diaries themselves in their entirety. Instead, it is a carefully curated presentation of select diary entries in French followed by English translations. In the selections, the author illustrates not only how the pre-war lives of the diarists shape their unfolding views of current circumstances, but also the ways in which the diary creates and documents narratives of identity. A sustained analysis of the diary entries of the public figure and decorated World War I officer Raymond-Raoul Lambert shows his attempts to maintain a sense of self as a leader in both prominent Jewish organizations and French political life. Freadman’s insightful commentary also serves to add nuance to conclusions drawn by other scholars regarding his controversial legacy. Likewise, passages from the diaries of the writer and Resistance activist Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar reveal the ongoing process ing of her initial notions of identity “from the inside” as French and “from the outside” as Jewish in the waning months of the war. The explicit aims of the featured diarists were varied. For some, like the dentist Benjamin Schatzman whose writing reveals a persistent struggle to maintain his mental and physical health, keeping a diary was an antidote to the extreme monotony of life in the camps and an anchor to time and reality. For others, like Valentin Feldman, a teacher and a communist activist in the Resistance, the diary served as a space to rehearse a public performance while hiding a private self. For others still, the daily recording of events was undertaken to bear witness for the benefit of future generations, as was the case for the promising young student Hélène Berr. When her studies, relationship, and youthful dreams were cut short, she joined a Jewish relief organization and devoted herself to recording the stories she heard and giving voice to the war’s voiceless victims. For all eleven diarists, writing was a means of “holding on and holding out” and of marking their very existence. Literary theorists will find the in-depth analyses in the chapters on narratives of identity and time to be thorough and thought-provoking, including a focus on pronoun shifts from “I” to “we” that reflect the diary writer’s sense of belonging or alienation and on the use of select adverbs to reveal the diarists’ changing perceptions of time and place. Students and scholars of French culture and history will do well to focus on the preface, the introduction, and the journal entries themselves, aided by Freadman’s masterful and poignant framing. [End Page 218] Michelle Beauclair Seattle Pacific University (WA) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French