Presence and Absence of the Shoah in Strasbourg – A Regional Narrative

Abstract

‘Presence and Absence of the Shoah in Strasbourg – A Regional Narrative’ tells a particularly Alsatian story of the absenting of Jews from the postwar narrative of the city of Strasbourg, and through it, the author explores the tension between regional specificity in a border region with a distinct local identity and a unique history, and a broader national narrative in France. Jews in postwar Strasbourg were absented from the narrative of the war through the double impulse of containment and universalisation. This article uses these double impulses to raise the question of the significance to the postwar of border regions in the making of national narratives.