• 2 National Archives (henceforth NA), AJ 38 795.

“A property manager is required to declare unoccupied apartments belonging to Israelites. That seems impossible because most of the time the manager doesn’t know if his tenant is Jewish.”2

But A. B., a tenant of a Jewish landlord, knew all about his confession:

• 3 Ibid., letter of 1 November 1941.

“Being a tenant in a building belonging to a Jew, should I keep paying him rent, or should I wait for a manager to be named?”3

2R. B. used his conception of the distinction between the French and the Jews when he wrote to the CGQJ to ask…

• 4 Ibid., letter of 27 November 1942.

“…if a solution will soon be given to the issue of residential spaces initially occupied by Jews who are now either in the free zone or under arrest. Many lodgings or apartments are thus unoccupied while many French live in hovels or in overly cramped spaces.”4

• 7 Ibid., box 18, letter of 22 June 1925.

“The owner of the house where I live 173 avenue Gallieni in Bagnolet want [sic] to sell me the house and surrounding land but since I want to build on the land I want to know 1) if the land is part of the zone and if I have the right to built.”7

5Both of these corpuses of letters share the form of personal request, but are rooted in very different circumstances. They document how claimants writing the administration used and appropriated boundaries marking social and/or spatial distinctions, as they are sometimes connected and mutually supporting. By sorting residents of the capital into groups to define their respective rights, these boundaries are also arguments in their favor. The social boundary is thus neither tangible nor universal; it emerges through the use of legal categories invented by the administration and imposed on constituents. Observation of the point of contact between constituents and the administration challenges the monolithic conceptions of each of these parties, and highlights how each uses the flexibility available to them. The constituents are not submissive or overwhelmed; they navigate between various administrations, adapt their arguments, present themselves differently according to the nature of their audience. Moreover, the administration must take account of its constituents’ demands and capacity to resist, but it also knows how to take advantage of constituent requests to obtain additional information. Consequently, the regulation of social activities does not flow from the univocal application of norms by the administration, but is rather the fruit of exchange occurring at the boundary, and on the subject of boundaries.

7After demonstrating how claimants appropriate or contest the social categories created by administrations, I will describe the interests spurring them to negotiate social categories and how they use them. Lastly, I will address the synergy between social divisions and spatial rootedness, another point of convergence between the two corpuses.

Administrations that impose controversial or appropriated norms

Ordinary lives in extraordinary contexts

11Together these two corpuses allow analysis of the everyday lives of Parisians entangled in an extraordinary situation – either a rupture or an event – that broke the flow: one had to leave the Zone at any cost after having set up a home there, or one hoped to improve one’s housing situation by taking over a Jewish family’s lodgings. The encounter between the triviality of everyday life and the upheaval of the time creates a compelling situation for two lines of enquiry. One is observing an event that historiography often studies at other scales (the expansion of Paris, the anti-Semitism of Vichy), but in this instance based on its effects on society, exploring how claimants seized upon the situation of rupture in which they found themselves to present their case. The other is to analyze how they fit into the event in question.

Constituents and the administration face off

12In the case of the Zone, the categorization imposed by the administration was contested; in the other case, Parisians looking for an apartment appropriated the imposed social categories (the distinction between Jews and non-Jews) as the basis of their request. These empirical situations first of all highlight the negotiation of administration-imposed norms, between protest and appropriation, thus describing the social actualization of legal boundaries found throughout the letters.

• 15 Henri Puget, “La Région Parisienne. Les problèmes actuels, les projets d’aménagement,” Les cahiers (...)

“the poorest or those with the largest families are crammed into the miserable cabins of the military zone, this leprous ring surrounding Paris.”15

In anticipation of future indemnities, a 1901 decree imposed restrictive construction norms that only tolerated…

• 16 Decree on the easements of the surrounding walls of Paris, 13 July 1901.

“… wooden shacks of just one story, a maximum surface area of twenty square meters (20m²), built or not on a base of masonry of twenty-five centimeters (0.25m) high and fifty centimeters (0.50m) deep, roofed in wood, tin, or tar paper, and without masonry chimney […]; fabric tents and light fabric shelters on light wooden frames […]; parking (requiring concerned parties to be in the possession of police authorization) of wagons mounted on their wheels, provided that these wagons are not connected to each other.16

14Such was the landscape of the Zone, so decried as proof that its residents were social and spatial fringe elements, painstakingly ensured by an imposed normative text that threatened them with fines should they disobey. The Zone was thus a wide boundary offering an opportunity to examine negotiations over a social and spatial norm compartmentalizing the space of Paris.

15Another group that wrote the authorities consisted of a mix of constituents residing in Paris and in its outskirts who were seeking an apartment in Occupied Paris, where the penury of housing, chronic since the nineteenth century, had been exacerbated by bombings since 1942. While Jews were persecuted and arrested, those ferreting around for lodgings jumped at the chance to improve their housing situations. They initially wrote to the CGQJ, charged with the “Aryanization” of French society that had begun in the occupied zone in October 1940. The CGQJ thus seemed to be the chosen interlocutor for anyone seeking vacant “Jewish housing.” This first wave of requests attests to an autonomous social dynamic unrelated to public housing policy. But faced with the influx of requests and the requirements of German authorities, in the summer of 1943 the prefecture of the Seine established a rehousing service at 2 rue Pernelle, to officially reassign these empty apartments to the unfortunates needing their help.

16I could thus use two collections of letters, those sent to the CGQJ and those sent to rue Pernelle, to study the Occupation period. These administrative organizations existed for completely different purposes, which influenced the content of the letters they received. While the former received more spontaneous letters fuelled by traces of anti-Semitic persecution, the latter received letters resulting from information circulating in the media, as several of them indicated:

• 17 AP, Perotin 901-62-1, box 46, letter from Madame H., 23 August 1943.

“Having read in the papers that I should see you to occupy housing previously inhabited by a Jewish family, I am here to submit my case to you.”¹⁷

Indeed, a headline on page 4 of the 23 August 1943 edition of Le Matin, “For the immediate aid of victims, may there be greater recourse to Jewish properties,” announced an article stipulating that…

• 18 Le Matin, 23 August 1943.

“In execution of a decision of occupation authorities and to compensate for current housing problems, apartments held by Jews, become available in the Département of the Seine, cannot be newly rented without prior authorization. This authorization must be requested in writing of the Housing Office, Service of Vacant Housing and Re-Housing, 2 rue Pernelle, Paris (4^th).”¹⁸

17The aim of these letters is the same – obtaining better lodgings – but the claimants adopt distinct repertoires thought likely to move the addressed administration so they would get what they wanted. While making the distinction between Jews and non-Jews is central for those addressing the CGQJ, having been a bombing victim was determinant at the rue Pernelle. Appropriating the categories legitimized by the administrations to which they wrote, housing-seekers produced variations (in the musical sense of the term) on a social boundary that might make their hopes acceptable.

Uses of the boundary

19The administration’s solicitations via the press prompted the writing of letters that demonstrate how variable these appropriations of social divisions were. On 14 January 1943, the CGQJ had a small article published on the first page of Le Matin, entitled “All Property Belonging to Jews Must Be Declared within Eight Days”:

20The call was addressed to building managers, superintendents, and tenants who were to indicate whether or not “Jewish buildings” had indeed been declared, so they could be provided with an interim manager. The responses skirted the initial aim, transforming into indications of Jewish tenants, which could be considered as akin to denunciation. For instance, on 27 January 1943, B. M. wrote:

• 20 NA AJ 38 box 811.

“In conformity with the communiqué recently appearing in the papers, we inform you that an apartment in our building, 40 rue Lubeck, is rented to Monsieur C. G. as a respectable dwelling.”20

21The boundary between Jewish goods and Jewish people has been crossed. Other letters describe the moveable property of Jewish tenants, giving a very broad interpretation to the CGQJ’s requirement, which only concerned the property of Jewish owners to be “Aryanized.” The ambiguity comes from the word “property,” which letter-writers thought included moveable property, so they sent lists of their Jewish tenants, both present and absent, whose possessions were still in place. The great variety of responses is a sort of test of actors’ ability to use a social boundary by mobilizing a wide range of behaviors, from denunciation to simple concern with obeying the law. The chasm between the newspaper announcement’s aims and the content of the response is an indicator of the writer’s relationship to Jews, and the letters’ denunciatory nature confirms a form of nearly incontestable anti-Semitism. For instance, Madame R. wrote:

• 21 Ibid.

“In conformity with the instructions, as superintendent of no. 8 rue de la Maire, I hasten to indicate to you the names of the Israelites residing in the house: Monsieur H, family, 3 people; Monsieur R., family, 3 people; Monsieur H., family, 5 people; Monsieur R., family, 3 people.”21

22One J. P., agent for several building owners, wrote “to give the list of Jewish tenants, or presumed Jews, living there.” He identified ten families at eight addresses, sometimes specifying if they were in the free zone, and concluding:

• 22 Ibid., letter of 29 January 1943. Underlined terms are underlined in the original.

“I cannot, as I indicated earlier, be certain for some of the tenants enumerated above and that’s why I indicated Jews or presumed Jews.”22

24Concern with obeying the law is obvious in the letters of some building superintendents, like Madame M. at 51 rue Marcadet:

• 24 Ibid., letter of 21 January 1943.

“I have several Jewish tenants in the house who have been deported, I declare them to you, monsieur the commissioner send me someone if possible, or have a response sent to me, so I know what to do to get in order.”24

25Details on family trajectories and the compartmentalization of Jews and non-Jews are dispensed throughout these hundreds of letters, offering an opportunity to probe constituents’ capacity to work the boundary between Jews and non-Jews and contribute to the identification of victims of anti-Semitism.

Boundaries for the recognition of rights

Inclusive boundaries

26Analytical and social boundaries are a promising approach because they are shaped by the assertions of letter writers: since they subscribe to or refute the compartimentalization of society that isolates residents of the Zone or Jews for their difference, claimants consider that they have rights that should be recognized by the administration. Jospeh Verrechia lived in the Pantin section of the Zone (16 bis route de Flandre) and he wanted to be able to stay in his “little plank house” where he lived with his eight children. To do so he was prepared to subvert another boundary – nationality – to preserve the status quo:

• 25 AP, Perotin 106/50/1, box 28, letter from Joseph Verrechia, Pantin, 24 March 1939. Naturalizations (...)

“I am informing Monsieur the Prefect that I am an Italian subject living in France for 18 years, father of eight children born in France, and I intend to have myself naturalized as French to give my children to my adopted homeland.”25

27This man, who had not previously felt the need to be naturalized as French, presents this undertaking as a gift to France, his children becoming a sort of currency. He would join the national community in order to continue living in the Zone. This game of social and spatial scales implemented by a Zone resident is instructive of the social diversity of this urban space and how manipulative residents of the Zone were prepared to be.

28To stay where they live, Zone residents breathed life into the existence of a social group established on the territory. Emile de Méo went back on the attack to build a brick house, authorization for which had always been refused, with the following argument:

• 26 Ibid., letter from Emile Di Méo, Pantin, 19 March 1927.

“Now I see in the same zone others that they are in the process of building a brick house. I ask, Monsieur the Prefect, in your fairness, the permission to build, me too, a house in the same zone because I need that a lot.”26

29This implicit solidarity also came up when Zone resident Pedro Juste thought he was being treated worse than his neighbors, since he had been asked to destroy his shack:

• 27 Ibid., letter from Pedro Juste, Saint-Ouen, 19 July 1930.

“Being surrounded by many tenants who find themselves in the same situation as me, and who haven’t received any notices concerning them, I beg of you, Monsieurs members of the council, to be willing to grant me temporary authorization to reside at the said places and in so doing defer the demolition of the shack.”27

Residents of the Zone were bound together by their condition as insecure tenants, but also by their neighborly situation. On top of social cohesion, spatial cohesion also interfered in these classifying and categorizing operations.

30Some letter-writers took care to generalize beyond their personal situations, in another approach to setting social boundaries. Madame D., who was seeking housing, wrote directly to Maréchal Pétain (document 2):

• 28 AP Perotin, 901-62-1, box 54, letter of 15 November 1943.

“I am notifying the prefect of the Seine immediately, on 8-11, of this state of affairs, requesting that he be willing to do what is necessary so that the radically inappropriate formalities for such a situation – far from being unique – be reduced to a minimum.”28

31One is not merely writing for oneself, and one gives weight to one’s particular situation by arguing the fact that many others face the same problem. As a spokesperson for a group of Parisians handled roughly by the administration, such writers try to pressure authorities with the weight of an invisible community that is revived with each letter.

The porosity of social boundaries

33Her letter of 15 November 1943 reveals the crossing of a boundary that is often considered impenetrable, between Parisians and Occupation authorities. Mme. D. claimed that she had:

• 30 AP Perotin, 901-62-1, box 54, letter of 15 November 1943.

“obtained from the Kommandantur the suspension of the requisition of a Jewish apartment […] 11 rue St Marceau in Paris – belonging to the city of Paris.30

• 33 NA, 19771095/1, letter of 28 July 1945.

“We are threatened with being put in the street because we can’t find any housing at any price, and this to the advantage of foreigners, so the French are thrown out to allow foreigners taking refuge in Nice to resume their trafficking, that is to say making workers work from home and not paying them well, and only declaring what they want.”33

36The penury of housing, common to both situations, serves as a magnifying glass for writers’ narratives, bringing out polyvalent social registers. R. R., the movie theatre manager, may have resisted like the rest of his family, but he didn’t balk at the prospect of a German recommendation allowing him to occupy a “Jewish” apartment. Public and private attitudes differ, personal interest and devotion to the nation obeying two registers of different scales, and noting this dichotomy is a way to work with the actors’ categories to describe Parisian society under the Occupation.

38Beyond particular cases, some institutions formalized these social divisions born of global conflict. In August 1945, the Union Confédérale des Locataires de France (the French Renters’ Union) wrote to the Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism to notify it of several cases of bombing victims being evicted in order to return the apartments to their previous despoiled occupants. Two social categories that emerged from the conflict became competitors that day:

• 35 NA, 19771095/1, letter of 2 August 1945.

“Although we are in complete agreement with returning to the despoiled the housing that was taken from them, we cannot accept throwing French families, who are sometimes just as worthy (if not more so), into the street without further consideration.”35

Spatial stakes and social interests

40All letter writers argued for their spatial position in Paris: they do not want to (or cannot) leave the Zone, or want to move into a “Jewish apartment.” The former think that they have been part of Paris since 1919 and object to the distinctions introduced by the new “sanitary zone,” a designation that the State had been prudent enough to put into law to keep Zone land under a special status after the destruction of the fortifications. The latter, to the contrary, had entirely appropriated the category of “Jewish apartment” on the Parisian real estate market, a boundary they use to justify their requests. The intentions are proven in both cases, but the social values differ. One group calls for the disappearance of the effects of a vanished boundary, the other insists on the existence of a boundary in letter after letter. Social use of the dividing line re-enforces the distancing of which Zone residents and Jews are victim. But each marginalization results from a different dynamic: Zone residents want to be seen and treated as normal residents, while every letter apartment hunters wrote contributed to the cumulative exclusion of Jews from Paris with the re-assignment of each housing unit, estimates putting the number of Jewish homes involved at 25,000.

The constraints of an imperceptible boundary

• 38 AP, 1338 W box 2138, letter of 24 August 1938. It is the facade of lot 42, corresponding to rue de (...)

“It’s been six years that we’ve been established at the café at no. 17, having paid rather dearly at the time for this business. When we arrived we had the market outside our door, and even farther, up to the barrier, but now they have closed it on our side, between no. 21 and no. 13… three of us shopkeepers are very unhappy.”38

42The town of Pantin had re-organized its market, bringing in vendors who had been selling at markets in the Zone (document 3) to provide commercial services for its residents and have rights over the merchants. But M. Calmel could not accept the disappearance of the bustling market, the basis of his café’s prosperity, so he took up his pen to complain to the mayor, protesting this new spatial division with obvious economic consequences.

• 40 Ibid., letter from the director of the extension of Paris, 23 April 1927.

“Only a tiny part of the lot measuring 9m² is located outside the zone […] I remind you that the law of 19 April 1919 maintained, in the interest of public health and salubrity, a ban on building anything in the easement area as well as a ban on repairing older buildings.”40

44Health and salubrity are invoked to limit residents’ ability to act on their housing while the ban on maintenance work prompts the slow degradation of this urban space – not out of residents’ negligence, but as the will of the administration. In 1923 M. Guiffaut wrote to the Prefect in anticipation of the purchase of a burrstone house at 72 avenue Jean Jaurès in Bagnolet, adding a little sketch at the bottom of his letter (document 4):

• 41 Ibid., letter of 16 November 1923.

“I’m writing to ask you if this house is liable to have the same fate as some found in the zone. The owner claims to have had permission to build and claims that it cannot be removed; being in doubt, before I commit my money, I preferred to inform myself.”41

46Numerous lots overlapped the Zone and an associated town, making the boundary a serious constraint for building. Albert Jouin was aware of this and wanted the property to be surveyed and marked so he could respect the distinction:

• 43 Ibid., letter of 28 November 1924.

“Planning to build on the part not in the easement, I ask you, M. Director, to kindly have the exact line of the so-called zone marked out so I can begin to build there soon. I ask you to kindly inform me of the day when the line will be made so I can be well aware of it.”43

Advantages of the boundary’s disappearance

47These epistolary exchanges also shed light on the speculative strategies in play. Some property-owners in the Zone wrote to the administration knowing that their property would be expropriated, offering to sell it privately; this was the case for M. Mélinon, who owned some land in Bagnolet and preferred to sell…

• 44 Ibid., letter of 29 October 1925.

“…the little family land we have left to the city of Paris, which must take possession of this land for extension and development, rather than selling it to speculators trying to profit from the expropriation.”44

Spatial rootedness as a resource

• 50 NA AJ 38 796, letter to rue Pernelle, 30 March 1944.

“So please grant me your indulgence to ask for a Jewish lodging (once the seals are broken) located at 192 rue Lafayette. However, I know that this vacant housing is reserved for bombing victims and that only you are authorized to order the exchange I am requesting, yielding mine to them.”50

51Mme. E. had appropriated two active social boundaries of the day: one between Jews and herself, another between bombing victims and herself. To reach her goal she proposes a trade, thus demonstrating some dexterity in manipulating recent administrative categories. Social use of the divisions between multiple categories of residents makes them operational, inflecting the idea of a unilateral circulation of the social compartmentalization of society from above and relativizing Parisians’ submission to a policy-dictated social order. Contact with the administration is a time and opportunity to verbalize and frame an “Us” and “Them” in service of acquiring an apartment: the social distinction is not abstract and must function in the claimant’s favor.

• 53 NA, AJ 38 796, letter of 7 June 1944 to the CGQJ.

“One of our friends who is a superintendent alerted me to the fact that there were 2 beautiful apartments in her building that are occupied by Jews who fled about two years ago, leaving their furnishings.”53

53She specified that the owner would like nothing better than to rent to Aryans and that three “Jewish apartments” in her parents’ building had been given to bombing victims. She concluded by giving the address and name of the Jewish man in question: 58 bis rue Ramey, fifth floor, Monsieur R.

54Zone residents used space in another way: uniting against expulsion. The administration was aware of this in 1920, when it wanted to enforce the 693 tickets for violations issued since 1912 but put on hold during the Great War:

• 54 AP 106-50-1-box 1, note to the director of the expansion of Paris, 20 January 1920.

“I propose to proceed immediately as follows so as to not provoke too much protest from zone residents: each week, a maximum of twenty offenders will be notified of the Prefecture Council’s orders, and as many as possible for buildings constructed in different parts of the zone.”54

55The temporal and spatial dilution of notifications made it possible to ward off potential resistance rooted in the localized unity of Zone residents. Residents further argued by explaining that they could not be moved like pawns on a chessboard. While the administration thought of the Zone as a homogeneous space to evacuate and develop, residents introduced geographical distinctions in hopes of staying near their part of the Zone, where their resources were (work, friends, professional networks). The Zone’s neighborhoods were an obstacle for the administration, which planned to re-house residents, regardless of where they lived, in a building constructed for this purpose in Villejuif, to the south of the city. This housing project, christened “The Future of the Zone,” was adapted to the presumed traits of Zone residents:

• 55 AP, Perotin 106/50/1, box 11, building plan for rehousing Zone residents, n. d.

“This resettlement should be planned in the particular and special conditions of this category of inhabitants who demand to be resettled in an atmosphere suitable to their resources, their lifestyle, and their social condition.”55

57Attention to space as a social resource is a way to reinstate letter writers’ strategic capacities. Their enrolment in the Parisian space is not the result of segregation fatally reproducing relegation. To remain in their living space or settle in new housing, they constructed arguments that shed considerable light on the public policies that concerned them, confirming that the word of constituents enriches understanding of the logics in play in urban change.

***

58These corpuses of letters are an opportunity to revise the hierarchy between administration and constituents, because they show how the legal norm is shaped by interactions between claimants and the authorities. The boundaries between worlds, each with its own logic, are not airtight. For the Zone, the administration was obsessed with the chronology of construction and how much to give in compensation, persisting in evaluating the age of structures. Inversely, Zone residents resisted with written proof that was tenuous given the ambiguity of the Zone’s status. Likewise, Parisians’ tenacity in seeking apartments and their use of their knowledge of the machinery of the administration to plea their case lays bare historiography’s dead-end concerning housing in Paris during the Occupation. The issue has its place in the study of despoliation. This search for property is indeed connected to anti-Semitic persecution, which had not been truly documented until now, and the active role that the administration was able to play has received even less attention. Analysis of these letters, a superb interface between the actors, allows us to escape the cliché of an omnipotent administration versus desperate Parisians or impoverished residents of the Zone.

59 I used these corpuses to flip the perspective by starting with the inhabitants’ point of view. In both cases, penury prompted indignation among claimants and fuelled strategies using social compartmentalization, either by rejecting it or asserting it. This appropriation of social distinctions affected the boundary established by the concerned administrations. The claimants used it to their advantage or protested it, and the interactions between norms and uses is at the heart of my analysis. Reaffirmed or transgressed, the boundary functions as a catalyst of social behaviors that in turn illuminate historic situations. What are we to make of the banality of Jacques Deschamps’ request of the CGQJ?:

• 60 Ibid., letter of 10 April 1943.

“… wanting to rent an apartment having belonged to a Jew, M. B., 2 rue de Provence, and to remove the seals, the German authorities are asking me for certification that M. B. is Jewish, I would be most grateful to you if you would so kindly obtain this certification as soon as possible.”60

60All claimants write because they think that they are in their rights. All of them tinker with two categorical registers. Some are obvious (“the Jew,” “the Zone resident”) but they are intimately entwined with other counter-categories, like “the absent Jew,” the “vacationing Jew,” “the Jew with two residences,” the negative charge to add weight to their requests. Unlike Zone residents with no need to attack the Other, these claimants are compelled to defend their interests against those of others. The categories they use are rather inclusive: they have occupations, families, concerns about their futures and their comfort. While the first group tried to set itself apart, the second sought the anonymity of being just more residents of Paris.

61This social history perspective is not blind to political choices. To the contrary, it allows us to examine the modalities of their diffusion and the adaptation of categories used to implement public policy – eradicating the Zone in one instance, rehousing under the Occupation in the other. In sum, these two corpuses document the two-way porosity between the administration and society. Anti-Semitism is a central issue in the corpus of letters from apartment seekers: “Us” and “Them” are well articulated in their pleas, and although it is difficult to distinguish between belief in the ambient anti-Jewish ideology and the opportunity to seize upon it to improve their housing conditions, these requests attest to a strong incorporation of administration-imposed categories. Deadbeat, in ill health, absent, prisoner of war… the former Jewish renter is first and foremost a Jew. Does the search for any sort of benefit eclipse the label of anti-Semitism? One wonders, but the question shows that the dynamic, which helped to bring about the exclusion of Jews from society in Paris, is complex and fuelled by the quest for personal profit.