17. The Revocation of Jews’ French Citizenship
Charlotte Sorkine was born in Paris in 1925 to a Romanian mother and Belorussian father. One of her grandfathers was an anthropology professor, and she was raised in an intellectual household. Her home hosted a weekly salon frequently attended by French luminaries of the arts, letters, sciences, and academia. Sorkine’s life took a drastic turn for the worse after the Nazis defeated France in 1940.
The collaborationist Vichy government enacted discriminatory laws that revoked naturalized Jews’ French citizenship, and authorized the internment of foreign Jews or the restriction of their residence. When out in public, Sorkine and her family had to wear yellow stars of David sewn on their clothes to identify themselves as Jews. By 1942, her father was in hiding. Later that year, her mother was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. Sorkine’s father and brother fled to Nice in southern France, and she followed soon thereafter.
