Jews and Psychiatry under the Occupation
Traduction par Sarah Stroud de mon article Juifs en psychiatrie sous l'Occupation. L'hospitalisation des Juifs en psychiatrie sous Vichy dans le département de la Seine. Histoire des Sciences Médicales, T. XLII, n°4, 2008; 349-358 |
The author presents the actual state of his research on this question so far little studied, in a department whose specifics must be taken into account. The study of about 50 medical files and various unpublished documents makes it possible to specify the conditions in which persons persecuted because of racial laws and hospitalized in psychiatry have been protected. With regard to their property, it appears that the system intended to protect the mentally ill during their placement in a psychiatric hospital has been diverted, and used to rob the patients “who claim to be Jewish or were supposed to be”. |
Then from a previous search on the famine and its consequences in the psychiatric hospitals under the Occupation (“about the hecatomb (def: any slaughter on a mass scale) deficiency in psychiatric hospitals under the Occupation” (Histoire des sciences médicales, 2006, XL, n°3; 313-319), we had to consult the registers of admissions of the mentally ill in the psychiatric hospitals of the former department of the Seine (Archives de Paris, 1243 W, articles 25 à 30).
If, during the 3 years of major danger –between the summer of 1941 and the summer of 1944 (June 2, 1941: 2nd Statute of the Jews, August 20, 1941: Drancy becomes a Jewish internment camp, July 31: the last convoy for Auschwitz leaves from Drancy, for Buchenwald on August 17) many Jews were hidden in psychiatric hospitals, or were simply kept there when their mental state did not justify it or did not justify it anymore, the fact must appear by many goings from September 1944.
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The Specialties of the Department of the Seine
The first results presented here cannot be generalized to the whole of France, nor even to the part of the national territory subjected to the German Reich, if only because of the specifics of the department of the Seine, and the establishment whose archives we have studied :
Thus, the granddaughter of a patient living in Paris wrote to the doctor in February 1943: “being an Israelite, it is difficult for me to leave the Seine department to visit him” (Archives de Maison-Blanche, décès 1943, 2ème section, dr. Schenda M. Veuve G.). This granddaughter will be deported to Auschwitz by convoy No. 61 on October 28, 1943.
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Fifty Files The study of the files, classified by year of exit, transfer, or death, concerned the years 1943, 1944 and 1945; and, for these last two years, only on the files of the people entered before the Liberation. Some of them had been admitted before the beginning of racial persecution, and, even for some, before the war.
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Saved by Internment?
Many of these people were undoubtedly protected voluntarily, and would have been deported if they had left before August 1944: 1 or more relatives, first or second degree relatives, of a very large majority of them disappeared in Auschwitz.
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The Case of Fanny P., 43 years old, Romanian Jew Naturalized French Another example of hospitalization that allows a patient, thanks to the protection of the doctor, to escape death: Fanny P., 43 years old, Romanian Jew Naturalized French.
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Mental Disorders The study of the files cannot make it possible to know with certainty who was sick and who was not, was no longer or was not enough to justify his stay in the hospital, in other words, that has saved by the asylum and by the disease. |
« SICK supposedly JEWISH » In one of the files consulted was preserved a curious printing (Archives of Maison-Blanche, 2nd section, Outputs 1944, Mrs. B., entered on April 4, 1944) entitled “SICK supposedly JEWISH“ :
Were Jews hospitalized in psychiatry under Vichy protected from spoliations, in particular thanks to the measures provided by the specific regulations and the law of June 30, 1838, or were they victims, like the other Jews?
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The law of June 30, 1838: protection of persons and protection of property The traditional psychiatric hospital has a double job, guaranteed by the law of June 30, 1838: the protection of persons and the protection of their property.
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The purpose of the census of Jews hospitalized in psychiatry 3 documents consulted at the Contemporary Center of Documentation of Jews (Centre de Documentation Juivre Contemporaine) (17, rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier 75004 Paris) suggest the purpose of this census :
The Prefect of Police refers to the Office of the Commissioner General for Jewish Questions, service of Jacques Ditte, Director of the Status of Persons :
The third document is the copy of a letter, not dated, dealing with this same question of the restitution of jewelry to the hospitalized Jewish patients (Fonds C.G.Q.J., CCXXXV-62 (C.D.J.C.), 1 p.):
It seems that this document follows those of September 2nd and 26th, 1941.
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The mission of study on the spoliations of the Jews of France, whose final report has been dropped in 2000, was responsible for “studying the conditions under which the property (…) belonging to the Jews of France were confiscated, or in a general way, acquired by fraud, violence or theft, both by the Occupier and the authorities of Vichy between 1940 and 1944”.
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Michel Caire 2019 |