Printing the New Jewish France: Farlag Oyfsnay and the Revival of Yiddish Paris, 1946–1975

• In Event: Where is Jewish France? Jewish Communities and Identities in Twentieth-Century France and North Africa

Abstract

Postwar, post-Holocaust Europe's largest Jewish population was found in France, and it was diverse, covering several years and layers of migration and integration into France. France's postwar social, political, cultural, and linguistic context was also unique in Europe because it played host to so many different Jewish migrant, returnee, and survivor communities. After World War II, one of the premiere Yiddish publishing houses was found in Paris: Farlag Oyfsnay. During its nearly thirty-year run, Farlag Oyfsnay published over 100 titles ranging from communist polemics, histories of Jews in France and Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War, memorial books for murdered Parisian Jewish culture makers, plays, novels and novellas, and books of poetry. Some of these publications were created by some of the most renowned postwar Yiddish writers, too, including, just to name two, the poet Dora Teitelbaum and the playwright Chaim Sloves. However, what little has been written about this publishing house typically casts a red light on these efforts, claiming that this was purely a “communist” publishing house. This paper will examine together the entirety of Farlag Oyfsnay’s output to argue that although the overarching framework of the publisher may have been communist (they were affiliated with the communist Union des Juifs pour la résistance et l’entraide) its actual output tells a different story. We will see how through the creation of material culture—books—postwar Yiddish Paris attempted to both establish itself as a hub of Yiddish publishing in Europe and also internationalize the Jewish community by way of a broad, wide-reaching catalog.

Author

• Nick Underwood, The College of Idaho