Books & ideas

Jewish Archives, French History

Pierre Birnbaum — 2024-10-10T07:56:26Z

Have France's Jews been excluded from the great national narrative? The fact is, their archives are as rich as they are significant, bearing witness to a very long history. Moreover, they provide a basis for writing the “external” as well as the “internal” history of Jewish communities.

From Infamous Men to Men of the Forest

Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod — 2021-01-04T07:00:00Z

What if, after his interest in “infamous men,” Foucault had turned his attention to the history of ecological marginalities, examining hermits, noble savages and other men of the forest? Philippe Artières writes a counter-factual fiction using real archives.

Opening the Nazi archives at Bad Arolsen

Jean-Marc Dreyfus — 2013-04-11T07:00:00Z

The International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany, was set up after the war to trace millions of deported and displaced persons. During the Cold War, its archives – personal files, transport lists, records of deaths from several concentration camps, and records of individual and mass graves – served to inform victims' families and to substantiate compensation and pension claims. The archives have only recently been opened up to researchers, stirring up considerable interest in the international research community.

Invisible constraints

Florent Brayard — 2010-12-15T08:33:00Z

Carlo Ginzburg, a historian specialising in witchcraft and popular beliefs, has produced an exceptional range of rich and powerful work. In this interview he looks back at his intellectual development, which has taken him from the Friulian countryside to the conspiracies of the 1970s and 1980s, and discusses the personal aspect of his relationship with the archives.