New York 1940-1945: a French exile

The pains of exile are from all ages. Ovid, assigned by Augustus to the shores of the Black Sea, at the dawn of our era, had sung them beautifully. Our time multiplies the number of our fellow men who are doomed by their fate to the darkest part of this test.

I therefore wanted to focus our attention on a specific case that recent history offers us: that of the French people who the defeat of 1940, followed by the Vichy regime, led to take refuge in the United States, and more precisely in New York, up to the liberation of their homeland, which brought most of them back. Emanuele LoyerUniversity Professor at Sciences Poshe had once clung to this subject, with brilliance and sagacity.

Of course, each wave of men and women sentenced to collective exile from internal heartbreak specific to their nation experiences specific pains, depending on the time and circumstances. We will evoke them, for the case that will occupy us, in the order of politics, of course, in the heart of the Second World War, but also of literature, science and the arts. But not without mentioning, along the way, some stays that refer to other periods.

Homesickness, as the popular saying goes, is ambivalent. Nostalgia can disarm courage and willpower or, on the contrary, prove fruitful by arousing the desire to fight, at least at a distance, in words or in writing. It is therefore a question of compensating for the geographical distance with the search for other proximity, intellectual and affective. It should be added that the constitution of small communities of exiles is rarely without quarrels, the more ferocious the more they unfold in the void. They often add their bitterness to the cruelty of uprooting

ARCHIVES DISTRIBUTED

• Excerpt from an editorial by Philippe Henriotaired on Radio Nationale Vichy on April 18, 1944.
• Interview with Claude Lévi-Strauss (upon his arrival in the United States)excerpt from Emmanuelle Loyer’s documentary “Voice of America, the voice of America, a radio station at war” broadcast in Emmanuel Laurentin’s “La Fabrique de l’Histoire” on France Culture, 11 February 2002.
• Extract from an interview with Jean Renoir (the arrival in New York)interviewed by Hélène Tournaire, broadcast on RTF on May 3, 1960.
• Extract from an interview with Alain Bosquetin “Le Bon Plaisir” by Luis Mizon, which aired on French culture on April 25, 1992.
• Interview with Stéphane Hesselexcerpt from Emmanuelle Loyer’s documentary “Voice of America, the voice of America, a radio station at war” broadcast on French culture on February 11, 2002.
• Extract from the “Voice of America” ​​radio station followed by an interview with Claude Lévi-Straussexcerpt from Emmanuelle Loyer’s documentary “Voice of America, the voice of America, a radio station at war” broadcast on French culture on February 11, 2002.
• Song in the credits: “As Time Goes by” by Dooley Wilson, taken from the film “Casablanca” by Michael Curtizpublished in 1942.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Emanuele Loyer, Paris to New York. French intellectuals and artists in exile 1940-1947, Grasset, 2005, cane. Literature Hachette, Pluriel, 2007.
• Emanuele Loyer, Claude Lévi-StraussFlammario, 2015.
• Emanuele Loyer, The ruthless todayFlammario, 2022.
• Laurent Jeanpierre, “Men between multiple worlds. Study of a situation of exile: French intellectuals who took refuge in the United States during the Second World War”EHESS doctorate, 2005.
• Jeffrey Mehlman, Emigrated to New York. French intellectuals in Manhattan, 1940-1944Albin Michel, 2005.