A historian of the Second World War and the Holocaust in France, I received a PhD in History and French Studies from New York University in 2023. I am interested in how individuals navigated the myriad challenges posed by wartime displacement, anti-Semitic persecution, and their postwar aftermaths. My work takes a micro-historical approach to understanding how “ordinary” people and local administrators interacted as they advocated for their needs and ideas, addressed national policy at the local level, and developed narratives about their actions and experiences. I dig beyond discourse to study the often messy practices and relationships that developed through these processes. A writer at heart, I also study the craft of writing history and regularly experiment with creative forms for presenting my work.
Expulsions from Alsace and Moselle, 1940-1945
After defeating France in the Second World War and occupying approximately half the country, German leaders expelled up to 300,000 people from the borderland area of Alsace and the Moselle. Men, women and children that German authorities considered racially or politically undesirable (including French citizens born in “interior” France, members of patriotic organizations, foreigners and Jews) were instructed to pack no more than 2,000 francs and 50 kilos of belongings. Often with only a few hours’ notice, they were sent to live in the southern unoccupied zone, run by France’s collaborationist and authoritarian Vichy government. As the expulsions were intended to facilitate this long-contested region’s annexation to Germany, the surviving expellees’ return was not authorized until the end of the war.
My dissertation, “Fragments of Exile: A Sociopolitical History of Alsatian and Mosellan Expellees in the Basses-Alpes, 1939-1945,” examines how expelled families, French authorities and members of the local population confronted the material, administrative and personal consequences of exile in southern France. Through a case study of the southeastern Basses-Alpes department (now the Alpes de Haute Provence), I argue that aiding and disciplining expellees were relational practices that developed from intersecting personal and institutional logics.
My dissertation was supported by the Société des Professeurs Français et Francophones d’Amérique and New York University. I am currently transforming it into a book manuscript.
Hilary S. Handin 