In addition, two organizations set up to prevent any return of Jewish properties were banned by the government in April 1945. But as Leora Auslander makes clear in her poignant and revelatory article, ‘Coming Home? Jews in Postwar Paris’, ‘These everyday furnishings were only the tip of the iceberg: lying just beneath the surface were the confiscated bank accounts, libraries, art collections, businesses, stocks and bonds and dwellings of Jews resident in France in 1940. Working out restitution or compensation for these goods (and reparations for trauma and loss of life) is still an ongoing enterprise.’ Admittedly, France was not the only country facing the postwar problems of homelessness and dispossession, and within France both Jews and non-Jews suffered. ‘But the experience of returning Jews was special because, whereas non-Jews were dispossessed by a foreign enemy, Jews were excluded from what they had thought was their home by people they had understood to be their fellow citizens and in some cases, their neighbours … Even more painful for returnees was the response of their fellow Parisians to their efforts to come home.’
In the face of strong opposition from those determined to keep hold of their wartime booty – frequently women proud of what they had managed to come by – the system for restoration required returnees seeking to reclaim goods to write explaining their situation, to submit a precise inventory of the contents of their home at the moment of departure and to provide a confirmation from the concierge, owner or manager of the building that the goods had been confiscated. It was made clear to claimants that unless the pillage had occurred in the final phase of the Occupation, that is after spring 1944, it was unlikely that anything would be recovered in Paris because before that most objects had been swiftly shipped out.
As Auslander shows, among the tens of thousands of returnees who filed petitions between the autumn of 1944 and 1947, there was a wide range of claimants, including men and women, French and foreign, rich and poor, very few of whom recovered the objects that had so painstakingly been bought or, freighted with emotion, transported to Paris from other countries or inherited. Historians estimate that only about 20 per cent of the contents of pillaged homes was ever recovered. And yet, this double dispossession struck at the heart of what it meant to be French and what it meant to be surrounded by domestic objects which defined identity, who one was and how one lived. Although men were often the petitioners, the creation of the domestic space was (and remains in many cultures) predominantly a female activity, and the need to recreate, through objects, the life they once had was pressing. As the increasingly hopeless and emotionally fraught petitions continued well into 1947, the sentiment of many changed from hope to anger.
Most returnees, Jews and non-Jews alike, having dreamed of the day they would return to Paris, were filled with deep disappointment when they actually arrived. ‘We were, like thousands of deportees, certain that we had been forgotten and above all certain that several people might have wished never to see us again,’ Jacqueline Marié recounted. ‘There was a general lack of excitement on seeing the deportees return and not knowing who among them had collaborated and who had done nothing. We felt we had returned to a different planet. We had nothing but rags, we weighed 36 kilos and had barely any skin covering our bones.’ All the women returnees looked strange – gaunt, wild-eyed and often with shaven heads and a sense of disorientation. Many were also ill and needed months if not years of medical treatment. Jacqueline added, ‘We came to the Gare de l’Est where we were given ten francs and taken to the H?tel Lutetia where we had a room and were given an assortment of ill-fitting clothes and a Métro ticket. But we had to take the mattress off the bed as it was too soft. We were used to a hard floor.’ When Jacqueline and her mother returned to the family apartment in Versailles they found it had been looted, but at least it was theirs. M. Marié, Jacqueline’s father, was there, still alive, but he had suffered dreadfully and never fully recovered. ‘When I recounted what we had been through,’ Jacqueline said, ‘no one believed us. They thought the camps had a canteen like a “soldiers’ mess” to eat in, and we were given beefsteak and chips. It was such a gulf so I stopped talking about what had happened to us.’
Another Ravensbrück returnee, Michèle Agniel, recounted how, since she could barely stand, she was given a permit to jump the queues for rationed food. ‘But when I did, a man complained, so I said I had just come back from a concentration camp. He said, “Mais quand même, they know how to queue in concentration camps, don’t they?” I hit him.’ Some tried to explain the gulf of misunderstanding. Fran?ois Mauriac wrote: ‘It is a mistake to think that the public avoids accounts such as this because it has heard them too often. The truth is that it has never listened to a single one to the end, and it makes it clear that it does not want the subject brought up.’