April 14, 2026 at 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Rosen Family Screening Room at the Ronald Tutor Campus Center, Room 227
(Join us in person or on Zoom)
Lunch following the lecture by RSVP only

A public lecture by Prof. Sarah Gensburger (Professor of Political Science and History, CNRS and Sciences Po Paris)
2025-2026 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence

Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research with cooperation from the USC Shoah Foundation

In 1940, Paris was home to 200,000 Jews, 40,000 of whom would be deported or shot by war's end. Those who survived fled south or went into hiding. Returning after the Liberation of Paris, survivors found their apartments occupied, their possessions gone, and most were unable to reclaim their homes. Tracing policies of persecution, the attitude of the population, and the actions of municipal authorities, landlords, neighbors, and others, Sarah Gensburger (Professor of Political Science and History) challenges notions of wartime solidarity and illuminates how the Holocaust could take place in Paris, a city where no ghettos ever existed.

This talk continues the work undertaken in her recently published book Appartements témoins. La spoliation des locataires juifs à Paris, 1940-1946, co-written with Isabelle Backouche and Eric le Bourhis (La Découverte, 2025). Winner of Albertine Translation Grant 2025, the book will be published in English by Rutgers University Press in 2027.

This lecture will be followed by a lunch hosted by USC Shoah Foundation. Advanced RSVP for the lunch (via the registration form) is required. Space is limited.

Register Here

Sarah Gensburger is Professor of Political Science and History at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Sciences Po Paris. Between 2021 and 2024, she served as the president of the international Memory Studies Association. She has authored 15 books, including Beyond Memory: Can We Really Learn from the Past, with Sandrine Lefranc, Palgrave, 2020; Memory on my Doorstep: Chronicles of the Bataclan Neighborhood (Paris, 2015-2016), Leuven University Press, 2019; Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris 1940-1944, Indiana University Press, 2015 and National Policy, Global Memory: The Commemoration of the Righteous among the Nations from Jerusalem to Paris, Berghahn Books, 2016. Learn more about her here.