Lucien Dreyfus papers

Lucien Dreyfus papers 

Lucien Dreyfus papers 

folders book enclosure 9 3 

The Lucien Dreyfus papers primarily consist of five parts of a seven-part diary written by Lucien Dreyfus from 1940 to 1943. An intelligent and discerning man, Lucien used his diary to document his intellectual and social life as a refugee in the south of France, his observations on the rise of antisemitic laws and violence, his cardiac condition, his daughter’s family and their emigration to the United States, and his efforts to retrieve his confiscated property. The diary includes information about Lucien’s students, his opinions about the limited utility of assimilation in fighting antisemitism, and rumors circulating about the terrible conditions in concentration camps in France and murder in the killing centers in Poland. The last entry dates just one month before Lucien’s arrest and deportation to Auschwitz. Cahier C, page 17, contains an entry from July 4, 1942 concerning Dreyfus' knowledge of 700,000 Jews killed in Poland. A September 1943 entry describes letters received from persons in the Drancy concentration camp. The diary notebooks are labeled A through G, but the covers for volumes E and F have not been recovered. Several of the volumes begin part of the way through composition books Lucien had used in the 1920s and 1930s to enumerate lists of books and copy passages from them, so his diary does not span the entire length of every composition book. The collection also includes a 1903 composition titled"Heine und das Judentu"; a lesson book dated July 1943; and a file containing general information about Dreyfus and his deportation to Auschwitz. 

The Lucien Dreyfus papers are arranged as a single series.