Archives de Paris, 1939-1945: guide des sources historiques conservées aux Archives de Paris

By Brigitte Lainé, Philippe Grand, Pascale Verdier

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Published for the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris, this guide describes the historical source materials concerning the period of the Second World War that are preserved and inventoried in the departmental and municipal archives of Paris. It presents the breadth of sources available, and in doing so, reveals new and perhaps unfamiliar historical sources that could lead to a deeper understanding of the period.

Grouped in sections by administrative function, the archival collections are further organized by depositing agency. The education section, for example, includes listings for collections from offices that governed the functioning of schools, the administration of examinations, and the maintenance of school buildings in the Paris region.

Each numbered entry includes:

• the name of the originating and depositing office
• the range of record dates covered by the material
• classifications assigned by the archives
• indications of the size, extent, and form of the items
• brief subject descriptions

Subsequent sections list collections of personal papers and of published materials such as posters, tracts, books, journals, and government publications. In addition to records from the war years, the guide also inventories related materials, such as records of legal proceedings in the 1960s and 1970s concerning the seizure of property during the war, and requests for amnesty that were made as a result of legislation passed in 1951 and 1953

The compilers of this work have included several aids to the use and understanding of the collections. Significant events of the war are outlined in a thirty-page general chronology, and a second chronology reviews French laws, decrees, and ordinances. Document reproductions illustrating the range of subjects covered by the collection are also presented, and include such materials as:

• departmental reports to the Interior Ministry regarding events in Paris
• reports on the application of racial laws as they pertained to rental housing
• Resistance documents seized by the police
• reports by arrondissement on events during the liberation of Paris

A concordance to archival record numbers, along with indexes of place names, terms from the thesaurus of the Archives of France, and keywords from the texts themselves, provide various means of accessing the entries. Finally, numerous images, including many full-color posters or fliers, enliven the directory, and provide the researcher with a glimpse into the history so carefully ordered and described in this unique resource.

407 pages
ISBN: 2-87900-190-0
Call no: Ref CD1217.P4 A56 1994

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