Escaping violence in 1935: Jewish Polish students’ strategy, from Montpellier to Lyon

Résumé En

On 31 January 1935, French medical students rioted in Montpellier in protest against supposed advantages given to foreign students at their expense. Within the context of a period of economic crisis, protestors claimed that their concern was purely professional and non-political in nature. This soon changed after ‘Action Française’, an extreme right-wing movement based in Paris, took control of the student movement. From this point, the movement evolved into a xenophobic, antisemitic revolt. Violence, riots and antisemitic slogans focused mainly on Romanian and Polish Jewish students spread among the French members of the faculties of medicine. Noteably, however, the Faculty of Lyon remained quiet. This paper will examine the hypothesis of a strategy assumed by the Jewish Polish medical students in Montpellier to escape from the rising violence they were facing. The article concludes with the xenophobic and antisemitic policies of the Vichy Regime in 1940 and 1941 which enacted laws against Jewish doctors and students.