Les dynamiques mémorielles de la Shoah : l’exemple de deux champions, Alfred Nakache et Young Perez

Abstract

This work examines the way in which two French Jewish sportsmen, Alfred Nakache and Young Perez, made a place for themselves in the French collective memory between the end of the Second World War and the most contemporary period. Based on a variety of sources, including a study of the press, oral testimonies, and private and institutional archives, the study reviews the different phases of memory that have followed one another since 1945. Thanks to this material, the process of memory inversion is brought to light and the spaces in which memory constructions take place are objectified. If during the twenty years following the end of the Second World War, the destinies of the two men remain blurred for various reasons, a dynamic emerges at the dawn of the 1980s when the duty to remember is distilled to the heart of the sporting sphere. Entering the collective memory at the beginning of the XXIst century, their destiny is summoned to serve educational actions while interesting the scholarly and cultural spheres, not without provoking some memorial controversies.