To be a Jew and Champion in Vichy's France: Alfred Nakache – From the Swimming Pool to the Nazi Camps (1940–44)

Abstract

Set against the background of France's cultural history during the Second World War, this biographical study concerns Alfred Nakache, a swimming champion of Jewish origin. Through his conditions of existence, the study amply demonstrates the exclusion, followed by the extermination, of Jews in France. At a time when the ‘Révolution Nationale’ (National Revolution) had been established as political dogma, it also demonstrates the bipolarity of the swimmer's identity, as both an emblem standing for the ‘New Man’ in the eyes of the ‘Commissariat Général à l'Education Générale et aux Sports (CGEGS)’ (commission for general education and sport) and a member of an inferior race for the Nazi occupiers and the ‘Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (CGQJ)’ (administrative body concerned with French policy towards Jews). Although temporarily protected by his rank as an athlete and his network of contacts, the hardening of German policies, together with widespread collaboration during 1943, led the leading actors of the sport world to curtail his sport achievements, thus marking the beginning of progressive anonymization which, in turn, finally ended in his deportation in January 1944.