Élise Marienstras was born in Paris in 1932 to Polish emigrants from the shtetl of Slonim, a place now steeped in legend that she herself knew as a child. During the war, the family crossed the demarcation line and lived in hiding until the Liberation.
Atlande, 2025. Élise Marienstras was born in Paris in 1932 to Polish emigrants from the shtetl of Slonim, a place now steeped in legend that she herself knew as a child. During the war, the family crossed the demarcation line and lived in hiding until the Liberation. Now an emeritus professor of history, she recounts in this narrative infused with literature and philosophy her journey through the twentieth century: from the shtetl to the kibbutz, from New York to the Sorbonne in May ’68. “This is a kind of oral history, imperfect, incomplete […] experienced like a dream into which I had been plunged for a time, […] a history (with and without a capital H) that took place and faded away—or rather, was scattered like the trails of sparks that escaped from the burning shtetl one day during Yom Kippur in December 1942.” With the author in attendance. In conversation with Raphaël Sigal, author of Géographie de l’oubli (Robert Laffont, 2025). Book
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Source: paris.fr — photo: Élise Marienstras ©Randy Logé.