Until the beginning of the German occupation of France in 1940, there were approximately 35,000 Judéo-Espagnols living in France, Jews who had immigrated to France from the territory of the former Ottoman Empire, from the Balkans and the Levant. By virtue of their language, Judéo-Espagnol or Judezmo, which they had retained ever since their expulsion from Spain, as well as by virtue of their common history and traditions, they constituted a community of their own. In many cities in France, they established their own communities and founded synagogues and cultural associations, while at the same time taking part in French public life. In terms of numbers, they constituted a larger group than the Jewish population of many European countries. During the Shoah, more than 5,300 Judéo-Espagnols from France were deported and killed by the Germans. But for a long time their fate was not perceived as the common history of a specific group and remained one of the unexplored chapters of the Shoah. The book Muestros Dezaparesidos closes this gap. It is the result of more than ten years of collective work by a group of volunteers and historians who have gathered testimonials and accounts by survivors as well as archival holdings in order to save the history and fate of the Judéo-Espagnols from oblivion. The book contains the names of the 5,300 Judéo-Espagnols who were deported from France, of those who were shot and killed, and of those who died in French camps. It also contains short biographies of about seventy of the deportees, supplemented by testimonies in French or Judezmo. But Muestros Dezaparesidos is much more than a memorial book. The historical first part, which comprises almost 350 pages, traces the group's distinctive history. It examines their situation in the latter-day Ottoman Empire and its successor states and describes their settling in France as well as the diversity of Judeo-Spanish life in their new home country and the expectations they had of it. It then goes on to depict in detail the conditions of exclusion and persecution the Judéo-Espagnols faced under the German occupation and the Vichy regime and takes a close look at their distinctive situation, which resulted from the fact that many of them were, or had been, citizens of countries that were either neutral or allied with Germany (Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy). Finally, it outlines the conditions the survivors faced after their liberation. In an original contribution to research, the work also contains a chapter on the participation and roles of Judéo-Espagnols in the resistance against the Nazis.
