The German Occupier and the Vichy Regime in relation to Foreign Students

19 To the German occupiers, the French university was suspicious and there seemed to be no specific approach to “foreign students”. Questions relating to higher education were dealt with by the cultural section, headed by Karl Epting. Under the orders of Ambassador Otto Abetz, Epting collaborated with the French authorities. Before the war, he was in charge of the University Office for Exchanges with Germany and worked with the International Student Service in Geneva. He was therefore aware of the issues surrounding student mobility.

20 At the beginning of the Occupation, German higher education officials did not consider abolishing the French university, as was the case, for example, in the Reich-occupied territory of Poland. According to a report by Group 4 “Schule und Kultur” within the German diplomatic delegation in Paris, in the future French higher education should be neither supported nor restricted so that, under occupation, it could only be useful to Greater Germany. [5] The revengeful spirit of 1918 also extended to universities. According to Dr Südhof, France diverted foreign students away from German universities to its higher education institutions by keeping tuition fees very low. [6] On the German side, therefore, the idea was to weaken the French university by limiting its international aura (Raphael, 1997: 519) and to maintain calm in the short term. Overall, this was a success. After the invasion of the free zone, the military command considered that Paris had become safer than Lyon and authorised the repatriation of the École polytechnique to the capital (Mitchell, 2008: 126).

21 Despite these general concerns, the superimposition of these two categories — student and foreigner — did not translate into specific measures taken against this population. On the one hand, when the policy of repression affected a foreign population, as in the case of Romanian political prisoners at the Vernet camp, the category of “student” almost never appeared in the “profession” section of the lists of internees: it was nationality that took precedence. [7]

22 On the other hand, when the military command took an interest in student spheres, police reports reveal a classification in accordance with the politico-racial criteria of the Third Reich: Freemason students, Judeo-Bolshevik students, National Socialist students. [8] From May 1941 onwards, the German administration observed an increase in student unrest: [9] students were then assimilated to youth in general, which also included schoolchildren. The German military therefore abandoned this population. In any case, the international meeting of peoples promoted by Germany, as fantasised by Epting after the war, did not materialise (Geiger, 1999: 237-281).

23 As far as the German administration was concerned, the category of foreign student only appeared in the security arrangements. This was the case of the informers of the German military secret police (Feldpolizei) who passed themselves off as foreign students in order to infiltrate the Parisian student scene. In June 1941, one of them pretended to be a Swiss student and took part in a student picnic in Neauphle-le-Château to gather information on their perception of the occupier. [10] Sometimes foreign students were used as informants. This was the suspicion that hung over the Hungarian Tibor Berger, who was murdered by the Resistance fighter Jean Arthus (Besse and Grason, 2018).

24 According to the Vichy regime, officially nothing had changed with regard to university studies, except for Jewish students. “The University of France — I am proud to say — retains a prestige that our defeat has not diminished.” This was the statement of Jérôme Carcopino on the radio in 1941 when he became Secretary of State for National Education and Youth, while at the same time holding the position of Rector of the University of Paris. [11] In general, foreign students were too small a population to form a specific administrative category for a specific policy. Students could therefore complete their studies and obtain diplomas. Charlotte de Prybram-Gladona, a German student born in Munich, thus became a Doctor of Art History in 1942 when she presented the first thesis on the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (Drost, 2014: 219).

25 However, at the political level, the National Revolution advocated values that were contrary to this cosmopolitan, urban and educated figure. Sometimes, the collaborationist press accentuated the amalgam between cosmopolitanism and opposition to order. In his report on Chinese society in Paris, René Kraemer mentioned fake Chinese students in the Latin Quarter, who were only there to “play the braggart, the student, the zazou”. [12]

26 State Councillor Jean-Marie Roussel, president of the Commission de révision des naturalisations (Naturalisation Review Board), a body serving the French state, classified foreign students among the occupations least capable of assimilation: the category of “foreigners from all countries of the world, who have come to France of their own free will to continue their studies, to practice an art, to set up an industry [...]” was to be subject to special scrutiny (Zalc, 2016: 176).

27 This represented a real break: from being a cultural ambassador, the figure of the foreign student became that of a student without a country or work. When the Hungarian student George Vadnai was arrested, was it not the case that he had a foreigner’s identity card with the words “non worker”? [13] In any case, this is what appears from the individual record produced at the time of his internment in the Vernet camp.

28 This opprobrium cast on foreign students, as vectors of cosmopolitan values, combined with the antisemitism of the German and French authorities when they reconsidered the status of Jewish students. From the Law of 21 June 1941 onwards, their number was limited to 3% per faculty, which separated them from other French students and made them foreign students by law. In 1942, a report by the German military command issued a warning about this social category hated by the Nazis, the “ost-jüdischer Studenten” (Jewish students from the East), accusing them of involvement in communist propaganda. [14]

29 In his book, Singer (1992: 109) recalls that the Carcopino Directive introduced an additional distinction between French Jewish students and foreign Jewish students, the latter being admitted to the university only if the 3% quota was not filled with French Jews. Not only did this measure lead to several hundred exclusions in some faculties (Singer, 1992: 153), but it also introduced significant discrimination against foreign Jews who had much more difficulty in documenting their student status.

30 Georges Mathieu, a professor at the Sorbonne, acknowledged this in his diary, without questioning the reasons for the difference between the cases: “The French have, for the most part, compiled stirring files, containing precious family archives (sometimes original copies). Foreigners provide much more succinct justifications, some under the (real or invented) pretext that their families came from Kiew or Salonika” (Mathieu, 2012: 106). The suspicion mentioned here explains, at least in part, how membership of this category is subject to arbitrariness. Mathieu goes on to say of a German student: “For foreigners, we hesitate; some are suspicious, for example a German woman who arrived in 1938 claiming to be a political refugee and who, since the occupation, continues to circulate without seeming to fear anything untoward” (Mathieu, 2012: 107).

31 In addition, many foreign Jewish students left the capital as the German invasion approached. Here too, statistics are lacking, but some cases, such as Eljasz Sureson, a Polish doctoral student at the Faculty of Arts, who left Paris on 11 June 1940, [15] or the Hungarian Georges Vadnai, who went to Clermont-Ferrand the following day, [16] are evidence of a wider movement. The case of Ilse Hempel, a German refugee since 1936, seems rather exceptional. After fleeing persecution in the aftermath of the Nuremberg Laws, she stayed with her family in the French capital to complete all her studies up to a BA degree in French literature before fleeing to Spain in 1944 (Röder and Strauss, 1983: 736). [17] The Bulletin de la société Théophile Gautier describes this specialist in Théophile Gautier and Goya, who was a professor at Vassar College, as having the ability to “abolish borders, whether of knowledge or geography”. [18] This multiple experience of exile undoubtedly contributed to the academic habitus described here.

Foreigner or Student in the Resistance

32 This invisibility of foreign students is also the case in the resistance movements, where this category is also absent. In this respect, foreign students follow the pattern observed with regard to the absence of foreigners in the historiography of the Resistance. On the one hand, the Resistance was quickly “nationalised” in public discourse and foreigners who had taken part in it were side-lined. However, it seems that proportionally more foreigners joined the Resistance than French people (Jackson, 2004: 582).

33 On the other hand, foreigners themselves did not want to emphasise this distinction, most often wishing to integrate into the national community (Peschanski, 2002: 9). By deconstructing these categories, it is possible to find the trace of foreign students, although this endeavour often comes up against the silence of the archives.

34 In the resistance movements led by foreigners, in particular the Main-d’œuvre immigrée (MOI) organisation, there is no specific trace of foreign students. However, on the eve of the war, several petitions were launched by foreign students in provincial universities, asserting their determination to fight for France. In April 1939, Albanian, Egyptian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Romanian, Yugoslav, Czech and Polish students at the University of Lyon announced their intention to help France, “in favour of freedom and against subjugation”. [19] It can therefore be assumed that some of these students joined the Resistance, particularly Polish students, who were numerous in the MOI, and Spanish students, who were more active in the Free Zone (Jackson, 2004: 583-584), and who formed one of the largest contingents of foreign students in Paris (47 in 1942/43), along with Russians (168) and Romanians (98). [20]

35 Among foreign resistance fighters, students seem to have formed a small minority. This is what emerges from an analysis of the group of 1,009 victims whose names are inscribed on the memorial erected at Mont Valérien. Focusing on a sample of 103 individuals, i.e. Resistance fighters born after 1906 (making them thirty-five years old or younger at the time of the first execution, i.e. approximately of studying age) whose country of birth was not France, a minority of less than 10% were students, and their backgrounds show the plurality of itineraries. [21] Lejb Léon Goldberg (1924-1944) came to Paris from Poland to study and became a member of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans — Main-d’’œuvre immigrée (FTP-MOI), after finishing his studies at the Turgot school. Bernard Kirschen (1921-1942), whose family came from Romania in 1932, became one of the leaders of the Jeunesses Communistes while studying literature. Tony Louis Clainville Bloncourt (1921-1942), a science student born in Port-au-Prince, came to Paris in 1938 and took part in the 11 November demonstration as a member of the Communist Students, then in numerous Resistance actions before being shot at Mont Valérien. Karl Schönhaar (1924-1942) was a German student at the Institut d’optique who fled Nazism to Switzerland with his mother, before taking refuge in Paris where he joined the Jeunesses Communistes. In this sample, students from the colonies also found themselves in a situation of remoteness and commitment in Paris. Madavin Mouchilotte (1914-1942) was born in the French Indies; he led a group of communist students at the Sorbonne University from the time of the Occupation. He was arrested in 1942 and shot. [22] Yvon Sauveur Djian (1919-1942) was a Jewish student from Algeria who was affected by the abolition of the Crémieux Decree in 1940. First a member of the Committee of the Association corporative des étudiants en lettres de Paris, then national secretary of the Union des étudiants communistes, he was particularly active in structuring the university and high school resistance movements in Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon and Paris, before being assassinated.

36 These biographies show that the status of foreign student remains a multifaceted reality and that there is no specific pathway to becoming active. Like those of other foreigners, they oscillate between rallying to France, as the pre-war petitions suggest, and fighting in France against Nazism, with these two paths not being mutually exclusive (Joutard and Marcot, 1992: 10). However, they are similar in that they were geographically very mobile during the months of resistance and are evidence of the significance of youth organisations as a gateway to the Resistance for these young foreigners.

37 Within the student resistance movements, Paris occupied a central place, particularly because of the size of its university population (Fischer, 2004: 27). From 1941 onwards, students were a priority target for compulsory labour, which provoked strong opposition (Mitchell, 2008: 78). In terms of memory, the student resistance fighters obtained a form of recognition for their commitment with the erection of the “Monument to the Students who died for France” by the sculptor Gaston Watkin, inaugurated in 1956 in the Jardin du Luxembourg. However, within these movements, the sub-category of foreigners was absent: how many foreign students marched at the Étoile on 11 November 1940, out of the 3,000 or so demonstrators? [23] We do not know. Similarly, in the main newspaper of the student resistance, L’Université libre (Jackson, 2004), [24] the specific problems encountered by foreign students were never discussed, even though, as a Communist Party underground publication pointed out, the Parisian university was praised for being open to the world and therefore incompatible with Nazi barbarism. [25] The structures of the Resistance often preferred the universalising category of “youth” to the category of “student”.

The Quantitative Approach

39 The national statistics do not call into question a somewhat natural intuition (cf. Figure 1) that the proportion of foreign students in France declined during the conflict and rose again — very quickly — after the armistice.

Figure 1: Number and proportion of foreign students in France

Figure 1: Number and proportion of foreign students in France

40 In Paris, the decrease in the number of foreign students was drastic (Raphael, 1997: 508). However, this trend conceals major differences depending on the origin of the students and on the sources. Unsurprisingly, the number of nationals from the Allied countries and more generally from the belligerent countries decreased rapidly in 1940. In Paris, the number of British students dropped from 217 in 1938 to six in 1943 and the number of U.S. students decreased from 197 to three. The number of Polish students was divided by 15, from 696 in 1940 to 47 in 1943.

41 In the case of another country of origin, Belgium, which was also under occupation, the evolution in the numbers of its nationals in the French capital was less marked. The number remained at around 68. In the case of countries further away, such as China, the number of nationals remained virtually unchanged after the start of the war, which can be explained by the fact that China was less directly involved in the war and that return there was particularly difficult. In the faculties of science, law and literature, there were 40 Egyptian students in 1940 and still 36 in 1942, despite the repatriation of all students in France organised by the Egyptian government. [26] The number of Swiss, German and Italian students remained relatively stable. [27] This statistical research should be refined by taking into account the grandes écoles and the vocational schools, notwithstanding the smaller numbers. According to the director of the École normale supérieure de la Rue d’Ulm in Paris, it appears that no foreign students were enrolled in 1942-1943. [28] All these figures are taken from the Annuaire statistique and generally correspond to the data provided by the faculties of the University of Paris to the Rectorate in a survey carried out in March 1943. [29] In contrast, there was a significant and inexplicable difference in the number of German students. According to the Annuaire statistique, the decrease in the number of German students was abrupt: in 1938 there were 179 German students in the capital; in 1943 there were only seven. In the course of the survey, it was found that in 1943 there were three Germans enrolled in law, one in science, 17 in literature as well as six women students in the French civilisation course at the Sorbonne. During the war, the German occupiers did not set up any student exchanges between the two countries. After the defeat, they considered the relationship in this field to be asymmetrical and the intention was to break France’s academic influence (Hausmann, 2004: 230-231). However, this principle did not completely dry up the flow of students to French universities. It was not until the summer of 1944 that German students from Humboldt University welcomed their French fellow students, who were obliged to perform compulsory labour in the Reich’s capital, into their club. [30]

42 Generally speaking, the attractiveness of the University of Paris, now in the occupied zone, decreased during the war. While more than 50% of students were concentrated there on the eve of the war, this share dropped to 38% in 1943. This change affected foreign students more than their French counterparts. Whereas in 1938, 53% of foreign students in France were enrolled in Paris, by 1943 this had dropped to 38%. In relation to French students, the distribution was more stable, rising from 37% enrolled in Parisian faculties in 1938 to 39% in 1943. [31]

43 This decline in the attractiveness of the capital can be explained by the German occupation, which came earlier, and by the flight of students from countries that were enemies of the occupying forces. In some cases, it was not the invasion that dictated departure, but the evolution of the conflict. For example, nationals of Bessarabia, who were Romanian citizens at the beginning of the war, became Soviet citizens in April 1941 and thus became enemies until the German invasion of the region. This was the case of Efraim Vavodtzew, a Romanian Jewish student, who was studying stomatology in Paris. In June 1940, he received his first notice of expulsion from the country by the Vichy authorities. Despite this, he managed to continue his studies in Paris. He was arrested between Mâcon and Lyon, then interned in the Vernet camp for having remained in France, even though his parents lived in Grenoble. [32]

44 From Paris, there were many destinations. To the students who left the capital in the summer of 1940, the choice seemed to be determined either by the presence of compatriots and acquaintances or chance. The very decision to leave was not easily taken and was not without hesitation. In a letter addressed to those in charge of student accommodation in Paris, Marie Louise Puech recounts that “requests [from foreign students] to leave for Toulouse have been made to the police headquarters, but now that fears have subsided a little, no one wants to leave!”. [33] But when people did leave, they did so in a hurry, without a clear vision of the future. Two Polish students recounted in a letter how they left everything in Paris, “our possessions, books, clothes, shoes”. [34]

45 Among the preferred destinations in the southern zone was the University of Grenoble, which was second only to Paris in terms of the number of foreign students at the beginning of the war. [35] Lyon also became an important centre of attraction, particularly for Chinese students (Gueslin, 1994) and Marseille allowed many foreign and colonial students to stay at the American YMCA hostel. French civilisation courses for foreigners, traditionally given at the Sorbonne, were also given in Montpellier from January 1941. [36] Toulouse was also favoured by Polish students, who made it a real “hub”. [37] Professors and students from Brussels also tried to re-establish a university community in these southern cities (Condette, 2003).

46 In terms of gender, the war only marginally altered this population. Overall, the proportion of foreign women students in relation to foreign men students was fairly stable, and even rose slightly in the second half of the war, whereas the proportion of French women students fell throughout the conflict. [38] This can probably be explained by the relative stability of this population, after the spectacular fall due to the defeat. Some of them were married to men who already had jobs in the capital. This was the case, for example, of Filomena Bovet, of Italian origin, who was enrolled in the Faculty of Biology while her husband, Daniel Bovet, of Swiss origin and future Nobel Prize winner in medicine, worked at the Institut Pasteur. [39] This case also shows the difficulties posed by university statistics: as the wife of a Swiss man, Filomena Bovet was recorded as a Swiss national.

47 However, the war did not open up new avenues of study for foreign women students. On 1 January 1940, they accounted for 44% of the number of foreign students in the arts. [40] Yet, they were absent from the major vocational schools such as the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers or the École centrale des arts et manufactures in 1943. Among the nationals of belligerent countries, women were in the majority while men were involved in the military. In 1942, in the Faculty of Arts, there were nine German women students for every eight men students from the same country; 14 Italian women students for every four men students. [41] In French civilisation courses at the Sorbonne, the majority of students were women (12 women for every three men) and almost half (six) were German students. [42]

48 Based on these figures, how did the Parisian institutions responsible for this population evolve during the conflict?

Evolution of the Institutional Framework

49 At the beginning of the war, the situation of foreign students was paradoxical. On the one hand, during the 1930s, the ambitious project of the Cité universitaire de Paris (CUP), on Boulevard Jourdan, was expanding. Initiatives were taken to stimulate contacts between foreign students and academics in Paris, for example the Cercle français des étudiants étrangers, sponsored by the Rector of the University of Paris, which included Honnorat, the project promoter of the CUP. [43] On that campus, certain residences tried to continue their activities until they were banned by the German authorities. In July 1939, at the board meeting of the Swiss Foundation at the Cité universitaire, its president Karl Fueter called for an intensification of student exchanges, as Switzerland had become the last German-speaking country to remain free. [44]

50 On the other hand, during the same decade, there was growing hostility towards foreign students, especially from Poland, Romania and Germany, and in the medical and law faculties (Schor, 1985: 605-607). Foreign graduates were seen as unwelcome competition. Thus, several barriers to “graduation and setting up professional activity” were put in place, starting with the 1936 Law that prohibited the practice of medicine by anyone without French citizenship (Fischer, 2000: 28-29). [45] It should be recalled that, since the 1930s, several European countries had been concerned about the overpopulation of universities and the intellectual proletariat that emerged from them. It was in this context that the International Bureau of University Statistics was established. In her doctoral thesis on the “Statut de l’étudiant étranger dans son développement historique” (Historical development of the status of foreign student), at the Sorbonne Law School, Waxin argued for a restriction on professional activity of foreign students and for the granting of scholarships to encourage the return of graduates to their country of origin (Waxin: 1939). Along these lines, the UNEF (French student union) also hardened its position towards foreign students. In September 1940, the student organisation met in Lyon and called for only scholarship students sent by their own governments to be admitted. [46] Communist students, in the newspaper La Relève, contested the view that foreign fellow students were the cause of unemployment. [47]

51 Foreign students were therefore caught between the logic of extending cultural influence and immigration policies. At the beginning of the war, a note from the Policy Directorate of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs summed up the situation perfectly: it would not be appropriate to ban foreign students from universities, but it was important to “remove from our universities certain elements who have often had too much access to them and whose country of origin has happily seen them leave for France and then settle there”. [48] In other words, the war should not prevent France from extending its influence through its universities, and the context of reduced student mobility could offer an opportunity to better screen certain individuals. The limiting criteria were not explicitly described, but it can be assumed that they were both political and economic.

52 The majority of foreign students who remained in France did not receive subsidies and were often unable to return. However, this reduction in support for mobility did not mean that this group disappeared. It is true that the number fell rapidly from 6,600 in 1939 to 1,100 in 1941 and numerous reports indicate a migration of students, particularly colonial students, to the south of France during 1940. [49] Yet, subsequently the number of foreign students in Paris stabilised and this new situation led to a reconfiguration of reception structures.

53 The Cité universitaire, although it was not officially called “international” until 1963, was the first institution to welcome foreign students. The promoters of this ambitious project oscillated between adapting to the Vichy regime and resistance. The project, with its roots in hygienism, was in some respects similar to the programme of the National Revolution (Kévonian, 2013: 156). The project seemed less ambiguous to the Germans. The German head of university affairs, Dr Südhof, clearly saw the CUP as a subversive anti-German hotbed. [50]

54 When the Cité universitaire became a barracks in the summer of 1940, its leaders concentrated a large part of their resources in sending books and parcels to French students and former residents who were prisoners. In Paris, the committee managed to maintain a medical service, particularly for former residents, and helped foreign students through the Red Cross. [51] At the same time, the leaders of the Fondation nationale were preparing, during the war, for the time when they would be able to put their institution back to its original use. The committees of the Houses that were not attached to the Fondation nationale generally worked in this same spirit. In conjunction with the State Secretariat for the Colonies and the École coloniale, the project promoters worked, for example, on the construction of a residence for students from the colonies. [52] Meanwhile the library of the Maison des Provinces de France was continuously supplied with books on France.

55 The Fondation nationale of the Cité universitaire also ran the Foyer international des étudiantes (International Women Students’ Hostel) at 93 Boulevard Saint-Michel. This institution, whose building was donated by the Young Women Christian Association after the First World War, was officially under the control of the Paris Rectorate, which delegated control to the CUP’s directors. It was run from 1920 until 1942 by Sarah Watson, an American national who was imprisoned in Vittel, [53] and was used every day by about a thousand students. This hostel accommodated both French and foreign women students, with a growing proportion of the former: in 1940-1941, there were 130 French boarders for every 12 foreigners. [54] Pursuing the same objectives of bringing together students from different countries, the hostel took the promotion of internationalism further, in this case of Christian observance (Jacques, 1989: 21-22). When it became dangerous for the American director to remain in Paris, tensions arose between the Fondation nationale and the Comité des œuvres sociales en faveur des étudiants (Committee for social works for students) in Rue Soufflot, which was part of the Secretariat General for National Education and Youth, as the former wanted to keep control of the institution. [55] The Rector of the University of Paris considered the committee the only official body. [56]

56 Although the Cité internationale was able to retain control of the women students’ hostel, the Comité parisien des œuvres sociales en faveur des étudiants, based in Rue Bellechasse and supported by the State Secretariat for Youth, became the main mutual assistance organisation in the capital; it dealt with the day-to-day difficulties of foreign students in Paris. While most of its resources were invested in helping student prisoners, occasional assistance was provided to students stranded far from their families, such as Corsicans and North Africans. [57] Under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, an aid centre for serving and imprisoned students was also opened in Place Saint-Michel in Paris and extended its assistance to Indochinese, Madagascan, North African and West Indian students, etc., but also to Polish students who were prisoners of war. [58]

57 Despite these initiatives, French students were affected by Vichy propaganda that favoured a national corporatism, distancing them from their foreign fellow students. In this respect, the Parisian Student Service chaired by Guillaume de Tournemire was responsible for disseminating the norms of the National Revolution — physical education, “communities” of students around teachers (Fischer, 2004: 25) — and preventing excesses (Aristide, 2006: 36-41; Hervet, 1965).

58 Meanwhile, the Comité parisien des œuvres sociales en faveur des étudiants in Rue Bellechasse tried to relay the needs of scholarship students, foreign students and colonial students who remained in the capital, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). These actions often involved precarious solutions in the form of loans, accommodation, meal vouchers, or even, in the case of young doctors, facilitating setting up practice. This commitment led to the creation of a Hostel for international students, especially those who continued to receive grants from the MFA. [59] This ministry, which was trying to repatriate the majority of scholarship holders, intended to keep a few students who had finished their studies and who offered, in the words of the High Commissioner in Beirut, “serious guarantees of intellectual and moral soundness”. [60] This remark should be understood to mean that the scholarship holders would, in principle, follow the Vichy political line: in this letter, the scholarship holders were contrasted with the “free students”, who were not known and of whom they wanted to keep track through the rectors. This was one of the timid attempts to use scholarship holders in new academic diplomacy in favour of the new regime.

59 On the ground, the problems of food shortages and restriction of mobility affected all students. Among the foreign students, the Polish students formed the largest group and experienced the “trap” phenomenon, because, in addition to being in the occupied zone, their country of origin no longer existed. Before the arrival of the Germans, the Paris Rectorate alerted the mutual aid institutions to this population, who were without resources. [61] The Swiss Consulate in Paris also highlighted the alarming situation of Iranian students. [62]

60 It was ultimately at the international level, with student aid organisations, that this category of foreign student retained some visibility, although it was slipping into the category of “refugee student”. The FESE acted, albeit in a limited way, to support foreign students in the French capital, in particular Jewish refugee students. It was mainly involved in helping captive students in Germany by sometimes redistributing books collected in France in the camps (Tronchet, 2019: 103-104). Although it was more established in the university towns of the free zone (Fivaz-Silbermann, 2017: 699), it provided direct aid to Parisian students, in particular by sending food. The few scattered notes from this organisation attest to the state of abandonment in which some foreign students found themselves in Paris, particularly among the Spanish and Greek students, and to the importance of places of refuge outside the capital, such as the Maison des Roches in Chambon-sur-Lignon, which housed eighty-six students (Fivaz-Silbermann, 2017: 698). [63]

61 These fragile arrangements provided support to French students and, to a lesser extent, to internationally mobile students. Within this population, the specific case of colonial students sheds light on other types of support organisation and, through a more abundant body of literature, allows us to gain insight into the experience of remoteness as a student in the capital.