"Jews in Danger: Wartime Mobility in the French Basque Country, lecture by Dr. Sandra Ott,

Dr. Sandra Ott is a cultural anthropologist and historian with the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her groundbreaking research focuses on memory, identity, and the lived experience of war in southwestern France. Fluent in Gascon and deeply embedded in the region, she has spent decades conducting fieldwork in the Pyrenees. Dr. Ott is the author of several acclaimed books on Basque and Béarnais communities during World War II, and her work sheds new light on the complexities of collaboration, resistance, and survival under Vichy rule.

Discover a little-known chapter of Vichy France’s wartime policies. This talk uncovers how hundreds of foreign Jews were forcibly placed in remote villages in the Lower Pyrenees under a policy known as résidence assignée—a quiet yet powerful tool of exclusion.

Focusing on the Ossau Valley and the spa town of Eaux-Bonnes, this presentation explores how the strategy—meant to isolate—also, paradoxically, offered some Jews a path to survive. A rare 1943 transfer of 361 Jews between departments reveals the inner workings of Vichy bureaucracy—and the disturbing game of “refugee tennis” played with human lives.

Join us for an eye-opening look at a largely untold story of displacement, resilience, and the contradictions at the heart of Vichy’s anti-Semitic agenda.