ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a representative sample of Jewish female-authored writings which retrace, often in autobiographical or autofictional mode, the diasporic, largely pre-1945 trajectories of Ashkenazic women. The pattern of migration in the texts is typically from Central and Eastern European nations to France, but there are variations, and France is not always the endpoint. It also examines a representative sample of diasporic writings, but this time authored by Sephardic women in the post-WWII period. The chapter discusses a middle-class Jew reproaching the French Republic for its perceived largesse with new working-class Jews is one more accretion to the dominant figure of irony flagged up. The old prejudice that Jews have no national loyalties, adhering instead to a mythical Jewish 'nation', is sharply countered by Hannah Kaganowski's determination to fight for her home country with 'les Polonais libres'. As for the paternal grandparents, their national border-crossings had paradoxically begun with one that involved no physical movement at all.
