In our new Have Your Say personal essay, American historian Robert Levitt writes how while working in the archives of the Alpes-Maritimes in Nice, France, sorting Holocaust-era documents related to a 20th century politician in Vichy France, he ran across a letter that changed the way he thought about Nice and led to his continuing study of the long and tumultuous history of Jews in the city, from medieval times to the present.
“The Jewish heritage in Nice is not about places that ‘used to be’ something else,” he writes.
The city’s Jewish heritage remains in full view, although it takes some interpretation to see and understand it.
It was a letter from a man about to be deported by the Gestapo because they were convinced he was Jewish, when in actuality he was not.
You can trace Jewish history from medieval times to the present. You can explore the old ghetto, visit synagogues and the Jewish cemetery, experience the life of a contemporary Jewish community – and even visit a museum dedicated to the works of the great Jewish painter Marc Chagall, who spent the last decades of his life nearby.
But you can also recall the sound of the heavy boots of Gestapo soldiers racing up stairs during World War II.