Daniel Lee (Incoming Fellow 2024-25)

Reader in Modern History, School of History, Queen Mary University of London

As a SCAS fellow, Daniel Lee will be working on his third monograph, The Roundup: Marseille, January
1943. Lee’s research project reconsiders the Vél d’Hiv roundup of July 1942 in Paris as the key moment
of the Holocaust in France. By examining the untold story of the Marseille roundup of Jews in January
1943, and exposing its unique features, he will transform understanding of the mechanisms of violence
and discrimination during the Holocaust in France.

To decentre the story of the roundups of Jews away from Paris, suggests a new way to understand the
experiences of Jews in Vichy France. A case study of Marseille considers other sections of France’s
Jewish population which remain invisible when placing a Parisian and Ashkenazic-centric version of
events at the heart of the narrative. The stakes of this research extend beyond France: a study of
Marseille will illuminate the transnational nature of the Final Solution. To examine the life trajectories
of lower-ranking Nazis brought to Marseille from the killing fields of eastern Europe exposes how ideas
developed in the east were put into practice in the west. Following these biographies brings together two
historiographies – The Holocaust in Eastern versus Western Europe – that are usually considered separately.

Lee’s research will be the first to reveal how the roundup was executed and experienced. It will employ
microhistory as a methodological approach, which until now has featured only sporadically in studies of
the Holocaust in France, to piece together events. This project relies on sources available in archives in
France, Germany and Israel, some of which have only recently been declassified.