page_title: Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme
section_title: To be a Jew in Paris in 1939
hierarchical_section_title: Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme / Permanent collection / To be a Jew in Paris in 1939
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme - Les habitants de l'hôtel de Saint-Aignan en 1939, oeuvre murale de Christian Boltanski (détail) English: Les habitants de l'hôtel de Saint-Aignan en 1939, mural art by Christian Boltanski - Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme, Paris
context_page_description: The Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme or mahJ is the largest French museum of Jewish art and history. It is located in the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan in the Marais district in Paris.
  The museum conveys the rich history and culture of Jews in Europe and North Africa from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Its fine collection of religious objects, archives, manuscripts, and works of art promotes the contributions of Jews to France and to the world, especially in the arts. The museum's impressive collections include works of art from Marc Chagall and Amedeo Modigliani.
  The museum has a bookshop selling books on Jewish art and history and Judaica, a media library with an online catalogue accessible to the public, and an auditorium which offers conferences, lectures, concerts, performances, and seminars. It also provides guided weekly visits in English during the tourist season for individuals as well as students and teachers, and workshops for children, families, and adults.
context_section_description: The museum didn’t wish to have a collection devoted to the Holocaust because at the time of its creation, the project for a Memorial for the Holocaust had already been launched: "a Holocaust museum will be opening in Paris after the planned extension of the Mémorial juif". However, it does trace the lives of some Eastern European, Russian, Polish, and Romanian Jews who came to live in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century and whose paths all led to the Hotel de Saint-Aignan. The museum offers a documented itinerary of the lives of twelve Jewish immigrants to Paris, illustrating Jewish life in the Marais, community organizations, and the last part of the life of these exterminated communities before deportation.
  
  To complete this presentation, the contemporary artist Christian Boltanski created a poignant installation placed in a small courtyard inside the museum made up of the names of the inhabitants, both Jews and non-Jews, of the Hotel Saint-Aignan on the eve of WWII. The installation reveals the history of the humble people who lived in the building before the war.
caption: The people of the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan in 1939, Christian Boltanski (1998)
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