The survival of Jews in France during World War II is related to the aid of rural residents, says Shannon Fogg, assistant professor of history and political science. With a grant from the University of Missouri Research Board, Fogg is spending the summer in London studying “Rural Anti-Semitism in Britain and France During World War II.”

“People often ignore the experiences of Jews in rural areas and assume rural residents were automatically unaccepting of outsiders to their communities,” says Fogg. “I think it’s really important to look at these areas because during the war many people, including Jewish refugees, fled cities to the countryside to escape bombing or the Germans, or for better access to food.”

Fogg’s research will cover three main areas – the extent the governments’ official attitudes toward Jews filtered down into rural communities, the extent of the rural anti-Semitism itself and how it affected the treatment of the refugees, and the effects of age and gender on rural anti-Semitism.