Construire l’identité sur l’oubli : conversion médiévale et sauvetage contemporain des enfants juifs

As a procedure of elimination through integration, forced conversions were a way to manipulate memory. With respect to the canonical prohibition of forced baptisms, the children, unable to exercise their free will, represented a borderline case. Unlike adults, whose will and memory would oppose conversion, they could become true believers, provided they were separated from their parents and raised as Christians. Therefore, the thirteenth and fourteenth-centuries theological discussions focussed on the lawfulness of kidnapping. The relationship between separation and salvation endured, as evidenced in the rescue of Jewish children during the Second World War. This situation gave rise to narratives where forgetfulness was associated with the persistence of traces, and which contradicted the expected success of the building of identity upon forgetfulness.