ROBIN, RÉGINE

ROBIN, RÉGINE (1939– ), sociologist, essayist, and fiction writer. Robin was born in Paris, France, to working-class immigrants from Poland. Named Rivka Ajzersztejn, she was hidden with her mother in the Paris suburb of Belleville. Both survived the war, as did her father, a French soldier. But some 50 relatives in Poland were killed by the Nazis, as were others from France, following "la grande rafle" (roundup) of Parisian Jews on July 18, 1942. These events left an indelible imprint on the infant Rivka, and would become obsessions for the writer that Robin eventually became. Thus, at the end of her short-story collection, L'Immense Fatigue des Pierres (1995), she inserted photos of 50 empty picture-frames to represent her eradicated Polish family. In the same collection, her story "Gratok, langue de vie, langue de mort" depicts the little girl's hiding place and her French babysitter, Juliette, who fraternized with Nazis but never betrayed her. Robin grew up in a home where she imbibed radical ideas and a deep love for Yiddish. She completed a doctorate in history but switched to sociology. She was a university professor in France, then in Montréal after her father and mother died, respectively in 1975 and 1977. Her passion for Yiddish rekindled just as she began to divide her time between her new home and Paris. Nearly all of her writing, some 15 books, contains reflections on Yiddish language and culture. In 1984, she published Pour l'amourdu Yiddish: écriture juive et sentiment de la langue, 1830–1930. In Kafka (1989), she discussed the fascination with Yiddish of the celebrated Czech writer. Her two novels, Le Cheval Blanc de Lénine (1979) and La Québécoite (1983), she labeled "auto-fiction," a combination of family history, imaginary elements and self-reflexive passages on writing. The much-discussed latter book treats imaginatively the narrator's complex search for identity between her Jewish roots, her French experiences and her efforts to integrate into Quebec society. This search resurfaces in Cyberdémocraties: Traversées Fugitives (2004). Among Robin's most important studies are Berlin chantiers: Essai sur les passés fragiles (2001; Prix littéraire de la Ville de Montréal) and La Mémoire saturée (2003). Both deal extensively with the Holocaust in German historiography and memorialization. She won the prestigious Governor-General's Award forLe Réalisme socialiste: une esthétique impossible (1986). Robin is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

bibliography:

B.-Z. Shek, "Pour l'amour du yiddish. The Literary Itinerary of Régine Robin," in J. Sherman (ed.), Yiddish After the Holocaust (2004): 286–299.

[Ben-Zion Shek (2^nd ed.)]