Dynamics of Subjectivity in the Letters of Jewish Internees From the Drancy Internment Camp During the Second World War

This article proposes a narrative approach to letters written by people interned as Jews at the Drancy camp between 1941 and 1944. Part of the interdisciplinary LettresCamps project, it combines history and psychology to analyse a corpus of around 300 letters – official, clandestine, or thrown from the deportation trains. These writings offer a rare insight into the subjective experience of internment, revealing emotions, daily concerns, and strategies designed to maintain ties with loved ones. The chosen methodology combines carrying out a thematic analysis across the corpus with an in-depth study of the dynamics of writing, examined through the analysis of individual letters. This dual approach makes it possible to identify the functions of writing and the forms of subjectivity mobilised, while highlighting, through the analysis of a letter, the most embodied dimension of these dynamics. Drawing on the combined contributions of history and psychology, the article highlights the emotional and relational dynamics perceptible in the correspondence. These letters form a “mosaic of moments” that together tell a story of internment and constitute, both individually and collectively, real acts of psychological resistance that helped to preserve connection, identity, and inner continuity in the face of the dehumanisation.