History of the Jews in France
The history of the French Jews goes back to 2000 years. In the early Middle Ages France was a center of Jewish life in Europe. However, this came to an end when the Jews were expelled in two waves (1182 and 1306). After centuries of practically no Jewish life, France was the first country in Europe where Jews received civil equality after the French Revolution . Anti-Jewish prejudices did not disappear, however, but found expression , for example, in the Dreyfus affair at the time of the Third French Republic . After a quarter of all French Jews fell victim to the persecution in the Holocaust , their number has increased through immigration since the 1950s, especially from the former French colonies in North Africa. Today France has the largest Jewish community in Europe .
Roman times
No sources are known about the presence of Jews on what is now French territory before the 4th century. In 321, Emperor Constantine the Great obliged the Jews to bear the burden of the Curia , a heavy financial burden for the inhabitants of Roman cities. Even after the Christianization of Gaul, nothing indicates that the Jews did not live in peace with their Christian fellow citizens. Christian clerics could attend Jewish festivals, and even marriages between Christians and Jews occurred. They were so attracted to some Christians that the Third Council at Orléans in 538 found it necessary to warn believers about "Jewish superstitions" and forbade them to travel on Sundays or to decorate their homes on that day.
A decree of the rulers Theodosius II and Valentinian III. in which they address themselves to Amatius , the prefect of Gaul , forbade Jews and other non-Christians in 426 to make use of the law and to hold public offices so that no Christian would have to submit to a non-Christian. From the year 465 the Christian Church began to marginalize the Jews of Gaul. Large Jewish communities existed in Marseille , Paris and Orléans , among others . The Jews built synagogues in most of the administrative centers and at important trading hubs . They were often traders or tax collectors. According to the regulations of the Codex Theodosianus , the Jews of Gaul could at least live free from state oppression and develop a liturgy that is still in use today.
Merovingian and Carolingian times
In Gregory of Tours in his are tens of books on the history of the Franks repeatedly mentioned Jews who act as remote merchants and moneylenders in the field of Merovingian. A Jew Priscus buys grain for King Chilperich I and thus supports the king in his endeavors to imitate the role of a Roman emperor.
King Dagobert I proposed in 629 that all Jews who did not want to accept Christianity should be expelled from his kingdom. In fact, there are no records of a Jewish population in the period that followed, up to Pippin the Younger . But in Septimania , a stretch of coast in southwestern Gaul with the capital Narbonne , the Jews were able to live under Visigothic rule. The first Jewish evidence pointing to France also appeared there. The Jewish community of Narbonne consisted to a large extent of respected traders.
Under Charlemagne , the Jews in the Frankish Empire were extremely numerous and their legal position was secured. They were allowed to litigate Christians and had to do Sunday work. However, they were not allowed to work in finance or grow grain or wine as farmers. They were mainly used in export trade, especially in trade with Palestine , from where they imported valuable goods. For example, a trader named Isaac was sent to Hārūn ar-Raschīd by Charlemagne in 797, along with two ambassadors . Jews in commerce could boast of being able to procure all goods from bishops and abbots .
Early Capetian period (987–1137)
First persecution of the Jews
In 1010, Alduin , Bishop of Limoges , gave the Jewish residents of his diocese the choice of either being baptized or going into exile . Theologians do everything they can to convince them to choose the former. In fact, only three out of four Jews renounced their belief. Those who refused to bow either fled to other cities outside the bishop's control or judged themselves. A Hebrew document also tells of how Robert of Normandy is said to have ordered his vassals to target and kill those among the Jewish community who refused to be baptized .
Robert II , the pious , was known for his religious prejudices and the extreme hatred he developed towards the "heretics" . He was one of the first to begin burning "unbelievers". There may be a connection between these persecutions and the rumor that went rampant in 1010 that Jews were sending reports to their Eastern co-religionists about the impending movement of troops against the Saracens . The year before, Muslims had converted the Church of the Holy Sepulcher into a mosque , which caused a sensation in Europe. The bitterness over this gave rise to the assumption that Muslims and Jews had colluded in secret. Rodulfus Glaber took this conspiracy theory to extremes when he claimed that Jews from Orléans had secretly instructed the Muslims through a beggar to completely level the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. By this presumption, Jews were chased out of the cities or murdered on the same day. Only a few stayed in their homeland and only a fraction of those who had fled came back years later. In response, Pope Alexander II felt compelled to send a message to all those rulers of France who had prevented a massacre of the Jews. He reminded them that God does not recognize the senseless shedding of blood. Nevertheless, a short time later, out of religious incentive, an army of crusaders was formed that went against the Moors in Spain and slaughtered all those Jews they encountered on the way.
Crusades
The Jews of France do not seem to have suffered much during the Crusades , with the exception of the first , when the Crusaders confirmed that they locked Jews in the Church of Rouen and slaughtered them all, disregarding their age and gender. Only two of them are said to have been spared when they accepted Christian baptism. At the time of the First Crusade, the Jews of France were in constant fear, as can be seen from the letters sent to the Rhine countries. It asks to fast and pray for the salvation of French religious comrades.
French-Jewish literature
During this time, the Jewish culture was shaken and formed a unity, especially in the south and north of France. Her work particularly included poetry, which until then had been limited to the liturgical and in Pijjutim Israel's suffering and its unwavering hope was the theme. However, it was primarily aimed at the entertainment component and less on mobilization. At the same time, biblical interpretations emerged which were summarized in the Talmud and its numerous commentaries. The writings were regarded as the “corpus juris”, as a code of law. A specifically Jewish philosophy , natural science , or classical literature in France, on the other hand, emerged later. A French-Hebrew language, the Zarfatian language ("Judaeo-French") , developed among the Jews of northern France (self-name Zarfatim) .
Shlomo ben Jizchak (1040–1106), or Raschi for short , played an important role during the 11th century and throughout Jewish history . He earned his living as a winemaker and wine merchant in Troyes . In him the portrait of the Jewish genius is realized. His works were distinguished by their clarity and subtle rejection. His commentaries on the Talmud, which arose through immense work, surpassed the works of his predecessors and soon achieved the status of an indispensable standard work. His complete work promoted the appreciation of the " Pschat ", the simple, literal interpretation of religious texts. Two of Rashi's grandchildren, the brothers Rabbenu Tam and Samuel ben Meir , called Raschbam, wrote further Bible commentaries that are important in Jewish tradition.
In the 12th and 13th centuries various members of the Ibn Tibbon family worked in Provence as authors and translators from Arabic into Hebrew.
Eviction and return
The Expulsion (1182)
The First Crusade led to allegations of alleged Jewish ritual murders for over a century , followed by persecution and cremation. Shortly after Philip the Second's accession to the throne , on March 14, 1182, he issued an order to arrest all Jews in the synagogues on a Saturday and to rob them of their money and ceremonial clothing. A little later, in April, he wrote an edict to expel French Jews and granted them three months to allow the sale of the private property. In doing so, he confiscated all real estate, such as houses or fields. The Jews tried to win the nobility for themselves, but in vain.
Finally, in July, they were forced to leave France and their synagogues were converted into churches. The confiscated goods were immediately converted into cash, suggesting that this was simply a method of balancing the royal budget.
Despite the disastrous outcome of the century for the Jews, their conditions were not bad, especially when compared to their brothers and sisters in Germany. This could explain the immense intellectual activity of this minority during the 12th century, the pull of foreign Jewish communities and their remarkable literary output. Rashi had given an impetus for this with his work, which was continued in particular in the discussion of the Talmud , biblical interpretation and rabbinical jurisprudence.
The recall by Philip II (1198)
The 12th century, which began with the return of Jews to France (mostly confined to the Île-de-France ), ended in many ways in exile. Against the general expectation and his own decree, Philip II called the Jews back to Paris. ( "À l'attente générale et malgré son propre édit, a rappelé les Juifs à Paris et a fait souffrir aux églises de Dieu de grandes persécutions" - Rigord , French chronicler).
In fact, the king was up to no good, he had already made known his true intentions. He had realized that the Jews represented a tremendous financial advantage, especially as moneylenders. Therefore, he not only allowed them to return, but even granted them state authorization to work in banking and as pawnbrokers. In doing so, he controlled their business, set statutory interest rates and demanded that the seal be printed on concluded business contracts. This trade was taxed and the Jewish bankers also had to pay for the royal seal. This resulted in a steadily growing amount in the royal state budget, the “produit des juifs” (“earnings of the Jews”). At the same time, it was in the interest of the treasury to secure the Jewish property, since it represented a respectable financial source.
The Jews were therefore held as quasi serfs of the king, even at a time when Charten was gaining influence and an end to serfdom was already promised. In several ways they had an even harder lot than the serfs, since they had nothing really tangible in relation to the king whose opinion they could have changed in their favor. She also put the Christian Church under her spell , which often gave protection to (Christian) serfs. The linguistic usage suggests the low esteem of the Jews: “My Jews” was used linguistically by the nobility and the king in the same way as “my country” to illustrate wealth. Both terms could be exchanged with one another, but the meaning remained the same throughout.
It was not without mockery. For example, the nobility often imitated the king: “They endeavored to know the Jews in indispensable dependency on their property and to establish the practice that if a Jew who was in one baron class passed into another, the Lord his previous abode should be given the right to take all of the other's property. ”In fact, this agreement was made in 1198 between the King and the Count of Champagne . The conditions stipulated that he could not keep another's Jews in his domain without his express permission , nor should they issue loans or take pledges without the permission of the king and the count. Other sovereigns made similar agreements with the king. From this they were able to derive income, known as the produit des juifs mentioned above , which includes the taille , an annual rent , the legal fee for the edicts that a court assembly had to issue, and the seal duty, which in large part is the King benefited. A characteristic component of this zealously practiced financial policy emerges from the fact that bishops, on the basis of an agreement from the year 1204, which clearly regulated the spheres of spiritual and feudal jurisdiction, strictly forbade clericals from giving those (Christians) from the church excommunicate who either sold goods to the Jews or obtained them from them.
Under Louis VIII and Louis IX.
Louis VIII (1223–1226), more inspired by the doctrinal structures of the church than his father Philip II , nevertheless knew how to act in the interests of the state treasury. Although he declared that from November 8, 1223 the share of the population in the Jewish debts was temporarily no longer applicable, he obliged the debtors to repay the said amount to the Jews within a period of 3 years and instructed the sovereigns to deal with this process Keeping records and keeping an eye on the legal progress of the repayments. And so they collected the debts for the Jews, no doubt not without a due commission . Ludwig then advocated that the royal seal, for the mandatory use of which was charged and only applied to Jews, should be abolished and replaced by a conventional one.
After all the efforts to get the banking and loans under control, his successor, Louis IX. , in his fiery godliness and submission to the church, put a stop to the entire system. He despised the nature of interest-bearing loans and was accordingly less amenable to financial considerations. Despite earlier meetings, at a meeting in Melun in December 1230 , he compelled numerous sovereigns to sign an agreement prohibiting Jews from any activity in the financial sector. No one in the entire kingdom was allowed to keep the Jews within the borders, and every prince could bring Jews who were his property from foreign rulers, wherever he found them or how much goal had passed after their escape. The decree of 1223 came into force, an indication that it was not implemented. Both the princes and the king were denied access to credit with the Jews. Shortly afterwards, Louis IX. a step further when he his subjects from the third part of their debt to the Jews liberated . Debtors should pay the remaining part of the debt within a specified time. It was also arranged that the third be given back to those who had already paid off their debts. At the same time one could neither be imprisoned for debts to Jews nor held liable by deprivation of property. In this way the king hoped to put an end to usury.
Before his departure for the Crusades, Louis IX had a stiffening, strict piety of God. to more stringent measures such as the expulsion of the Jews from manorial territory and the confiscation of part of their property. The order to evict was only partially effective, if at all. When the king was captured during the Crusades in 1251, numerous supporters of Louis gathered with the intention of wresting him from the enemies in the east. This army never actually crossed the borders of northern France, and Jews were the preferred objects of their attacks. King Ludwig finally achieved freedom without the support of the said army, a ransom of a million Besanten could buy him from captivity.
Even before the Crusades he had scruples about the fact that the treasury could enrich itself through the profit from the interest received if this amount were not repaid to the debtors, the king in 1257 or 1258 issued an order for the entire repayment of the interest received the former debtors who were to be paid either to them or to their heirs. After detailed discussions with his son-in-law Theobald , King of Navarre and Count of Champagne , he decided on September 13, 1268 to compensate for these immense expenses by moving in Jewish property. A decree, which he passed shortly after the former in 1269, indicates that Louis the Saint himself had considered this. At the insistence of Pablo Christiani , he compelled the French Jews to always wear the rouelle (French for "disc") or a patch , under threat of the penalty of 10 pieces of silver . It consisted of a piece of felt or a scrap of clothing in the shape of a wheel, four fingers in circumference, which had to be attached to the chest and back. Noticeably different clothing had been determined at the Fourth Lateran Council .
The Exile (1306)
At the beginning of the 14th century the treasury of the French kings was practically emptied due to the constant conflicts, and Philip IV (1285-1314) tried to get money again by seizing the property of two unloved minorities. His first victim was the Jewish communities of France (his second a year later the Knights Templar ). He condemned the Jews to exile and seized their property. These were then auctioned off; the king was the one who was entitled to the real treasures that were found in the houses of the Jews. That this was obviously another attempt to plug the hole in the state treasury and that the well-being of the subjects was absolutely irrelevant is shown by the fact that Philip assigned himself the role of debt collector when he made the unconditional repayment of debts more Christian Citizen forced. This had the twofold advantage, on the one hand, to wrest the property from the Jewish community and at the same time to take over their demands. Furthermore, three months before the auction of the Jewish possessions, he ordered the cancellation of the coins, so that those who took part in the auctions had to pay in whole notes. In the end, fearing that the Jews had hidden things, he granted a fifth of the value found to anyone who should find Jewish property.
The Jews were arrested on July 22, 1306, the day after the 9th Av ( Tischa beAv ), a Jewish holiday. While in detention, they learned that they had been sentenced to exile . Within a month, they were informed, they had left France without their possessions, except for their clothes and the sum of 12 sous . A French historian recorded this banishment as follows: "With the blow against the Jews, Philip IV dried up one of the most profitable sources of the financial, commercial and industrial prosperity of his kingdom."
Although the history of the Jews of France began again shortly afterwards, it may be that it ended at this point in time. In particular, it was tragic for those affected that France had expanded significantly in the previous century. It now also included Champagne , Vermandois , Normandy , le Perche , Maine, and many more. As a result, the possibility of exile was largely restricted, and French Jews could now only go to Lorraine , a region of Burgundy , Savoy , Dauphiné , Roussillon , and part of Provence to flee. It is still not possible to determine an approximate number of refugees yourself.
The city of Avignon and the surrounding Comtat Venaissin formed a papal enclave from 1348 until the French Revolution , in which some Jewish communities flourished for centuries due to a tolerant asylum policy. The Jews of Venaissin lived in a few, strictly closed streets ("carrieros" in Provencal language ) in the villages of Cavaillon , Carpentras and L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue .
Persecution by the Inquisition
The Inquisition , which was originally used to stop the Albigensian heresy , soon dealt with the Jews of southern France, after all, the popes had always complained that not only baptized Jews would return to their roots, but Christians would also follow them. In March 1273, Pope Gregory X formulated the following rules: Recidivist Jews, such as Christians who had renounced their fate and chose the path of “Jewish superstition”, should be treated equally by the Inquisition as heretics. Those who were supposed to pick up or defend the guilty were considered complicit instigators of apostasy and should be punished in the same way.
According to these regulations, on January 4th, 1278 Jews from Toulouse , who had previously buried a converted Christian in their cemetery, found themselves before the court of the Inquisition, with Rabbi Isaac Males being sentenced for death at the stake . Philip IV had initially ordered his seneschals not to imprison any Jews in the name of the Inquisition, but as early as 1299 he revoked this order.
The Return (1315)
Scarcely nine years had passed after the exile of the Jews when Philip's successor, Louis X, called them back again. The edict of July 28, 1315 allowed them to stay for twelve years and authorized them to settle in the respective city that they had previously had to leave. This happened at the request of the people: Geoffroy de Paris , a famous contemporary poet, pointed out, for example, that the Jews were gentle compared to the Christians, who had empowered themselves to own property and treated others so badly. He claimed that the king would have done better not to deport the Jews since there would no longer be pawnbrokers in the whole country (Bouquet, xxii. 118). So it stands to reason that Louis X primarily considered the financial aspects in his decision. The previous confiscations had benefited the treasury, and if the Jews were granted permission for only twelve years, he had the option of blackmailing them again at the end of that period. It appears that the Jews gave the king the considerable sum of 122,500 livres for entry . It is also possible, as Vuitry suggests, that numerous debt claims by the Jews were not previously collected. The decree caused at least two thirds of these amounts to go to the treasury.
The exact circumstances of the return of the Jews in 1315 were recorded in numerous documents, some of the regulations were influenced by the same, which was secured by payment. On the one hand they were forbidden to bother believers with religious discussions, on the other hand they were not allowed to be attacked personally, neither because of the goods they owned and were able to take with them before their exile, nor because of the loans they had granted since her return or other things she was accused of in the past. Jewish synagogues and cemeteries were allowed to be restored on condition that the Jewish community could repay their value, and if this was not possible the king offered them land at a reasonable price for this purpose. With the exception of the Talmud , Jewish law books that had not been returned to them had to be replaced. After the twelve-year period had expired, they had to leave the country, but were given an additional year within which they could dispose of their immovable property. They were not accused of usury by the king, nor did they have to pay taxes. The king finally took the Jews under his personal protection by stipulating that neither Jews nor their property should be attacked. You should now also be free from any oppression.
Expulsion (1394)
On September 17, 1394 King Charles VI. announced in writing that he had known for a long time the extent of displeasure about the alleged excesses and offenses of the Jews against Christians. After investigations, it was found that the Jews had breached their agreement with the king several times. So the irrevocable law was passed that from now on no Jew should live in his domains ("Ordonnances", vii. 675). If the " Réligieux de St. Denis " is believed , Charles signed it under pressure from Queen Isabeau de Bavière, his wife, who reigned for him ("Chron. De Charles VI." Ii. 119). The law took effect immediately. The Jews were given a period within which to sell their property and pay their debts. Said indebted persons had to pay off the debts themselves in a certain time, otherwise the other community members had to bear the costs as well. The head of the Jewish community had the duty to lead his followers to the borders of the empire. Christians were freed from their debts to Jews. Only the Jews in the Dauphiné and Trois-Évêchés enjoyed a special status.
In the 17th century
By the 17th century at the latest , the Jews began to settle again in France. Anti-Semitic unrest in Provence , which forced them to migrate to northern France, prompted Louis XIII. to a stricter policy: the new edict of April 23, 1615 forbade Christians from harboring Jews or even communicating with them under threat of confiscation of their property up to the death penalty. In this way, the king was spared disputes throughout his life.
Louis XIV expelled the Jews from the newly acquired colony of Martinique in 1683, and even at the time when Alsace and Lorraine were incorporated into the kingdom, he tended to relocate the Jewish community of France to the same area, but was quickly deprived of money Advantage of the current situation has been convinced. On September 25, 1675, he therefore informed them that from now on they were under special protection. Of course, this did not protect them from all kinds of blackmail and bad treatment - the social position of the Jews was no different from that in Austria, for example.
Beginnings of emancipation
During the course of the 18th century , the situation of the Jews in relation to the rulers gradually changed. A feeling of tolerance began to spread, which compensated for the legislative injustices that still existed. Authorities often overlooked violations of the Edict of Exile, and settlements by Portuguese and German Jews in Paris were tolerated. The voice of the Enlightenment was no longer falling on deaf ears. Cerf Beer a Jew from Medelsheim who had made a name for himself in the supply of the French army, had until the time of Louis XVI. holds the position of interpreter for the Jews. The humanist minister Malesherbes set up a commission of distinguished Jews to find ways to improve the situation of their co-religionists. This already bore fruit in 1784, when the humiliating poll tax was abolished and the free choice of seats within France was granted.
The question of the Jews also gained importance in the thinking of Mirabeau and Henri Grégoire , later revolutionaries . On a diplomatic trip to Prussia , the former made the acquaintance of the enlightener Moses Mendelssohn and his teaching, the Haskala . Together they worked on the emancipation of the Jews , and Mirabeau wrote the pamphlet About Moses Mendelssohn, about the political reform of the Jews ( Sur Moses Mendelssohn, sur la reforme politique des juifs , London 1787), in which, among other things, the arguments of German anti-Semites like Johann David Michaelis were challenged and full citizenship was required for Jews. It attacked writings against as well as for Jews, and so French public interest in the subject grew steadily. Even the royal society of science and arts in Metz offered an award for the article that most skilfully answered the question of what means could be used to make the French Jews happier and more useful. Nine articles were eventually presented to the congregation, only two of which were directed against the Jews.
Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786)
Gabriel de Riqueti, Count of Mirabeau (1749–1791)
Henri Grégoire (1750-1831)
The French revolution
In the meantime the revolution broke out, which among other things resulted in acts of violence against the Jews, the mob often attacked their accommodations. Not infrequently, the Jews were forced to flee and find refuge in Basel, for example . Before the Assemblée nationale , the Abbé Grégoire sketched a gloomy picture and at the same time called for an immediate emancipation of the Jews. The assembly shared Grégoire's indignation, but left the question of emancipation untouched, intimidated by the deputies from Alsace , especially Jean François Reubell , who believed that the decrees granting citizenship to Jews a signal for their eradication in Alsace would be. On December 22nd, 1789, the debate flared up again as to whether the office of civil servant should be opened to all citizens regardless of their religious denomination. Mirabeau, the Count of Clermont-Tonnerre and the Abbé Grégoire tried with all their language power to achieve the longed-for emancipation; but the repeated unrest in Alsace and the constant resistance of the representatives of this province as well as the clergy, such as Anne-Louis-Henri de La Fare , the Bishop of Nancy , Father Maury and others, caused another decision to be postponed.
These demands on behalf of the Jews were made in accordance with a decisive restrictive parameter: Count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre summed it up as follows: “The Jews as a nation must be denied everything; as individuals you have to give them everything. ” For example, the Ashkenazim in northern France lived as a nation within a nation : they had their own administration, jurisdiction and, in addition to French laws, had to follow their own. Most spoke a fair French and communicated mainly in Alsatian German or Yiddish .
Only those Jews who had previously enjoyed all civil rights as naturalized French were recognized as full citizens by a majority decision of the National Assembly on January 28, 1790, from which the Sephardim in the southern regions of France in particular benefited. This partial success gave hope again to the Jews of the German districts, and so the will to fight for equality did not dry up. They won over Godard, an eloquent advocate who enjoyed considerable influence in revolutionary circles. Thanks to his efforts, personalities in the military and other institutions began to speak out in favor of the Jews; the abbot Malot was sent by the general assembly of the commune to the national assembly to represent its interests there. Unfortunately, the serious conflicts, the ongoing clashes in Alsace, and the continued strong ties to the clergy hampered peaceful propaganda by the Jews and their allies in front of the gathering.
A few days before the dissolution of the National Assembly (September 27, 1791), a member of parliament and the Jacobins , Adrien Duport , climbed into the speaker's platform and said:
“I am convinced that freedom of worship prohibits the discrimination of citizens' political rights based on their beliefs. The question about the political existence of the Jews was postponed. Nevertheless, Muslims and followers of all sects are allowed to enjoy political rights in France. I demand that the motions be withdrawn after postponement and that a decree be passed so that the Jews in France enjoy the privileges of full citizenship. "
This statement received strong applause. Jean François Reubell , one of the fiercest opponents of Jewish emancipation, tried to contain the enthusiasm but was interrupted by Regnault de Saint-Jean , president of the assembly; Saint-Jean then said that anyone who opposed this request would be called to order, since he was opposing the constitution. The decree was issued.
Under Napoleon Bonaparte , the Consistoire central israélite was created in 1808 as the central representative body for French Jews vis-à-vis the state, which lasted until 1905.
After the restoration
The restoration by Louis XVIII. did not change the political conditions of the Jews. Their opponents, who hoped that the reforms during the revolution will be reversed with the resurgence of the Bourbons , were soon disappointed. Since the emancipatory advances, even a clerical monarch could not find an excuse to curtail their rights as citizens. Now they were neither suppressed peddlers nor moneylenders, whose fate had to be decided by the arbitrariness of an official. They already held high positions in the military and in the administration of justice , in art and science. In 1831, the French Jews won another victory.
State recognition
Under the state-recognized religions, the Jews always had to support their sympathizers among the ministers, while the Catholic and Protestant churches themselves were supported by the government. That year, that state-sanctioned inferiority was eliminated thanks to the Duke of Orléans , lieutenant general to the king, and the campaign in parliament led by Rambuteau and Viennet . Motivated by these outstanding people, the Minister of Education formulated a motion on November 13, 1830, to place Judaism on the same legal foundation as Catholicism and Protestantism, especially with regard to support for the synagogues. This application was accompanied by enthusiastic compliments to the Jews, “who,” said the minister, “have proven themselves worthy of the privileges granted to them since the revolution had removed their handicaps.” After a brief discussion, the application was recognized by the masses adopted by the Convention. In January 1831 it was passed by a majority decision of 89 to 57 votes and ratified on February 8 by King Ludwig Philipp , who had been striving for equality between Judaism and the other faiths since the beginning of his reign. Shortly afterwards, the rabbinical academy Séminaire israélite de France , founded in Metz in 1829 , was officially recognized as an institution and received government support from then on. The government also canceled numerous debts that the Jewish community had incurred before the revolution.
Assimilation
Although the French Jews were treated on an equal footing with Christians in all respects, despite repeated protests by the rabbis and the Jewish council, they had to take the hated More Judaico oath , a discriminatory legal practice that forced Jews to take a special oath in court. It was only thanks to a brilliant speech by Adolphe Crémieux , a Jewish lawyer and later Minister of Justice of France , who defended a rabbi who had refused to take the oath before the court in Nîmes , and an important treatise by a prominent Christian lawyer by the name of Martin, the highest court of justice ( Cour de Cassation ) and in 1846 removed this last vestige of medieval legislation.
With this victory of justice, the history of the Jews of France now largely merged with that of the French people. Many of them quickly gained wealth and prestige. Despite the prejudice against them deeply rooted in some social classes in France, many Jewish French held high positions in the arts, literature, science, justice, the military - indeed in all areas of life.
On October 24, 1870, the Jews of what was then the French colony of Algeria were granted French citizenship by the Décret Crémieux . The residents of the other French protectorates in the Maghreb such as Morocco and Tunisia were denied this right.
In the last decade of the 19th century , the reactionaries who had failed to achieve their goal of overthrowing the republic found steadfast support in anti-Semitic agitation. The Jews were accused by them of the decline of France and of all the crimes that could arise, for example, from the vivid imagination of an Édouard Drumont . Because the accused abstained from responding to the baseless allegations, large parts of the population began to believe in their guilt. Action was taken against Jewish officers , culminating in the Dreyfus affair :
Alfred Dreyfus , a Jewish artillery captain from Alsace , was accused of treason and sentenced to life in exile in 1894. The debates about his guilt and innocence had an impact on French domestic politics and polarized French society, in which a certain anti-Semitic attitude had not yet been overcome.
In the 20th century
Before World War II
At the beginning of the 20th century the social situation of the Jews in France had improved remarkably. France was hit by a great wave of immigrants who had largely given way to the pogroms in Eastern Europe. This movement stopped briefly during the First World War , but then continued again. Jews had earned a reputation for themselves on France's side during the war, and Jews were also prominent in art and culture - Camille Pissarro , Amedeo Modigliani , Chaim Soutine and Marc Chagall are just a few of the Jewish artists at the beginning of the 20th century.
In politics, Pierre Mendès France and Léon Blum stand out. Blum was the first Jewish Prime Minister of France in the 1930s. His assumption of office caused outrage within the extreme right in parliament as well as within the associations belonging to it. This reinvigorated anti-Semitism should persist and completely discharge under German occupation.
During the Second World War
On September 14, 1939, two weeks after the start of the German invasion of Poland , the French government, Daladier III , ordered that all men between 18 and 55 who belonged to “enemy nations” should be interned in camps de concentration. German Jews who had fled to France were not exempted.
Chronology of internment
On June 22, 1940, the armistice between Hitler Germany and defeated France (de facto a surrender) was signed. In July 1940, the aged Marshal Philippe Pétain proclaimed a “state” in Vichy that included the part of France that was not occupied by the Wehrmacht . The power of the Vichy regime was limited. On the basis of an ordinance issued by the German military commander on September 27, 1940, French institutions began to take targeted anti-Jewish measures in October. A law prevented Jews from moving from their place of residence and restricted their access to public places and several professions ( Lois sur le statut des Juifs October 3, 1940, professional bans and the exercise of most public offices) based on a racist definition of the population group.
The law, actually an ordinance of the Vichy regime, of October 4, 1940, stipulated that " les ressortissants étrangers de race juive " (German: "foreign nationals of Jewish race") should be held in internment camps (such as the Camp de Gurs ) . Before the outbreak of the war, many Jews from Germany had fled to France.
In March 1941, the regime in Vichy set up a “General Commissariat for Jewish Questions” ( Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives ), which carried out anti-Semitic propaganda and the theft of Jewish property (forms of Aryanization similar to expropriation were also practiced in France ). It created files for the counting of Jews in Vichy France, which was specified in more detail by the "Second Statute" of June 2, 1941 and supported the administration of anti-Jewish policy. The General Commissariat cooperated with the Gestapo and prepared the deportation of French Jews to extermination camps . The deportations, which intensified from 1942 with the first transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau on March 27, and which also affected women and children after the Rafle du Vélodrome d'Hiver (raid in Paris) on July 16 and 17, 1942, continued German command carried out mainly by the French police.
The French administration unscrupulously implemented the anti-Jewish legislation in administrative acts and handed over the foreign Jews interned in French camps. She is complicit in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews in the context of the Holocaust .
In 1942 and 1943, underground resistance fighters in France promoted the creation of SERE ( Service d'Evacuation et de Regroupement d'Enfants ), an association dedicated to the welfare of Jewish children. The children, who were threatened with arrest and deportation, found protection with families and non-Jewish institutions. In September 1944, the OPEJ ( Œuvre de protection des enfants juifs - work for the protection of Jewish children) took over the rescue of Jewish children, orphans, whose parents had been deported and / or disappeared, as the legal successor.
In September 1943 the Wehrmacht also took control of the zone previously occupied by Italy (in which Jews had been largely spared until then) and in Italy itself ( case of the Axis : occupation of Italy after the fall of Mussolini). The expansion of German influence went hand in hand with the intensification of the hunt against Jews, which began on September 10, 1943 in Nice. A certain Jewish resistance had developed, which they wanted to counter with the formation of the Milice française . The French resistance , which did a lot against it, could not stop the convoys to the extermination camps . On July 31, 1944, the last deportation train left the Drancy assembly camp . Soon after, northern France was swiftly liberated by Western Allied troops who had landed in Normandy in June 1944 . In mid-August 1944, Western Allied troops landed on the Côte d'Azur ( Operation Dragoon ); they moved quickly north.
Mention should be made of René Carmille : he created the Service national des statistiques (National Statistical Office) during the occupation and knew how much punch card technology made administration more efficient. He offered passive resistance (e.g. delayed data collection) and was therefore deported to Dachau concentration camp in February 1944 , where he died of typhus on January 25, 1945 . Other examples of opposition to the crimes of deportation include Madeleine Barot , who saved around 100 children in the Lyon area in August 1942, or the region around Le Chambon-sur-Lignon , a place in south-west France where a great number of Jews lived during the Shoah were hidden by local Protestants. Those French who protected Jewish citizens from persecution and deportation and who often risked their lives in the process have been collectively honored since 2007 as Les Justes de France (“The Righteous of France”) in the Panthéon , France's national hall of fame.
Between 1942 and July 1944, almost 76,000 Jews were deported to extermination camps; of them, only about 2,500 (3.3 percent) survived. The Drancy camp near Paris was the central assembly camp for the Jews who were deported from there to Poland and Eastern Europe. Designed for 700 people, up to 7,000 people were crammed there in 1940. In 1939 about 300,000 Jews lived in France; about a quarter of them were killed. This rate is significantly lower than that in other countries occupied by Germany.
It was not until 1995 that the French government officially recognized (through President Jacques Chirac ) that France was responsible for carrying out the persecution measures. Previously, such statements were omitted by many (taboo) or had been prevented, up to and including the censorship of films and pictures on which Vichy personnel (especially gendarmes) could be seen rounding up Jews. At that time, many French witnessed crimes against Jews (expropriation, disenfranchisement, rounding up or arrest, transport to assembly camps). The actors had no reason to act clandestinely. Many collaborators (especially janitors , police officers and transport personnel) apparently had no awareness of wrongdoing . After the liberation of France, some survivors spoke publicly about their fate during the occupation.
After the Second World War
The Shoah and World War II changed the fate of the French Jewish community forever. The surviving part of French Jews was reinforced in the immediate post-war years by 80,000 Jews who came from Central and Eastern Europe and settled in France.
Another change occurred from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when an estimated 300,000 Sephardic Jews from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco immigrated to France. Immigration from the North African colonies of France developed parallel to decolonization . With independence, Arab nationalism and its anti-Zionism experienced a strong upswing and drastically worsened the situation for the Jews living there. Because of them, the image of the Jewish community in France has completely changed.
The North African Jews, as they were mostly French-speaking, soon enjoyed social and economic integration and thus revitalized French Judaism. Kosher restaurants and Jewish schools emerged, especially during the 1980s. A new religious self-confidence also developed within the younger generation. Unlike the Ashkenazi Jews, the Sephardim did not perceive themselves as French citizens of Jewish faith, but rather as French Jews. Besides Paris and the municipalities of the Île-de-France , their cultural centers are primarily Marseille , Toulouse , Lyon and Strasbourg .
France advocated and supported the establishment of the State of Israel politically, militarily and technically. During the Suez Crisis , the French Air Force worked with armed forces from Great Britain and Israel to reverse and overthrow the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser . After the Six Day War in 1967, French policy shifted to a pro-Arab line.
On the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah in 1980, a bomb exploded at the entrance to the synagogue in Paris' 16th district. Four people were killed: an Israeli woman and three non-Jewish passers-by. In front of the camera, French Prime Minister Raymond Barre said the fateful sentence that would change the lives of French Jews : The despicable terrorist attack was directed against the Jews in the synagogue, but hit innocent French people crossing Rue Copernic.
On September 7, 1995, the Algerian armed Islamic group GIA carried out an attack on a Jewish school near Lyon after an explosive device was defused in front of a Jewish school in the Lyon suburb of Villeurbanne in August 1995 .
In the 21st century
The organization Maison de la Culture Yiddish (House of Yiddish Culture) has made it its mission since it was founded in 2002 to preserve France's explicitly Yiddish culture. Their library (the Medem Library, founded in 1928/29 ) contains (as of 2003) over 30,000 works and, together with the Bibliothèque de l'Alliance israélite universelle and the Bibliothèque du Séminaire israélite de France, offers a rich treasure trove of Jewish literature in Paris.
Anti-Semitic incidents, especially by Islamists, but also by right-wing extremist groups, have risen sharply since the 2nd Intifada and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA, with three to four reported anti-Semitic cases per year. According to the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l'homme (CNCDH), they were 601 incidents in 2003 and rose to 970 in 2004, an increase of 61%. The number of anti-Semitic attacks on schools almost tripled during this period. On April 1, 2002, the synagogue in the southern French port city of Marseille burned down completely after an attack.
President Jacques Chirac's approval of the US policy towards Lebanon and Syria since the assassination attempt on the convoy of Rafiq al-Hariri in February 2005 initiated a further shift in a Middle East policy of France.
In 2005 the Mémorial de la Shoah was opened in Paris. The Israeli daily Maariw published (although it had previously criticized the supposedly strong anti-Semitism in France ) a study by the Pew Research Center , which examined the sympathies of various countries towards the Jews living there and found that 82% of the French surveyed had positive attitudes towards Jews had. This put France in second place.
On January 21, 2006, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi , a French Jew of Moroccan origin, was kidnapped in Paris. He was tortured to death by a group of Muslim immigrants over a period of 24 days. The brutal murder and the course of the crime caused a public outcry.
In an attack in Toulouse on March 19, 2012 , four people were killed in front of a Jewish school. The thirty-year-old Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two young children and the eight-year-old daughter of the school principal were murdered. All victims were both French and Israeli citizens. A 17-year-old student was seriously injured.
In connection with the attack on Charlie Hebdo , there was a hostage-taking in a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris on January 9, 2015 , in which four French Jews were murdered.
In the letter claiming the terrorist organization Islamic State to the terrorist attacks on 13 November 2015 Paris a quote from the is the Koran ( Sura 59 : 2) preceded by focusing on the expulsion of the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir in 627 by Muhammad refers . The Bataclan was presumably chosen as a target because it was owned by Jews until shortly before the attacks.
On April 4, 2017, Sarah Halimi , a 65-year-old French Jewish woman and former head of a preschool, was badly mistreated in her apartment in Paris's 11th arrondissement in the Belleville district and then pushed out of the third floor window. The perpetrator was a Muslim immigrant from Mali , his motive had an anti-Semitic background. On March 23, 2018, 85-year-old Mireille Knoll was murdered and burned with at least eleven stitches in her social apartment in Paris . French police arrested two suspects, one is a 28-year-old Muslim neighbor.
According to the French government, the number of anti-Semitic attacks in France rose by almost 70 percent in the first nine months of 2018.
literature
- Wolf Scheller: Interplay. Paris and its Jewish community. In: Documents. Journal for the German-French dialogue. Vol. 64, No. 4, 2008, ISSN 0012-5172 , pp. 44-46.
- Annegret Holtmann: Jews in the county of Burgundy in the Middle Ages. (= Research on the history of the Jews. Section A: Treatises. Vol. 12). Hahn, Hannover 2003, ISBN 3-7752-5621-0 (At the same time: Trier, University, dissertation, 2000: Studies on the history of the Jews in the late medieval county of Burgundy. ).
- Esther Benbassa : History of the Jews in France. Translated from the French by Lilli Herschhorn. Philo, Berlin a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-8257-0144-1 .
- Paula E. Hyman: The Jews of Modern France. (= Jewish Communities in the Modern World. Vol. 1). University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. a. 1998, ISBN 0-520-20924-9 .
- Frances Malino, Bernard Wasserstein (ed.): The Jews in Modern France. (= Tauber Institute Series. Vol. 4). University Press of New England, Hanover NH u. a. 1985, ISBN 0-87451-324-3 .
- Celine Leglaive-Perani: Pletsl. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 4: Ly-Po. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-476-02504-3 , pp. 562-567.
- Jacques Semelin: The Survival of Jews in France: 1940–1944 , Wallstein Verlag GmbH, 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3298-0
- Laurent Joly: L'État contre les juifs: Vichy, les nazis et la persécution antisémite , Grasset Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-2-2468-6300-7
Web links
- Overview of the history of the Jews in France
- Texts, witness reports and documents on the Shoah in France (French)
- International Religious Freedom Report 2006 - France (English)
- Newspaper article about burning synagogues in France. (PDF; 13 kB) In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 3, 2010
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gregory of Tours: Ten books history of the Franks, Volume 6, chap. 5
- ↑ Sur Moses Mendelssohn, sur la reforme politique des juifs (French)
- ^ "Admission of Jews to Rights of Citizenship"
- ↑ Décret Crémieux (French)
- ↑ Laurent Joly / Tal Bruttmann: La France antijuive de 1936. L'agression de Léon Blum à la Chambre des députés , Éditions des Équateurs, 2006
- ↑ Michael Jürgs : Code name Hélène: Churchill's secret agent Nancy Wake and her fight against the Gestapo in France. Bertelsmann, Munich 2012, p. 36. ISBN 978-3-570-10142-1
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated November 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ orange.fr
- ↑ On the creation of the French Jewish statute from 1940 Mayer at www.ifz-muenchen.de . It specifically calls them race.
- ↑ valley Bruttmann: Au bureau des affaires juives. L'administration française et l'application de la législation antisémite , La Découverte, 2006
- ↑ The OPEJ still exists today (as of 2013): Homepage (French), Homepage (English)
- ↑ Katja Happe u. a. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945. Volume 12: Western and Northern Europe, June 1942–1945. Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-486-71843-0 , p. 77.
- ↑ perso.orange.fr
- ↑ perso.orange.fr
- ↑ shoa.de
- ^ Jews in France. In: HaGalil .de. July 14, 2002, accessed August 2, 2019 .
- ↑ We and the Muslims are never just French. In: Welt.de . March 25, 2012, accessed August 2, 2019 .
- ↑ France: Ever more hatred of Jews since the outbreak of the Intifada In: Israelnetz.de , December 11, 2001, accessed on August 10, 2018.
- ^ A b International Religious Freedom Report 2005
- ↑ Synagogues Burned - Anti-Israeli Violence in France and Belgium. In: Israelnetz .de. April 2, 2002, Retrieved October 25, 2019 .
- ↑ study . For comparison: the Netherlands topped the list with 85%.
- ↑ Series of murders shocked France. Attack on school in Toulouse. In: Spiegel Online . March 19, 2012. Retrieved March 29, 2012 .
- ↑ The assassin apparently wanted to go to the stadium with a ticket. In: Welt Online. November 14, 2015, accessed November 14, 2015 .
- ↑ Jeremy Saltan: Jewish owners recently sold Paris's Bataclan theater, where IS killed dozens. In: timesofisrael.com. November 15, 2015, accessed November 14, 2015 .
- ↑ Michaela Wiegel: Thousands who hate France. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 15, 2015, accessed November 16, 2015 .
- ↑ French Foreign Minister: The fight against anti-Semitism continues In: israelnetz.de. Israelnetz , March 27, 2018, accessed April 13, 2018.
- ↑ Almost 70 percent more anti-Semitic attacks , Frankfurter Allgemeine, November 9, 2018. Retrieved November 10, 2018.
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