Antisemitism in France

During World War II, the Vichy government collaborated with Nazi occupiers to deport a large number of both French Jews and foreign Jewish refugees to concentration camps.

[3][4] The French Jewish population increased dramatically during the 1950s/60s, as Jews from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia emigrated to France in large numbers following the independence of those countries.

[8] Jews in Gaul had certain rights, deriving from the Constitutio Antoniniana, decreed in 212 by the Roman Emperor Caracalla to all inhabitants of the Empire, and included freedom of worship, the ability to hold public office, and serve in the army.

[9] After the Fall of Rome, the Merovingians ruled France from the fifth to the eighth century,[9] The emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III sent a decree to Amatius, prefect of Gaul (9 July 425), that prohibited Jews and pagans from practicing law or holding public offices.

[10] The conversion to Christianity of the Visigoths and Franks made the condition of the Jews difficult: a succession of ecumenical councils diminished their rights until Dagobert I forced them to convert or leave France in 633.

[15][19] If Adhémar of Chabannes, who wrote in 1030, is to be believed (he had a reputation as a fabricator), the anti-Jewish feelings arose in 1010 after Western Jews addressed a letter to their Eastern coreligionists warning them of a military movement against the Saracens.

At this date Pope Alexander II wrote to Béranger, Viscount of Narbonne and to Guifred, bishop of the city, praising them for having prevented the massacre of the Jews in their district, and reminding them that God does not approve of the shedding of blood.

[27] According to a Hebrew document, the Jews throughout France were at that time in great fear and wrote to their brothers in the Rhine countries making known to them their terror and asking them to fast and pray.

A historian has argued that organized and official persecution of the Jews became a normal feature of life in southern France only after the Albigensian Crusade because it was only then that the Church became powerful enough to insist that measures of discrimination be applied.

[citation needed] According to medieval Christians, anyone who did not agree with their ideas of faith, including the Jewish people, was automatically assumed to be friendly with the devil and simultaneously condemned to hell.

Their main concern was simply to maintain their right of residency, which involved significant financial payments to various rulers, which was complex due to the division of authority between king and local seigneurs.

[52] In the 1770s, the majority of contributors to the Encyclopédie and other thought leaders (excepting rare philosemites like Irish philosopher John Toland in 1714, or Protestant pastor Jacques Basnage de Beauval in 1716[53]), who were busy defending the civil rights of the black inhabitants of the Antilles, the Hurons of North America, or other tribes, forgot to plead for the emancipation of their immediate neighbors, the Jews of France, and instead covered them with accusations and mockery.

[64] The Catholic journalist Léon de Poncins, a follower of conspiracy theories and a contributor to many newspapers (including Le Figaro, directed by François Coty, or L'Ami du Peuple, subtitled "Weekly magazine of racialist action against occult forces"[b] participated in it,[64] as did the occultist Pierre Virion, who founded an association after the war with General Weygand,[65] the Vichy Minister of National Defense, before enforcing racist laws in North Africa.

[66] Hannah Arendt argues that the affair had an immense importance in the development of French antisemitism, due to the involvement of two Jews of German origin, Baron Jacques de Reinach and Cornelius Herz.

Martin du Gard reported that "Individuals with Jewish features were grabbed, surrounded, and roughed up by delirious youths who danced round them, brandishing flaming torches, made from rolled-up copies of L'Aurore.

[73] During World War II, the Vichy government collaborated with Nazi Germany to arrest and deport a large number of both French Jews and foreign Jewish refugees to concentration camps.

The dispossession of Jews was from the outset included in the mission statement of the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs, created on 29 March 1941 and directed first by Xavier Vallat and then by Louis Darquier de Pellepoix.

[96] Between 1940 and 1944 Jews in occupied France, the zone libre, and in Vichy-controlled French North Africa as well as Romani people were persecuted, rounded up in raids, and deported to Nazi death camps.

According to the Vichy correspondent of the Swiss newspaper Feuille d'Avis de Neuchâtel et du Vignoble neuchâtelois, on Saturday, 4 October 1941:On the night of Thursday and Friday in Paris between 1 am and 5 am, attacks took place against seven synagogues.

[119] In Algiers when Émile Zola was brought to trial for his defense in an 1898 open letter, J'Accuse...!, of Alfred Dreyfus, over 158 Jewish-owned shops were looted and burned and two Jews were killed, while the army stood by and refused to intervene.

[122] Most Algerian Jews in 1961 still hoped for a solution of partition or dual nationality that would permit a resolution of the conflict, and groups such as the Comité Juif Algérien d'Etudes Sociales attempted to straddle the question of identity.

But the situation worsened rapidly with the accession to power of Houari Boumédienne in 1965, with the imposition of heavy taxes and a rise in discrimation, including lack of protection from the courts, and attacks from the press in 1967, cemeteries decayed, synagogues were defaced.

[157] The "Cercle Édouard Drumont" (named after the author of the antisemitic essay La France juive) was formed in 2019 to "honor" this "great man" and "nationalist" activist.

For Libération journalist Pierre Plottu, this circle is close to Amitié et Action française, a dissident faction of Action française[158] directed by lawyer Elie Hatem [fr] who also organizes meetings where "the guest list is a who's who of the French antisemitic far right: Yvan Benedetti but also Jérôme Bourbon [fr] (from the denialist newspaper Rivarol, Alain Escada (head of the national catholics of Civitas), the Soralian Marion Sigaut [fr], Pierre-Antoine Plaquevent (obsessed with Soros and 'the immigrant invasion'), Stéphanie Bignon (from Terre et Famille, close to Civitas), or the prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parme who is close to personalities of the rightist Rassemblement national.

It educates children of primarily Sephardic, Middle Eastern and North African descent, who with their parents have made up the majority of Jewish immigrants to France since the late 20th century.

[176] On 9 January 2015, Amedy Coulibaly, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,[177] attacked the people in a Hypercacher kosher food supermarket at Porte de Vincennes in east Paris.

The New York Times noted, "The speed with which the authorities recognized the hate-crime nature of Ms. Knoll's murder is being seen as a reaction to the anger of France's Jews at the official response to that earlier crime, which prosecutors took months to characterize as antisemitic.

[206] The following day, a Jewish woman filed a complaint with French police that a man with a knife approached her on a Paris street, threatening to "kill Jews".

As a result, the Jewish community is becoming increasingly concerned and fearful; some parents have removed their children from schools, and a record number have been leaving France and emigrating to Israel or other countries.

[5] Threats and violence from radicalized Islamists have caused heightened security concerns for Jews in France, as well as schools, religious institutions, and other gathering places.