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Jewish Resistance Durham E-Theses Philo-Semites, Anti-Semites and France's Jewish Communities in the late Third Republic (c.1900-1940) YOO, YOUNGHO How to cite: YOO, YOUNGHO (2020) Philo-Semites, Anti-Semites and France's Jewish Communities in the late Third Republic (c.1900-1940), Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13909/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Philo-Semites, Anti-Semites and France’s Jewish Communities in the late Third Republic (c.1900-1940) Youngho Yoo Master of Arts (by Thesis) History Department Durham University 2020 1 Abstract This study analyses the attitudes of a wide spectrum of political commentators and the press on Jews in France between the 1880s and 1930s, and how these debates affected the self- understanding and mutual perspectives of the two distinctive French Jewish communities – the long-established Jews (known as Israélites) and the foreign Jews (known as Juifs). The First chapter explains the formation and development of French Jews in the Third French Republic, demonstrating the relations between distinctive Jewish communities. Next two chapters explore philo-Semitic and anti-Semitic feelings of the French Right and Left. These chapters discuss the two opposite views of each political side on Jews and show their ambivalent positions that coexisted according to their own criteria. The last chapter investigates the attitudes of Israélites and Juifs to each other and France, particularly in relationship to Zionist ideas. It explains the precarious situation of Juifs and Zionism as a self-defense strategy for them against anti-Semitic threats and the indifferent attitude of Israélites There was not a single opinion from one political or social group regarding Jewish communities in the Third French Republic. Rather, anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic feelings were distributed across the French Right and Left. These perspectives also changed continuously during the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War and the interwar period. In particular, the two Jewish communities were forced to reconsider their identity following the mass migration of Eastern European Jews and the rising anti-Semitic climate in French society. This resulted in friction and tensions between the two Jewish communities. 2 Table of Contents Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 - Historiography ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------10 - Methods and Sources ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 - Chapter Layout -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Chapter 1: Formation and Development of the Native French Jews in Modern France ------ 19 - Mutual Perspectives of Two Native Jews -------------------------------------------------- 26 - French Perspectives Towards the Two Jewish Communities ---------------------------- 30 - Becoming ‘Israélite’ in French Society ----------------------------------------------------- 33 - Mass Migration of Foreign Jews ------------------------------------------------------------ 35 - Daily Life of ‘Juif’ in France ---------------------------------------------------------------- 39 - Reactions of Non-Jewish Migrants ---------------------------------------------------------- 43 - Impact of Mass Migration: Reactions of French Society -------------------------------- 44 - Impact on the Israélite Community --------------------------------------------------------- 48 Chapter 2: Perspectives of Right-Wing towards Jews --------------------------------------------- 52 - Anti-Semitism of Right-Wing --------------------------------------------------------------- 52 - Anti-Semitism in Conservative Presses --------------------------------------------------- 55 - ‘Unassimilable’ Jews ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61 - French Catholics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 64 - Anti-Semitism and Immigrant Jews -------------------------------------------------------- 66 - Philo-Semitism of Right-Wing -------------------------------------------------------------- 67 Chapter 3: Perspectives of Left-Wing towards Jews ---------------------------------------------- 83 - Anti-Semitism of Left-Wing ---------------------------------------------------------------- 84 - Economy --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 84 - Politics ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 89 - Anti-Semitism towards Left-Wing Jews -------------------------------------------------- 92 - Philo-Semitism of Left-Wing --------------------------------------------------------------- 98 - Humanitarian Value ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 100 - The Left against the Anti-Semitism of the Radical Right ------------------------------ 103 - Discovery of Jewish Proletariat ----------------------------------------------------------- 104 - Humanitarian and Internationalism ------------------------------------------------------- 107 - Philo-Semitism as Anti-Anti-Semitism against the Radical Right ------------------- 110 - Philo-Semitism and Jewish Proletariat in Interwar France ---------------------------- 111 Chapter 4: Jewish Resistance: Jewish Identity and Nationalism through Zionism ---------- 114 - Threats of Native French Jews in the Third Republic ---------------------------------- 115 - Zionism --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 117 Conclusion --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 132 - Fate of Jewish Communities in 1940 ----------------------------------------------------- 132 - Prospective Directions of Further Research --------------------------------------------- 137 Bibliography ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 140 3 Introduction The history of the Jews in modern France needs to be understood in its diversity, since the Jewish population was made up of multiple communities. There were distinctive Jewish communities, including an assimilated French Jewish community and foreign immigrant Jewish society in the twentieth century; before the twentieth century, there was also a visible separation between the Sephardi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews. This separation had existed for centuries, and certainly preceded the French Revolution of 1789, rooted in various contexts of migration, professional mobility and legal privilege. Experiences of Jewish communities in France were rarely identical, and often diverged. Some points of contrast include the process and time period of assimilation, their attitudes towards French national identity, and their self- understanding. Regardless of their different – sometimes ambivalent – experiences, French Jews could not avoid the mass murder that happened in the Shoah. The Vichy government did not hesitate to indiscriminately persecute Jewish citizens and Jewish immigrants. Moreover, with Vichy France’s active assistances, the Nazis murdered more than 77,000 Jews in France by deporting them to extermination camps. This number was more than twenty-four per cent of the entire Jewish population who lived in metropolitan France at the end of 1940.1 In the summer of 1942, approximately 13,000 foreign Jews, including women and their French-born children, were arrested by French police. Many of them were held at Vélodrome d'Hiver and other places, such as Drancy camp, guarded by French gendarmes. Subsequently, they were deported to extermination camps in East. Up until the end of the Second World War, the Vichy regime never 1 Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (New York, 1993), pp. 280. 4 ceased to round up Jews; they found and arrested their Jewish citizens, including recently naturalised Jews and assimilated Jews (who were usually from long-established Jewish families) without drawing any distinction. As Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton proved in their seminal book, Vichy France and the Jews, the Vichy regime was never passive in the process of arrests of Jews in France, but rather actively participated in the Nazis’ horrendous project. Donna Ryan, in The Holocaust & the Jews of Marseilles, has demonstrated the active collaboration of French officials in persecuting Jews through her case study on Marseille which remained in the Free Zone. Her research reconfirms the Vichy regime’s active collaboration in stripping native and foreign Jews, as well as the Jews of North Africa, of their citizenship.2 Her research indicates the converging fate of Jews in France during the Second World War. It did not
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