The French Jews and France: a different vision
by Serge Klarsfeld

The text written by seven leading figures seeking to restore confidence between the Jews of France and France (Le Monde, 30 December 2003) caught my attention. Firstly, why "Jews of France" and not "French Jews"? I am one of those who have most often made use of the term "Jews of France", but in a historical context and situating the tern, within a period when half the Jews in France were foreigners, stateless or of undetermined nationality, whereas nowadays practically all the Jews in France are Jewish-French or French-Jewish.

I also used the term "Jews of France" when campaigning in Germany for the Nazi criminals who deported them to be brought to trial, because I wanted to make it clear who we were and on behalf of which Jews we were campaigning.

However that may be, the use of the term "Jews of France" already serves to diminish what confidence there may be to re-establish between French Jews and France.

While the authors' description of the current malaise in terms of its manifestations seems to me to be accurate, the reasons they advance as to why this confidence no longer exists do not seem acceptable.

Our "seven pillars of wisdom" blame rejection of the Jewish state on French disaffection for the nation. It may be worth remembering that, from the Revolution to the Occupation, France was an unswerving opponent of a Jewish state. "Grant nothing to the Jews as a nation; grant them everything as individuals," (Clermont-Tonnerre, 23 December 1789).

The Zionist movement, which received some support from the German Empire prior to 1914, was opposed both before and after the First World War by French diplomacy and by most French Jews. A brief parenthesis lasting some twenty years (1946 -1967) was marked by a simultaneous crisis between France and the Arab world and by support for the new Jewish state.

The Jews' choice to support the Republic, our "seven pillars" assert, formed the basis for "their fulfilment as individuals and as a community". The judgement is superficial; after suffering many vicissitudes under absolute monarchy, the Jews supported every regime that followed after the Revolution, in particular the parliamentary monarchy of Louis-Philippe and the Second Empire, probably the two periods in which Jews exercised their greatest influence ever in French society, at periods when France stood as high, if not higher, than it later did under the Republic. The Jews of those periods, perhaps to a greater extent that those that followed them, also experienced "a positive way of existing and playing a part in history".

The Jews of today certainly share ardently in the values of the Republic, but they believe that in its foreign policy it should take into account political morality as one of its fundamental values, and should not be willing to condemn or sacrifice Israel in retum for economic advantage or a relative level of domestic sccurity. The confidence between French Jews and France was broken when the most illustrious of Frenchmen decided to break it, by sharply rebuking Israel for practising legitimate self-defence and describing the Jewish people in terms that Charles Maurras would have approved of.

Our "seven pillars", too indulgent, believe or at least pretend to believe that it was post-war optimism that helped to wipe out the memory of the extermination of the Jews, and that it was in the 1960s when reflection on the Holocaust emerged. In reality, the reason was a refusal by French political society to confront, face the consequences of and elucidate the blackest page in France's history: the time of the Vichy regime's complicity in the "final solution", when thousands of Jewish children were arrested by men in French uniforms before being shipped off to the slaughterhouses.

That reflection only really emerged in the mid-1970s. Since then, it has been actively pursued and only our seven are still left wondering "why Judaism was its target". On the one hand, there are a number of historical explanations that could be offered. On the other, the Holocaust has taken its place in the history of Europe as an event incomparable to any other, but which is certainly not overwhelmingly negative and paralysing since, in compensation, it demands of Europe greater respect for human dignity and the human person - something which, happily, the European Union has been putting into practice in its political, social and cultural life for what will soon be half a century.

The memory of the Holocaust is not a "vain memory", but a mernory of reference, a memory of refusal of totalitarianism, racism and xenophobia, a memory that is encouraging, generous and humanist.

We must absolutely refute the accusation from our seven thinkers, who reproach everyone, "Jews, non-Jews, French, Europeans and Westerners", for not having "made central to their thought and their action the principles that they [the Nazis] sought to flout and erase". Never would Westemers have imagined in 1945 that they would decolonise, bring down the Soviet Empire, enjoy unbroken peace, security, constant improvements in living standards, social protection and living conditions leading to sharply increased life expectancy, better food, shorter working hours, more holidays, easier travel, television, etc.

If poverty of thinking on the Holocaust exists, it seems to me to come more from our "seven pillars" than from those who have thought long about what it represents and who continue to do so through the work of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah (Holocaust) set up by the French govemment. The sheer enormity of an assertion to the effect that France "would be banned from history" because of what happened under the Occupation would suffice in itself to discredit the wisdom of these "seven pillars".

If there has been mistrust between the majority of French Jews and successive governments, it is because these governments have pursued a determinedly pro-Arab policy which has received the support of public opinion. This policy is based on what is considered to be the national interest: the importance of trade with the vast and wealthy Arab world. France's influence in the many Muslim countries and a desire to avoid the bloody terrorist attacks that France has suffered in the past at the hands of anti-Jewish Arab terrorists and Algerian fundamentalist terrorists.

French Jews feel a profound sense of solidarity with the existence and security of the state of Israel. They understand that anti-Semitism has recently undergone a profound change, just like the change that in the 19th century marked the shift from religious hatred to racial hatred as Jews began to make their way into society. At the end of the 20th century, the new anti-Semitism has emerged primarily in the form of a rejection of the Jewish state.

Many Jews suffer from this situation and remember that, while it may have been a difficult time for France, the Vichy regime made it much harder still, for French Jews, all in the name of a national interest invoked by Pétain, Darlan and Laval. "On that day France, home of reason and the rights of man, land of welcome and safe asylum (..). committed the irreparable." as the President of the Republic so courageously admitted on 16 July 1995, at the annual ceremony commemorating the rounding up of Jews at the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium. From this tragedy he drew a lesson for the future, which our seven would have done well to pick up and ponder, rather than referring pointlessly to a France "locked in remorse" and "barred from any hope of history" by the Holocaust. Did not Jacques Chirac appeal to "humanist values, to the values of freedom, justice and tolerance on which France's identity is founded and which lay upon us an obligation for the future. These values, the values on which our democracies are founded, are today being flouted in Europe before our very eyes by those who would commit ethnic cleansing. Let us learn the lessons of history; let us not consent to be passive witnesses or accomplices of the irreparable"? And did the head of state not immediately place France and the West firmly back in the march of history by military intervention in Bosnia to put an end to the massacres?

France does not need a "pact" with the Jews to move forward, as our thinkers claim. Since 1945, France has succceded magnificently in getting back on her feet and, with a population of only 60 million, nonetheless asserting herself as a global power with a universal calling, and as a driving force in the European Union thanks to her surprising yet sincere reconciliation with Germany. 

Colonial wars had at least as great an influence on France as the consequences of Vichy's anti-Jewish policy. No, France is not dragging behind her a bal1 and chain of history that prevents her from moving forward. The French Republic offers French Jews every possibility that it affords to non-Jewish French citizens, on the sole criterion of merit. It is Jews who suffer both from the distance France has put between itself and Israel, and from the fact that to the anti-Semitism of the right there has, with time, been added an anti-Semitism of the left after decades of campaigning against Israel. This anti-Semitism cornes from the hard left, the communists, the Greens and some of the Socialists. In addition, an active fundamentalist anti-Semitism has suddenly broken out within a Muslim population that outnumbers the Jewish population ten times over.

What does the future hold? Some French Jews will bow their heads, express their differences with Israel- or even their indifference -and will plunge, or at least pretend to plunge, into the "ethics of Judaism" and resolve to become nothing more than political Marranos. Others will divorce themselves from France because their sensibilities as Jews in the wake of the Holocaust and of the resurrection of the state of Israel will be wounded too sharply by the daily stings they will have to suffer as a result of the ambient climate of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Or, as we all hope, peace will be established in the Middle East, Israel will be accepted by all Palestinians and by the Arab world, and the situation in France will finally normalise for the Jews. But they will nonetheIess have to come to terms with one fact: contrary to the assertions of the "seven pillars", France does not particularly need the Jews, any more than the Jews need France.

Serge Klarsfeld is a lawyer and chair of the association of sons and daughters of Jews deported from France.

Le Monde
Wednesday, 7 January 2OO4

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