Today in Jewish History - Shvat 13

Sponsored by Aish.com:

In 1790, France granted full and equal citizenship to Sefardi Jews. (Ashkenazi Jews gained citizenship a year and a half later.) The French Revolution, born of the ideals of Enlightenment, had become the first society to emancipate the Jews, permitting them to enter the highest levels of government and finance. In 1807, Napoleon created the French Sanhedrin -- a Jewish communal structure sanctioned by the state. (The French Sanhedrin sat in a semicircle, following the custom of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem that served as the Jewish supreme court during the times of the Holy Temple.) Despite these liberties, anti-Jewish measures were passed in 1808: Napoleon declared all debts with Jews annulled, which caused the near ruin of the Jewish community. Restrictions were also placed on where Jews could live in an effort to assimilate them into French society. The invective reached a head in the 1940s when the French Vichy regime took the initiative to round up and hand over 61,000 Jews to the Nazis.

Today in Jewish History - Kislev 18

Sponsored by Aish.com:

In 1793, the French district of Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine passed an anti-Jewish law prohibiting circumcision and the wearing of beards. It also ordered the burning of books written in Hebrew. The French Revolution, born of the ideals of Enlightenment, had become the first society to emancipate the Jews, permitting them to enter the highest levels of government and finance. Yet all the talk of "equality" did not stop Voltaire from singling out the Jews as "the most abominable people in the world." The invective gained expression in the 1940s when the French Vichy regime took the initiative to round up and hand over 61,000 Jews to the Nazis.

Today in Jewish History - Tishrei 11

Sponsored by Aish.com:

In 1941, SS Chief Helmut Knochen ordered the systematic destruction of synagogues in Paris. During this time the Vichy government established other anti-Jewish measures, including the requirement that all Jews wear a yellow badge. Roundups took place in Paris where tens of thousands of Jews were arrested and handed over to the Nazis. Of an estimated 350,000 Jews who lived in France, 25 percent were murdered in the Holocaust. While many were sent to Auschwitz, there were also concentration camps located inside France, such as Gurs.

Report: Anti-Semitic attack against Jewish woman in Paris

From Anti-Semitic attack against Jewish woman in Paris:

A 23-year-old Jewish woman was attacked in Paris this week by two masked men of African descent, who beat her up and uttered anti-Semitic slurs, the Jewish Agency reported Monday. Following the attack the young woman needed medical treatment. The local police launched an investigation into the incident.

The Jewish Agency further reported that another anti-Semitic incident took place in the French capital two weeks ago, when a young haredi man was battered by a cab driver. According to the report, the youth was on his way to the synagogue with his brother-in-law and nephew, when the driver began shouting anti-Semitic slurs at them.

Some 50 anti-Semitic incidents have taken place in France since the beginning of the year, the Jewish Agency said.

Obituary: Henri Amouroux

Henri Amouroux, a French historian who testified on behalf of Maurice Papon at his war crimes trial and wrote several books on the Nazi occupation, has died, news reports said Monday. He was 87.

Amouroux died Sunday in Normandy, Le Parisien newspaper and France-Info radio reported. No cause of death was given.

Amouroux, who served as president of the history section of the prestigious Academie Francaise, testified at Papon's 1997 trial for his role in deporting Jews during the World War II. Papon, a former Cabinet minister who became a symbol of France's collaboration with the Nazis, was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity, and died earlier this year.

Born July 1, 1920 in Perigueux, southern France, Amouroux started as a journalist during World War II. He later worked for radio and television, and wrote several books on daily life under the German occupation.

Many historians accused him of being an apologist for the Vichy regime.

At the Papon trial, Amouroux countered noted American historian Robert O. Paxton's version of the Vichy period. Lawyers representing Holocaust victims at the trial said Amouroux was sanctioned during postwar purges of the collaborationist press, charges Amouroux denied.

He was to be buried in his native Gironde region, Le Parisien reported. No information about surviving family members was immediately available.

French prime minister urges youth to remember wartime deportation of Jews

Prime Minister Francois Fillon urged France's young people to remember the horrors of the Holocaust during a speech yesterday to mark the 65th anniversary of a World War II roundup of Jews. Speaking at the former site of the Velodrome d'Hiver bicycle stadium - which was used as a transit camp for thousands of Jews on July 16-17, 1942 - Fillon said the French must not shrink from the memory of those hours of shame. On those July 1942 days, 13,152 Jews were rounded up in the Paris region, and 8,160 - mostly children - were held at the stadium before being sent to Nazi death camps. "It is by recognizing fully the lights and shadows of the pastthat the nation learns and grows," Fillon told an audience of hundreds. In all, about 75,000 Jews were deported from France to Nazi concentration camps during the war. Fewer than 3,000 survived.

Today in Jewish History - Tammuz 11

Sponsored by Aish.com:

Yahrtzeit of Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer who was falsely arrested and charged with treason. Dreyfus was the victim of a frame-up; falsified documents were exposed in a famous open letter entitled J'accuse! (I Accuse!). This scandal, which came to be known as the Dreyfus Affair, bitterly divided French society for many years. Dreyfus was stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. (Five years later, he was released and later pardoned.) Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist reporting on the trial, was so affected by the anti-Semitism and injustice, that he committed his life to vigorously pursuing the cause of Zionism.

Torture and Death of Jew Deepen Fears in France

Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man, spent the last weeks of his life tormented and tortured by his captors and splashed with acid in a low-ceilinged pump room in Bagneux, France.

"I knew they had someone down there," said a young French-Arab man in the doorway of a building adjacent to the one where Mr. Halimi was held. "I didn't know they were torturing him."

But it is clear that plenty of people did know, both that Mr. Halimi was being tortured and that he was Jewish. The police think at least 20 people participated in his abduction and the subsequent negotiations for ransom.