From the Archive: French anti-Semitism deja vu
Concern about anti-Semitism in France has been mounting in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the head of France’s Jewish umbrella organization, told a New York audience that French Jews are increasingly threatened by far-right parties, disaffected Arab and Muslim youth, and anti-Israel sentiment.
A few days later, a woman yelling anti-Semitic slurs assaulted a Jewish mother and her baby at a Paris bus stop. And a recent survey indicated that almost 75 percent of French Jews were considering emigrating.
In July 1934, A. Herenroth, JTA’s Paris correspondent published an essay in three installments detailing the re-emergence of anti-Semitism in France, a problem that the author said had been relatively dormant since the Dreyfus Affair, when a Jewish major was wrongly convicted of treason.
Herenroth wrote that anti-Semitic newspapers were proliferating and that while German Jewish refugees — who began arriving after Hitler’s rise to power — had initially been welcomed, they were starting to spur resentment. Numerous French leftists were accusing the new arrivals of trying to drag France into a war with Germany.
Comments are closed.