Paris – In a year during which the French calendar is highlighted with festivities and commemorations surrounding the 70th anniversary of the Liberation of France, 1944—from D-Day (June 6) to the Liberation of Paris (Aug. 25) to the Liberation of Strasbourg (Nov. 23)—the reopening of the Medem Yiddish Library 70 years ago this week, on October 14, 1944, was noted by few.

The date nevertheless resonates as a marker of the return of Jews from hiding in France and their first steps toward reclaiming an identity and a language that Nazism and its allies, including in France, sought to wipe out.

Though relatively small and discreet compared to the world’s major Yiddish centers in New York and in Israel, the Medem Library’s 30,000 volumes (of which 20,000 are in Yiddish) and 7500 recordings, along with the classes, workshops and events of the Paris Yiddish Center (together with the library they form a single entity) make this the largest Yiddish cultural center in Europe.

In 1939, at the outset of the Second World War, it was common to hear Yiddish in certain quarters of Paris, particularly in the 3rd, 4th, 10th and 11th arrondissements. Yiddish, the language that most unified European Jewry before the Holocaust, had been spoken among some families and communities in Paris since the liberating effect of the French Revolution began drawing Jews to the French capital. Its presence was increasingly seen and heard in the northeast quadrant of Paris after 1880s, when greater waves of Jewish immigration began arriving from the east, waves that would also reach the shores of North America.

Over coffee and chocolate rugelach with members of the administration and the staff in the center’s little café in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, Gilles Rozier, author, translator from Yiddish and the Medem Library’s director from 1994 until June 2014, outlined the history of the library and cultural center.

At the time of its founding in 1929, during the golden age of Yiddish artistic and literary creation and publication, the Medem Library was just one of a number of Yiddish libraries and centers in Paris. Each Jewish political party or religious movement, Rozier explained, had its own library which also served as a form of social and cultural center, a gathering place where there was often a soup kitchen for those in need. Neither Zionist nor religious, the Medem was created as the library of the Bund movement, a secular Jewish socialist movement that had developed in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and spread out from there, eventually brought to Paris by immigrants fleeing pogroms and unrest in Eastern Europe. The library was named for Vladamir Medem, one Bundism’s major theorists.

Though now officially apolitical, the Medem Library and Maison de la Culture Yiddish (or Paris Yiddish Center as it’s officially called in English) as an institution remains distinctly secular. It’s even open on Saturday, though closed on Friday.

Foreign Jews in France, already targets of anti-Semitism and anti-immigration sentiment during the economic downturn of the 1930s, were increasingly treated, legally, as outcasts once the German Occupation began in 1940, at which time the rights of French Jews were also progressively diminished. Two years later, both foreign and French Jews were being deported to concentration camps. Authorities closed the Medem Library in 1943 but not before many of its books had been hidden in the basement of the building that then housed the Medem Library at 110 rue Vieille du Temple in the Marais. About 76,000 of the 270-300,000 Jews living in France before the war were killed between 1940 and 1945.

Following the Liberation of Paris from German Occupation and the removal of the Vichy Government, the Medem Library reopened on October 14, 1944. It was a small but significant step in a return to normalcy for Jews in the capital.

The number of Yiddish speakers in Paris after the war nevertheless continued to wane. Pogroms in the Soviet Union, particularly in 1956 and 1968, saw a small influx of Jewish immigrants who brought along their personal libraries, including books in Yiddish, eventually resulting in an expansion of the Medem and other libraries then still in existence. Yet the number of Yiddish-speakers was in steep decline as younger generations no long learned the language of their parents or grandparents. During the same period, the arrival of Sephardic Jews from territories formerly controlled by France in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) meant that Yiddish, historically spoken by the Ashkenazi, was no longer the primary shared language of new Jewish arrivals in continental France.

That might have spelled the end of the Medem as a gathering place, as it did for other Yiddish libraries, but the 1970s brought with them an awareness of and desire to maintain contact with one’s roots. What was true for Breton and Basque, the languages and cultures of Brittany and Basque Country, respectively, was also true of Yiddish. Roots for Jews may also mean an attachment to prayer/the synagogue and/or to Zionism, but in the case of the Medem Library, one of whose pillars remained secularism, it was the language of pre-war European Jewry that brought people together. By the 1980s, with Yiddish classes in full swing, the Medem Library was becoming more a research library than a popular library.

By the 1990s, as other Yiddish libraries and institutions closed and publications ceased, the Medem was receiving some of their collections along with collections of citizens no longer capable of reading their parents’ or grandparents’ books.

Moved to its current location, it was less the books themselves that kept the Medem Library alive than the emphasis on learning Yiddish and the enjoyment and understanding of Yiddish culture (particularly klezmer, theater, song and cooking)—in short, on transmitting Yiddish heritage. Since 2002 the center has been called Maison de la Culture Yiddish – Bibliothèque Medem.

Asked if the center was associated with the Association for the Promotion of Foreign Languages in France, Fanny Barbaray, the center’s president, said that Yiddish couldn’t be considered a foreign language but was rather a “language of France” more comparable to Breton and Basque.

In the 85 years since its creation in 1929, the Medem Library has only had four directors: Kiva Vaisbrot, one of its founders, who assumed the position until 1979, Yitskhok Niborski, director from 1979 to 1994, Rozier, director from 1994 to June of this year, and Tal Hever-Chybowski, director since September.

The House of Yiddish Culture and Medem Library occupy 7000 square feet of the ground floor and basement of a building in the 10th arrondissement (near a nice little indoor food market). Only the ground floor is open to the public. Most of the books, recordings and documents are stored the basement, available for retrieval by the Medem’s librarian, Natalia Krynicka. A hallway exhibition space, three classrooms and a small café are open to the public, as are the reading room with membership to the library, the classroom for those registered and an 80-seat room where cultural activities and events are held.

Along with Yiddish classes for all levels, the center holds klezmer, dance, choral, theater and cooking workshops and has a choral group as well as programing for children. Concerts, readings, encounters with authors and film projections also take place. While Jews make up the vast majority of those taking Yiddish classes, Barbaray noted that there are a significant number of non-Jews in the klezmer workshops.

While visitors may encounter Yiddish speakers at any time at the center, its little Tshaynik Café especially becomes a Yiddish-speaking coffee klatch on Thursday from 2:30 to 4:30pm.

In addition to income derived though classes, workshops and membership, the center receives subsidies from the Paris region, DRAC Ile-de-France (a regional department of cultural affairs), the City of Paris, the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, the National Book Center, the Rothschild Foundation, the Rachel Ajzen and Léon Iagolnitzer Foundation, the L.A. Pincus Fund for Jewish Education in the Diaspora and the Unified Jewish Social Fund. The New York-based American Friends of the Medem Library also supports the center’s activities.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

Maison de la culture Yiddish – Bibilothèque Medem, 29 rue du Château-d’Eau, 10 arrondissement. www.yiddishweb.com. Tel. 01 47 00 14 00. Contact: mcy@yiddishweb.com. Metro République, Jacques-Bonsergent, Château-d’Eau.

Open Mon., Tues., Thurs. 1:30-6:30pm, Wed. and Sat. 2-5pm. Closed Friday, Sunday, French holidays and Yom Kippur.

For other articles about Jewish Paris on France Revisited see the March 2014 issue.

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Last November I was designing an issue of France Revisited by gathering together an assortment articles and stories about Jews, Jewish sights and Jewish history, particularly in Paris. I thought I’d call it the Hanukkah Issue. That was to be followed by a Christmas/New Year Issue before I would head off on my East Coast lecture tour in January and February.

But then the parties started—the cocktail events, the tapas evenings, the teatime happenings, the association dinners, the afternoon interludes, the “I’m only in town for a couple of days” pleas, the holiday celebrations—and before I knew it Christmas trees littered the sidewalks of Paris, New Year wishes came and went, and then I was on the road in the U.S..

There, I plotted my return, considering material that arrived from contributors and other texts that I might write. Should I transform the planned Hanukkah issue into an Semitic Food Issue, a WWII Issue, an If I Were A Rich Man Issue, an Evolution of the Marais Issue? – for I had articles on all those subjects and more.

But our first ideas are often the best, and a look at the articles I had on hand led me back to the Hanukkah Issue – except that the candles have long disappeared. So let’s get down to basics and call this issue by its rightful name: The Jewish Issue.

Here are the 9 articles, interviews and stories that comprise France Revisited’s March Jewish Issue

1. Love and Latkes. Canadian humorist Melinda Mayor, the Menschette of Montmartre, sent this piece about the trials of being a latke-lover in Paris. Melinda has previous contributed a piece about the trials of motherhood in Paris.

2. Passover and the 11th plague. New York writer and filmmaker Max Kutner tells of his first Passover in Paris and an encounter with the 11th plague.

Two articles about wealthy Jewish banking families that have left their mark on Paris:
3. The Rothschilds of the 19th century: A Riches to Riches Story.

4.  The Nissim de Camondo Museum: A Glory and the Tragedy

Views, one personal, one collective, of WWII deportations and the Holocaust
5. An exclusive interview with Paul Niedermann, a Holocaust survivor, currently living just outside of Paris. His extraordinary story is told though a text and interview by Janet Hulstrand. Janet, you may recall, previously introduced readers to American poet James Emanuel.

6. The Deportation Memorial and The Shoah Memorial. A look at two memorials that merit a place on the list of every traveler, whether Jewish or not.

7. In search of a Jewish Quarter: Rue des Rosiers, the Marais and the Jewish Food Court of Paris.

8. Noshing in Nice: Bread and the Bagel. The ever-perceptive Daniele Thomas Easton went looking bread in Nice and came home with bagels. Readers may recall Daniele’s review of the movie Sarah’s Key.

You might also want to return to an older editorial about anti-Semitism and the traveler.

Read them all, learn, discover, travel, comment, enjoy!

Gary

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Adidas, Kookai, Minelli, Annick Goutal, Fred Perry, The Kooples, Kusmi Tea. Does that sound like the making of “the Jewish Quarter” to you? It doesn’t to me either, but those are among the signs—along with “falafel, 5€50”—that one now finds on rue des Rosiers, the 1000-foot long street in the Marais that was once a main artery of Yiddishkeit in Paris.

Even well into the 1970s a visitor, few as they were, might have peered into storefront or observed local residents gathering in the street or returning from work and sensed a neighborhood, a community, whose lifestyle and traditions were visible, alive and collective, whether Ashkenazic, Sephardic or Parisian.

Now, however, the tradition most followed on rue des Rosiers is that of a shopping mall, with a Jewish-theme food court to one end and familiar international clothing brands to the other. It can be hard to see the history for the falafels.

Jews were known to have lived on the City Island in the 6th century and later on the Left Bank, and records indicate their presence in the Marais by the 13th century. Nevertheless, due to successive expulsions and limitations on the activities of Jews, notably in the 14th century, there were in fact relatively few Jews in Paris at all between the 15th century and 18th century, when Jews began trickling back. Nevertheless, due to successive expulsions and limitations on the activities of Jews, notably in the 14th century, there were in fact relatively few Jews in Paris at all between the 15th century and 18th century, when Jews began trickling back. Still, it’s unlikely that there were any Jews in the Marais when, in 1791, during the Revolution, France became the first European country to grand Jews full rights of citizenship. By the early 1800s Jewish presence in the Marais was well established. Jewish arrivals in the quarter, and throughout Paris, took on greater amplitude in the second half of the 19th century, with large movement of Jews from Alsace and Lorraine, where more than half of the Jews of France had lived. Others arrived from Eastern Europe (Romania, Austria-Hungary, Russia), particularly between 1881 and 1914, in the same pogrom-fleeing waves that reached American shores, and Jews continued to arrive in the Paris region into the 1930s.

The Marais thus became home to a grouping of diverse Jewish communities that included Alsatian, Russian, Polish and other Ashkenazic traditions, along with Portuguese and Spanish Sephardic traditions, then in the minority here. In the initial decades of the 20th century one could therefore easily believe that the center of the Marais, comprising large swaths of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements, was Paris’s “Jewish quarter,” though there were in fact mostly non-Jews living throughout this working-class area, much of it very run down.

During the German Occupation of 1940 to 1944 the French police certainly knew how to distinguish a Jewish address from a non-Jewish address; they had identity files, now visible at by the Shoah Memorial, indicating with a large J (for juif) which were Jews. The massive round-up of Jews throughout the Paris region in July 1942, followed by mass deportations to the death camps, removed the “Jewish” from any sense that this was “a Jewish quarter.”

After the war some of those who had managed to flee in time and some of the few who survived the camps returned to the Marais, where, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they were joined by Sephardic Jews arriving from North Africa as Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco gained independence from France. Though the Jewish presence in the Marais was dramatically reduced compared with the pre-war years (most Jews arriving from North Africa settled in other quarters or in the suburbs), rue des Rosiers and surroundings still visibly formed a Jewish neighborhood.

And now? Are travelers correct in thinking when coming to rue des Rosiers today that they are actually visiting “the Jewish quarter”? Is the presence of Semitic fast food and a few Judaica shops a reflection of a vibrant local community or of successful ethnic marketing or of a combination of the two?

Let’s take a look at what’s here.

Clearly there are Parisian Jews around—clearly, that is, if you walk by one of the active synagogues and religious schools just off rue des Rosiers or look into a kosher butcher shop or one of the less tourist-directed bakeries or visit on a Jewish holiday. A Jewish vocational school still operates at 4 bis rue des Rosiers. On Sundays cliques of Jewish adolescents from throughout Paris gather on the street, though they can be lost in crowd of other visitors, for every Sunday is a non-religious holiday in the Marais and the occasion for all comers to celebrate the pleasures of a stroll in the city.

Otherwise one is more likely to catch a glimpse not of neighborhood life today but of the neighborhood that is no longer here: The façade of the old  baths (closed in 1989); a plaque indicating that an attack was carried out against Jewish targets by a Palestinian terror cell on August 9, 1982 at the restaurant Jo Goldenberg , killing 6 and wounding 22 (the space is now occupied by a clothing shop); a sign in the middle of the street stating that this was the Pletzl or little square, the crossroads of the old urban Jewish village (in 1900), and signs here and on neighboring streets (rue des Ecouffes, rue des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais) telling of deportations to death camps.

Synagogues of the Marais

Attesting to the centuries-old presence of Jews in the Marais, specifically the former parish of Saint Gervais, rue Ferdinand-Duval came to be called rue des Juifs (Street of the Jews) in the late Middle Ages. It was briefly a closed street, though not a ghetto per se since Jews also lived elsewhere in the city. An unsuspecting visitor is unlikely to walk up that little street today thinking that it might ever have been “a Jewish street,” until arriving at its northern end, where it spills into rue des Rosiers. You’ll find more by going one parallel street over in either direction, to rue Pavée or to rue des Ecouffes, where the neighborhood’s Jewish religiosity is more readily visible.

For security reasons, you’ll have to settle for an outer view of the Art Nouveau synagogue at 10 rue Pavée and the religious school across the street. The Pavée Synagogue (the synagogues in Paris are generally referred to by the street on which they’re located) was built in 1913 for the Union of Communities (Agoudas Hakehilos), largely comprised of Orthodox Jews of Russian origin. This high, narrow synagogue was designed by Hector Guimard, the architect famous for designing the entrances to the first Paris metro stations. The Pavée Synagogue, the only religious building to his credit, is less exuberantly Art Nouveau than the metro work, but the rising curves are undeniably his. It was dynamited on the eve of Yom Kippur 1941 by French Nazi sympathizers at the same time as several other synagogues in Paris. Guimard wasn’t Jewish but was married to a Jew—an American at that. Already in 1938 Guimard and his wife had fled Paris at the specter of war and moved to New York City, where he died in 1942. The Pavee Synagogue was restored after the war and is now listed as a Historical Monument. The building also houses aid services for the Orthodox community.

With a kind word and perhaps a small donation, visitors may be able to enter one of the smaller synagogues just off rue des Rosiers on rue des Ecouffes.

The largest synagogue in the Marais is at the district’s eastern edge, on rue des Tournelles, between Place de la Bastille and Place des Vosges. The Tournelles Synagogue, also listed as a Historical Monument, isn’t open for impromptu visits. Those interested in visiting this beautiful structure, built 1867-1876 with Gustave Eiffel’s company involved in the creation of its metallic skeleton, can contact the synagogue in advance to request permission (Synagogue de la rue des Tournelles, 21 bis rue des Tournelles, 75004 Paris). The Tournelles Synagogue backs up to the Vosges Synagogue whose entrance is at 14 place des Vosges. During the Jewish harvest-time holiday of Sukkot passersby will see a hut or sukkah installed on the balcony above the arcade on the square. There’s another handsome synagogue, built in the 1850s, in the northern part of the Marais, at 5 Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth. Taken together, these synagogues attest to the diverse community of Jews had spread throughout the Marais by the end of the 19th century, a century that saw the number of Jews in Paris increase six- or seven-fold. Many more would arrive in the following decades

Neither Rue des Rosiers nor any other area of the Marais was a closed ghetto, though portions might be considered a ghetto in the sense of being extremely run down. Jews were clearly a sizable presence in the Marais by the end of the 19th century, their numbers continuing to climb, however Jews lived throughout Paris in varying density. Rue de la Roquette (past the Bastille just east of the Marais) and Belleville were also had noticeably dense Jewish populations. While some who had distinguished themselves on the social ladder remained in the Marais, others preferred to live in the city’s upscale quarters, such as near the boulevards and quarters being modernized by Haussmann’s transformations of Paris. (Read about the Rothchild family here and the de Camondo family here.)

Wealth in the Marais

Even when Jews returned to the Marais after the war the strong Jewish presence had existed on the southern side of rue de Rivoli and rue Saint-Antoine was, by the late 1940s, largely absent; the homes of French and foreign Jews and non-Jews had been expropriated for the purposes of rehabilitating an “insalubrious” zone. Little by little the Marais lost its craftsmen and its peddlers as it became home to the middle class and to government projects. Yiddish, so frequently heard and read in the Marais prior to the war, had largely disappeared by the end of the 1950s. Another accent arose, that of Sephardic Jews arriving in numbers from North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. Sephardic rituals replace Ashkenasic rituals in certain synagogues, notably the synagogue on rue des Tournelles that was split in two to accommodate the distinct ritual interests of the Marais. On rue des Rosiers and nearby streets the neighborhood’s Jewish presence remained clear in the cafés and restaurants, local grocers and shops, with some now preferring couscous and bricks over herring and latkes. But the Marais as a whole was on the way upscale. “The Marais” wasn’t yet a call to stroll and shop, to see and be seen, but by the 1980s public funding was pouring into the area to restore its noble historical buildings—the 17th-century mansions and the town houses on Place des Vosges—and poverty, the hallmark of pre-war Jews in the Marais, no longer had a place here; the working class had been pushed to the edge of the city and into the suburbs. The Picasso Museum opened in one of those mansions in 1985, a turning point in terms of the neighborhoods visibility to visitors to Paris. The decade witnessed an acceleration of a transformation of the district’s local population, in the use of its storefronts and in the way in which the Marais was viewed from outside the 3rd and 4th arrondissements. Visitors from elsewhere in Paris and from abroad began to arrive. Gay bars and businesses opened just west of rue des Rosiers and within a few block of rue des Archives.

With rising real estate prices and an increasing number of visitors through the 1990s, shops began catering to clients from beyond the neighborhood. Rue des Rosiers, the remaining portion of the Marais to stake a claim to being the Pletzl—the ever shifting center of “the Jewish Quarter—, once again began to lose its local Jewish identity, though this time without anyone being murdered. Briefly Paris had the distinction of having side by side a Jewish village by day and a gay village by night. That held for about a decade, but as the Marais gained in desirability for increasingly upscale residents and visitors, any sense of neighborhood anywhere in the district largely evaporated.

Of course, Addidas, Kookai and Fred Perry shops on rue des Rosiers can be Jewish operated, as can the real estate on rue des Rosiers, but only foreign Jewish visitors and native anti-Semites consider this a Jewish quarter anymore. Similarly, only visiting LGBTQ individuals and French homophobes consider the area around rue des Archives a gay quarter. Otherwise, visitors are unlikely to have any idea who actually lives in these areas.

The 2000s saw the arrival of something new on rue des Rosiers and perpendicular streets, a new kind of Diaspora. This time it wasn’t a wave of Jewish immigrants arriving but of Jewish recipes, from New York—deli fare, pastrami sandwiches and the like. Oh, there had been pastrami sold here before, but the new deli restaurants marked the transformation of this small portion of the Marais into a Jewish-theme food court.

Though regrettable for those expecting to be visiting a Jewish enclave and a local community, this is simply part of the evolution of the city, just one of many formerly distinct neighborhoods that have been transformed by market forces in recent decades. The neighborhoods of Paris can still be distinguished by architecture, monuments, museums and history, but they are increasingly homogenous with regards to populations living and visiting there.

Wealth is the historical feature that the central Marais most recalls. After all, nobility and financiers began buying up lots here in the second half of the 16th century, and during the 17th century this became the most fashionable quarter of Paris thanks to the construction of Place des Vosges and of dozens of noble mansions. That was before there was a significant Jewish population here. It was the downfall of French nobility during the Revolution that gave Jews the freedom and elbow room to increase in numbers in the Marais. It was persecution elsewhere, hope for a better life and a need for community that caused the number of Jews in the Marais to swell in the late 19th century. It was also sense of security, hope and community (along with fun) that led to the opening of gay bars and businesses nearby in the late 20th century. The Marais was less desirable for business ventures then. Now, 400 years after the royal inauguration of Places des Vosges, the re-establishment of the Marais as a prized destination and residential area is a sign not such much that it has lost its Jewishness as that it has regained its lettres de noblesse—at least de bourgeoisie.

The Jewish Food Court

French and foreign visitors from beyond the quarter now frequent rue des Rosiers primarily for the shopping and the falafels—falafels, enjoyable as they may be, aren’t a reflection of local community or agriculture or known-how but of what visitors are happy to purchase. Hungry visitors will line up at the falafel window at L’As du Falafel as though the several other similar stands on the street had all failed their latest health test or lost the recipe for frying chickpea balls and slicing cabbage. The devotion to queuing there, particularly on Sunday, is partially due to the perverse lingering effect of an old article in the New York Times, partially due to the hawkers out front (once you’ve paid you’re stuck waiting), partially due to the fact that it’s kosher, whatever the latter may mean to the vast majority of those in line. As to quality, if you’re a serious student of fried chickpea balls and sliced cabbage in Paris then you should try them all. But if you simply want to eat a falafel pita sandwich any stand will suffice.

The street’s other hotspot is Chez Marianne, which takes its French republicanism seriously enough to present itself as French first, Jewish second. Chez Marianne, at the corner of rue des Rosiers and rue de l’Hospitalières Saint-Gervais, serves all kinds of delicious Mediterranean mush (eggplant, hummus, tzatziki, tarama, tapenade, etc.) as well as falafel, so there’s something for everyone. It isn’t kosher and so is open daily noon to 11pm. There are other choices in the area for a decent pastrami sandwich and well-oiled latkes, as well as some fine Ashkenazic bakeries. And there’s one remaining café that on weekdays still maintains a neighborhood feel, Les Rosiers, at #2 on the rue. Meanwhile, while fast foodies are now able to enjoy pastrami sandwiches and other New York imports in other quarters of Paris as well (e.g. meaty Freddies Deli in the 11th or vegan MOB in the 13th), while falafels are more common than crepes on some streets.

But I digress. The purpose of this article is not to recommend specific eateries in the Jewish food court or to speak of recent influences to the Paris fast food scene but rather to encourage those interested in Jewish history to look beyond the 20 years of Marais history represented by the Mediterrean-meets-NY-deli food offerings on rue des Rosiers. Enjoy them, enjoy that lingering scent and that occasional glimpse of the Pletzl and an old Jewish quarter—and why not enjoy them insightfully after working up an appetite at more instructive sights? The Deportation Memorial, the Shoah Memorial and the Holocaust Center would be fine places to start. You can begin by reading about them in this next article.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

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Jewish quarters come and go, but anti-Semitism never goes out of fashion. Most recently in France—we are in 2014—there’s been a growing attraction (patent yet limited) of the “quenelle,” a down-turned Nazi salute now understood by most to be an anti-Semitic, anti-establishment gesture. It has gained favor among individuals and groups who believe that Jewish concerns, interests and history get too much airplay, in the way that some in France and elsewhere will unify in their antagonism against homosexuals, gypsies or others.

The Deportation Memorial

Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, political opponents and others were among the 200, 000 men, women and children deported from France to Nazi concentration camps between 1940 and 1944 who did not return. The French Deportation Memorial that honors their memory lies at the eastern tip of Ile de la Cité, behind Notre-Dame Cathedral.

At the back of quiet little park, steep stairs lead to a high-walled triangular courtyard where the Seine can be seen flowing toward barbed iron. A first-time visitor might think that itself is the monument before noticing a narrow passage formed by two blocks of stone leading into the memorial crypt.

Inaugurated by President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, the memorial crypt contains the Tomb of the Unknown Deportee. The remains placed in the tomb are those of an individual who died in the concentration camp of Neustadt. A long alley containing 200,000 points of light extends beyond the tomb. Triangular urns inscribed with the names of concentration camps contain earth from the camps and ashes from their crematoria. Lines of poetry inscribed on the walls speak of pain, loss and tragedy. The entrance is barred to the cells to either side the alley. We peer into these cells unable to see the dark corners, unable to fathom what suffering they might hold.

An annual ceremony is held here on the last Sunday in April. That has, since 1954, been designated as the National Day of Memory of the Martyrs and Heroes of the Deportation, which is close to the date of the Hebrew calendar on which Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah, is commemorated.

The Shoah Memorial and the Holocaust Center

Of the 200,000 individuals memorialized at the Deportation Memorial, about 77,000 were born Jewish, and they were specifically targeted to be exterminated because of that. The majority of those Jews were killed in Auschwitz and Birkenau. Several thousand died in internment camps and some thousand others were otherwise executed or killed in France. The memorial to their memory is in the Marais, a large district (broadly the 3rd and 4th arrondissements) that had sizeable Jewish population at the outbreak of the war. The Shoah Memorial/Holocaust Center building is situated within a 10-minute walk of the Deportation Memorial to one side and rue des Rosiers to the other.

Roundups and Deportations

Following Germany’s defeat of France and the Armistice of June 22, 1940, the Germans occupied the northern half of France and a wide swatch down the country’s Atlantic coast. With Paris occupied, the French government, having originally decamped to Bordeaux, made the spa town of Vichy its headquarter. There, on July 10, 1940 Marshal Philippe Pétain, a hero of WWI, was voted full governmental power, hence reference to the French government from then until the Liberation of France in 1944 as the Vichy government.

An estimated 270,000 to 300,000 Jews were living in France in the late 1930s. Within several months after France’s armistice with Germany, the policies of the German occupiers and new French laws led to Jews being progressively excluded from professional life and dispossessed of property. Jews, defined by French officials as individuals with at least two Jewish grandparents, were required to register with the local police, constituting files that would eventually be used to round up Jews for deportation.

In collaboration with Germans and on their own, the French government along with local and state French police began rounding up Jews in 1941, first primarily foreign Jews then increasingly French Jewish men. Jews were required to wear a yellow star as of June 1942. The massive and all-inclusive round-ups in the Occupied Zone would follow.

During the mass round-up (rafle in French) of July 16-17, 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested in Paris and the Paris region. The event was exceptional not only for the number of Jews that were arrested in a single well-organized sweep but for also the fact that it embodied a clear shift in policy to the deportation of women and children along with men. Many of those arrested were corralled at the winter cycling stadium—the Vélodrome d’Hiver, commonly known as the Vél d’Hiv—that then stood just beyond the Eiffel Tower. From there they were moved to the transit camp at Drancy, northeast of the city, and then by train to Auschwitz.

Though not the only round-ups of the war period in France, those of July 1942 have come to represent the injustice and horrors of deportations throughout that period in France.

In 1995, at the site of the Vélodrome, President Jacques Chirac officially recognized on behalf of the nation France’s responsibility, under the authority of the Vichy Government and in collaboration with the Germans occupying the country, in the deportation of French Jews.

While the sculptural group shown above has been placed near the river, a memorial stands by the site of the former velodrome at 8 boulevard de Grenelle.

The Wall of the Righteous

Of the 270,000-300,000 Jews in France prior to the start of the war, nearly 75% survived by their own means, through the help of Jewish resistance organizations and/or through the assistance of non-Jewish French, through efforts both individual and collective.

For a variety of reasons, a larger percentage of French Jews escaped the Shoah than Jews from most other European countries. That partially explains why France now has the largest Jewish population in Western Europe. (Another reason for its size is the many Jews who arrived from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco as those countries gained independence from France in the 1950s and 1960s.)

Righteous Among the Nations is a title granted since 1963 by the State of Israel via the Memorial Museum of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to non-Jewish men and women who helped save Jews from persecution during the war. The names of over 3300 Righteous, whether French or acting in France, are inscribed in bronze plaques along the alley, now named  Allée des Justes (Alley of the Righteous), that borders the north side of the memorial. Inaugurated in 2006, the Wall of the Righteous also contains the name of the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon, a largely Protestant village whose religious leaders and villagers, some of whom are individually designated as Righteous, helped save numerous Jews. French Protestants had known periods of tremendous intolerance and murder at the hands of the Catholic majority and nobility from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

On the opposite side of the Allée des Justes can be seen a plaque indicating that more than 11,000 Jewish children were sent to the camps from France, including more than 500 from this, the 4th, arrondissement. Such plaques are now found on schools in districts throughout Paris where Jews lived. Some 6100 of those children lived in Paris. A sign facing the playground in Square du Temple, a park on the northern edge of the Marais, lists the names of 87 children (les tout-petits) from the 3rd arrondissement who weren’t yet old enough to attend school before being sent to the camps.

Entrance to the Shoah Memorial

Ten years after his speech at the site of the Vél d’Hiv, President Chirac inaugurated the Shoah Memorial and Holocaust Center on January 27, 2005, on the Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust and for the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity, marking that year the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Security here is attentive, humorless and direct, as at the entrance to other major Jewish sights, notably the Great Synagogue on rue de la Victoire (9th arrondissement), but one can nevertheless freely enter the memorial (if without a weapon), whereas the synagogue requires prior arrangement for those who aren’t normally affiliated with it.

The names of death camps are written on a circular memorial in the courtyard, above the memorial crypt. Along the nearby wall seven bas-reliefs (1982) by the sculptor Arbit Blatas symbolize the camps. Text on the façade of the building written in Hebrew from poet Zalman Schnoeur’s adaptation of a line from Deuteronomy 25:17 is translated by the center as follows: “Remember what Amalek did unto our Generation exterminating 600 myriad bodies and souls, in the absence of war.”

Below that is written in French the words of Justin Godard, former government minister, Honorary President of the Committee for the Unknown Jewish Martyr: “Before the unknown Jewish martyr, incline your head in piety and respect for all the martyrs; incline your thoughts to accompany them along their path of sorrow. They will lead you to the highest pinnacle of justice and truth.”

History of the Shoah Memorial

The Shoah Memorial and the Holocaust Center form a single entity whose mission is “understanding the past to illuminate the future.” The building combines a museum, a documentation center and reading room, France’s largest (by number of titles) physical bookstore on the subject of the Holocaust, an auditorium for screenings, symposia, debates and presentations, offices and a memorial crypt. Though the building, as a Holocaust center, was inaugurated in 2005, the memorial itself had already existed.

Already in 1943 there was awareness among some Jews in France that evidence and testimony of their persecution would be necessary for the time when justice would be demanded. In April of that year Isaac Schneersohn invited 40 militant leaders of the various political factions in the Jewish community to his home in Grenoble, in the unoccupied zone, to set up the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation. But in September of that year the Germans entered into the unoccupied zone (referred to as the Free Zone by the Vichy government), causing Schneersohn and others to go underground as part of the Resistance. There, efforts continued to collect secret archives, including those held by the Vichy government and by the Gestapo in France.

After the war the CDJC began classifying these archives and established a publishing house to publish books and journals about the Shoah. The CDJC was soon called upon by the French government to provide evidence for the Nuremberg Trials.

Still under Schneersohn, the CDJC in 1951 sought to create a memorial to the victims of the Shoah and eventually obtained this plot of land owned by the City of Paris. Schneersohn passed away in 1969.

The Wall of Names

An estimated 78,000-80,000 Jewish men, women and children were deported from France between 1942 and 1944. Of them, some 76-77,000 did not return. (The round numbers in this article are approximate as figures vary among the most serious sources. Those given in this article are generally those presented at the center.) Past the security box at the entrance from the street, one approaches the building through the narrow passage between walls inscribed with the names and dates of birth of these individuals, listed alphabetically by year in which they were deported.

The Memorial Crypt

The building housing The Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr was inaugurated in October 1956, three years after the laying of its cornerstone, and in February 1957 ashes of victims from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Mauthausen and from the Warsaw Ghetto, placed in earth from Israel, were buried in the memorial crypt.

A Biblical quote in Hebrew on the back wall of the crypt reads: “Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. Young and old, our sons and daughters were cut down by the sword.”

A map of the Warsaw Ghetto and an actual door from the Ghetto are now on the opposite wall. Off to the side, behind Plexiglas, are the “Jewish Files,” the index cards created between 1941 and 1944 under orders of the Vichy government and the will of the police department of the Paris region indicating the identification of Jews. These are the files that were used by French police in complicity with the Nazi occupier to know the identity and address of Jews to be rounded up for eventual deportation. Though present here for their association with the memorial, the files belong to the National Archives of France.

The Permanent Exhibition

The Shoah Memorial was officially listed on the register of historic buildings in 1991. But it soon became evident that of the need to enlarge the building and bring the CDJC and the Shoah Memorial together a single entity. A major transformation of the building led to its reopening in early 2005. The facades and the crypt of the original building were integrated into the new structure.

Other than to coming pay homage to the memory of victims of the Shoah, the permanent exhibition in the sub-basement museum is the most instructive aspect of the memorial and center for first-time visitors. Through photographs, texts, documents, films and recordings, the exhibition provides an excellent overview of the history of anti-Semitism in Europe and the events of the war period, followed by evidence and testimony gathered during the post-war period. While the films and recordings are in French only, the texts are in both French and English.

The center’s board of directors includes a number of well-known Jewish figures in French political, intellectual and economic life, currently among them Eric de Rothschild (president), Robert Badinter, chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim, Alain Finkielkraut, Serge Klarsfeld and Simone Veil. Among the memorial’s partners are the City of Paris, the Paris region (Ile de France), the Ministry of Education and the French train company SNCF.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

The Shoah Memorial, 17 rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier, 4th arr. Tel. 01 42 77 44 72. Metro Saint-Paul or Pont-Marie. Open Sunday to Friday 10am-6pm, until 10pm on Thursday. Closed for certain Jewish holidays as well as Jan. 1 and Dec. 25. Admission is free except for the auditorium and some educational activities. Free guided tours for individuals are given Sundays at 3pm in French and the second Sunday of each month in English.

The 7000+ titles available through the center’s bookshop are listed online at www.librairie-memorialdelashoah.org.

The Museum of Jewish Art and History, is also in the Marais at 71 rue du Temple, 3rd arrondissement. Metro Rambuteau or Hôtel de Ville. Open Monday to Friday 11am-6pm, Sunday 10am-6pm. Exhibitions open until 9pm on Wednesday. A 15-minute walk from the Shoah Memorial and also in the Marais, this museum is housed in a 17th-century mansion called the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan, a building occupied in 1942 by number of Jews, 13 of which died in the camps. The permanent collection shows glimpses of Jewish life in France through the centuries and mounts notable temporary exhibitions.

Related articles on France Revisited:
– Paul Niedermann: Interview with a Holocaust Survivor and Witness in France
– In Search of a Jewish Quarter:  Rue des Rosiers and the Jewish Food Court of Paris

The post Jewish Paris: Deportation Memorial, Shoah Memorial, Vel d’Hiv Memorial appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

The south of France is not generally associated with the Holocaust. But for many of the more than 6,500 Jews deported from the German provinces of Baden-Wurttemberg and the Palatinate during a single night in October 1940, the journey to Auschwitz passed that way. Among those rounded up was the family of Paul Niedermann, a boy of twelve at time, who would later become my friend.

I had first met Paul in 1978 when I was living in Bry-sur-Marne, where he had a small photo business. We became good friends, but I never knew that he was a Holocaust survivor until 1987, when he was called upon to provide testimony at Klaus Barbie’s trial for crimes against humanity. Prior to that, he never spoke of it: I didn’t even know that he was Jewish. The closest he ever came to revealing anything about what he had lived through before that was one day in the course of a conversation we had, when he mentioned that he had had “a difficult childhood.” At the time I didn’t know what he meant by that, and I didn’t press him for details.

What happened is this: during the night of October 22-23, 1940, Paul and his family were removed from their home and taken to the train station in Karlsruhe, where they and hundreds of other Jewish citizens were held for 24 hours. Then they were loaded onto trains and sent to an internment camp at Gurs, near Pau in the south of France. At the time this was in the unoccupied part of France, under the control of the Vichy Government.

In March of the following year, Paul and his family were transferred from Gurs to another internment camp, at Rivesaltes, near Perpignan. From there his parents were sent to Auschwitz, where they both perished.

Before his parents were sent to Auschwitz, Paul and his younger brother Arnold had been rescued from Rivesaltes by Vivette Hermann (later known as Vivette Samuel), who was working with an organization called OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) to save the lives of Jewish children. A Quaker group had worked out an arrangement with the U.S. government for the United States to accept five convoys of refugee children. Through this arrangement Arnold was given the chance to go the U.S., where their mother’s sister lived: however, the Quakers were unable to send Paul since, under the terms of the agreement, only children under the age of 12 could be admitted. Thus Paul, at 14, was given the responsibility, as “head of the family,” to decide whether Arnold should go to the U.S., or stay with him in France. “I didn’t think about it too long. I gave my consent,” he says. His parents were gone, he knew not where. And it would be 14 years before he would see his brother again.

For the next couple of years Paul lived as a fugitive, hiding and being hidden in a series of safe places in France and Switzerland, including the children’s home in Isieu that was raided by the Gestapo on April 6, 1944, shortly after he had left there. Of the 44 Jewish children and seven adult caregivers who were arrested, only one survived deportation. Most were killed at Auschwitz.

After the war Paul made his life in France, but took frequent trips to the United States to spend time with his brother in California, and his aunt.

In 1992 Paul learned that his brother was in possession of a box of letters that his mother had written from Gurs and Rivesaltes to her sister in Baltimore. Arnold could not bear to read them, and for many years Paul couldn’t either. Arnold passed away in 2000. Paul eventually decided that he would allow these letters to become part of the public record of the Holocaust. Beginning in 2007 he read them all and translated them into French. They were published in a bilingual (German/French) hardcover edition, Briefe einer badisch-jüdischen Familie aus französischen Internierungslagern / Lettres d’une famille juive du Pays de Bade internée dans les camps en France  (Info Verlag, 2011; separate German and French editions have also been published).

One of the most impressive things about Paul is that despite all he went through he has never succumbed to bitterness. Another is his level of energy: since 1987, he has spent most of his time traveling and witnessing to school, church, and other groups in France and in Germany. He has also appeared in several documentaries, and a recording of his oral history is in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He takes very seriously the responsibility of telling his story, a responsibility that he feels more acutely as the number of Holocaust survivors still living dwindles.

What follows are his answers to my questions, which I have translated from the original French.

Janet Hulstrand: You lost your parents at an early age, and in a particularly terrible way. But what are some of the happy memories you have of your parents and grandparents, and of Karlsruhe before it was taken over by the Nazis?

Paul Neidermann: Certainly a childhood and adolescence in Nazi Germany was not easy for a Jewish child, but we were a very close family. Inside the shelter of our home, my childhood always seemed normal to me.

My family was observant, and we didn’t have any problems in this regard. Before the Nazis came into power, we were very well integrated into the city, and we had both Jewish and non-Jewish friends. I started school in 1933, and I was the only Jewish child in my class. The city of Karlsruhe, which was relatively young, had never had a ghetto, so Jews lived all over the city.

J.H.: You celebrated your bar mitzvah in the internment camp at Gurs. How did you manage to do that, and what was it like?

P.N.: I spent the first two weeks at Gurs in “Block K,” the women’s barracks, because my mother, being a good Jewish mother, didn’t want to let my little brother and me out of her sight. But when I turned 13 I was considered an adult and was transferred to Block E, where my father was.

Back in Germany I had been preparing for my bar mitzvah. A rabbi had saved a scroll of the Torah, and that is how the ceremony took place in Block E, with my father and grandfather, along with many other people I didn’t know—including the rabbi. There certainly was no special meal, and there were no gifts! At the time I didn’t think much about it—our concern at the time was first and foremost to survive.

J.H.: Can you tell the story of how you came to have the picture of your mother that is on the front cover of your book?

P.N.: We were transferred from Gurs to a camp at Rivesaltes, and it was in that camp that I stole the photo of my mother. The director of the barracks had sent me to deliver the roll call list to the director of the camp. When I was there, I saw a big box full of photos near the door. My family was always interested in photography, so I was curious about the pictures. I impulsively grabbed a handful of photos without looking at them. Back in my barracks I looked to see what I had gotten, and I saw that my mother was in one of the photos I had taken, there in the front row, waiting for soup to be distributed. Two weeks later, she went to Auschwitz, where she was killed. This photo is certainly the most precious of all the treasures I’ve been able to save from oblivion.

J.H.: I knew you for a long time before I ever knew about your experiences as a child during the war. What made you decide to begin sharing these life experiences with others?

P.N.: For a long time I wasn’t able to talk about what I had gone through. I had a real block about it. But I was called as a witness in the Klaus Barbie trial in 1987. [Ed note: Barbie was the notorious head of the Gestapo in Lyons. It was because Paul had been a resident at the safe house in Izieu that he was called as a witness for the prosecution in Barbie’s trial.]

The prosecutor, Pierre Truche, a wonderful jurist, questioned me about the smallest details without emotion. For him, I was just another witness. But for me he was kind of a “shrink,” without his knowing it. At the trial there were thousands of people who heard my story. Afterward many invited me to speak, mainly in schools. I’ve continued to go over all of what happened in my head now, and that’s how I became the witness of my own story, which is of course a part of the larger History of the Holocaust.

J.H.: How do you feel about the generation of Germans who allowed the rise of Nazism to take hold?

P.N.: During the war, everything German was the Enemy. But afterward, I realized that hate is a completely sterile emotion, and that you can’t build anything on this foundation. The criminals of that time are all dead now, and I have no quarrel with those who were born afterward. That allows me to speak to young Germans and also Frenchmen and women, to bear witness to what was possible and still is, unfortunately. I tell young people today that they must be involved in such a way that these things can never happen again!

J.H.: Many people who suffered as much from hatred as you and your family did come away from the experience embittered. While it is easy to understand how this can happen, and I believe it is wrong to blame victims of hatred who do end up this way, you have taken a different path. How did you come up with the courage, strength and compassion to retain your essential human kindness and compassion, and your positive attitude about life?

P.N.: More than anything, I believe that I owe my optimism and especially my positive attitude to my parents, who made me who I am. I thank them for this every day.

J.H.: You have received many awards and accolades for your work as a witness to the Holocaust. Can you tell us about some of them? Is there one of them that is particularly meaningful to you?

P.N.: My work as a witness has been widely recognized. I might mention the Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. I’ve also been given the opportunity to tell my story in both Protestant and Catholic churches: all these are signs of respect for the Jewish communities in France and Germany. But I am especially proud of an abundant correspondence I have had with German and French youth, who have proved to me that I’m not “preaching in the desert.” I am very happy to be able to continue this important work, even at 86 years of age. Somebody has to do the job!

© 2014

Acknowledgement by Janet Hulstrand: Because of his dedicated efforts as a witness, Paul’s story has been given fairly broad exposure in France and in Germany. When I asked if he would be willing to share his story with an English-speaking audience, he readily accepted. I am grateful for the time and thought he put into answering my questions. I am also grateful to Gary Lee Kraut for the opportunity to bring Paul’s story and outlook to an American audience.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches Paris: A Literary Adventure each summer in Paris for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and literature classes at Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. She writes the blog Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road.  She has also profiled the American poet James A. Emanuel for France Revisited in two articles found here and here.

For another France Revisited article about deportations and the Shoah see Jewish Paris: The Deportation Memorial, the Shoah Memorial and the Holocaust Center.

The post Paul Niedermann: Interview with a Holocaust Survivor and Witness in France appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

Between 1870 and 1900, a period of great influx of Jews into France, you’d be unlikely to find a wealthy Jewish resident of Paris going into the Marais for kugel or gefilte fish, let alone a falafel. Leave that to the tourists and the working class schnooks, they’d say. Well, maybe not. Maybe they’d send a servant or two to Rue des Rosiers for some kishke and kreplach or stay for a meal when in the neighborhood for some philanthropic mitvah.

Otherwise, prosperous Jews in Paris in the latter decades of the 19th century likely felt more at home among the bankers, industrialists and aristocrats of the 8th or 9th arrondissements than in the Pletzl, the Little Place, as the heart of the then-significant Jewish Quarter around Rue des Rosiers was known. In any case, wealthy Sephardim, such as the de Camondo family, a Jewish banking family that had made its fortune in the Ottoman Empire and Italy, would have been more familiar with Turkish spanakopita and kaskarikas and yufka than with the Ashkenazi fare found in the Marais, where the vast majority of Jews were then Ahkenazim. Anyway, by the time the de Camondos established residence in Napoleon III’s France in 1869, they were probably well accustomed to the foodstuff of aristocracy.

The Camondo family’s rise in wealth originated through commerce at the end of the 18th century. By the early 19th century the fortune was sizable enough for Isaac Camondo, based in Istanbul, to open a bank in his own name. Isaac died without children and so his brother Abraham Salomon Camondo (1781-1873) inherited the bank and greatly developed. Having aided Italian unification through loans to the newly formed kingdom, Abraham and his grandsons (Abraham’s son died in 1866) were ennobled by Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel II. The parallel with the (de) Rothschilds led the (de) Camondos to be known as “the Rothschilds of the east.” (See this article about the Rothschilds in Paris.)

The Camondo family’s French story begins in 1869 when the elderly Abraham Salomon Camondo followed his two grandsons Abraham (1829-1889) and Nissim (1830-1889) to Paris to further grew their successful family.

Abraham and Nissim elected to live in what was then becoming one of the most exclusive quarters in the capital, the area around Parc Monceau. Through the 1860s and into the 1870s, members of the imperial aristocracy and of the haute bourgeoisie built stately mansions surrounding the park’s genteel greenery and theatrical décor. Here one could stroll by a colonnade of Corinthian columns in partial ruin, watch duck in the oval pond of a naumachia (the basin Romans used for mock naval battles), walk over a Chinese bridge and visit an Italian grotto and an Egyptian pyramid. The sight of well-dressed (faux) explorers visiting (faux) ancient ruins on an afternoon in Parc Monceau might have been reminiscent of paintings by 18th-century French painters Watteau, Fragonard, Lancret or Bouchet found in the Louvre—or on the walls of neighborhood residence since living with great wealth now required a backdrop of great art and perhaps some antique furnishings.

Soon after they arrived in Paris, brothers Abraham and Nissim de Camondo built mansions side by side overlooking the park. Several streets away, Edouard André, heir to a Protestant banking family, built an even more ostentatious home on the new and expansive Boulevard Haussmann. When, in 1881, André married Nélie Jacquemart, they formed a couple of the most devoted art collectors in Paris. Their home and collection are open to the public as the Jacquemart-André Museum, which gets the lion’s share of museum attention in the quarter, leaving relatively few visitors to the exceptional home and collection of Moïse de Camondo.

The collectors in the de Camondo family weren’t brothers Abraham and Nissim, who arrived in Paris as business-minded adults, but their respective sons, Isaac (1851-1911) and Moïse (1860-1935). The cousins continued to live side by side after their fathers died, both in 1889.

The Republic of France was the center of the art world between 1870 and WWI, and while Isaac had a taste for modern art, Moïse (Moses) was devoted to the styles of the pre-Revolutionary Kingdom of France. Having arrived in France as a child, Moïse developed a taste in decorative arts that was more French than the French. He considered the beauty of decorative art of the 18th century, particularly the period from 1750 to 1789 (the second half of Louis XV’s reign and Louis XVI’s full reign) as “one of the glories of France.”

Moïse de Camondo, like his cousin next door, grew up in a Napoleon III-style mansion bought by his father in 1870. After the death of his mother in 1910 he had the home demolished in order to build his dream home. Modeled after the Petit Trianon, that little jewel of a palace at Versailles that Marie-Antoinette used as her getaway house, Moïse’s new home combined the luxury of a modern mansion of the 1910s with a space that could ideally present his 18th-century decorative treasures. (The former home of his uncle Abraham and cousin Isaac, which would have had much in common with the home Moïse had demolished, can still be seen next door.)

The brothers would eventually bequeath their extensive art and decorative collections to French cultural institutions. Isaac, who never married, left his collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings to the Louvre (many of them are now in the Orsay), while Moïse bequeathed his home and collection of 18th-century decorative arts to the Union Central des Arts Decoratifs. The UCAD, an institution created in 1882, is now called Les Arts Decoratifs, and oversees the Museum of Decorative Arts and affiliated museums, including the Nissim de Camondo Museum, where Moïse’s home and collection are still largely presented as he wished.

Whether or not you’re greatly interested in 18th-century decorative arts, the museum is remarkable in its combination of three different points of interest: an extraordinary decorative arts collection, the technology and services of an ultra-modern home of the early 20th century, and the life and times of the de Camondo family as bankers, philanthropists, collectors and Jews. Use of the audio-guides (free with the entrance ticket) or a human guide is highly recommended.

Rooms specially designed to receive Moïse de Camondo’s growing collection are fitted with antique wood paneling and present marquetry, inlaid tables and other furnishings by great names of French cabinetmaking in the latter decades of the 18th century, such as Oeben, Riesener and Jacob, along with paintings, bronze clocks, vases and chandeliers. Methodical in his purchases and with a sense of symmetry in his home, he often purchased items in pairs. The pieces often have a known history relative to high aristocracy or royalty, such as Marie-Antoinette’s chiffonier, a table for her needlepoint work. A room off the dining room was built to showcase Moïse’s porcelain collection, including two Sèvres dinner services (“Service Buffon”), each piece of which is illustrated by a different bird.

Advised by curators at the Louvre and the Union Central des Arts Décoratifs and in contact with major antique dealers, Moïse continued to enrich his collection until the end of his life. He sold pieces to buy better pieces.

While wishing to present the art de vivre of the ancient regime, Moïse de Camondo had also instructed the architect René Sergent to provide all of the high-luxury comforts of his own time, complete with an ultra-modern kitchen, heating, bathrooms and car park.

In an alliance of two powerful banking families, Moïse married Irène Cahen d’Anvers in 1891. Irène had been painted by Renoir as a child, her curly long brown hair falling down her back and wrapped around her shoulder like a fur cape. They were married at the Grande Synagogue de Paris on Rue de la Victoire. Five years and two children later she fell in love with an Italian count who was a racehorse trainer, the era’s equivalent of running off with the pool boy. In the divorce, Moïse was granted custody of the children.

Their son Nissim (named for Moïse’s father) was the intended heir to the home and his collection, as well as of the bank, but he predeceased has father, dying in air combat during WWI in 1917. Moïse then closed the bank and eventually bequeathed the mansion and its furnishings to the Union Central des Arts Décoratifs in Nissim’s memory.

Their daughter Béatrice showed no interest in her father’s passion for 18th-century decorative arts. She nevertheless inherited a sizable fortune. Horses were her passion, and in any case she had a family and home of her own. During the German occupation of WWII, she felt protected from expanding anti-Jewish policies by her wealth, assimilation and position in French society. By then, her late father’s Paris home and collection had become a museum. If she had inherited them the collection would undoubtedly have been dispersed since her own possessions were eventually seized when she, her husband Léon Reinach, and their children Fanny (born in 1920) and Bertrand (born in 1923) were arrested in 1942 for being Jewish and deported (Léon, Fanny and Bertrand in Nov. 1943, Béatrice in 1944) to the death camp at Auschwitz. They did not return.

This is one of the most beautiful of lesser-known museums of Paris enlivened by a fascinating family history, ideally followed up by peaceable stroll through Parc Monceau.

© 2013, Gary Lee Kraut

Musée Nisim de Camondo, 63 rue de Monceau, 8th arr. Metro Villiers or Monceau. Tel 01 53 89 06 40 or 01 53 89 06 50. Open Wed.-Sun. 10am-5:30pm. Entrance: 7€50, includes audio-guide. Joint tickets including entrance to the Museums of Decorative Arts, Fashion and Textile and Advertising, all on Rue de Rivoli, are available for 12€.

The post Nissim de Camondo Museum: The Glory and the Tragedy appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

Passionate, lively and enthusiastic, Gilles Paquet-Brenner leads us into a flood of reflections about his latest film Sarah’s Key, starring Kristin Scott Thomas, his love for the cinema, and his own new role as a father. He is hopeful that his message in this film will touch the American public in a universal way that goes beyond the historical events of the round-up of the Jews of Paris in 1942, which is shown in the film’s opening scenes.

How to classify Sarah’s Key? For the director and co-author of the screenplay, Sarah’s Key is not just another Holocaust film written by someone directly affected by the event, even if Paquet-Brenner is aware of the disappearance of part of his own family, including his grandfather, a Jewish musician of German origins, who took refuge in a free zone and was deported after being denounced by the French.

While feeling a deep and resounding respect for the victims, Paquet-Brenner bemoans the fact that the Holocaust is often “put under a glass dome.” His approach, intended as positive, is to recognize through this film, beyond the dark period of the Vichy Government, “the wounds inflicted on minorities, whichever they may be.”

He explains, “Sarah’s Key is undeniably linked to a page of our history, the history of a Jewish family in Paris in 1942. Yes, but this event has parallels in our time. In today’s world, separatism is winning ground and I hope the film can show the dangers and the absurdity of the results when they are pushed to the extreme.”

What does he think of the obligation to remember? He resists the desire to teach the viewer a lesson or impose a feeling of guilt, which he sees as the best way to achieve the opposite effect.

“It’s a film, it’s a thriller; it’s neither a historical documentary nor a teaching tool.” The fast-paced plot, the back and forth between 1942 and the present, between Paris, the French countryside and the U.S., the quest for truth, and the painful resolution of the mystery keeps viewers holding their breath and leads them to ask the question, which Julia, the journalist played by Kristin Scott Thomas, asks her colleagues: “What would you have done in their place?”

To this Paquet-Brenner adds: “In France, many viewers asked themselves what their parents’ role was during the war, what position they took, whether they had been collaborators, resistance members, passive witnesses or victims…”

“There are few remaining survivors from this period. Other than several films such as Mr. Klein, these episodes have never been mentioned except between the lines. One can talk about them more calmly today. My film brings a very modern point of view on history; it’s a reflection on the past, restoring it to better confront it, assimilating it to let us construct our future.”

Gilles Paquet-Brenner, in writing a faithful screenplay of the novel, also wanted to deal with historical facts and their repercussions on future generations. But he wants to conclude with a message of hope. Though the film contains numerous scenes about the past, perhaps due to the power of the images, major portions of the film focus on the present and the future—the future of little Sarah. In the French version, he chose for the final frame the little girl, behind the picture window of a restaurant, looking, wide-eyed, with the park spread out at her feet.

A sign of destiny? He chose to call his first child, born on the last day of the shooting for Sarah’s Key, Sunniva: ‘the gift of the sun’ in Norwegian.

Daniele Thomas Easton is the Director of France-Philadelphie, which provides consulting for French-American business and cultural projects. She is the former Honorary French Consul to Philadelphia (PA) and Wilmington (DE). She lives in Philadelphia. In 2007 she received France’s Legion of Honor.

Un entretien avec le jeune cinéaste français Gilles Paquet-Brenner: “Il faut apprendre et connaitre le passé pour pouvoir progresser.”

Passionné, vif, enthousiaste, il vous entraîne dans un flot de réflexions sur son dernier film, Sarah’s Key, qu’il est venu présenter en avant-première dans plusieurs grandes villes américaines (sortie officielle le 29 juillet) -, sur son amour du cinéma, qui lui a permis de cotoyer Marion Cotillard, Patrick Bruel, Laura Smet, avant de diriger Kristin Scott Thomas dans l’adaptation du roman de Tatiana de Rosnay, ou encore sur sa vie personnelle de tout nouveau père. Il est surtout animé par l’espoir que son message touchera le public américain de façon universelle, au-delà de l’événement historique de la rafle du Vel d’Hiv, présenté dès les premières images du film.

Comment “classifier” Sarah’s Key? Pour ce réalisateur qui a aussi participé à l’écriture du scénario, ce n’est pas un énième film consacré à la Shoah par quelqu’un de concerné directement, même si Gilles Paquet-Brenner évoque à demi-mot la disparition d’une partie de sa famille, notamment de son grand-père, musicien juif d’origine allemande, réfugié en zone libre, déporté après avoir été dénoncé par des Français. Tout en éprouvant un très profond et vibrant respect pour les victimes, il déplore que cet holocauste soit parfois “placé sous cloche”. Sa démarche, qu’il souhaite être positive, est de faire reconnaître par le biais du film et au-delà des sombres moments du Gouvernement de Vichy, “les blessures infligées aux minorités, quelles qu’elles soient.”

“Sarah’s Key est indéniablement relié à une page de notre histoire, l’histoire concerne une famille juive, à Paris en 1942. Oui, mais cet événement est en résonance avec la période à laquelle nous vivons. Dans notre monde actuel, le communautarisme gagne du terrain et je souhaite que le film puisse montrer les dangers et l’absurdité des dérives lorsqu’elles sont poussées à l’extrême.”

Que pense-t-il du devoir de mémoire? Il se défend de vouloir donner une leçon au spectateur et d’imposer un sentiment de culpabilité, “le meilleur moyen d’obtenir l’effet contraire.” “C’est un film, c’est un thriller, ce n’est ni un documentaire historique ni un outil pédagogique. Il faut non pas montrer du doigt mais intéresser.”

Il est vrai qu’on serait presque tenté de parler d’enquête policière si le thème n’en était pas aussi tragique. Le rythme rapide de l’intrigue, le va-et-vient entre 1942 et le présent, entre Paris, la campagne française et les Etats-Unis, la quête de la vérité, et la douloureuse résolution du mystère gardent le public en haleine et l’amènent à se poser la question, comme le fait avec ses collègues Julia, la journaliste interprétée par Kristin Scott Thomas: “Qu’auriez-vous fait à leur place?” À ceci Gilles Paquet-Brenner ajoute : “En France, bon nombre dans la salle se sont demandé quel rôle leurs parents avaient pris pendant la guerre, quelle position ils avaient adoptée ou subie, collabos, résistants, témoins passifs ou victimes…”

“Il reste peu de survivants de cette époque. À part dans quelques films comme Monsieur Klein, ces épisodes n’ont été évoqués qu’en filigrane. On peut en parler plus calmement aujourd’hui. Mon film apporte un point de vue très contemporain sur l’histoire; c’est une réflexion sur le passé, le restituant pour mieux l’affronter, l’assimilant pour permettre de construire notre futur.”

Gilles Paquet-Brenner, dans sa transcription cinématographique très fidèle du roman, aura lui aussi traité de faits historiques et de leurs répercussions sur des générations futures. Mais il veut terminer sur un message d’espoir. Si les séquences consacrées au passé semblent nombreuses, peut-être en raison de la puissance des images, une place prépondérante est donnée au présent et au futur, au futur de la petite Sarah. Dans la version française, il a d’ailleurs choisi en ultime image de cadrer la petite fille, derrière la grande baie vitrée du restaurant, regardant, les yeux écarquillés, le parc qui s’étale à ses pieds.

Signe du destin? Il a choisi d’appeler son premier enfant, qui a vu le jour le dernier jour du tournage de Sarah’s Key, Sunniva : le don du soleil en norvégien.

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